Courage When Your Knees Buckle
The opposite of weakness isn’t strength, it’s courage.
Your knees will buckle someday. Strength will fail you unless you consistently aim low. Boredom defeats you when competence always sustains you.
Clinging to competence is sleeping with attainability. Attainability is the mother of average. Lean into courage when you’re in over your head.
Courage when your knees buckle:
#1. Drop your mask.
Vulnerability sets you free. Weak leaders eventually collapse under the weight of fakery.
Don’t run around bragging about incompetence. Seeking pity weakens you.
Ways to drop your mask with courage:
- Say you don’t know but you’re working on it.
- Do something today that reflects your commitment to personal growth. People can’t grow for you.
- Connect with others. Ask experienced leaders how they found strength. (Don’t simply ask what to do. Ask how to do.)
- Look outside your current circle of friends for a mentor or coach.
#2. Experiment.
- Reflect on desired results. What do you want to happen?
- Record your current strategy. What are you doing that isn’t working? Confess current strategies aren’t working.
- Adopt an “I’m learning” attitude. (Learning means failure. You only learn when you fail.)
- Write down three things you could try to attain desired results. Try one.
- Reflect and repeat.
#3. Self-reflect.
Practice structured self-reflection.
- Set an intention in the morning. Determine one behavior that expresses your intention.
- At the end of the day reflect on results.
- What did you try?
- How did it work?
- What did you learn about others, yourself, and behaviors that work?
- What do you intend to do tomorrow?
- Treat yourself like a kid. When children are learning you don’t beat them down. You cheer them on.
What do courageous leaders look like?
Courage to Become a Leader – Leadership Freak
Two Hours to Courage – Leadership Freak
Source for Roosevelt quote: Good Reads
“The Vagrant: The Inner Journey of Leadership,” enables leaders to see themselves more clearly and provides structured self-reflection exercises to move your growth forward.
Order The Vagrant:
Strength lets you lift something heavy; courage is what gets you to pick it up in the first place. I learned that at the gym.
Day 1, the coach gave me a PVC pipe instead of a barbell. But once I knew the right movements, I graduated first to a barbell (no weights) and then to a barbell with weights. And then more and more weights. Each time I go for a heavier weight than I’ve ever done, it is courage — not strength — that gets me to try.
Brilliantly put, Jennifer. I wonder if courage is a constant and strength goes up or down?