#380： How to Be Braver
Episode Stats
Summary
For thousands of years, philosophers and writers have debated the nature of courage. What is it, are some people born more courageous than others, and can you learn to be more courageous? My guest today sets out to answer those questions by looking at courage through a scientific lens.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast for thousands of
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years philosophers and writers have debated the nature of courage what is it are some people born
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more courageous than others and can you learn to be courageous my guest day set out to answer
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those questions by looking at courage through a scientific lens his name is robert bizwas
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diener he's a psychologist and the author of the courage quotient how science can make you braver
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today on the show robert explains how he defined courage for the purpose of his research and how
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he went about studying and quantifying this quality he then explains how courage manifests itself
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differently in cultures of dignity cultures of honor and cultures of face we then discuss the
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genetics of courage and how people can learn to be more courageous robert then gives brass tacks
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advice on what you can do to manage fear and increase your propensity to action including
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carrying lucky charms thinking about yourself less and avoiding self-handicapping after the show's
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over check out the show notes at aom.is slash courage quotient
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robert bizwas diener welcome to the show thank you so much for having me so you wrote a book you're
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a psychologist you wrote a book about courage it's called the courage quotient where you try to
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articulate what courage is and how to measure courage and how to increase courage i'm curious what led you
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down this path to research courage oh that's a interesting question i think it was thrust on me
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actually uh i come from a tradition of studying happiness that's my primary area of expertise i i am
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attracted to positive topics but but along the way i kept studying happiness in sort of unusual places
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in in brothels in india slum areas and sometimes dangerous places like favelas in brazil and people
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kept telling me how courageous i was which wasn't necessarily how i thought of myself i definitely
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knew i was prone to take risks but i certainly didn't think of myself as a hero but because it came
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up as as a conversation piece more and more i decided that i would start looking into what was published
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out there what what research had been done and the the deeper i went the more fascinating it became
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and what's interesting about courage is that it's this virtue that you know it's been written about
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by poets philosophers theologians even and i'm sure psychologists have gotten in on this in the past
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few hundred years and everyone has like different conceptions of it right like when they when you ask
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someone like what does what does courage mean i'm sure you get a hundred different answers but you
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know but they're vaguely trying to hit on the same idea in your research what did you find are the most
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common ideas of what courage is yeah again good question the i think among lay people just everyday
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folks one of the most common misconceptions about courage is that courage is a physical act of bravery
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a stereotype is sort of the the soldier in combat heroically saving his and it's usually a male
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his comrade in arms in a midst of a firefight something like that and i think that that really
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is a myopic view of of courage that people attend very narrowly to these these physical and often
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stereotypically masculine ideas of of bravery i think that that we can expand from there and and think of
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of bravery as something far more wide-reaching it's somehow a mental state it's an attitude
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traditionally the philosophers as you said said it's a part of the spirit if you will and i believe
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the that it's really about acting in the face of fear so it's not the absence of fear but it's as one
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person i interviewed very articulately put it's the ability to step through fear so psychologists
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really define courage as going ahead and choosing to act or sometimes just acting automatically
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despite the presence of fear and doing so when you when you're uncertain of the outcome of your action
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that is there has to be a a risk involved now philosophers would say that that there should also
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be a moral dimension because if you think about it someone who is a street criminal and mugs people
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is probably afraid probably acting despite their sense of fear and and certainly the outcome is unknown
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they're taking a risk so we would add to that this this morally inspired dimension so it's acting in a
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way that is positive that would help people or is for the community good or personal good and
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despite the fact that you're afraid okay so three so there's three things going on there i guess so
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the first thing there's there's a moral component to courage we want it to be for a good cause but it's
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also the ability to control fear but also act despite that fear that you might still have
