Small Acts of Courage

Engaging in small acts of courage is critical to living an excellent life, whether it's the courage to try new things, to push beyond your comfort zone or to do what's right. Small acts of courage might seem minor, but they are not. They have a profound impact on your flourishing. They build resistance, shape character and lead you towards living a life of virtue. Small acts of courage build your courage muscles to allow you to engage in greater acts of courage in the future. Start small and watch how these acts of courage transform your life, one courageous step at a time. Stay tuned and learn how you can use small acts of courage to build a more excellent life. Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you.

When our pup Maggie was younger, we took her to a beginning agility class. It was pretty awesome. The instructor was fantastic and there was a great group of pups and owners. Maggie was a bit of a star. Yeah, I know I'm biased. She took on many of the challenges like she was born to him. You should have seen her on the weave poles. It was amazing. But then there was the teeter totter that Seesaw to some of you. She was terrified of the evil teeter totter, as were many of the other dogs. Me, being a bit of a smartass, started yelling Face your fears, maggie, face your fears. As Maggie approached the teeter totter, although this did absolutely no good, it became a bit of a meme in the class. By the way, we never forced Maggie onto the teeter totter, we just let her do her thing.

Later, it occurred to me that all of us need to face our fears. Learning to face and overcome your fears is important to living an excellent life. Fears hold you back in many ways, so developing the courage to overcome those fears is how you can grow when you're flourishing. Let's take a step back and talk about what courage is. To answer this question, I'll draw on Aristotle's concept of the Golden Mean. To Aristotle, virtue is the midpoint between the vice of deficiency and the vice of excess, between too little and too much. The virtue of courage, then, is the midpoint between cowardice the vice of deficiency and rashness, the vice of excess. Frequently and consistently engaging in small acts of courage will help you move away from cowardice towards the virtue of courage. They also let you test the reasonable limits of courage so that you can avoid rashness. Your experience will lead you to the right balance.

Also, it's important to remember that courage is not all about physical bravery. In fact, for most of us, physical bravery isn't nearly as important as other types of courage, such as having the courage to live a life of virtue and reason. Yes, it does take courage to flourish. It's important to understand that courage and fear are tightly coupled. Courage is the will to take action despite fear.

There's an old saying that courage isn't about the absence of fear. It's about being afraid and acting anyway. Never forget this. Fear is a natural, often useful response to a situation. What's important is to have the wisdom to discern when fear helps you and when fear limits you. Being afraid of a loose growling dog is useful. Being afraid to speak up for your beliefs may be not.

Courage is so important to living an excellent life that it's a cardinal virtue in stoicism, along with wisdom, justice and temperance, ordinal virtues are the core virtues from which all other virtues flow. Why is courage so important to flourishing? Well, there are a few reasons. Courage helps you deal with weakness of will. I talked about overcoming weakness of will in episode 52, which is available at livewellandflourishcom, slash 52. If you think a little, you can probably remember a time where fear kept you from doing what you knew to be the right thing to do. These fears come in many forms fear of discomfort, fear of failure, fear of social repercussions, even fear of confronting our flaws. All of these keep us from doing what we ought to do. Performing small acts of courage can help you overcome weakness of will by conquering your counterproductive fears. Courage also helps you do what's right and good. It helps you live your virtues.

Let me share a silly little story about a lack of courage leading to a lack of virtue. When I was in I don't know a third or fourth grade, I decided I wanted to be more like Dad, so I tried shaving. It did not go well. I ended up with a pretty impressive cut on my face. Dad noticed and asked me what had happened. My response I don't know. I was playing with some paper, so maybe it's a paper cut. I was not a good liar. He looked at me and said you cleaned the blood off the sink but not the razor, some well-deserved old-school punishment ensued. Dad did explain that the punishment was the result of the lie, not the attempt at shaving. I've never forgotten that lesson. My fear of punishment kept me from practicing the virtue of honesty. Yeah, a little courage would have saved me from a sore rear end.

So courage helps you bridge that gap between what's easy and what's right. I hope you can see, then, why developing your courage is so critical to your flourishing. Let's talk some more about the benefits of expanding the boundaries of your courage. I'm going to talk about four main areas in which expanding your courage will benefit your life Personal growth, ethical and moral development, social benefits and navigating life. Becoming more courageous helps you grow. This is where the metaphor of building muscle is kind of useful Doing something that's hard for you makes it easier to do other hard things. As podcast hall of famer Dave Jackson is fond of saying, you've done hard things before. When you act with courage and do something hard, you build the confidence to do even harder things so that you can continue to grow and live a better life. Your fears will no longer be limitations and you'll open a world of possibilities for living a life of meaning, purpose and fulfillment.

An argument can be made that there are two main sources of ethical and moral lapses lack of knowledge and lack of courage. My little shaving mishap story illustrates how a lack of courage can lead to an ethical and moral lapse. In my case, the lapse was due to a fear of consequences. I knew lying was wrong, but I did it anyway. I lied because I thought I'd get in trouble for using my dad's razor. Fear of consequences often gets in the way of acting morally. Interestingly, there's a bit of short-term thinking that comes into play as well. A lack of courage can lead you to act according to the fear of negative short-term consequences, without thinking through the more serious long-term consequences of living outside of virtue. Building your courage muscles can help you overcome fear and act in ways that align with virtue. Over time, through the consistent practice of small acts of courage, you can replace the habit of fear with a habit of courage.

