Developing courage in the new year

As it turns out, developing courage in ourselves is not so easy. We have to learn it by practicing it. There’s no YouTube video (that I’ve found at least) that we just have to watch once and suddenly become courageous. Reflection and introspection is the best method I’ve found so far (and that’s not particularly easy, either).

In lieu of a New Year’s resolution like running a marathon or reading 20 books, I’ve opted to commit to a practice which I hope helps me to cultivate courage.

In hopes that it’s helpful, here It is:

First thing in the morning, answer these two questions in notebook, quickly:

• What do I think will be one of the hardest things I have to do today?

• How do I intend to act in that situation?

Last thing at night, answer these two questions in notebook:

• What was actually the hardest thing I had to do today? Why was it hard?

• What should I do differently next time?

I’ve been on the wagon for about 6 days now. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Even considering what’s going to be hard, helps me to have a plan. That makes me feel more confident and courageous in the moment

• Debriefing and learning from the hard stuff yields benefit quickly, sometimes even the next day

• I’m really bad at predicting what the hardest part of my day will be, which is humbling. I’m excited to review the data in my journal after 2-3 months because I suspect it’ll reveal some blind spots I have in my life

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Here’s the background on why courage matters so much to me, and why I’m so interested in trying to cultivate it in myself and the organizations I’m part of:

The first obstacle to being better at anything is laziness. If we don’t get off our behind, we can’t figure out the easy stuff. This is the case for being a better spouse, parent, citizen, athlete, accountant, corporate executive, chef, team leader, musician, change agent, or gardener.

Any domain has fundamentals that are easy to learn, but just take work. We’re lucky that in our lifetimes this is true.

Before things like youtube, google, and the internet more generally I suspect it was much harder to learn the basics of anything - whether it was baking bread, grieving the loss of a loved one, personal finance, or designing a nuclear reactor. But the obstacle of laziness remains, if we don’t get out of bed we don’t get better anything.

Eventually, however, the easy-to-learn-if-you-do-the-work fundamentals are already done, because we, correctly, tend to do those first. At that point, all that’s left is hard. So we have a choice: do the hard stuff, or stop growing.

As I’ve gotten to the age where all that’s left is hard or really hard, I’ve become more and more interested in courage. Courage, as I define it, is the ability to attempt and do the hard stuff, even though it’s hard. For this reason courage, to me, is the king of all virtues: it helps us to do everything else hard, including building our virtues and character.

This is a broadly applicable skill because there are all sorts of hard things out there: technical challenges, situations requiring patience or emotional labor, bouncing forward through adversity, product innovation, leading others through solving complex problems, being vulnerable, managing large projects, having a happy marriage, being a parent…the list goes on.

Courage matters, because it is fundamental for us to even attempt the hard stuff once the low-hanging fruit in our lives is gone. Although it is non-trivial, developing courage in ourselves and our organizations matters a lot and can make a huge difference for ourselves and those we seek to serve.

Coaxing my best self to show up

Historically, the time between hitting the snooze button on my alarm and getting out of bed has been the worst part of my day.

One of two things usually happens. One, I might immediately open my phone and start scrolling through facebook, which gets me amped because of the memes and sensational posts. Or, my mind starts to run through my to-do list, and I feel like garbage out of the gate because I’m always behind and that’s the first emotion I’m feeling to start the day.

Either way, I never fall back asleep, which makes me feel even worse because I’ve wasted 9 (or 18 or 27) minutes of my day on top of putting myself into a bad mood. This cycle repeats, every day. 

And every day our culture is like Lucy pulling the football out from under me, and I’m Charlie Brown thinking today is different and ending up on my ass before I’ve even put my slippers on.

This past week, I’ve been trying an alternative snooze cycle.

I’m in bed, my eyes are closed, and I’m cycling through my day. But instead of dreadfully asking, “what do I have to do today?” I’m thinking, “what would my day look and feel like today if I were being the best version of myself?”

And I visualize in my head, myself, going through my day at my best. Hour by hour, I’m feeling my attitude and my body. I’m imagining how I am treating others. I’m thinking about how I’m approach the day’s work if I’m at my peak. I’m thinking about times when my day is going to spiral out of control, and I’m feeling in my bones how to bring it back to balance. I’m thinking less about what I have to do, and more about how I’m going to act.

It’s a dress rehearsal for the day. And it takes about 3 minutes.

I remember from dance recitals  growing up, what dress rehearsal feels like. It’s different than rehearsals at the studio, because you’re in the space you’ll be performing and you’re actually wearing the clothes and costume as if it’s the real thing. It’s as close to the real thing as it gets without performing in the actual show.