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absolutely absolutely and and i think the best way is just that idea of of stepping through fear the most
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courageous people they get afraid they aren't people that are immune to fear they're just very very
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good about acting even though they're afraid and not being paralyzed by that fear so as we mentioned
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earlier courage is a sort of virtue you know universal virtue is a universal ideal that humans across the
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world experience but how do how do different cultures shade the meaning of courage or what it
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means to be courageous oh interesting there there are certainly different ways we can look at cultures
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and most people when they think of culture they think of the most obvious aspects of culture like
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language or dress food or religion things like that as a psychologist i tend to think of of cultures
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and categories in terms of how people identify how they view the individual and the individual's
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relationship to the group so you can look for example cultures of dignity and these these are
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westerners by and large folks that are americans canadians for example and we think that every
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individual is the unit of measurement of our culture that each person has dignity or should have dignity
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and you can you can contrast that with for example many middle eastern cultures that we would call
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cultures of honor and certainly it's not only the middle east other places as well but honor cultures are
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those where people are very concerned about how they come across to others they they feel more on stage
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and their their personal and family reputation is very very important to them so understanding culture
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and this type of way really gives us some insight into some of the mechanisms that bring courage about
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you or i if we're from a dignity culture might be more likely to to speak up on behalf of an underdog
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because something has violated our culture of dignity we really value everyone being treated with dignity so we can't stand a bully
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so we're going to be more courageous in that particular instance whereas uh someone from a culture of honor
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if you say something bad about about a family member you know talk talk about someone's mother or sister in a
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in a derogatory way they are not going to let that slide because you have just insulted their very sense
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of honor one of the things that their culture prizes most highly so it's it's sort of what in the culture
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will activate our willingness to act and you besides uh dignity and honor you also mentioned
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cultures of face which are you know you see in asian countries what is the difference between like
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face cultures and honor cultures or is there one they're they're similar a culture of face culture
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and and listeners may be familiar with the idea of saving face for example and and these are the
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cultures in the the pacific rim like taiwan japan china and so forth korea and people are interested in
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avoiding personal embarrassment that they they think they are personally on stage they have a more
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hierarchical society they want to impress others and so that's a little bit different than culture
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of honor which is about reputation and family reputation the culture of face can be a little
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bit more individual if i'm going to stand up in front of my work group and give a presentation
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i need to do a good job not only so that i don't embarrass my colleagues but also that i don't embarrass
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myself okay so what you're saying again is culture is what triggers will determine what triggers
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courageous or brave acts it's one of one of many causes but absolutely and you begin the book which
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i think was interesting with your sort of a personal experience right in africa can you tell us a little
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about that and like what sort of culture of courage were you seeing there yeah so i had gone to africa
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originally to study happiness among tribal tribal people i was interested in working with people who
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had been traditionally overlooked by research psychologists and i was focusing in particular
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on the maasai in kenya and many people are familiar with the maasai they're sort of poster children for
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tribal africa the warriors especially they have those these long braids in their hair that are painted
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with red ochre paint and are swaddled in these bright red cloths and they're known for jumping
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high and having spears and so forth and so i went and i stayed there many months and i was conducting
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interviews with them principally about happiness about the quality of their life what makes them happy
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how their relationships are what their dreams and hopes are those types of things and one of the things
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i noticed very quickly about them is that they really prized courage as a virtue which makes loads
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of sense if you live among wild animals you know there are lions for example roving wild and in fact one of
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the people i interviewed in fact was attacked by a lion one time as he was walking by and all he had
