Shh, just a moment! Stop, stop, stop! Did you hear that? Listen louder, not more intently; it’s there, in the background, sorting out its indifference to your demands and nonsense, armed with a face mask and body armor in preparation to take the hits you will inevitably sling at it.

Do you recognize it anymore? Or has the habitual denial of its needs become a second home to your emotional placeholder far too long, a location with no face?

Now, you can stop reading if you’re not quite ready to tackle what will inevitably ask more of you than a series of steps and to be fair, you should give yourself more than that.

You see, the art of courage is never something you just do – it’s what you become by undoing what you’ve already begun.

Let’s check in and start at the beginning.

Brain VS Brain

The first premise to dismantling our self-dictatorship begins with dismantling the demanding leader fueling the fire; get a mirror and check out that reflection, it certainly doesn’t look evil or appear with an intent to destroy everything we hold near and dear, yea?

I mean, unless you definitely are fitting this context, in which case, good luck and remember my support if…when you succeed at world domination!

Now, take a moment to think about when you felt conflicted with your confidence in a situation.

There are many words we could use to describe variances to a situation, but more often, it’s a chemical reaction fueling a feeling – a feeling similar despite those variances, more inclined to differences in heights.

When standing atop a tall tree, a rope being handed to me to swing on with the goal to let go and land in the river – my body seized, absolutely frozen. Chemically, adrenaline is all over the board on top of other chemical releases flooding in between social (I was chanted to jump) and the one handing me the rope was Mr. Handsome who said if I jumped, he’d kiss me and that was the moment my brain started mocking me for not negotiating with terrorists.

We could call this a physical threshold, different and more extreme in the physical sense as it paralyzed me. I don’t feel this depth, say, when I am socially nervous. To be fair, I realize I have literally walked very fast away from someone who made me nervous all while talking like we’re having a conversation. They actually followed me and gave up as I kept picking up pace and shutting down the talk with an end and realized after, yes, I just really did that!

I don’t get nervous often so that person was more an Achilles heel I have less ability to re-engineer responses to, but all the same – it had a physical effect. Emotionally, there is history there and a reason why I want to disconnect and not engage with him. My solution, I suppose, was to run with some reasoning to not actually run. Seriously, how awkward would that of been if I just flat out started running? Ha!

I didn’t jump from that tree, either; I climbed back down because my brain noped it outta there, ultimately preferring to not test that data despite the evidence on hand after watching others complete the task.

Take your own experiences that you draw or situations that trigger responses and actually look at them.

You have data sets from learned experiences, knowledge obtained, deductions, etc.; your brain is always inputting data and assessing from known and unknowns.

What is often overlooked is the emotional data, the second brain so to speak, that is reactive to that data. Meanwhile, your conscious self is muted as you’re flooded with a need to respond to the situation – there is less time to think.

Once we’re out of a situation, we can review and assess, we can afford time to rationalize and make sense of it.

Simple to understand in base, yea? Rational data + emotional data = response.

Yet this isn’t courage – it’s just data sets specific to the human presenting and calculating behavioral shifts to re-engineer responses; you can train a lot of these things to new responses.

What is important here is to be mindful, understanding your seeds is part of understanding how you in turn facilitate them and your responses.

The Blame Game

Well, someone is responsible, yea? Of course that is you who should have, could have, would have, if only x, y, or z.

What we deduce as a failure is more mitigated to your life experience and what you value as a result of it. Again, we’re all presenting very different facets and factors to that premise and covering the breadth of it all broad and extensive, given this.

What is universal, though, is the need for peace – this can look different, for some peace may be quite literally self-destructive behavior so don’t assume a specific image of what that means, just the pocket it builds.

Think of it as a space utilized to overwrite the overwhelming feelings currently taking you hostage, a place we all desire to get back to and stabilize.

It’s all coding and the longer you’ve been using your codes, the easier it autopilots versus deep analytical thought, which is why it is so easy to bypass a factor in it.

What happens with the daily micro interactions and engagements?

