Today is November 6 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you practice the different types of courage?”
People who navigate the chaos understand the etymology of courage comes from Latin cor meaning “from the heart.” Having heart is often the deciding factor between those who translate their dreams into reality and other who just dream.
Aristotle believed courage to be the most important quality in a man when he declared “courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible.”
Recent research into understanding what courage is and how we might be able to cultivate the ability to exhibit it when necessary is providing new insight into having a bias toward action.
Uri Nili and Yadin Dudai from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel recently determined just how courage works in the brain, finding that a region called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) is the driving force behind courageous acts. Generally speaking, there are many forms of courage but the four most common are physical, collective, moral, and intellectual.
Physical courage is a willingness to push the limits of one’s body; collective courage refers to when one joins or leads other like-minded individuals; moral courage is the courage to stand up for one’s beliefs in the face of overwhelming opposition and intellectual courage is the willingness to come out in favor of an idea that others find ridiculous.
How often do you practice being courageous?