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to defend himself was a knife so you imagine yourself you know that's your morning commute that you might
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be attacked by a wild animal like a lion and you think well they must do something to instill bravery
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they must tell their young children that bravery is one of the best possible virtues our society
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can have um and by and large they consider themselves pretty brave and in fact i think they they are pretty
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brave and i think that their particular brand of bravery is largely that kind of physical brand of
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bravery that most people default to and it's not so much some of the other types of bravery that we
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might think of like an entrepreneur opening a new business which of course is a risky proposition and
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so let's get into sort of the specifics of courage what allows us to be more what allows us to be courageous
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and what we can do to be more courageous so we talked about earlier some of the factors of courage
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is one is the ability to manage fear when you experience fear
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and then the other one is to act even though you're afraid do these two factors work exclusively
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from each other or is it are they sort of intertwined with one another
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this this really i think in some ways is sort of the the heart of courage so if you do think of courage
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as being two separable processes one is the ability to manage your fear and the other is the willingness
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to act that is essentially your courage quotient you need your willingness to act to be greater than
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your fear if your fear is greater you're going to be paralyzed and not do anything if your willingness
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to grip to act as even incrementally greater then you will as the name suggests be willing to act
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and most people would assume that this operates like a seesaw when one goes up the other goes down
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if i can sort of tamp down my fear then my willingness to act will go up and vice versa
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and in some ways that's true but they don't operate exactly like a seesaw they're a little more
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independent of each other the two sides so for example someone who's afraid of flying may boost
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their willingness to act by let's say praying and and trying to fortify their their attitude to say hey
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you know i i can do this without tamping down their fear whatsoever that is their fear is still
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going to remain sky high but they are going to be willing to act despite that similarly you could
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really really tamp down your fear and it might only incrementally increase your willingness to act
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but you've pushed your fear down so far so it's sort of the the relation of those two things willingness
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to act and fear um that they give us two separate avenues for trying to boost our own courage
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and this is where the debate with philosophers at least gets into like what is considered a
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courageous act because some philosopher would say well if you feel no fear right maybe you have some
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sort of thing where you just you don't feel fear at all like are you really being courageous
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right if you don't experience fear that's right and and i actually i think to some degree would
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would agree with that notion that is really if you don't feel any fear you don't have any sense that
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there's a real risk you don't have any skin in the game you're really not putting up too much by way of
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virtuous behavior now i've i've heard many people sort of you know wave their hand at me and say but
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wait wait what about someone that just out of instinct bolts into the burning building to save the
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family and they didn't even have time to feel afraid well the truth is they're still experiencing
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the physiological symptoms of fear they they have the accelerated heart rate the the blood pumping
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the adrenaline all of that whether or not they're consciously sort of aware of it in the moment
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that's a i think it's more nuanced and subtle issue but in general we think that that courage
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has to happen in the presence of fear and this raises an interesting question so in psychology
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there's this idea of temperaments that you know you're born with and you know it makes up about
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like 50 to you know i can't remember the percentage but sort of like you know if you're gonna if you're
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conscientious as a kid you're going to be conscientious as an adult are are some people born more
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courageous than others out of temperament yeah it's a it's a really interesting question to dig into and
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and we know look there's individual differences between people some folks are artistic some are
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smart some are detail oriented and and some of that isn't just genetic but it's also comes through
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practice and through their upbringing and and some combination of all of those things and exactly the
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same thing is true of courage and that happens in part because of people's emotionality so some form
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some folks are are born just with their their emotion dial set really intensely they feel emotion
