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The Courage Quotient

How Science Can Make You Braver

by Robert Biswas-Diener

|Jossey-Bass©2012·208 pages

Robert Biswas-Diener is known as the “Indiana Jones of positive psychology.” As per his bio, “his research has taken him to such far-flung places as Greenland, India, Kenya and Israel.” And, important note: “He is afraid of quicksand and snakes.” :) Robert is also the son of one of the leading positive psychology researchers: Ed Diener. We covered a book they wrote together called Happiness. This is basically the ONLY book on science of courage. It's fantastic. Big Ideas we explore include defining the numerator and denominator of our Courage Quotient (hint: Increase your "willingness to act" and "ability to control fear"), courage's two flavors (general + personal), courage blindness (and how to heal it), the power of playing our roles well (choose a courageous one!), being willing to fail and playing to win.


Big Ideas

“Being able to take courageous action is one of the most important, useful, and exciting aspects of being human. Of all our basic virtues, courage is the one that helps us to live exactly the way we want and provides the psychological fuel we need to create, take risks, help others, and face hard times. I am not overstating the case when I say that courageous action is humanity at its finest. This notion is as old as Socrates, who argued that a person is courageous ‘whose spirit retains in pleasure and in pain the commands of reason about what he ought or ought not to fear.’ Embedded in this ancient wisdom is the idea that individuals can live up to their full potential and experience a full life only if they are masters of themselves and not victims of their emotional whims, particularly fear.

~ Robert Biswas-Diener from The Courage Quotient

Robert Biswas-Diener is known as the “Indiana Jones of positive psychology.”

As per his bio, “his research has taken him to such far-flung places as Greenland, India, Kenya and Israel.” And, important note: “He is afraid of quicksand and snakes.” :)

Robert is also the son of one of the leading positive psychology researchers: Ed Diener. We covered a book they wrote together called Happiness.

I got this book after reading Character Strengths Matter. Robert contributed some wisdom on the science of courage. I heard about this book and, of course, immediately got it. Read it. And, here we are.

This is basically the ONLY book on the science of courage. Although it’s out of print for some reason, I really enjoyed it. (Get the book here.)

It’s PACKED with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share some of my favorites we can use to boost our Courage Quotient TODAY, so let’s jump straight in!

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To be clear, I think that living courageously is synonymous with living well. I believe that living out loud and not letting fear hold you back is the key to the fullest, most rewarding life possible.
Robert Biswas-Diener
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The Courage Quotient

“The definition of courage is not a matter of idle academic interest. It is a crucial first step in understanding this shiny virtue that can help you have better relationships, perform better at work, and feel more fulfilled. The definition of courage is the heart of the courage quotient for which this book is named. Courage contains two primary internal elements: the willingness to act and the ability to control fear. When you can successfully curb your fears and boost your ability to take action, you are better able to live a full and virtuous life. You are more likely to face challenges with grace, connect with and inspire others, and be a force for good.”

Courage.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle tells us that it’s THE #1 virtue if we want to high five our inner daimon and live with eudaimonia.

As we’ve discussed, it’s from the same root as “heart” and, just like the heart pumps blood to arms and legs and vital organs, courage VITALIZES all the other virtues.

Which, begs the questions: What is it? How do we define it? And, how can we Optimize it?

Answering those questions from a scientific perspective is, of course, the aim of this book.

Robert tells us there are TWO variables that make up our “Courage Quotient.”

First, we need to Optimize our “willingness to take action.”

Second, we need to Optimize our “ability to control fear.”

