Gus Lee

Thanks to two great readers and polymath SMEs, Alen Ulman and Leon Garber. They invited me onto their SEIZE THE MOMENT PODCAST to figure out HOW TO GET OUR COURAGE, FREE OURSELVES FROM FEAR, TRULY HELP OTHERS, AND LIVE WITH QUIET RESOLVE FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS. This is a time-out from my blog series on Getting Your Courage so you can enjoy listening to two very sharp, warm, and welcoming hosts learn how we overcome fear and access courage in everything. Courage is the real deal and is, for most, merely the biggest issue in our lives. https://youtu.be/jWwJZlmhF2E

How to get your courage, Part 2. Get a piece of paper. Write down your two biggest fears; it takes guts to admit them. Say to your fears something like, “Worry reduces my inner self and spreads fear to my friends. Leave my mind and my heart.” Tape the paper to monitor or mirror. For one take, retake control over anxiety. Don’t quit.

Not letting fear control our thinking, dialogs, meals, and life, is a superior human achievement. Naming, facing, and banning them — that’s key to Courage 101.

Fear has 2 moving parts. First, it’s a huge primitive emotional reaction to a lethal threat; it triggers more than 26 involuntary physiological reactions (heart races, mouth goes dry). The biggest is that fear drains blood from our brains to arouse our major muscle groups for a life-and-death struggle against saber-tooth tigers. Filled with stress hormones, we lose logic and become freaked out Neanderthals on crack. We act badly; we become our worst selves.

We counter fear’s first moving part with BICBOF: BREATH IN COURAGE, BLOW OUT FEAR. Take slow, deep, diaphragmatic breaths, 5 seconds in 5 long, slow seconds out. This dissipates our home-made street drugs and frees us from looking like stunned mullets. (Read James Nestor’s Breath to learn why slow nasal breathing is essential to your health and weight, as well.)

Part 3: how to beat fear’s second moving part. Check out THE COURAGE PLAYBOOK: 5 STEPS TO OVERCOME YOUR FEARS AND BECOME YOUR BEST SELF at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can also read this on guslee.net or LEADERS OF CHARACTER, LLC, on fb.

Make it a courageous day by how you treat non-friends.

Did you know that courage is our one, key human ability? Courage lets us do what we value most: love others and unconditionally respect all persons. We can gently retire those crazy forms of bias that feed on our imperfections. Courage lets us genuinely care for others when we’re tired, cranky, and sliding into unhealthy interior spaces. It frees us from self-doubt and sad regrets. It equips us to do the right thing, especially when we’ve told ourselves that we can’t. It grows us to make wise and celebration-worthy decisions in relationships, life, and work.

Courage promotes hope and health. It mitigates angst re: texting drivers, loud neighbors, and dental care. It gives hope for the future. Life teaches us that without courage, even love gets totally messed up. Then anxiety wrecks the delicate eco-cultures of identity, of families, organizations, and communities. Peter Pan creator J.J. Barrie told college graduates: If courage goes, then all goes.

Many of us see courage as a nice, abstract idea without boots on the ground, unrelated to being able to love, to be loved, and to find meaning. But research reveals that courage is that one intensely vital, tangible, practical, operational, and often, life-giving and lifesaving, human ability, that we all need just to get through the day, and to then thrive, despite unknowns, into many tomorrows.

Okay, Gus, say you’re right. So how do we find and get our courage? Turn on your sweet, essential Courage Mindset app (John Whitcomb, a genius colleague, is creating this). Virtually admit that feeding your anxieties and fears like they were household pets is a fake and even a bad form of living. Take a deep cleansing breath, dump self-critical mindsets and believe that you need courage to truly love, to live rightly, and to handle chunk servings of contentment and happiness. Practice this twice. In the next blog, I’ll provide the next step to courage.

Breaking news: what if there were already a user’s manual that laid out how to become personally courageous — and to become an effective, courageous leader regardless of station or history? The Courage Playbook just came out. https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Playbook-Steps-Overcome-Become/dp/1119848903?asin=1119848903&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-courage-playbook-gus-lee/1140119834

GOT COURAGE?

Long before the invention of the corporation (or Twitter),we were hardwired  to show courage regardless of risk to ourselves.[1]                                                                                                     

I wrote that line in 2006. It remains true. That’s because whether we’re blue, red, green, or the American bluish brown-conglomerate of these often clashing primary colors, we all dislike cowardice. We don’t like it in others; we don’t like it in ourselves. We’d hate it in those we love.

Today, without courage, nothing—from relationships to families, communities, firms, economy, our Nation or democracy —is safe from the toxic effects of our pervasive fears.

For years, I’ve been in phone conversations and snail/email correspondence with many of you regarding courage, leadership and ethics. Few matters are more essential. Courage is not physical bravery or valor, which most of us seldom require. But we need moral courage when we think, speak, act, relate, decide or react – a hundred times a day. It is the stuff of life, itself.

Last week, Diane urged me to begin blogging as a more effective way to encourage the dialog. Thanks to her, the blog invites personal and community consideration of courage in our relationships and courageous leadership in life.

Years ago, I was asked to meet with Terry Stein, M.D., and Dr. Bob Tull, experts in professional education on the West Coast. Their company serves 3 million members. Our task was to help several hundred of their hard-working leaders raise sagging customer and employee satisfaction scores. Since most of our lives are spent in communication, we designed an intense leader development program focused on strong communication. This evolved into Courageous Communication, which Diane and I detailed in Courage: The Backbone of Leadership. The program was effective in leader development and in raising satisfaction scores, but I remember a leader named Fred Baring. After one of our tough leadership clinics, I asked if the new tools had helped him with a challenging team member. He had someone else in mind.            “

I used your model with my teenage daughter,” Baring said. “It’s changed everything.”

Two days ago, Chief Tom DeMint of the Poudre Fire Authority in Colorado called me. He had just led his courageous and brave fire fighters in four weeks of combating lethal and vicious wildfires that took three lives, 600 homes and 150,000 acres of forest land. It had been the state’s largest firestorm in history, and Colorado’s communities loved them as never before.

“I was talking,” said the Chief, “with Luke (not his real name, a tall, broad-shouldered battalion chief with piercing eyes.) He had just helped citizens in a bad emergency. I’ll give you the details later. He said your class last week changed his life. He wants your email address so he can thank you.”

So this is our conversation about courage.

Please join me in discussing how to activate, strengthen and share it.

Courage!

Gus