But there’s less pressure because it’s not the recital; you know it’s not the real show. Which makes it a risk-free rep. But dress rehearsals are amazing because they help your body know what the real thing will be like, for the most part. So when the real show happens, you’re as ready as you can be.

I tried “dress rehearsal for the day” visualization once, and I was hooked. I’ve done it every day since. As I went throughout my day, after the first morning of doing this exercise, I felt like I was in a prepared posture instead of a defensive one. When things started going badly during my day, it’s like my mind and body had muscle memory kick in to recognize that something was wrong and self-correct.

The truth is, I have not been at my best for the past few months. I have been getting angrier at my children more quickly. Resentment piles up faster when I perceive an affront of disrespect from my family or at work. I am more overwhelmed by my to-do list. I have been in a state of general malaise more days out of the week, then I was a year ago. And like most mortal men, when tension piles up, it leads to conflict more often than it would otherwise.

And I don’t want more conflict in my life. I don’t want to be that resentful husband. I don’t want to be that angry father. I don’t want to be that self-absorbed neighbor or colleague.

The problem is, life has trade offs. In addition to not wanting to feel so much tension, I don’t want to give up on the priorities I care about that give me this tension in the first place. Nor do I want to to accept this tension and have a short fuse basically all the time.

There’s one way I see out of this trade off, and that’s to be my best self: behaving with a better attitude and a clearer mind throughout the day. Because my best self is better equipped to deal with this tension than my average self is. My best self creates growth and love from tension, my average self gets washed over by it.

But it’s not easy to get him to show up all the time, even though I want him to. Which is not unique to me, I think. I think a lot of us want our best self to show up more often.

This dress rehearsal visualization has helped my best self show up more regularly (at least a little), which is why I wanted to share it with others.

What did yesterday say about [blank]?

I started with just gratitude journaling to start my day, and have since added a bunch of “content blocks”, if you will, to my morning reflection. It’s the first thing I do when I open my computer at work. (I send an e-mail to myself that automatically delivers at 7:30am the next morning).

This is the latest question I added to my morning reflection. It’s now the first thing on the page.

“What did yesterday say about your character?”

There are two parts to this question.

First, there’s the prompt of “What did yesterday say about _______?”. What’s effective about this prompt is that it forces me to take stock of the entire previous day. And it’s pointed so that it’s fairly difficult to lie to myself, because I have to come up with specific examples from the previous day.

This is a little goofy, but in my head, I imagine “Yesterday” speaking to me and evaluating me like a benevolent, credible, and demanding coach, and I write my response in Yesterday’s voice. Yesterday is like my wise elder great uncle - I know he loves me, but objective enough to keep me on the hook for my actions.

The second part of the prompt is the “your character” part. This is user-specific.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what my highest priority in my life is. For me, it’s being a good man. In other words, it’s my character.

Character comes before being a husband, father, citizen, or professional. My character is my standard, just as my word is my bond. As a result, I fill in the blank of this prompt with “ your character”.

The way I ask myself this question has an imbedded assumption about how I view right and wrong. By asking myself about character, it reinforces the belief that what we matters most about is not what we accomplish but how we conduct ourselves when we do it. That may not be how you see the world, but it’s a choice worth being intentional about.

So, if you’re planning on using this prompt, take some time to think about what your “blank” is. Maybe it’s being faith-driven. Maybe it’s being a parent or partner. Maybe it’s having a second-to-none work ethic. Maybe it’s related to serving others.

The key is to fill in the blank with the aspiration that is your highest and truest aspiration.

It has been a great way to start my day. For me it all comes down to character, so a reflection on character is where my day begins.

4-Part Daily Gratitude

Starting a gratitude changed the course of my life. I don’t even think that’s an overstatement.

In my times of highest anxiety, thinking about gratitude helped me to think about and even feel my feelings. I suppose it may vary from person to person, but I am not able to function normally when I’m completely gripped by high-intensity emotions. Being emotionally stable is a necessary condition for living out my best intentions.

Writing down gratitudes helps me stay centered, even, and calm. There are many ways to do this. Here is how I approach it, which I took from a meditation class on Glo.

I write down four sentences as part of my morning routine. I happen to do this as part of my first order of business before I start my work day.

I recommend keeping your gratitude journal in the morning, but doing this at any time daily is great. Here are the four parts to my daily gratitude journaling:

• Who is someone I am grateful for?

• What is something I am grateful for?

• What am I grateful for in the coming day?

• What is a problem I am grateful for?

If I’m feeling angry, I might add, “Who do I forgive?”. When in despair, I might add, “What do I pray for?”.

There’s no 100% right way to do a gratitude journal, as long as you write out what you are grateful for. It’s hard at first, but definitely worth going deep on, every day.