The Courage to Create

I love that.

Imagine your body without your heart. Say goodbye to your arms and legs and brain and all your other organs and, well, your life.

Now, imagine your life without courage. All that love and kindness and compassion and creativity and joy and patience we live to express? Gone.

Courage. It’s the “heart” of our psychological virtue system.

Without it, all the values “wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue.”

Powerful way to look at it, eh?

Alright, so courage is from the French word for heart and we need it to pump blood to all our other virtues, but what IS courage?

Courage is NOT the *absence* of despair.

As May says, it’s the capacity to move ahead in spite of our despair. REALLY important distinction.

As I’ve said many times in these Notes, it’s easy to look at people we admire and think they’ve arrived at a place where they no longer experience any doubts/fears/desperation. But, that’s just not how it is.

John Eliot, in his great book Overachievement (see Notes), says this: “Butterflies, cotton mouth, and a pounding heart make the finest performers smile—the smile of a person with an ace up their sleeves… They definitely would agree with Tiger Woods, who has often said, ‘The day I’m not nervous stepping onto the first tee—that’s the day I quit.’”

And Georgia O’Keefe says: “I’ve been afraid every single day of my life, but I’ve gone ahead and done it anyway.”

So, the day Tiger Woods is NOT nervous stepping onto the first tee is the day he quits. And, Georgia O’Keefe has been afraid every single day of her life, but hasn’t let that stop her…

Unfortunately, for most of us, we won’t even TRY something new if it makes us nervous. We’ve already rehearsed all the different ways it can go wrong before we even try and then, way too often, don’t dare to go for it. Eek.

Or, when we wake up in the morning with a pinch (or a tsunami, as the case may be) of despair, we pull the covers over our heads and ignore the commitment we made the night before to get up early and (re-)begin our meditation practice or exercise regimen or whatever.

Again, it’s not about NOT having the despair.

It’s about whether or not we have the courage to move forward in spite of it.

Let’s go back 2,500 years and listen to what Aristotle had to say. He’d *definitely* agree with Sir Rollo that “courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.” Remember Aristotle’s virtuous mean? He liked to say that there were “vices of excess” and “vices of deficiency” and that right between those vices was the “virtuous mean.” One of my favorite examples is the virtue of courage.

If courage is the virtuous mean, what would be the vice of deficiency?

Well, if you have too little courage, you’d be a coward. You’d experience fear/despair/doubt/nerves and you’d just run the other direction. Not so good. Vice of deficiency.

How about a vice of excess?

Well, a vice of excess in this case would be too MUCH fearlessness. Aristotle calls that being rash. Imagine jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Not such a good idea. Vice of excess.

So, let’s remember, courage is NOT the absence of despair/fear/nerves. It’s the willingness to go for it IN SPITE of those kamikaze butterflies. :)

And, before we head to the next Big Idea, I want to take a moment to share a bit of wisdom on HOW to get through the despair. It’s one thing to know that it’ll be there at times and it’s another to know how to deal with it directly.

Let’s look at what Martin Seligman has to say in his *great* book, Learned Optimism (see Notes): “Whether or not we have hope depends on two dimensions of our explanatory style; pervasiveness and permanence. Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope: Temporary causes limit helplessness in time, and specific causes limit helplessness to the original situation. On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavors. Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair… The optimistic style of explaining good events is the opposite of that used for bad events: It’s internal rather than external. People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people or circumstances.”

Check out the PhilosophersNotes on Learned Optimism for the whole discussion on explanatory styles and how you can get your mojo on more consistently by shaping how you explain the events that are happening in your life. But for now, know that it’s ALL about how we perceive the challenge.

If you make it permanent and pervasive, meaning you think it’s here to stay and that it’ll apply to all aspects of your life, you just bought yourself a ticket to helplessness which is the fastest way to depression.

If, on the other hand, you make a setback or feeling of despair temporary and specific, meaning that the problem is NOT permanent (aka “This too shall pass…”) and it’s NOT pervasive (rather, tied to the specific issue), you’ll be embracing an optimistic explanatory style that will leave you more empowered and beat your heart of courage to pump blood to all those other vital activities of your life. :)

Of course, this is only relevant to the extent it relates to YOU, so….

What’s one area of your life in which despair/stress/angst might be slowing you down? How can you move forward in spite of that despair today and how can you choose a more optimistic explanatory style to rock it?!?