He tells us: The people who have the highest courage quotients are those who … are able to get a handle on their own anxiety as well as find ways to boost their own sense of agency and take action. If the courage quotient were an equation, it would be a simple one:

Willingness to act
Courage quotient = ———————————

Fear

Those same folks, those with the greatest facility with courage—those with the highest courage quotients—have a clear understanding that there are two separate processes at work with courage. In fact these two processes—controlling fear and boosting willingness to act—are rooted in the way our brains are wired. To put the complex clockwork of neurological functioning very simply, we are built with two motivational systems. One is called the behavioral inhibition system, which includes activation of the hippocampus, among other brain stem regions. This inhibition system is what helps us stay wary of novel situations, especially those that carry the risk of harm or punishment. It is the inhibition system that encourages you to tread cautiously when crossing a deserted parking lot at night or climbing in a tall tree. The behavioral activation system, by contrast, is rooted in our brains’ pleasure centers and is all about beginning or progressing towards goals. Each system is on the lookout, as it were, for different details in our world and leads to a different emotional reaction (fear or happiness). Those with a high courage quotient often know when it is best to work on controlling their fear and when it is wiser to try to muster the will to act.

Robert provides a handy-dandy little assessment tool in the book to measure your willingness to act and your ability to control your fear.

For now, know that we want to drive up the ol’ numerator (be willing to act in the face of fear!) while we reduce our denominator (by learning how to control our fear).

Quick napkin math to bring the point home:

If your willingness to act is a 10 and you can drive your fear down to 1, you’d have a Courage Quotient of 10. If, on the other hand, your willingness to act was a 1 and your fear was a 10, you’d have a Courage Quotient of 1/10.

Where do you think YOU land?

What’s working?

What needs a little work?

What could you do TODAY to Optimize?

P.S. As I read this section, I thought of the neuroscience of being an Iconoclast. Specifically, I thought of Gregory Berns’s wisdom from his great book Iconoclast. Recall there are three keys. In short: 1. See the world differently; 2. Have the courage to act on that vision (aka: control your fear and do what needs to get done!); and, 3. Be awesome so people want to follow your lead.

Check out those Notes for more on this fascinating topic.

Courage: General + Personal

“To get a better sense of how courage can be learned—rather than being just the product of chance factors related to personality and birth—let’s look at the intriguing way in which some psychologists understand courage. Researcher Cynthia Pury and her colleagues draw a distinction between two types of courage: general courage and personal courage. General courage is what most people think of when they think of bravery. General courage is present in all those dramatic acts of bravado that would scare the pants off just about anyone: a soldier rushing out into gunfire to help a fallen comrade; a parent jumping into a freezing river to save a child; an employee blowing the whistle on an illegal company practice; a camper yelling to frighten a bear out of a campsite. Personal courage, by contrast, is in evidence in an act performed by an individual for whom that act is scary; it might not be present when the same act is performed by anyone else. That is, personal courage represents overcoming a personal limitation, even if others would not be intimidated under the same circumstances. The fear of flying is a perfect example. A person who has an acute flight phobia is exhibiting courage when she musters the strength to step on board a plane, even though this is a relatively routine act that many people do each day without a second thought. Personal courage is acting in a way that is courageous for you but not necessarily for anyone else. It is overcoming a personal fear, even if it is not a fear commonly shared by others. And herein lies one of the greatest insights about courage: we all have the capacity to be brave in the realm of personal courage. It is here—in the context of personal courage—that we can say with confidence that courage can indeed be learned. We may not all be likely to climb into a burning vehicle to save an accident victim, but each of us has the potential to face down our own psychological demons, overcome them, and get on with the business of living. Personal courage represents our best possible return on any investment we make in learning courage-enhancing strategies.”

Courage.

It comes in two flavors: GENERAL and PERSONAL.

<- I love that distinction.

Yes, we can run into a burning building and save people. That’s a form of general courage.

AND…

We can move through whatever idiosyncratic fears we have. That’s a form of personal courage.

Robert tells us that we ALL have the capacity to be brave in the context of personal courage.

So…

What’s one little thing YOU are afraid of that others might not find quite so freaky?

Remember: Nothing’s wrong with you per se. You’re human. You’re not perfect. No one is. All good. And… What’s one little thing you can do to wisely move outside your comfort zone as amp up your courage quotient by being willing to act while controlling your fear?

Shall we get on that? “Bring it on!” “I’m excited!”

