The New Year inevitably brings resolutions to attain new targets, achieve new heights, accomplish new goals. Though there tends to be more jokes about New Year's resolutions than the actual accomplishment of them, every year, many of us, perhaps secretly, make inner decisions and promises to ourselves to take that step that has eluded us, to break that habit, to finally make that leap.
Rarely, in the frenzy of coming up with goals that we might actually be able to accomplish, do we make resolutions of character. A character resolution would be a concerted effort to develop a particular character quality that we admire and aspire to. Courage is one such quality. Winston Churchill called courage the "foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend."
Courage is an interesting word, one that is used most often to describe those people who find themselves in life and death situations and face the challenge boldly. Soldiers have courage, firemen and policemen have courage, people facing life-defining illnesses have courage. As much as we admire these people, most of us do not find ourselves in those intense kind of situations very often, if ever! And so courage is an attribute we do not talk about much.
The reality is, I believe, that we all require an enormous amount of courage and fortitude (another word and value we hear little of these days) to navigate our way through the complexity of the 21st century.
Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy has just been honoured in the U.S., was a modern exemplar of courage. Not only did he face beatings and ridicule for the sake of justice and equality, he brought others with him. He inspired millions to do things they never would have believed themselves capable of, to think and dream of a world they had despaired of ever seeing. He en-courage-d them. He gave them courage.
We tend to think of courage as a personal quality that some people simply have and others do not. "Joe showed a lot of courage." But where did Joe get his courage? Where did it come from? Very often we receive it from others. Many years ago, George M. Adams, the American statesman wrote, "There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come about through encouragement from someone else." Martin Luther King Jr. had much courage but he perhaps had an even greater amount to give away. The beautiful thing about courage is that we do not have to possess it ourselves in order to give it to others.
To "encourage" literally means "to give courage." Many of us may feel that we have little courage ourselves. We would not see ourselves in the same category with King, and yet, mysteriously, we have much courage to give away — an endless supply actually. This is encouragement. We have the largest amount of courage for those closest to us like a spouse, child or parent. When a parent says to a child "I think you can do this or that…" you are giving that child courage even when you don't think you have any of your own.
A discouraged 18 year old single mom with rock bottom self esteem who doesn't know where her next meal will come from sits on an outdoor basket ball court in a poor neighborhood with her four year old boy. A moment later she sees her boy pick up a basketball left by the neighbourhood kids. He walks over to the hoop and with everything he's got he heaves the ball toward the hoop. It doesn't even get half way there but his mom exclaims, "Billy, I've never seen you throw a ball that high. You're becoming such a strong boy." What do you think Billy will do next? That's right. He will pick that ball up and try again. It's not saving the free world but for that little boy, it's everything. He now has a portion of courage that he did not have before. It isn't courage to run into a burning building to save lives, perhaps, but its courage that he needs, courage to face his personal challenges, courage to overcome his unique failures, courage to keep trying. His mother, who felt terrible about herself, and would likely admit she had no courage, just gave her son a healthy dose of courage to try again.
Someone very wise wrote, "A word of encouragement after a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after a success."
How many Billy's do you have in your life? It may be your partner, child or co-worker. Why not test it out today and give someone some of their courage that you possess.
"John, you did a great job on the project. You're just getting better every time!"
"Mary I couldn't have done this without you and your significant contribution to this team!"
Billy, I know you're going to get that ball into the hoop!
Your New Year's resolution could be to give something away rather than obtain or achieve something yourself. And you just might find that in the giving away there is much receiving.
Happy New Year!
Dave Phillips, a Vancouver-based business and life coach will share his secrets for achieving both professional and personal success on globeandmail.com/smallbusiness. Mr. Phillips is a Guinness Book of World Record holder and a former national team freestyle skier. In addition to growing several nationally-recognized businesses from the ground up, he has worked as a ski show performer and stunt man for film and television. Mr. Phillips is married to 1976 Olympic Gold medal-winning skier Kathy Kreiner-Phillips. They have three children.
