The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 158 - Courage

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: Would you consider yourself to be courageous?

Jen: Oh my goodness. Yes and no...no and yes.

Pete: Mmm, both. I think I feel the same way. And I realized the other day that I don't know if I've thought about or spoken to you about or unpacked at all courage, in particular how that relates to, you know, creative leadership and making change. So, I was curious if we might unpack that some.

Jen: This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Okay. So as with all of our podcasts, if you like, this idea came to me as I was listening to a podcast, Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

Jen: Your favorite.

Pete: My favorite. My favorite interviewer ever, for those listening that didn't know that. I think Debbie Millman is the best podcast interviewer out there. Run to Design Matters right now. Anyway, she was interviewing Suneel Gupta, who honestly I hadn't actually heard of, and is (since, I've discovered) quite a successful and well-known entrepreneur over there in the States. And there were many, many, many moments in this podcast where I literally had to pause, I got out my Notion on my phone, and I wrote down the quote. And the first one happened in like, I want to say it was the first ten minutes of the podcast. And I will put it in the Box O' Goodies, so if anyone wants to listen, head on over there. But basically what happened is he was telling a story about his mom and how she, in his eyes, was incredibly courageous. And I can't remember how the extent of the aha moment came about for him, but basically it was, for the longest time he thought one had to build up courage and then take action. And what he realized in witnessing his mom was she took a bunch of action, which gave her courage.

Jen: Mmm, yeah.

Pete: And I got super fascinated about the difference between the two. And I feel like there are so many rhymes and parallels to many of the things we've talked about. And so I just wanted to set that context, first of all, is, does action lead to courage or does courage lead to action? And his assertion was, the realization he had was action first, which builds courage. What do you think?

Jen: Wow. First of all, courage is a very important word to me. I don't know if, like you said earlier, I don't know that we've ever actually talked about this word together. But it is very, very important to me. And is a focal point of what I'm trying to do with my artist clients, is to help them find their courage. So, interesting.

Pete: Oh.

Jen: It makes me think of the Wizard of Oz and the Cowardly Lion, who has assumed that he's just a coward, and it turns out that he had courage all along. That's the discovery at the end, that the thing that each one of them thought that they needed, they actually had inside them all along. And so, I think there is so much truth and validity to that idea that you find your courage by taking action. You know, you can relate this to all sorts of things. You find your creativity by putting pen to paper. You find your faith by taking the leap. So it seems that that's true of so many of these inherent qualities that we want to possess, that we actually have them but what we need to do is activate them.

Pete: Right. Yeah. The thing that I thought of that rhymed, I think, was around flow, or even motivation, or inspiration, as an idea. Like, you don't sit around and wait for inspiration to strike. You don't sit around and wait for the flow state to arrive. Or, you can but you'll be waiting a long time. You actually need to take action and then you may find inspiration, flow, motivation as you are going, as you are actually taking action and doing a thing. So, that was the rhyme I thought of.

Jen: Are you familiar with the phrase...I'm wondering if this is like super American because it kind of sounds like, you know, the announcer voice should be saying it. "Find out what you're made of." Is that a phrase that you all use over there down under?

Pete: "Find out what you're made of." You know, like I've heard of it. I've heard of people saying that. But I have never said it to a friend. I've never heard a friend say it to me. So, maybe I've heard it in movies?

Jen: I think that this conversation is reminding me of that phrase. That you don't ask yourself, "Am I made of courage? Hmm. No. So, I won't do this thing." But instead, you do the thing and you're able to, in hindsight, go, "Wow. I found out that I'm made of courage."

Pete: Mmm. Oh, yeah. Okay, I like that. I can get down with that phrase. Maybe we should try and popularize it here in Australia.

Jen: And lose the announcer voice?

Pete: No, I like the announcer voice. I think that was a good part of it. So, one of the many reasons I liked this idea was the way that it puts you on the hook. Because I know for myself, and I know plenty of the clients that I work with around the world in any field, any organization, or C-Suite or non-C-Suite, or creative discipline, whatever it is, the temptation to hide. And hide because we tell ourselves a story, maybe, that we're not courageous enough, or brave enough, or skilled enough even (I think that relates) to start the thing, do the thing, have the conversation. And so I really like this flip because it takes away that excuse, basically. It's like, "No. You need to start with the action. You need to start with the action, and then that will come." And I feel like maybe it sounds obvious to those listening, like, "Of course, Pete." But for me, it was like...like I was riding my mountain bike when I was listening to this episode. And I literally pulled over, pulled out my phone, paused, and wrote this down. I was like, "That feels profound." So, it was a big aha moment for me.

Jen: You know, I had a personal experience with something similar to this. Just yesterday, I went to this incredible training with an organization called Edify. I'll put it in the Box O' Goodies for people who want to learn more about Edify and the work that they are doing to dismantle white supremacy. And we went through a series of self-reflection exercises about when we have felt proud of the way we have shown up and when we haven't. And I actually wrote this down yesterday in my little journal, the times when I haven't felt proud of the way I've been showing up, I have used this story that, "I just can't find my courage right now." And that story is a hunk of BS. It is a steaming pile of poop.