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strongly when fear hits it hits intensely they love intensely they get really angry when they get angry
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for some of those people fear might be overwhelming to them they might be more likely to to be paralyzed
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by fear on the other hand some of those people more likely might be motivated by anger when they
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when they feel the outrage at an injustice or seeing someone being bullied they might be the one to to
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step forward so people who have a better sort of natural ability to control their emotional states
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or have more even keeled emotional states may in some ways be better able to to control fear and
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therefore be more courageous and there are also people who are sort of just dialed a little bit more towards
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optimism a little bit more towards risk taking and that's that other element though the willingness
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to act element of bravery and for those people they they are more likely to take risks you you find this
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sometimes in serial entrepreneurs who open business after business despite the prospect of failure you find it
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with some types of people that that enjoy things like rock climbing or or other dangerous hobbies
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but with that said you know you might have a temperament that allows you know gives you propensity to be
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more courageous you argue in the book that courage can be learned like you agree with aristotle for
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example that courage is a virtue that can be learned yeah absolutely and courage can be learned i think
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in a variety of ways one of the things that a number of scholars do is that they distinguish between
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what's known as personal courage and general courage general courage is exactly what you would think it
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would be courageous if if that act were performed by anyone it would be courageous if anyone ran out
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into a hail of gunfire saved someone and pulled them back that's we just get that anyone would be
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afraid in that situation we would think anyone was a hero in that situation but personal courage is only
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courageous if you do it so again returning to the example of of the person who's afraid to fly
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if they get on a plane that is an act of personal courage because they've overcome a personal fear
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but we wouldn't necessarily consider that a generally courageous thing to do because people do it without
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a second thought all the time and i think that it's in personal courage that people are more likely to make
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gains that if you're afraid of dogs afraid of flying afraid of public speaking afraid of failure afraid
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of intimacy those are where you can make some incremental gains and you don't need to worry
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necessarily about having to rush into fires or rush into gunfights to to save strangers although that's
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certainly a nice thing to do so let's talk about these two processes of courage so first one is your
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ability to control fear i think it's an interesting one because you probably you know as a psychologist
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you're probably there's some people who are just anxious like they're just fearful about everything
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but there's some people who just they're they're not anxious but they do have that they experience that
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fear of public speaking and they can't get over that so what are some ways that people can do what
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are some things that people can do to increase their ability to control their fear so the good news is
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people already have a pretty good intuitive grasp of some of the things they can do so people engage
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in a whole range of mental techniques naturally and these range from praying right you you whether
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you're religious or or very religious or not at all religious the the process of trying to tap into
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to to some force whatever you think that is that will help fortify you and give you strength is very
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common strategy um people and to use the example you just raised of public speaking a lot of that is
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fear of the unknown fear of being evaluated what what will it be like tomorrow when i have to give this
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huge presentation and if you can remove some of that unknown for example go to the auditorium see what
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it's like to stand on stage you can picture now a little bit of what the audience will look like
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what the seats in front of you look like how they're laid out and and as some of that unknown
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shrinks you gain a little bit of of confidence and because fear is also physiological we can do a number of
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things to relax our muscle tension so deep breathing exercises tensing and loosening our muscles to feel
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relaxed various mindfulness activities sometimes people for example have a glass of wine or beer you know
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the mild consumption of alcohol can relax you a bubble bath can relax you turns out there's just a whole
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host of things that can help cut fear won't necessarily get rid of it but but it can cut it down quite a bit
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the one section i thought was really interesting is this idea of egocentrism that you know increases when you
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think about yourself a lot your fear goes up so how does like not thinking about yourself reduce
