Courage Boosters: 8 ways to be brave when you’re feeling freaked

I have a firm belief that courage and bravery isn’t something that some people have and some people don’t.  In my experience, courage is a practice.  It’s something that you can get better and better at summoning – like a muscle, courage can be flexed over and over again to become stronger.  And in even better news, flexing your courage in very small ways requires the same je ne sais quoi as flexing your courage in big ways.  It requires the same self-talk, the same belief in your innate ability and resilience, the same willingness to accept some level of risk in order to reap reward.  And so, I’m an advocate of finding small ways to flex your courage on a regular basis, so that you can find what it takes to be brave when you’re feeling truly freaked about something – whether it’s making a big life change or just trying something you’ve never done before.

Here are 8 Courage Boosters – little things you can do to boost your courage, and help you remember just what you’re made of:

1. Learn something new.  It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic or scary, but when you do it, take note of all the things that you had to figure out along the way, the new skills you had to acquire.  Notice how many times you totally screwed it up before you got it right.  You survived, right?
2. Tell someone you love them.  For the first time or the hundredth time, sharing this sentiment in a way that is truly meaningful never stops feeling a little vulnerable…but it reaps incredible rewards.
3. State your opinion.  Along the same lines exploring vulnerability as a way to tap into courage, stating what you believe in can be scary, but fierce as all hell.  Go for it.
4. Do something you usually ask for help for all by yourself.
5. Be bold.  Wear something bold.  Do something bold.  Shock someone…even if it’s only yourself.
6. Go somewhere you’ve never been before:  to the movies by yourself, on a new hiking trail, to a nearby town.
7. Think of something you’re really damn afraid of doing.  Now do the thing you’re avoiding:  actually write out the list of things that could go wrong, ways you could fail, hurts you might incur as a result of putting your neck out there.  Naming your fears and being very, very specific about them might actually knock the substance right out of them.
8. Purposefully fail at something.  Choose anything.  Do it really badly.  Survive.

Okay lady, it’s time for you to go out there and Do The Thing.  What Courage Boosters will you try out?  Do you have some of your own you’d like to use?