Courage Blindness

“All signs point to a related set of conclusions. First, courage is easy to understand. It is simply the willingness to act even in the face of risk, uncertainty, and fear. Second, courage is a valuable commodity, something we want to promote in ourselves and others, because it involves moral action and leads to the good life. Third, courage can be learned. Fourth, by understanding that courageous action requires two separate processes—controlling fear and boosting the willingness to act—we can identify twice as many approaches for learning to be braver. Finally, the initial step for raising your courage quotient is to wake up to the fact that courage is all around you! Interviews taken with the Courage 50 make it clear that people’s failure to recognize courage is one of the largest obstacles to getting more courage. I call this phenomenon courage blindness.

Courage blindness is the tendency to overlook their own extraordinary behavior and to dismiss it as ordinary.”

“Courage blindness.”

Isn’t that an interesting idea?

Too often we are blind to the good/virtuous things we’re ALREADY doing in our lives. And THAT is often the greatest obstacle to cultivating MORE of the goodness.

As I read this section, I thought of Tom Rath’s latest book: Life’s Great Question. He tells us that the ultimate purpose of life is all about helping others. And… He points out the fact most of us are “blind” to all the ways we’re ALREADY helping others. We can call it “purpose blindness.”

And, we can generalize this to the broader phenomenon of “virtue blindness.”

We’re ALL already living with more Wisdom + Self-Mastery + Courage + Love + Hope + Gratitude + Curiosity + Zest than we may realize.

We just need to slow down long enough to notice and appreciate all the ways we’re already rocking it while deliberately finding novel ways to operationalize our virtues a little more Today.

Throw in a little Lanny Bassham “That’s like me!!” celebration of our micro-virtue wins and we can heal ourselves of blindness and find our way to Eudaimonia.

How about we take the first steps right now?

Pick your favorite virtue. How have you rocked that lately?

Nice work!! That’s like YOU!!!

Choose Courageous Roles

“If we choose courageous roles or think of ourselves as filling courageous roles, we are more likely to act boldly when the need arises. A perfect example of this is the action taken by nine-year-old Lin Hao in Suchuan, China. On May 12, 2008, Sichuan was struck by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake that left buildings flattened and more than 69,000 people dead. Among the most tragic losses on that day were the countless children whose school buildings collapsed. Lin Hao was in such a school and was able to rescue two of his second-grade classmates from the rubble before saving himself. When asked about his courage, this young boy simply explained that he was the hall monitor and that it was ‘my job’ to save the other children. Lin Hao quickly became a symbol of virtue in China and led the opening procession of the 2008 Olympic Summer Games. This is a beautiful illustration that courage is not a trait that lives inside us but rather a matter of having the right job.”

Want to exhibit more courage?

Give yourself the right job. Create a courageous role for yourself. Then play it well.

As I typed that I thought of some exemplars who played their roles well. We have Viktor Frankl, a psychotherapist in a concentration camp. James Stockdale, the commanding officer in a prisoner of war camp. And Marcus Aurelius, a lover of wisdom and reluctant Emperor.

Then we have YOU.

What roles are you being asked to play? Energy + Work + Love wise.

What IDENTITIES can you create that will help you play those roles with the most virtue?

P.S. As you contemplate that and Optimus You high fives little Lin Hao, remember that simply dressing like (then ACTING like) that best version of you will Optimize your performance.

<- Check out our Notes on Counterclockwise to learn more about Ellen Langer’s Air Force pilots—whose vision improved the moment they acted like pilots!! And don’t forget the kids boosting their grit by simply dressing up like Batman or Dora the Explorer! (Thank you, Todd Herman and The Alter Ego Effect!)