You’ve been engineering your entire life, whether you realize it or not, and in it created an entire “neuro-system”, a whole program primed and effective to the needs in it. You have created yourself, ultimately, and continue to do so each and every day, be it changing something or funneling it into base responses. Take responsibility for that because it’s a big step to owning it and the power that comes with it.

So, if we can identify our seeds and own our bases, what does that have to do with courage?

The Task of Unmasking

Let’s track back to those micro interactions and engagements because it is here, hidden amongst ourselves, the one bearing the weight.

Maybe we can organize this.

You have your triggers, coding, and responses, yea? Where does the residual go? I mean, we have a solution that brings back some stability, back to our space, but where did the rest disperse to?

Who cares! I’m feeling good to go! But…are you? How many times have you cycled back? How often have you found yourself in that same place?

The thing is, it does go somewhere and that is in your data.

Generally, I think we do well with extremes as they are more sensible; if someone wants to skydive, way to go for them but it’s an easy pass for others and rational. We don’t carry emotional baggage for these choices as much when we’re deducting on a larger scale. It’s less personal, yea?

What is personal, though, are all the daily collections you’ve been transitioning through that build and stack in weight to each collective.

The internet, even, has opened this whole new window in which we can learn and build data sets of what we define as successful or standard; your standards of what you perceive as necessary have grown for it. What can happen, though, is instead of seeing your own ability, you see a range and what works, further deepening not your own self but an image now of what you feel needs to be or should be.

And, you know, in the scope of things, we can deflect a lot because our problems are minor feeling in comparison and we just need to “toughen,” up, cue some motivational YouTube videos to signal emotional responses to cover up the stink and rearrange our current state with some release. Maybe, we cope with ignoring or bottle it up and replace it with anger or some feeling that is stronger to drive forward and get past the current barrier.

We could call the residual a cache memory, a background where all the processes partition behind the scenes. Ultimately, this is where our self reflects a lot of the “truths,” we have rooted and ingrained throughout what we’ve been processing amongst ourselves.

The goal becomes more need to review that cache and unfortunately, we are not able to click a button to clear the clutter and really, we shouldn’t want that ease because it is our collection that has birthed ourselves; if you don’t see the value in that, you’re forgetting just how amazing you’ve been at surviving to today.

Human Vs Human

What I am attempting to do and asking of you is to see yourself in a simple form, a human system in three parts – biological, chemical, and conscious. The chemical and biological having learned and automatic responses, while the conscious is able to question or simply follow data as it presents and needs with answers derived from each area built over a lifetime.

I am asking this of you because it’s important to know your power and be aware of how life affects that how and what you root; you are the driver, owning that position is the difference between knowing when to take control of the wheel or allow systems to take over, especially when self-preservation is at risk.

Courage can be colored many ways, but the base is more tuned to each person’s programming; words matter less here because what we’re searching for is the feeling that unlocks the right release.

Courage isn’t necessarily an ability to overcome a situation, either, despite rationality stating this derivative – it’s very human to context words to explain feelings and associate them with understanding but chemically, we have to delve deeper.

I was born wired to an extremely loud world, forcing me to learn to function and pattern; there is so much engineering, I find myself lost when trying to understand who I am because sometimes all I see is the engineering and I mean, is that really me, then? There’s a wormhole.

Part of my self-programming has been to cue adrenaline to shift the second I feel fear, I funnel it to excitement; it hypes me up and serves to shut down the effects that would otherwise hinder me. If a situation is extreme, I will absolutely release any chains and go crazy, allowing myself to fully become what I need to be in a situation. I still feel the effects, but my response is overwritten by fueling and shifting into a different persona.

That’s not courage, it’s programming I routed, well learned given the traumatic experiences I have had to survive.

No, you see, courage is more underwritten to that cache – that place you’ve funneled residual matter to in the background that signals what triggers, that face behind your own that takes everything you can’t and attempts to hold the weight.

You cycle because it can only hold so much before it collapses, finding yourself face to face with all those feelings you’ve rooted to it.

Day after day, telling yourself who or what you should be in context to the data set you created based on what you’ve input and aligned to that manifest.

