Courage is not the absence of fear, it is moving forward in the face of fear.
I read this line in a book, and it just wow-ed me. I had to regroup my thoughts. Initially, what I had in my head was “courage is the absence of fear”. Often times we think that being courageous or having courage is some esoteric, difficult to understand concept, when in reality if we were to package that word into just that, it’d be a failure.
The key to the line above is, the action oriented word “moving forward”. Courage cannot be stagnant, and it cannot be something that one ponders or thinks about. Courage happens when action happens.
For example, a boss at work or a colleague overpowers you in a meeting and cuts you off. Courage doesn’t mean you thinking about how you’ll address it next time, and imagining/visualizing the results, it’s specific to the next time your colleague begins the pattern, you speaking up for it.
Courage happens because something is fearful, yet you do it anyways. Otherwise if things were not fear-filled, there’d be no courage involved.