Courage

 Probably one of the most important things in life I believe is learning to be courageous. So basically what really is courage, is it doing what you want when you want? Well that's freedom. Maybe courage is eliminating fear. But then what is fear, fear is an emotion designed to protect human beings from danger. Basically, if a tiger comes in front of you, it's very natural to feel the emotion of fear. The idea of losing a job and not having any income is a fear as it might also hinder with our way of being. Taking too much risk in business and losing out a lot of money is also fear as it's our desire to protect our money. In cricket, hitting a six comes with the risk of getting out and losing your wicket, so you want to protect your wicket and that's why you have the fear. So is fear really important ? Sure it is, it's designed to help human beings live a life that's lasting. Is there a thing where you become totally fearless? I believe it's stupid to become completely fearless. Basically, you fear something because you want to protect something. It's a very important thing to protect yourself from the wrong people, the wrong attitudes or the mindsets, so fear in my opinion should be viewed as an important emotion rather than a less important emotion. Imagine if you are fearless and you drive your car recklessly, it's very likely that your life will be taken away from you, so fear is so so important for our survival. 

Now on the other hand, there are fears that give you the illusion of protection, for an example, lets say you want to speak up in a meeting about something that's bothering you, now the protection mechanism in our head tells us that don't do this, else you will lose your job, once you lose your job no one will respect you and you wouldn't have any value to the world. But listen up, this is what is an illusion, in fact speaking up in situations will make people respect you more and more importantly value your contributions more. So the illusion of fear is a negative thing. Now, let's take another situation. You might find a particular business where you want to invest into but it's fairly risky and you will lose money, but if you succeed, you will make tons of money. But you can always allow investors in, have people willing to bet on you and succeed in developing the business. So there are some fears that can be decreased by sheer planning and making the right decisions with the right strategies. Obviously, the fear of not succeeding in a business will certainly not go away and it will in fact some times help you succeed and work harder at getting the business right. So again this gives us another example that fear is not always negative. A student who fears failing will work harder and eventually get a good result. However the fear should not crumble a person. Now that we understand what are good fears and bad fears, one conclusion I can draw is, any fear that's life threatening is a survival mechanism and helps you survive the difficult moments of life, and any fear whether that's losing a wicket in cricket or whether that's losing a job, as long as you have the life, those fears are mere illusions and stopping you to achieve the things you wish to achieve. 

Now how do we develop courage, and how do we really think about being courageous in any situation: There are various books that suggest a lot of things, but the number one thing is to look long term in my opinion. Think about 1 year from now, how would your life be different if you lost a wicket, how would your life be different if you approached someone and got rejected, how would you feel after a year if you spoke up in a meeting where you were really afraid to speak, the reality is these things genuinely wouldn't matter in a year from now. However, if you are over courageous in driving and an accident can actually kill you, that's where you need fear and not courage. You need a part of fear but more trust in your abilities to drive and understand the physics behind driving. The way to overcome fear, these are all cliches but they are true: 

1. Face your fears(wow that's such a new thing that I said). 

2. Remember it's okay to fail, and have a long term perspective. 

3. Write down a list of your fears and what you are going to do about it. 

4. Knowledge also eliminates fear, for an example a normal person who doesn't know swimming will fear deep waters, but a person who has practiced swimming in deep waters millions of times, will not have even a pinch of fear. So skill and practice also eliminates fear. 

Here's a beautiful equation I found, the knowledge for an example lets say you want to go skydiving, first you would need some knowledge about what to do while doing skydiving, that's what the instructor will teach you to hold so and so stuff. You need the faith in yourself that you will be able to do what the instructor told you to do and eventually you go on and do the skydiving yourself, so that's where you get courage. 

You can read these equation on your own, but lets say you don't know how to swim, you go ahead with a strong belief in yourself that you will be able to swim and you jump, eventually you drown inside the water, so no knowledge + faith + action = reckless. You know how to swim, you believe and have faith in yourself that you will be able to swim but you don't jump is paralysis. You know how to swim, but you don't really believe that you will be able to jump in deep waters and you go ahead and jump, but because you don't believe in yourself, you would go ahead and jump in shallow waters. So Knowledge + No Faith + Action = Safe. 

These are really important equations and make sure you remind yourself about them whenever you feel a lack of courage in life. Remember, Knowledge + Faith + Action = Courage.

At the end of it all, I would say that humans would have never survived if it was not fear and humans would have never grown if it was not for the courage to act against fear. The only take away is the fact that any fear that's not life threatening is actually an illusion and not fear.