Each and every part where you attempted to succeed and do as you programmed in your mind what should be and when the results didn’t match, you took that weight and gave it to that part of you to maintain it.

Courage is the pain that asks you if you can survive it because it’s collapsing and needs you now to take the wheel and nurture it.

You wrote this standard dictating who it should be and this part of ourselves can’t rationalize that, it just collects and imprints your expectations, and what you need to do is free it from your demands.

The Art of Courage

What does that mean?

It means connecting your conscious self to the system self and rerouting your expectations.

Who is that potential you that has been buried endlessly by nomenclature you’ve defined, thereby assigned to this self?

This ideal self you’ve created becomes a monster looming over you, one that has less forgiveness for who you’ve become that isn’t the ideal it feels it should be.

If you love this ideal more than yourself, invested in it over everything that is – you essentially have destroyed yourself and it’s worth, overwriting an entire being that exists in effort to become a projected self.

You’re a bully and like all bullies, you need a punching bag.

Stop a moment and look at the bruises, look at the scars, the pain that has accumulated and ask yourself if it’s working more than its destroying in the process.

You are absolutely enough, each and every moment that brought you to today that has had to navigate multiple layers and growth to transition and work with what you had to work with your entire existence – when did you ever fail?

The thing is, we could be a lot of things, but our starting point is not the same nor all the multiple coincidences or situations that may have affected outcomes from those similar; the success you are viewing and attempting to attain is not written in a statement nor is there a determined route.

The art of courage is being able to look at yourself as it is and believe in it. I mean, really celebrate and love this being that is you above all else that states it’s not enough.

Data is data and a matter of strategy and rooting tactics; you find solutions and build a schematic that works with your strengths and weaknesses to align and execute directives.

It’s not personal but we make it personal when we attack ourselves when that data doesn’t match up, investing our worth in those outcomes and not seeing it instead as a simple data set we are testing.

Let’s look at this from a different point of view.

Kanya Sesser is a model, actress, skater, surfer, skier, snowboarder, and a professional athlete – she was also born without legs.

Data would tell you a lot about the barriers she inevitably would and have to face as a result of not having legs, yet she’s defied them and is more skilled than a large percentage of us with legs.

She’s not courageous because she was born without legs; she’s courageous because she believed in herself over the data. She pushed through those barriers because she believed herself over the challenges that told her otherwise.

And that’s it, that’s the secret – you have to love the magic that is you; it’s a quality, a strength, a power that you are gifting the world with.

It’s not about the data, it never was. We all fail forward to success and to be successful, you learn to succeed in failing by not losing the courage to believe you’ve learned versus believing you became something as a result.

What I am asking you to do is ultimately dump the data, clear the cache – data is a tool, not you.

Look at yourself, feel it – I mean really stop and feel that right there, in your chest, vibrating away; it exists and is alive. Nurture it.

It takes courage to tell the world it’s wrong, to tell the data it’s wrong and defy it.

It takes courage to believe what you’ve felt your entire life, much easier to bury it in all the reasons why it can’t be real; all the investments, all the you that has pushed and strived to make it to another day – it’s in there, you once believed in it and it has never stopped believing in you.

It takes courage to stand up to a bully who knows every secret and where it hurts, but this monster is our own creation and one we have to face down by building ourselves up, not it.

You see, courage was never about my ability to jump from that tree or your ability to execute some task – it was always about being okay with your ultimate needs and how you answered them because you needed that more than the task asked of you.

We are growing everyday and building towards layers of goals; it’s a process filled with thresholds we are achieving as we navigate them. Success is not the outcome – it’s what you became and become as you take those steps.

What I want you to do is look again in that mirror and see how absolutely amazing you are, love that reflection and have the courage to believe what it knows and has always known is true and tell it you have the courage to believe it.

Now take that feeling and hit the world and its data with all that magic that is you; tell the world and everything in it that it is wrong.

Right now, say it out loud; it is wrong.

That…that takes courage, and if you believe it, you’ll feel it.