Be Willing to Fail

“Herein lies the intervention related to failure: accept it. We modern people have fallen in love with the idea that we are in control of our lives, and this worldview gives rise to an impulse to resist failure, to fight against the very notion of it. But just like the modern trend to defy age, the battle against failure is a lost cause. Failure is inevitable. We all experience it, in forms large and small. It is in your past and it is in your future. People with a high courage quotient understand that failure is a risk much of the time and unavoidable some of the time. Rather than trying to tiptoe around failure, they simply accept it as part of the process of success. Failure is a fantastic learning opportunity. Think of every time you have made a mistake and said to yourself, ‘Well, I will never do that again!’ A single instance of failure can serve as a powerful lifelong course correction. Failure also helps us regroup mentally and improve our skills and strategy so that later attempts at goals might be more successful. Where your courage quotient is concerned, here is the tricky part: you do not have to accept that failure feels good, just that it is inevitable and often beneficial. Accepting failure is not synonymous with actively pursuing failure or enjoying failure when it crashes down upon you. The trick is to acknowledge both the positive and the negative aspects of failure. You can tell yourself, ‘This does not feel good and I am very disappointed with myself,’ on the one hand, even as on the other you reassure yourself by saying, ‘This is also a growth opportunity for me. I will learn from this temporary experience and move on.'”

That’s from a chapter called “Be Willing to Fail.” It’s PACKED with powerful, practical wisdom.

Like this: Where the courage quotient is concerned it is instructive to realize that not everyone reacts to failure, or even the prospect of failure, in the same way. Some people—as I have mentioned and as we have all seen—allow failure to overshadow their lives, restricting their decisions and leaving them embarrassed, timid, or withdrawn. Other people appear to take failure in stride and are able to move beyond it after experiencing its temporary psychological sting. Thomas Edison famously said, recalling countless problematic attempts to create a working light bulb, ‘I failed my way to success.’ Winston Churchill too might be among the resilient. He once said, ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm.’ Apparently the ability to reframe failure as part of a larger process—learning, say—is instrumental in being able to cope with it. The Academy Award-nominated documentarian Adrian Belic (Genghis Blues) has articulated this exact point to me perfectly. ‘There are no successes and failures’ according to Belic, ‘there are only successes and opportunities. When I make a movie I shoot hundreds of hours, each of which has the potential to make the final cut. Most will not. The film that winds up on the cutting room floor shouldn’t be seen as failure though. Each frame was an important part of the overall process, even those that didn’t ultimately get used.’

Love the Edison and Churchill wisdom, of course.

And, I ESPECIALLY love the filmmaker’s perspective. HUNDREDS of hours are shot to arrive at an hour and a half movie. Less than 1% makes the final cut. Was the other 99% a “failure.” Of course not. Let’s apply that wisdom to our lives. TODAY.

P.S. Remember Michael Beckwith’s “Mis-takes”? That’s another super-helpful reframe!!

Playing to Win (vs. Playing not to lose)

“Psychologist E. Tory Higgins and his colleagues have conducted a range of studies that offer evidence that people can adopt a promotion focus and that this focus is associated with increased motivation and success at tasks. In one simple demonstration of this, described in a 1997 article by James Shah, E. Tory Higgins, and Ronald Friedman, the Higgins team had research participants play a word-scramble game. In one of the study conditions the participants were told that they would receive extra money if they solved a high percentage of the puzzles but only the normal amount offered otherwise. Participants in a second study condition were given a different mandate: they were told that they would receive a flat sum but that money would be deducted for errors. In essence one group was playing a game that was framed as either ‘gaining or not gaining’ money whereas the other group’s game focusing on ‘not losing or losing’ money. Just this reframing of the game had a dramatic effect on performance: the individuals who were given the focus on gaining performed better.”

Another tool Robert gives us to increase our Courage Quotient is to create meaningful goals.

And… We want to make sure we create them with a “promotion focus.” We want to frame it such that we’re playing to WIN rather than playing *not* to lose.

Of course, we want to be antifragile about it and use our barbell strategy (being simultaneously super conservative AND super aggressive) while WOOPing our wished-for outcomes up against the obstacles of reality as we make a plan. And, Robert tells us that we want to actually list all the “growth and advancement potential of the goal.”

So… How can YOU play to win a little more Today?

Here’s to increasing our willingness to act while Optimizing our ability to control fear as we get our Courage Quotient nice and strong so we can be the light for our families and communities and world.

With Wisdom + Self-Mastery + Courage + Love,

About the author

Robert Biswas-Diener
Author

Robert Biswas-Diener

A leading authority on positive psychology