Reminds me of the wisdom I picked up from two of my favorite people/teachers Gay and Katie Hendricks. They say that commitment is important. But RE-COMMITMENT is MUCH more important. :)

It’s one thing to “commit” to a goal.

The challenge is to RE-commit again and again and again and again in the face of all the doubt/second-guessing/etc.

So, remember, courage is that virtuous mean and re-commitment is the way to deal with the healthy amount of doubt we all experience as we move toward our highest selves and the goals that matter to us.

And, while we’re here, let’s check in on your commitments. :)

I am committed to:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

(And, I trust you’ll move forward in spite of the healthy doubt that may creep in and RE-commit as many times as necessary. :)

Wow. That’s amazing.

So, a kitty cat and an acorn are driven to become what they’re destined to become without any “commitment” on their part. It just happens.

May makes the important distinction that with us, we will only become fully human by the choices we make and the commitment we demonstrate to those choices.

As he says, we attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions we make from day to day and moment to moment. And, these decisions (each of them!!) require courage.

Powerful stuff.

Perhaps the most fundamental choice we will ever make is the decision to create our greatest life, to fully express our potential in these precious few years we dance on this little planet.

What choices are you making in your life?

And how committed are you to them?

Let’s remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s comments on the subject (see Notes): “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

Reminds me of Wallace D. Wattles’ wisdom (from the Notes on The Science of Being Great): “The only service you can render to God is to give expression to what he is trying to give the world, through you. The only service you can render God is to make the very most of yourself in order that God may live in you to the utmost of your possibilities.”

Wattles also says: “Your first duty to God, to yourself, and to the world is to make yourself as great a personality, in every way, as you possibly can.” And: “The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.”

May makes his point in even stronger words:

Wow.

That’s a strong statement.

I’m learning to take these guys literally, so let’s review that: “Every organism has one and only one central need in life, to fulfill its own potentialities.”

Echoes the wisdom of Abraham Maslow who described the central need of human beings as the need to “self-actualize” and said: “Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization… It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming.”

So, are you honoring your central need to fulfill your potentiality?!?

And, you might be wondering: Why is this SO important?

Another wow.

Reminds me of Ayn Rand’s comments in her Introduction to The Fountainhead (see Notes) where she says:

“It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature—and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or “The Fountainhead” that they will betray: it is their own souls.”

And: “Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.”

How about you? Do you have the courage to express your own original ideas?!?

And… What ARE your original ideas that’re begging to be expressed?!?

And, perhaps most importantly: What steps can you take TODAY (!!) to more fully listen to your own being?

As you reflect on that, remember: “Whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world. This is creative courage, however minor or fortuitous our creations may be. We can then say, with Joyce, Welcome, 0 life! We go for the millionth time to forge in the smithy of our souls the uncreated conscience of the race.”

Love that.

So many things come to mind here. From Joseph Campbell and Carlos Castaneda to Abraham-Hicks and Friedrich Nietzsche.

First, Campbell, Castaneda and Abraham-Hicks. Recognizing that there will be times when we feel despair, but always remembering that joy is the goal, these guys tell us that one of the best ways to know if we’re on the right path is to check in with how we feel.

Campbell tells us to “follow our bliss,” Castaneda tells us the path must “have a heart” and Abraham-Hicks tells us our primary job is to feel joy. I’ll let them go into more detail. :)

Abraham-Hicks: “If we were talking to you on your first day of physical experience, we could be of great advantage to you because we would say, ‘Welcome to planet Earth. There is nothing you cannot be or do or have. And your work here—your lifetime career—is to seek joy.’”

Campbell: “Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word ‘Sat’ means being. ‘Chit’ means consciousness. ‘Ananda’ means bliss or rapture. I thought, “I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.’ I think it worked.”

Castaneda: “Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: ‘Does this path have a heart?’”

He continues: “‘But how will I know for sure whether a path has a heart or not?’ Anybody would know that. The trouble is nobody asks the question.”

And, finally, let’s remember Nietzsche’s wisdom: “This is the manner of noble souls: they do not want to have anything for nothing; least of all, life. Whoever is of the mob wants to live for nothing; we others, however, to whom life gave itself, we always think about what we might best give in return… One should not wish to enjoy where one does not give joy.”