by Coach Chuck Barnard
Courage is not an emotion but action emanating from the emotion of love which has cast aside the fear that resides in the mind, heart, body, and or gut (gut instincts). Courage only happens when fear is, was, or could be present. When I was attacked by a dog as a boy I was filled with fear and the biological response to fight kicked in (no pun intended) as I kicked, punched, screamed, and cried for the several seconds the dog came at my little sister and I before retreating to its yard. I felt the fear.
As a man when I lost control of my car on an icy road and started skidding directly in the path of another oncoming car I felt nothing. I simply reacted trying to get control of the car which I did at least enough to avoid the oncoming car and end up in a snowbank on my side of the road. The gentleman who was in the passenger seat of my car said he was frozen by fear and thought we were going to collide head on into the oncoming car. He saw his life pass before his eyes.
In one incident I felt fear and reacted out of fear, in the other I felt nothing, no emotion at all. I don’t know if my response was the fight response taking over, but I do know I felt no emotion in that moment. Why did I not feel any emotion in that latter example? Can that response be trained into you?
I will honestly admit I am not sure we fully understand why, but we have a better knowledge of the how, which means the answer to the second question is yes. From my background in Advanced Behavioral Modeling, we presume that if a human being can do something, the process they use can be modeled and we can train others to do the same thing. The results may not be identical, but you can train people to use the same process to achieve similar if not identical or even better results.
In athletics what that means is I can’t change the genetic makeup of a sprinter to make the sprinter faster than what they are genetically engineered to be, but I can learn the common elements found amongst the best of the best sprinters who ever lived and help fast runners become faster by training them to do the same things the best of the best did or do.
Two of my trainers, Tony Robbins and Wyatt Woodsmall, talked about a project they were both involved in. The project was to redesign the pistol shooting training for the U.S. Army back in the 1980s. The training program at that time was a four day training and the Army expected a certain percentage of participants to pass at the minimum standard. By modeling what the best pistol shooters in the world did, those involved in the project created a two day training that increased the number of people who not only passed at the minimum standard but increased the number of people passing at the highest standards. This is behavioral modeling in practice.
There are men and women who have to face legitimate fear as part of their profession. Military members, firefighters, and police officers are examples. The military in particular works hard to put their soldiers, especially those who will be front line fighters such as marines and special op warriors, through training on how to manage their fear.
Mark Divine, a former Navy SEAL commander and the founder of Unbeatable Mind, related a story of when he was doing a sky diving training and became tangled in the chute of one of his team members. He claimed that his training kicked in and he used breathing to quickly gain control of his initial fear and to cut himself free from the other’s chute before deploying his back up chute with literally only a few seconds to spare. He hit the ground very hard but came away unscathed – his training “kicked in.”
Courage shows up in all kinds of places. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch attempted to teach his son Jem about courage. One day in a fit of righteous anger at how Jem saw their racist and cantankerous elderly neighbor, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, treat others, Jem had destroyed the beautiful flowers she had in her front yard. Mrs. Dubose took great pride in those flowers.
As a consequence for his actions, Jem had to visit regularly Mrs. Dubose, who was dying and trying to quit her addiction to pain killers at the same time. When asked why he had him do it, Atticus replied, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
Undoubtedly there was fear lurking beneath the surface of Mrs. Dubose that she was finally trying to face down and defeat. That was the courage Atticus wanted Jem to see. He didn’t want Jem to think courage was only the soldier with a gun facing death, but showed up in the lives of everyday people.
For the vast majority of us, we won’t have to face the kind of fear a police officer, firefighter, or warrior might have to face on any given day, but we may well have to fight the kind of fear Mrs. Dubose faced. The past two years has given plenty of examples of fear ordinary Americans have had to face and judging by data being recorded by Collateralglobal.org, there are far too many who have struggled unsuccessfully against that powerful enemy of fear, let alone other emotions such as grief, anger, hurt, and guilt.
Please do not misunderstand and think that all you have to do is cast out fear to conquer whatever trial or tribulation you are going through. If you don’t, though, address fear and control fear by feeding your courage Wolf, you can’t hope to conquer that trial or tribulation. In my experience, fear is the emotion that has always been present in the people I have been called on to work with. Fear has been in the background causing them to fight imagined enemies, freeze and not be able to do what they know and want to do, or flee from their responsibilities, dreams, or relationships.
