Steps Are To Be Taken With Courage

Suppose courage isn’t your natural behavior. Then I have something for you to know: being timid isn’t your natural behavior either.

We choose to be timid, or we choose to be courageous. What you choose is based on your risk profile. If you try to avoid as much risk as possible, then being timid is your better option: you can avoid confrontation. But if you travel through time, you’ll find that the most remarkable people were those, who immersed themselves with risk. Seamen in the 15th century didn’t have GPS to guide them to their destination. They always took a risk when going out to sea. Columbus was one of these men. Someone who immersed himself in risk by doing a risky job. Hannibal wouldn’t have defeated the Romans in three battles if he weren’t a man of risk. Not only did he take the dangerous treacherous terrain with 40.000 men, and famously with war elephants, through the Alps, but he also used unconventional war tactics with his weaker troops in the middle and his stronger troops on the flanks. All in all, paving the way for him to be remembered as one of the greatest war strategists of all time.

Risk-reward is a concept everyone has heard of. The more risk you take, the bigger the reward. But I argue that there is a big miscalculation of risk and reward in the “real” world. We overvalue risks and we undervalue the rewards. What concept we are missing is the self-fulfilling nature of choosing between being timid and being courageous. If you choose to be timid, then you create a self-fulfilling cycle of fear and disaster. But if you choose to be courageous, then you create a self-fulfilling cycle of boldness and greater boldness, fixing or at least masking the problems created by your courage. Casanova was courageous in every seduction. He held nothing back and did everything, and the woman under his attention realized this and fell under his charm. Casanova never showed hesitation or doubt during a seduction, simply because he never felt it.