Sharing Courage

I've written about the interplay between Fear & Courage before, but I recently came across some new ideas related to courage and encouragement and thought those might be a good follow up to last week's thoughts on Help!

I've actually heard two new ideas related to courage that are related, so let me describe each one and then see if we can connect the dots with a fun story.

En-Courage: To Give Courage

I was chatting with some leaders last week and as we were talking one of them said they found it so helpful when they understood that to en-courage someone was to actually give them some courage.  Now, that may seem like a "No duh, Stephen!" to you, but it felt like it really opened up an insight for me. Maybe I've always viewed encouragement as a simple way to help someone else feel supported or like I had their back, but this made me think that what I am actually doing is working to actually increase their courage within themselves. That is an insight that helps me think about en-couragement more as a powerful part of em-powerment, where I am actually trying to support someone in using their own power, which might require me passing them some of my courage for them to use.  

Borrowing Courage

Sometimes I think we need to be able to borrow courage from another individual or group of people in order to help us keep moving. We may not have enough courage in our own hearts, so we need to reach out and borrow some from others we trust. Maybe they can see things from a different perspective, or they've actually accomplished this task in front of us that is requiring some extra courage, but whatever the case may be, there are times when we need to borrow a cup of courage from our neighbor to help us keep moving forward.

I think you can see how these two ideas match up pretty well, but let's see if the story helps bring it all together.

I recently witnessed a situation in which an adult was trying to encourage a young person to take a risk and be a bit more adventurous on a trail.  The younger one had been pretty brave up to a certain point but had allowed fear to cause them to stop and not go any further (they froze). The adult started with some simple verbal en-couragement, giving reassuring messages to try and empower the younger person to keep moving on their own power.  However, at one point the adult also came over and took the hand of the young person, which was this powerful act of actually being able to borrow courage from the adult.  Through both the en-couragement of the adult, and the ability to borrow courage by the young person, they were able to finish out the trail together!

As you reflect on your life right now, where do you think you can be an en-courager? Is there a particular person who comes to mind that you are wanting to continue to support and empower? How might you give them some extra courage to keep climbing? Maybe you are in a situation that has just about got you locked up and frozen in place? Is there someone nearby or a trusted colleague or friend who's maybe been down this road before that you might be able to "grab their hand" and borrow some of their courage to keep moving? 

Here's to Sharing Courage on the trail this week!

Be Well,

Stephen

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