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your fear yeah so ego this idea of ego kind of popularized by freud is the idea that we're our own
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top fans we just like ourselves we're heavily invested in our own success our own outcomes and this doesn't
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necessarily mean that we're arrogant or conceited it just means we really really care about us because
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we have to live here inside our own bodies and with these identities but because of that the downside
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risk is that we're very protective of ourselves of our reputations of how others evaluate us and
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sometimes this means that people are only willing to take baby steps because they don't want to make a
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mistake they don't want to be unfavorably evaluated they don't want to be ostracized from
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a group and the more self-conscious a person is oftentimes the more paralyzed they are they just
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simply don't want to act at all let alone take a risky action so if you can shift some of that focus
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shift some of that focus um the to the idea that you are just a cog in a machine um and many people
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might not like that idea but at work for example you're just one member of a team and really you're
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focusing on the team outfit uh output not your own output or focus on others that that really this risky
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action isn't about you it's in the service of other people so really just shifting away from that
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kind of like i'm staring in a mirror and there i am to i'm really looking out and focusing on the impact
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and the obligation and responsibility to others that can get people to to sort of tamp down the
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the brakes that ego put on yeah i know when we we did a series of articles a couple years ago about
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shyness or social anxiety and you know one of the things that kept on popping up over and over again is
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that the sort of the thing that drives that shyness or social anxiety is that you're just thinking about
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constantly how am i looking am i looking like an idiot am i looking and then like that just
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creates this vicious cycle and the way you get out of that you just try to think about the other
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person and make them feel comfortable and put the focus on them and that can help out a lot absolutely
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and one thing i would like to to add to follow up on that sometimes you'll probably notice from your
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own life the more heavily you invest in a goal kind of the bigger the deal it is you know like wow i
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really care about this sometimes that can lead to more and more anxiety it can be more and more
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more paralyzing and what some of my colleagues have discovered is when people are heavily invested in
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pursuing a piece of success some people end up being really happy and some people end up being
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really anxious and the difference between those two groups is what they're focusing on and the anxious
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group is focusing on oh no if i fail all this terrible stuff is going to happen but the happy group is
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focusing on progress hey i've made a little tiny piece of progress even though you know there might
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be loads more to do i'm still making progress i'm still putting one foot in front of another
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and if you can start focusing on that and making sure that your attention's locked there you're more
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likely to continue on and and taking risks and not be paralyzed so continuing on on that idea of
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reducing fear by eliminating the unknown right so if you're public speaking you gave the example of go to the
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place before your your speech walk around get familiar but like the other idea of just eliminating
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the unknown is just facing the fear and then experiencing you know what you fear because then
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you you realize it's not as bad as you thought it was going to be absolutely one of the people i
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interviewed for the book said that they give themselves a a weekly challenge to be uncomfortable
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and that could be any number of things going to a new restaurant trying a new type of food going to
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a a church service for a religion that might be related to your religion but it's not exactly your
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religion or or caters to a different um i don't know a different demographic than than yours um and and then all
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sorts of little things too just like strike up a conversation with a stranger or be willing to fail
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today and they would just do about 50 of these small experiments uh a year kind of by way of
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inoculating themselves and i when i asked like oh now do you not feel fear uh i remember her saying oh no
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i feel tons of fear it's just not so toxic that's great i love that idea so let's move on to that second
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process which is increasing your willingness to act so let's say you've got you may be able to tamp
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down your fear using some sort of tactic what do you do to increase your willingness to actually
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you know take action on that risk that you you're confronting so there are a number of of things you can
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do here the one that tickles me i believe the most is the idea of magical thinking magical thinking
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is something that all humans have a capacity for you can see this most clearly in the persistence
