How do we integrate courage into our mindset in such a way that we act courageously by default?
As we reach Week 5 of my Yale class on Courage, we look at how we can create a courageous mindset.
2. Week 5: The Courageous
Mindset
❖ How do we integrate courage into our mindset in such a
way that acting courageously becomes our default?
3. –Alexandra Dufresne (via Sara)
“Courage isn’t in doing what comes naturally.
It is rarely about one grandiose, beautiful self-sacrificing gesture.
And it isn’t about doing what’s right when success is a sure thing.
Courage is doing what is awkward, tedious, annoying and inelegant
in the face of uncertainty.
It is stepping in to cover for someone else because someone must.
And it is taking small, incremental steps every week, every month,
every season, every year until it becomes a habit.”
4. Hannah: Searching for
Courage
Positive traits
(predispositio
n) Positive
emotions (vs
cognitive)
Values/
Identity
Positive
states (self-
efficacy)
Social
forces/trainin
g/heroes
Situation
(can work
both ways)
COURAG
E
7. Carol Dweck - Mindset: The New Psychology of
Success
❖ Fixed Mindset:
❖ belief that basic qualities, like intelligence or
talent, are fixed traits
❖ talent alone creates success—without effort
❖ Growth Mindset:
❖ belief that basic abilities can be developed
through dedication and hard work
❖ creates love of learning and resilience
❖ trust in self
8. Fear Sets Me Free
Comfort Zone Infinite Potential
Fear=Bridge
9. How can you develop your Growth
Mindset?
(if/then scenarios)
23. COURAGE
❖ Clarity
❖ Ownership
❖ Uncluttering
❖ Resources
❖ Action
❖ Reach activation point - what you’ve brought is what you’ve got
❖ No ruminating, overthinking, or comparing
❖ Approach your goal like a man with his hair on fire approaches a
pond
Just a few weeks into the crossing, my first oar broke. All four of them would break before half way, and I had to patch them up using a boathook and duct tape. No matter how many times I fixed them, the waves would come along and break them again. When I ran out of bits of boathook....
Made the oars ungainly. Despite all my training I had tendinitis in my shoulders, and the off-balance oars didn’t do much to help.
The oars were not the only casualties:
- marine instruments in cockpit
- camping stove
- stereo
And I wasn’t the only one having problems. Out of the 26 boats that left from La Gomera, 6 of them would have to be rescued after capsizes, sinkings, or in one case a close encounter with a shark followed by a dramatic capsize in which one of the crew was thrown overboard. Nobody died, but it was not a good year to be on the Atlantic.
My mother was there to greet me. She had been through nearly as much as I had, and she tells me now that many times during the crossing she really wondered what had made me think that I could do this.
My father had died just the year before, and one evening as we were sitting there in Antigua she told me that when she lost contact with me, when my phone died, it was like being bereaved all over again.
My poor old Mum - I’ve really put her through it over the years, but I think she understands. She and my father were both Methodist ministers, so I guess she knows what it’s like to have a kind of vocation, something you just have to do.