Have you seen the movie We Bought a Zoo? I only saw it a few weeks ago, and I loved it. There was a line in the movie that the dad said to his son; and it struck home for me in many ways. He said… you only need “20 seconds of insane courage†to get anything done. Too true! Its so easy to hesitate at something – saying something, asking something, doing something – but if you had just 20 seconds of insane courage to just start – to just say the first few words – to just jump… what would be different in your world?
I know that for me personally, in my own Heidi world, I’m a bit shy. I have to get into the right state even just to ask a question to a shop assistant… so I’ve been working on my state of insane courage.
Wikipedia defines courage as: the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Courage is acting in spite of fear. Now, I have to say, again for myself – courage is less about fear, pain and danger in my day-to-day life and more about uncertainty. Uncertainty about what someone else will say or do, or the ultimate outcome. Yet, I know for sure that if I never say or do anything I’m only working with my imagination – and that can surely run amok at times!
What I really like are the synonyms of courage – bravery, boldness, fearlessness, mettle, fortitude, or intrepidity. Its usually these types of words that I start to build resource anchors for. I’ve created my own anchor for Insane Courage – I’m still refining it, but it seems to be working awesomely! AND, the best part – it only needs to last for 20 seconds!