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of superstition you know don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back don't spill salt
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don't walk under a ladder no black cats should walk in front of you those types of things and even though
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in our our modern heads we know that when we knock over some salt nothing's going to happen
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there is something very primal in our heart that gives us a little bit of an uh-oh
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uh and that's because of this capacity for magical thinking we just we just are are willing to tap into
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to to some unknown pool of of stuff that we can't explain we'll call it magic that can cause events
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that seem miraculous uh and i don't want to offend anyone who who's religious um but sort of religion
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would fall under under this category as well which is we're not using the lots of physics to to explain
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real world events we're using something that that is a different type of phenomenon well how this relates
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to courage is the idea that many people have a lucky charm and i know when i present this idea to people
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especially when i go into a corporate organizational environment people just sort of laugh at me and they say
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yeah well i don't have a lucky charm but it turns out that just about everyone has a lucky charm of some
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sort uh for men it's often a piece of attire such as a power tie or a special pair of cufflinks given to
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them on a particular occasion maybe a pair of socks um for women who i interviewed they often said it was a
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piece of jewelry or a pair of underwear and even though no one thinks that that these items truly
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are magically infusing anyone with courage they do seem to make people feel more confident sort of on
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game day as it were people choose these special items because it puts a little bit more spring in
00:28:28.820
their step and that somehow translates to i've got this i'm willing to take a risk and it often can
00:28:36.860
translate even to to better performance that's awesome so yeah find a lucky charm that might might
00:28:41.440
work out for you absolutely and i i would say you might already have a lucky charm um that is if you
00:28:47.480
have a piece of attire that gives you particular confidence if you have a photograph of a loved one a
00:28:53.540
piece of jewelry and the thing about these is that that we create them right if someone gives you a
00:29:00.160
gift from from a trip abroad suddenly that gift has special significance you've already imbued it with
00:29:07.300
a special quality if you found that same thing on the ground it wouldn't be nearly as special but
00:29:12.820
because someone who's connected to you gave it to you as a gift because it represents something larger
00:29:18.780
perhaps their trip abroad you're already making that item special and because you have the this ability
00:29:26.580
to to create magical items you can kind of go out and do that with something that that will be a
00:29:33.680
little bit of a lucky charm maybe something you could keep in your pocket during those those uh
00:29:38.920
really really terrifying public presentations in your research do you find that is courage domain
00:29:45.260
exclusive like say if you're you increase your courage in one aspect of your life like you
00:29:50.220
overcome your fear of public speaking does that carry over to other domains say to your family life or to
00:29:56.240
some other part the truth is we don't know exactly uh it's in theory that's the case but we don't have
00:30:04.880
the numbers for it i will tell you this this is i think somewhat related and it has to do with the way
00:30:11.140
that people view courage and that is people are more likely to view a successful act as a courageous act
00:30:20.060
so if you think about someone who who sees a car fall into a pond and they're worried that the
00:30:27.200
occupants are drowning if a person jumps into the pond and saves the occupants of the car everyone around
00:30:35.080
and says wow that was so courageous but if the person jumps into the pond and they themselves drown
00:30:41.860
and don't save any of the occupants the witnesses are far less likely to say that was courageous
00:30:48.620
so we have this idea that courage is somehow tagged to success a courageous action as one that works in the
00:30:57.360
end but i don't think that's always true and i think we sometimes overlook acts of courage that
00:31:05.240
just happened to go awry so one of the one of your sections in the you know how to increase your
00:31:10.720
willingness to act i thought was really interesting was this idea of self-handicapping and it's something
00:31:15.380
that people do without even thinking about it and when we self-handicap it reduces our willingness
00:31:20.640
to act so what is self-handicapping for people who are familiar with the concept self-handicapping
00:31:25.960
is the idea that we don't like to be evaluated so a classic example is you get a smart college student
00:31:34.420
and they've got a huge final exam coming up now they're they're smart they're bright they've attended
00:31:40.900
class they in all likelihood can pass that final exam and yet they don't want to have to go through
00:31:48.140
the burden of being evaluated and they're afraid that they might fail so what they would do if they were
00:31:54.040
to self-handicap is they would create some type of circumstance that might actually lead to their
00:32:02.180
failure so let's say they stay up all night the night before studying and then they go in dead tired
00:32:11.060
to the exam first thing in the morning they end up doing terribly on it the upside for them psychologically
00:32:17.960
speaking is that they now get to say oh well it wasn't because i'm not smart you know i failed
00:32:25.100
because i stayed up all night because of something more circumstantial something more external to me
00:32:31.240
if i would have gotten good sleep i would have aced the test but because of this this really terrible
00:32:37.680
sleep i ended up doing poorly and many of us do this in a variety of ways and we tend to even kind
00:32:44.720
of do it a bit subconsciously it sounds like passive aggression but directed at the self
00:32:49.120
that's a decent way to look at it right so so how do you how do you reduce that you know tendency to
00:32:55.940
self-handicap or how do you you know you said we do without even thinking about it or not even
00:32:59.500
like how do you check yourself to make sure you're not doing that well it's it's difficult because it can
00:33:05.660
