❤️ The importance of courage ❤️

❤️  ❤️

❤️ Welcome! According to the dictionary, courage is “the ability to do something that frightens one” and “strength in the face of pain or grief”. It allows us to fight injustice, make tough but important decisions and live a full life, even when it is scary. Isn’t it amazing how one act of courage can change your life? ❤️

❤️ Courage is needed to ask the love of one’s life out, to speak up when someone is mistreating you, to move out, to take a job offer, to send risky messages, to start a new adventure and, in short, to evolve. It’s what we use to put our determination into practice and what allowed history to happen. While being scared is natural (and valid!) and fear can be helpful (by warning us of the danger), having the courage to take important steps is very beneficial: the ones that chose not to go to the Moon didn’t make it to our History books! ❤️

❤️ Moreover, being able to read this on your device is a direct result of courage. If the people responsible for today’s technology didn’t dare to try something new, experiment and work on the weird concepts that formed our everyday lives, we wouldn’t have the things we have today. We wouldn’t even have 7 Cups! After all, the mental health movement happened (and happens) thanks to courage, too. Most decisions are a result of courage (even making a decision requires courage!), and we are the result of a series of decisions ❤️

❤️ Let’s reflect on the quotes “Regret is worse than rejection” and “Better done than perfect”. When it comes to social matters, if we use our courage to take the leap of faith and get rejected, it will be painful, yes, but we will eventually recover and we will know that we did all we could. But if we don’t use our courage, we might wonder what could have happened our entire lives, and asking ourselves if we let the greatest opportunity pass is worse than a rejection we can recover from. And, when it comes to perfectionism and fear stopping us from taking action, we often forget that having something imperfect is better than having nothing: if we need to make and deliver a key tonight, it’s better to have a simpler key than no key at all. After all, we can use a simpler key, but we can’t use a nonexistent key. We need to let our courage be that key to progress and a better life ❤️

❤️ How do we do that? It can look different for everyone, but things like making a plan (if it’s not something spontaneous), comforting yourself, using affirmations that resonate with you, positive self-talk, getting support, taking deep breaths, trying to make the hardest parts more manageable and rewarding yourself might help ❤️

❤️ Fear is a part of life: it can prevent us from making bad decisions and exposing ourselves to danger. However, frequently, the courage to continue and fight our fears is the force we need to keep growing. As they say in The Princess Diaries, courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear. So, today, I invite you to use your courage whenever it is more beneficial than fear ❤️

❤️ Discussion questions: ❤️

❤️ ✅ 1- What does courage mean to you? ❤️

❤️ ✅ 2- Please think of an act of courage that you did. What fueled your courage? What was the result of your courage? If you feel comfortable doing so, please share the story and/or tips to use our courage! ❤️ 

❤️ Thank you for having the courage to be you ❤️