Pete: [laughing] That's very visual, I like that. I think it is, and then I think, "So what is it that we need to find in order to take action?" Is it that we need to realize this, that courage will come? And that's the carrot that we dangle to then take action? Is it that we need to remember or unpack, "What's the thing we're afraid of?" Because I think the thing that often stops action, pretty much every time, is some sort of fear. And if we reference the most referenced episode of all time, the Fear Onion...

Jen: The Fear Onion.

Pete: ...I would imagine, really all this comes down to is the fear of what other people think of us, the fear of being cast aside. Because we have an idea or an input that we think might ruffle people the wrong way, or have people say something bad about us, or whatever it is, we're fearful of what other people think of us. I guess I wonder, "What is the prompt, or the carrot, or the reframe, or the idea to keep in mind when trying to take action?"

Jen: At my studio, on our bulletin board, I write a little note to people every week.

Pete: I love it. I've seen it. It's great.

Jen: I'm saying this as if we're in-person right now, we're not. We're not. But when we are, I write a little note to everyone every week. And the one that got a lot of comments was, "Yeah, you're right. This shit is hard. But the thing that you came here for is waiting for you on the other side of your fear." And I'm hearing you talk about the relationship between courage and fear, and it's making me want to question, "Why do I feel like I need to have courage in the first place to take an action that I know is right, or beneficial, or positive, or useful?" Like, why am I qualifying that kind of decision, like I can only make that if I'm feeling courageous. Like, maybe are we giving courage too much credit. Is that possible? I feel like I'm saying something that might be like unpopular, and I don't even think it's popular with me. But I'm saying it anyway. Are we giving it too much credit?

Pete: I feel like that's juicy. And my answer in the moment, thinking out loud, is yes. Because of what you said, which is, "Why does it take courage to do the thing that we want to do?" On some level, we want to do this because there's a desired outcome. Maybe we're seeking, maybe we want to change someone, maybe we want to impact some people, maybe we just want to like express ourselves in a certain way, you know, on a stage or whatever in your world, and maybe it's just to launch a project or start a business, you know, in the world that I play in. So why does it take courage to do the thing that we want to do? That is a...yeah, I definitely don't know the answer to that. But I think that's a fascinating and kind of confronting thing to noodle on. Why does it take courage to be me?

Jen: Yeah, like I'm disturbed now.

Pete: You also just made me remember two really interesting books written by the same authors. I'll put them in the Box O' Goodies. One is called The Courage to be Disliked. The other one is called The Courage to be Happy, which was the follow-up. I really love these books, written as a conversation between a young kind of up-and-coming teacher and an old wise philosopher, if you like. And the conversation is antagonistic. It's, you know, quite thrashy. And it's basically around this idea of, "One can only live a free life,"...and I'm butchering and paraphrasing a lot here. But, "One can live a free life when they have the courage to be disliked." i.e. They acknowledge and accept that when they show up as themselves, when they do the projects they want to do, when they give the feedback they want to give, when they, you know, embody themselves in the way that they embody themselves, however that looks, there'll be people, there'll be someone, there'll be a moment where someone won't like that, that will annoy somebody. And so the courage to be disliked is the courage to accept that, I guess. And acknowledge that in me being who I am, in me doing the thing I want to do, I'm acknowledging someone's not going to like that. And I feel like, maybe that's where the courage element comes in. It's the courage to deal with the Fear Onion.

Jen: Yeah. Well, because that's at the root of the Fear Onion: other people.

Pete: That's what I mean, yeah. Right.

Jen: Oh my gosh. I pulled up this Brene Brown courage quote, because she has so much to say on courage.

Pete: True. Yeah.

Jen: She's got so much to say about so many things. And never, ever stop talking, Brene. She says, "Courage is like, it's a habitus, a habit of virtue. You get it by courageous acts. It's like, you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging."

Pete: Oh, I like that. In that sense, it reminds me of a skill. Right? Like, I feel like so many of the episodes that we've ever recorded, we are trying to help folks see that things like creativity, things like leadership, things like empathy, things like imposter syndrome, these are skills. And so, skills are something that can be practiced. Skills are something that could be honed. And in the way that you just described it from Brene, I feel like perhaps courage is also a skill.

Jen: Woah. I feel like we just went full circle, all the way back to where we started this conversation. Which is that these inherent qualities, or perhaps real skills, are things that we already have within us. Courage, empathy, resilience, kindness, joy, leadership, these are all things that we have. And if we tell ourselves the story that we are not whatever the adjective is, "I'm not courageous. I'm not empathetic. I'm not kind. I'm not joyful," then we are letting ourselves off the hook. And maybe what we need to do is claim the noun, "I possess courage. I possess empathy. I possess leadership. I possess joy, kindness, etc.," so that we can take what we have already and action it.

Pete: You know, all of this is reminding me of something our good friend T.K. Coleman says, and has said, and continues to say at the end of every single episode of Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast. Which is...you know, we live in the information age and you can get access to as many resources, and ideas, and thought leaders that you like. And I think he actually says, "There's no thought leader that can out think of the internet." And I'm obsessed with that. There's no way that we can out think courage. And so what we need to focus on, I think, is a context and a way of showing up that sort of says, you know, the way he frames it is, "When are you going to show up? When are you going to face the blank page?" And I feel like that's the skill to focus on. Is, can we practice courage by showing up? Can we practice courage by facing the blank page, whatever that blank page looks like for you?

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.