come so naturally to us one of the things i think is interesting though about self-handicapping
00:33:11.940
is that people are still willing to do whatever the action is so think about the the example i just
00:33:17.720
gave you that person is in essence afraid of the final exam but you'll notice in this case
00:33:24.140
they were acting if if we can make the case bravely that is they still took the final exam
00:33:30.200
um that that is they didn't stay home and and just you know shrink in the corner terrified of the
00:33:36.940
final exam they were still willing to do it um but what we want is for them to to do it in a way that
00:33:44.740
doesn't involve them sort of cutting their own legs off i think it has to do with a minor but powerful
00:33:52.160
shift in mindset um wherein you are not being evaluated on success or failure but rather on your
00:34:01.740
own sense of growth and even if you underperform the student in this case getting a c rather than an a
00:34:08.500
they use that as as important feedback to identify areas that they're weaker in or that they're stronger
00:34:15.920
in it will help them redouble their efforts and it's just part of an overall personal narrative of
00:34:22.300
i'm getting better i'm learning more even if there's a few stumbling blocks along the way
00:34:27.160
so you have to be less focused on the individual momentary failure and have a grander sense of
00:34:34.740
in general i'm still developing and growing all the time so another thing that prevents us or keeps us
00:34:41.640
from taking action is social cues right we might not be afraid the fear might not be there but when we
00:34:47.540
look around at other people and we see them not taking action it tends to cause us not to take action this
00:34:53.860
is called the bystander effect so what can we do to overcome those biases that we have we have towards
00:34:59.880
inaction when no one else is taking action yeah absolutely so to to remind listeners what the
00:35:07.340
bystander effect is it's the idea that if five people witness someone fall down and have a seizure for
00:35:14.440
for example that in in some cases they're less likely to render aid to that person and and this
00:35:21.960
goes a little bit against how we would think because you'd be like wow there's five people there should
00:35:27.100
be five times the amount of help given one of the problems is that each individual sees the others as
00:35:37.640
being equally responsible and so no one's willing to step forward because they assume that others will step
00:35:43.360
forward and so you can you can sidestep this by nominating yourself and you can even do this ahead
00:35:51.960
of time just right now in your head say when i see someone in trouble a car on the side of the road
00:35:59.000
that's disabled someone that's fallen down fainted had a seizure uh someone that's obviously injured
00:36:05.240
anything like that i'm the person i am the person that is going to rush to their aid and so you you
00:36:13.120
sidestep that bystander effect in part one of the things that will help empower you to do that
00:36:19.140
is sort of knowing what to do if you're an emt or a first responder and you have loads of medical
00:36:25.380
training you're far more likely to rush to to the aid of someone having a seizure because it's not
00:36:31.660
weird to you it's not uh frightening to you you know exactly what's happening exactly what to do
00:36:37.080
so if you um can in some ways review in your head the types of skills you have you can better nominate
00:36:46.580
yourself to act in the types of scenarios that can use those skills so it sounds like you're using
00:36:52.020
implementation intentions like if i see someone in need of help then i will help right i mean that's
00:36:58.400
what you're kind of doing absolutely if i see a car go off the road on the freeway
00:37:04.260
i am absolutely going to stop my car even if i have an appointment even if i have a long drive
00:37:12.180
ahead of me and render aid however i can that is me robert there's a lot of tips that we haven't
00:37:19.620
covered in this conversation but if you were to you know go back and you know the people who are
00:37:23.700
listening to this show and if there's one thing that they can do today to start increasing their
00:37:29.300
courage quotient what would that one thing be you think i i'm actually going to cheat a little bit
00:37:35.680
on this one and bring sort of the finish line of the race a little closer to people rather than try
00:37:42.320
and get people to run faster to the finish line and that is uh there's a a concept i describe in the
00:37:48.920
book called courage blindness which is you you're just often unaware of how much courage you yourself
00:37:54.920
have under your belt and i think that once you start appreciating all the courageous things you
00:38:00.620
you've done you know maybe chosen to get married or chosen to get divorced chosen to have a kid
00:38:07.660
moved jobs moved to another state gone away to college switched your majors dropped out of college
00:38:16.000
all of those things are frightening to say the least they're all uncertain they all require you
00:38:22.280
overcoming a sense of apprehension and taking a risk and and the list goes on and on opening businesses
00:38:29.760
all sorts of things and i would say that once you start considering that those are brands of courage
00:38:37.900
that the resilience is a type of courage perseverance is a type of courage physical bravery is a type of
00:38:44.640
courage uh risk taking like being an entrepreneur is a type of courage when you start thinking of
00:38:51.060
of all of these every time you've stuck up for an underdog or every time you've been party to a
00:38:56.540
politically incorrect conversation and said you know what i'm just going to bow out i'm not comfortable
00:39:00.720
with this every single one of those instances is a brand of courage and i would i would have people
00:39:06.680
review that in their head so that they can see that they're not a zero out of 100 on courage but
00:39:13.460
that they have a huge history of personal courage and that that's what they should be building on going
00:39:17.720
forward so robert this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your book
00:39:22.840
and your work well certainly they can get a copy of the the courage quotient or or any of my books at
00:39:29.940
online retailers and they can find out more about me by going to intentional happiness dot com
00:39:39.480
fantastic well robert thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you brett my guest
00:39:43.640
here's robert bizwasdiener he's the author of the book the courage quotient it's available on amazon.com
00:39:47.860
you can also find out more information about his work at robertdiener.com that's d-i-e-n-e-r.com
00:39:53.440
also check out our show notes at aom.is slash courage quotient where you can find links to
00:39:59.320
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:40:15.340
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00:40:19.000
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00:40:23.760
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00:40:26.820
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00:40:30.380
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00:40:33.640
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