Yes, You Can Learn to Be Brave

MANAGING YOUR FEAR

While courage may sometimes be hard to summon, we know it when we see it: Police officers and firefighters put their lives in peril to save others; athletes awe us with their daring; and activists refuse to let their voices be silenced, risking imprisonment or death. The well-known quote that courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it takes bravery out of the realm of superheroes and into the world of everyone. “I am not overstating the case when I say that courageous action is humanity at its finest,” says Robert Biswas-Diener, author of The Courage Quotient. “This notion is as old as Socrates … and 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.”

Even people who regularly engage in spectacular feats of daring aren’t immune to debilitating anxiety. Take Steph Davis, a world-renowned BASE jumper and rock climber. Davis dons a wingsuit—a contraption that makes her look like a flying squirrel—and runs off the sides of mountains, slicing through the sky at 120 miles per hour, before her landing chute deploys. One tiny mistake could be fatal. Davis also free solos, using only her hands and feet—no ropes or safety harness—to scale towering rock walls and mountain cliffs. To watch her, you’d think she’s impervious to fear, but Davis regularly deals with the crippling effects of fright, just like the rest of us who quiver at the thought of climbing a ladder. “I know that if I’m struggling to fight extreme fear I won’t have full focus on performing my best,” she says, “and then that becomes dangerous.”

Davis has mastered the secret to being brave: You don’t become immune to fear; you cope with it when it wants to crush you. She spends a lot of time evaluating the conditions before she leaps. “Managing fear is both an external exercise—the winds are blowing this direction—and an internal one—you have to get yourself ready to jump,” she says. While most of us won’t be standing at the edge of a mountain in a wingsuit anytime soon, we can still employ that cool-headed approach to what’s happening inside our minds and outside our bodies whenever we’re feeling threatened.

TRAINING TO BE BRAVE

Often, taking courageous action is optional. If we find ourselves in a bad situation, we can retreat. The downside is that we’re less likely to act bravely the next time around. But we can learn from people who train themselves to summon courage when lives are on the line. Their strategy is also one we can use in life’s critical moments when we have no choice but to act, even though we’re frozen with fear.  

How does a SWAT officer find the nerve to shoot at a kidnapper when there’s a chance her bullet will hit the hostage? Steve Duncan, former Central District commander of an award-winning SWAT team in North Carolina, says that his snipers trained to stay steady by learning how to shoot when their bodies were stressed to the max. The officers would run, climb, jump—anything to elevate their heart rate to where they could hardly breathe and bring their muscles to the brink of failure. And that’s when they’d practice taking their shots. “The mind cannot differentiate between physical stress and mental stress,” says Duncan. “The reactions are the same.”

The rest of us can learn to be brave by deliberately scaring the stuffing out of ourselves—and building our capacity for courage. Research shows that a simple process (used in the military) called Stress Exposure Training (SET) effectively helps build nerves of steel. Soldiers in training to be paratroopers aren’t pushed out of a plane on day one. First they jump off a box, then a ladder, then a platform and so on. We can easily apply the SET formula to our own fears and challenges. Afraid of snakes? Start your SET by looking at pictures of them until you feel comfortable. Next, visit a nature museum or, better yet, a pet store where—in a rush of personal valor—you ask the proprietor to let you hold a python. This kind of self-training prepares us to do the heavy lifting when life calls on us to be brave.

FIGHTING THE FEAR OF FEAR

William Hocking—who wrote Morale and Its Enemies, one of the most insightful works on courage—studied ordinary soldiers who suffered from what he called a “fear of fear.” These men, Hocking said, hoped that they would rise to the occasion but secretly weren’t sure they could. After years of studying resilience on the battlefield, Hocking developed this advice for the rest of us: Practice dealing  with whatever scares you, so that when it really happens, you’re capable of a cool response. “Therein lies the secret of all courage,” he wrote. “Men are not born brave. They become brave.”

Steph Davis’ strategy for teaching BASE jumping underscores Hocking’s assertion. “I see a lot of people using the ‘rip off the Band-Aid’ approach,” she says. “But I think the best approach to intimidating activities is gradual, repeated exposure, step by step. That’s the way I teach people to BASE jump: It’s always adding one new thing at a time, rather than trying to plunge in and handle too much at once.”

HAVING COURAGE EVERY DAY

Can embracing fearful situations help you quit the job you hate, leave a loveless marriage or finally say what’s on your mind? The answer is yes. Courage built through physical challenges transfers to the emotional ones—and vice versa. Best of all, you don’t have to climb Mount Everest or start a civil rights movement as your first act of bravery. Simply commit to going to a place that scares you, no matter where it is or how insignificant it may seem. If your fear is speaking up at work, then begin practicing at home. If you’re afraid of heights, try a low-to-the-ground zip line, where you’re harnessed in and can’t get hurt. Each success is like eating one perfect potato chip: Once you get a taste, you can’t help but want more. Starting small will get you there, but you do have to start.

“Learning to understand fear, and how to operate in its presence, is very liberating,” says Davis, who even suggests we look at fear as a positive emotion. “Sometimes I prefer to use the word ‘exciting’ or ‘intense’ when I might find myself saying ‘scary,’” she says. “Renaming the feelings, or getting more specific about the different shades of those emotions, can drastically change your perceptions about them.”

Biswas-Diener agrees. “Bravery is a psychological skill,” he says, “like curiosity, forgiveness and generosity—that improves relationships, increases effectiveness and opens the door to a sense of mastery. Bravery is a skill that can be learned, practiced and used daily. That’s right—each and every day. Including today.”

Source: Janice Holly Booth via Life Reimagined