Creating courage or the ability to act despite the presence of fear, involves two approaches. First, you need to identify past fears and beliefs and other negative emotions that have been unaddressed. Once identified you need to learn from those memories and let go of the emotion or the decision that was made. When that is done, you can much more effectively train the habits, emotions, and attitudes that will allow you to continually feed the courage wolf and starve the fear wolf.
There is a part of the brain where fear becomes material. Remember, fear is an idea that manifests itself materially and that is done in a specific part of the brain. In the book Breath The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nester relates the cases of people who lost the ability to feel fear. In other words, their body could not trigger the fear response in situations where it should be triggered.
An experiment was done and it was found that the one thing that could trigger the fear response, despite the fact that the part of the brain responsible for the fear response was not functioning in these people, was to convince the brain that the body was not getting enough oxygen. When these people were given a mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide to breathe and more carbon dioxide above a certain percentage was added, fear was induced. The individuals were not being deprived of enough oxygen for their biological needs, but the amount of carbon dioxide in relation to the amount of oxygen made their brains believe they weren’t getting enough oxygen and triggered a fear response.[1] Despite not being able to feel fear before, in this situation fear was still triggered.
I only relate the above as evidence that the fear wolf is in us. It never apparently dies, but it can become weak and controlled. When you feed the courage wolf, you starve and control the fear wolf. As stated in other writings, love is the food of choice for the courage wolf. One of the great weapons to fight fear is prayer. Jesus modeled that the night before he was to be crucified.
Whether you believe Jesus was both man and God at once or not, the fact that he was about to face death, a tortuous death, so painful the word excruciating (ex, out of, crux, the cross) was created, Certainly, the human side of Jesus had to face the human response, which would at the very least be fear. If it wasn’t the fear of death, it most certainly would have been the fear of pain or suffering. The body would react with fight, flee, or freeze to protect from bodily harm. With that situation facing Jesus, he went to pray.
The New International Version of Luke 22:44 writes, “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” The sweating of blood is an actual rare medical condition. “Hematohidrosis also known as Hematidrosis, hemidrosis and hematidrosis, is a condition in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood, occurring under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress.”[2] Notice that this condition occurs under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress. To relieve that stress, Jesus was relying on prayer. While dying on the cross, Jesus again turned to God on two different occasions. First praying and asking God why he had forsaken him and again to ask forgiveness on those who crucified him. The point being that prayer is one of the most important tools to fight fear as well as other negative emotions.
Let me share with you some conclusions I have made about prayer, meditation, and mindfulness practices. I believe that all three are deeply connected. At the physical level of what happens to the body, I would say there is no difference. At the level of process, there seems to be some superficial and even practical differences. There seem to be some specific technique differences from different worldviews that adherents follow that get them into the meditative or prayer state.
From the reading I have done, it seems mindfulness would separate itself from the other two in that it is more specifically about learning to focus one’s attention to get into and while in a meditative state. What I believe to be the difference between prayer and the others is spiritual and mental in nature and it is related to purpose. In prayer, as I understand the term at least from a Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditional standpoint, the purpose is to connect spiritually to God.
I believe when you look at ancient texts and practices prayer was much more than “talking” to God. Believers seemed to spend quiet time with the lord which meant taking time to get into a meditative state. I am not saying simply talking to God is not prayer nor that he won’t hear your prayers if you only talk to God, but I am saying that prayer in a meditative state has much more influence on your physical body than simply talking to God.
Essential weapons in the fight against fear are practices that build love characteristics so deeply into your being you act out those characteristics as habit or out of your nature. Practices that help you manage your emotions and the beliefs or attitude that drive your actions are also essential. The most effective weapons are breath work, exercise, prayer/meditation/mindfulness, positive thinking through use of music, literature, mantras and the like, and reflective journaling. When these habits are built into your life you will be well-equipped to live courageously.
[1] Nestor, James. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. , 2020. Print.
[2] Freddrick Z., Dr Hematidrosis. Available from: http://enwikipediaorg/wiki/hematidrosis.