L30 · Lens
Courage and confrontation
Move toward the feared challenge; courage is acting in the presence of fear rather than waiting for fearlessness.
Use: Avoidance, cowardice, fear of success, conflict avoidance.
Boundary: Principled confrontation, not recklessness.
Cues
Showing 20 of 24 cues
“For sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?”
“‘Anger is useful,’ says our adversary, ‘because it makes men more ready to fight.’ According to that mode of reasoning, then, drunkenness also is a good thing, for it makes men insolent and daring, and many use their weapons better when the worse for liquor. ... No man becomes braver through anger, except one who without anger would not have been brave at all: anger does not therefore come to assist courage, but to take its place.”
“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”
“To will to be himself is man’s true vocation ... blockages in self-awareness [occur] because the individual [is] unable to move through accumulations of anxiety at various points in his growth. Kierkegaard makes it clear that selfhood depends upon the individual’s capacity to confront anxiety and move ahead despite it.”
“A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition ... I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways ... Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.”
“The difficulties of our psychotherapeutic work teach us to take truth, goodness, and beauty where we find them. They are not always found where we look for them: often they are hidden in the dirt or are in the keeping of the dragon.”
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
“There is a certain extra gain in having conquered [inner] territory entirely through one’s own initiative, courage, and perseverance.”
“You should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is some thing in you that wants to move out of it ... We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
“By not venturing, it is so dreadfully easy to lose that which it would be difficult to lose in even the most venturesome venture ... For if I have ventured amiss - very well, then life helps me by its punishment. But if I have not ventured at all - who then helps me?”
“The work of changing - indeed, the work of living - cannot be done on one’s behalf by another person ... We can learn important lessons from those who have gone before us ... But, ultimately, each of us faces a unique configuration of challenges and a very personal responsibility for the choices we make in moving onward with our lives. We have only partial information, limited understanding, and imperfect control.”
“Everyone approaches a danger with more courage if he has prepared in advance how to confront it. Anyone can endure difficulties better if he has previously practiced how to deal with them. People who are unprepared can be unhinged by even the smallest of things.”
“The greatest height of heroism to which an individual can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule.”
“What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, in the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.”
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”
“Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.”