26. Practice Everyday Acts of Courage.

My sweethearts. This is a big one. This is one of those lessons, where if you do what we talk about, your life will be so much more rich and wonderful. . . and if you don’t do them, your quality of life will suffer.

Practicing everyday acts of courage means doing at least one thing every day that makes you feel uncomfortable.

It’s facing the fear, knowing it scares you, and doing it anyways. It’s the conscious act of getting out of your comfort zone.

You know this on an intuitive level and it sounds a little cliché, but all of the growth in life occurs when you’re outside of your comfort zone. If you’re doing things that are easy for you, that are just habitual then you’re in danger of becoming complacent. You can get fat, dumb, and happy. Or at least happy in the moment . Because it feels good to sit and binge watch TV. It feels good to eat the junk food scientifically designed to increase cravings. At least in the moment .

But the results of that behavior do not feel good. The hours turn into days, those turn into weeks, months, years…and then you’re wondering where those dreams of your childhood went at some point in your life--but you’ll have enjoyed the time.

A cure for that kind of thinking is to practice everyday acts of courage.

It’s the mindset of this that’s important. My mentor Dan Sullivan says that the difference between courage and confidence is that courage feels horrible while confidence feels great. He also points out that competence and confidence never get to happen without the initial commitment and courage to get good at something. So, it all starts with that first shaky, imperfect action where you’re scared to do something, but still do it.

The magic of what happens with that is that—just like a physical muscle—your courage gets greater and you become a better person each and every time that you take action. Knowing you’re going to be uncomfortable and scared, and you do it anyways.

The thing is, this courage will get easier over time. Not because the act is any different, but because YOU are different. You’re literally better each time you’ve performed an act of courage. You’ve improved your character through stepping out and doing the thing that scares you.

When we think of courage, we often think of the great big things: having the courage to end a relationship that’s not working, or switching careers, or moving to a place where you don’t know anyone. These are all acts of courage, and they’re often defining moments in a great life.

However, these moments are usually far and few between. They don’t usually happen often, so you can’t use these times to develop your courage. You need to practice building your courage each and every day, and you do it by consciously putting yourself in a situation that makes you uncomfortable. Then you take action in the face of fear.

I’m going to give you some tools to help with this in a bit, but let’s talk about some examples we may have to show courage. For me, I used to make sales prospecting calls for real estate every day at the office. I never enjoyed them. There was always a little apprehension over making that first call, but I picked up the phone more often than not and started dialing. Usually when I didn’t feel like it. If you feel like doing it, then you’re not exercising much courage.

I’ll brag right now, because I’m writing this at 6am-ish on a Saturday. I’ve been up for a while, and I’m thinking I want to go lay down and get comfortable. But alas, no! I’m practicing a bit of everyday courage by writing this to you now. I want to help you, and I’m also concerned about my character. If I keep doing what’s easy all of the time, instead of what’s right then that will invade my life, become a habit, and be cancerous to my character and the things I want to accomplish for myself and others. So, I’m going to keep writing for both of us!

These days, the things that are making me uncomfortable are mostly physical. They can include eating the right way even when you and mom leave cake on the counter. It is especially my burpees in the morning. Burpees just aren’t fun, and there is literally a little fear every single morning before I do them. But—I always feel better when they’re done. Out of breath, and breaking a little sweat, yes, but I feel like a total badass for having exercised that extra bit of courage.

And now—I’ve started to end my showers in the morning with turning the knob all the way to cold for a few minutes (it’s supposed to be three). Whew! That just doesn’t feel good. I can talk myself up, I can put on music that I love while doing it, but it still takes some courage to do it. Every. Single. Time.

There is a lot of science to show that the cold shower has a lot of health benefits. They help you boost your immunity, wake you up more completely, and can increase metabolism by using energy to warm you up again, helps circulation…and more. 2 BUT—the thing that I appreciate most about them, although I pretty much hate it—is that it gives me a chance to exercise my daily courage.

When you take daily cold showers, and do burpees, and pick up the phone when you don’t feel like it, and do it consistently. . . it leads to confidence. That gets you feeling pretty good about yourself. It develops that courage muscle so that when those big decisions come that require intestinal fortitude—you’ll be prepared. You can do it .

Another one of my virtual mentors and all around badass human (maybe the toughest man on the planet), David Goggins has a saying that can be applicable:

“Embrace the suck.”

Just know it’s going to be horrible and lean into it. Yell at it, curse at it if you want to, mentally or actually out loud…and then do it.

Form the habit of practicing every day courage, and then watch as that habit forms you .

The Advice in Practice:

• Decide on something that makes you uncomfortable. Even if it’s mildly so at first (you will get better as you practice this). Here are some suggestions:

• Burpees. Start with just a single one if you need to, and build up to more.
• The cold shower end we mentioned above, even if it’s for a few seconds to begin.
• Writing out an idea list first thing in the morning.
• Doing the hardest thing first on your daily “to-do” or outcome list.
• Starting a conversation with a stranger when you’re an introvert.
• Any kind of sales. If you’re already doing the sale, then doing an upsell.
• Pressing “post” on something that scares you a bit.

• Do an Idea List in your journal about things that make you uncomfortable if these aren’t doing it for you. It’s a good idea to do it, regardless.
• Commit and decide to do it for a minimum of a week, or more if you’re feeling brave in the moment. Write down that promise to yourself (don’t underestimate putting it in writing, it’s important).
• Then do it. Mark it down in your journal each day to start and keep a streak going.
• Look for and study the “5 Second Rule” from Mel Robbins. It’s basically where you feel and know that you’re about to do something beneficial (like burpees for instance), and your brain starts to try to talk you out of it. We’re REALLY good at talking ourselves out of things, especially when they’re uncomfortable.

When you even start to get an inkling of that self-talk starting, you count down out loud, “Five, four, three, two, one,” and TAKE ACTION before that brilliant mind of yours can list the 3,827 reasons you shouldn’t be doing this. There is a lot online about the rule, and Mel has actually written an entire book about it which I recommend. This tool for everyday courage has been invaluable to me in the past few months.

• Get two accountability buddies to do this with you. The reason you need two is that one will always flake out. The rule in the Army is about redundancy. They often say, “If you have two, you have one and if you have one, you have none.” So get two buddies for this, and replace one whenever one flakes out and stops being accountable .

Let me know you’re doing the uncomfortable thing! I want to know. I love you, you know.