Building courage also provides social benefits. The effect is a little bit subtle, I think, but it seems to me that courage often comes down to being willing to take personal risks for the greater good. Consider the example of someone standing against an injustice. Doing so is often risky and sometimes carries little personal benefit beyond acting morally. But standing up for what's right can serve as a beacon for others to act with similar courage. Over time, this can result in erasing or at least reducing the injustice. Imagine the courage it took to stand up against racism during the Selma civil rights marches. But the collective courage of these brave individuals helped bring about significant social change for the better.

But it's not only grand acts of courage that can improve society. Even small acts, like being kind to someone who's socially awkward, can make the world a better place. Yeah, you might seem uncool to your more shallow friends when you befriend someone outside society's norms, but your little act of courage improves society nonetheless. Remember many small acts can equal big changes for the better. Expanding the limits of your courage through practicing small acts of courage also better equips you for navigating the complexity and uncertainty of modern life.

We live in uncertain times. Building your courage will help you take measured risks that can allow you to shed fear and anxiety so that you can thrive in these uncertain times. Anxiety is fear brought on by uncertainty. Becoming more courageous will help you banish that fear so that you can face life with resilience, adaptability and purpose. The connection between courage and adaptability is especially interesting, I think. Being adaptable requires being able to make changes, and change can be scary, especially in uncertain times. Being courageous means having the ability to do things in new ways without being paralyzed by fear, so that you can adapt to almost any circumstance. All right, let's sum up Enhancing your courage brings huge benefits for flourishing, not only for you, but also for society.

Growth comes from courage, as does wisdom and virtue, so building your courage is critical to living an excellent life. But building courage can be hard, which is why I recommend establishing a consistent practice of performing small acts of courage constantly and consistently pushing the boundaries of your courage further and further so that you become a truly courageous person. Remember, consistent, conscious practice leads to a habit of courage, then to courage becoming part of who you are. How can you build your courage muscles? Through small acts of courage. Well, I can help. I'll tell you how in just a minute. Before getting to that, however, I want to let you know that I'm making a change to live well and flourish.

Starting with this episode, I'm going back to an every other week release schedule. I'm doing this to free up some time for my own little act of courage the launch of a new newsletter and podcast AI goes to college. As I've mentioned, I've really gotten into generative AI like chat, gpt, and I want to share my experiences and knowledge with the higher education community. So, starting in a couple of weeks, I'll begin producing a twice monthly newsletter and podcast on AI and higher ed. The newsletter and podcast will be called AI Goes to College. If you're interested, send an email to aigtcatethicalaucecom and I'll add you to the list. I'll put those addresses in the show notes and we'll also post announcements on social media.

Back to how I can help you build your courage muscles. Well, I can help by providing the first of a series of 30 day challenges, the 30 day small courage challenge. This is the first in what I hope will be a series of similar challenges I'll release throughout the year. This is an email course that will guide you towards building a habit of living courageously. The course is free and there won't be any upsells or any other attempts to sell you anything at all. I don't want your money. Each week I'll send you a list of daily practices and reflections that can help you build a habit of courage. The emails will also include little tidbits of wisdom that can help you along the way. Seriously, the entire thing is free and is part of my ongoing quest to help you flourish.

To sign up, just send me an email, crvanslikeatpmme, with the subject line 30 day small courage challenge, or something like that, and I'll put you on the list. No, I won't spam you or share your information with anyone. You have my word. I'm sure you'll find it interesting and useful to participate, so I really hope you'll do so. What else can you do this week to start practicing small acts of courage?

I have a couple of recommendations in addition to signing up for the 30 day small courage challenge. First, develop your courage radar by spending a few minutes each morning thinking through your day and identifying three or four ways you might be able to practice courage. This can be as small as trying a new place for your morning coffee. Anything that takes you out of your comfort zone is an opportunity for small courage. Another good opportunity may be to say no to something. Yeah, you may risk disappointing someone, but often the right act and the courageous act is to say no when doing so is warranted. Check out episode 70 for some of my thoughts on saying no gracefully.

Disagreeing with someone respectfully, might be another beneficial way to act with courage. Going along is easy. Rocking the boat is hard, even when the boat needs to be rocked. There are many opportunities for small acts of courage, even in the most mundane of days. At the end of each day, reflect on these opportunities. If you took advantage and acted with courage, congratulate yourself and think about how the experience went. How did you feel during the experience? What did you do to overcome your fear or discomfort? If you didn't act with courage, don't get down on yourself. Remember this is a process. You'll have your missteps. Just think about what kept you from acting courageously and what you can do to be more courageous in the future. Small steps lead to great journeys, even when you take a step backward from time to time.

I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite stoic quotes. It's from Marcus Aurelius it's Good for the Hive is Good for the Bee. Your small acts of courage may carry personal risks, but your actions will be good for the hive and that goodness will be returned to you, my little bee. Until next time, be courageous, my friends. I produce Live Well and Flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish. If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. The best way to do that is to direct them to livewellandflourishcom. Until next time.