But I’ve had a lot of people attack me. With some of those attacks, I’ve been in fights, sometimes with great harm to me.

Eventually on serious threats I settled on a partition of the cases into two situations:

(1) Immediate. Here I’m in the middle of the threat; bad things are happening to me or might; e.g., my attackers at least are trying to have their way with me. In this situation, I realize that I might lose, maybe indeed will be lucky to get out whole. So, moment by moment, I just notice if I’m still okay or not. If I’m still okay, then so far the attackers have failed. Okay. No big fears or courage required.

(2) Future. Here it appears that I will be attacked, but the attack hasn’t happened yet. Here I need courage because I’m not yet actually in the middle of the threat and moment by moment don’t know if the coming attacks will be successful or not.

E.g., when I was 15 and had a good bicycle but no driver’s license, early one Friday evening my girl invited me to see her at her cousin’s house about 1/3rd of the way across town. So, starting about an hour after dark, I got on my bicycle and road west, north, and west again. On the second west leg, I was on a major street, four lanes. The traffic was fast and heavy. There was no place on the street for a bicycle. So, I tried the sidewalk: There were many drives cutting the sidewalk and the city had built unusually high curbs. On my bicycle usually I could jump a curb, but with those high curbs the front sprocket of my bicycle hit the curbs. So, on the sidewalk I would have had to have walked my bicycle and would have been late. I didn’t want to be late to see my girl.

So, I rode in the street, on the right, close to the curb. Cars were going by me on the left 18 inches away. I could easily have been knocked off my bicycle and run over several times and killed. I was at risk of dying, and, since I’d had a lot of experience on my bicycle, knew it. But, again, I didn’t want to be late to get to my girl. Since moment my moment I was still okay, I kept riding. I never got hit or hurt and was not late to my girl. But I’d had about 25% chance of serious injury or death.

Since I was moment by moment in the middle of the threat and still okay, I didn’t need courage. But if you’d told me that the next day I would have to do that bicycle ride again, then I would have needed courage!

http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/courage-ceo-shoptalk/

It doesn’t have to be heroic. It has to be real. Learn how.

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

#ceo #founder #entrepreneur #courage