26 Jul, 2022

Pete Cohen 0:01
Happy beautiful, amazing day. It is Pete Cohen, it is the Future Self podcast. Today's podcast. is called the he Courage To Be Courageous - Revisited. I'll see you after the theme tune.

Speaker 10:16
Courage courage is key to life itself. It takes courage to act part of being hungry when you have been defeated. It takes courage to start over again.

Speaker 10:25
If I could do anything for you, I would walk into your life and I would breathe courage into your life and courage is a result of confidence. You have never seen a courageous person that didn't

Speaker 10:42
have confidence. human potential is not have any kind of measurable limit. It can go as far as you desire, or as as far as you have the courage to walk.

Pete Cohen 10:55
So we're talking all about courage. It's one of those subjects which I definitely love to share with people because when we look at what makes a human being great, I would say it's our ability to do things that are challenging and difficult. And in this podcast today I definitely want to share some really powerful perspectives of courage. Ultimately, we are our own business card. We are our own promotion. And as we move thought forwards in this world I just wonder how many courageous acts we're going to have to go through. And I definitely want to give you a different perspective. Because I think that every act that we do today is basically that is a vote for the person that we want to be and everything we do around the Future Self podcast is is really just about knowing the person that you want to become, as Gandhi said, all those years ago, be the change that you want to see in this world. And if you can't be that change, we'll just get out of the way and support the person you can. So not only is it courageous to decide who you want to be and then start voting for that person every day by what you do every single day. But I also think it's a wonderful courageous act. When you decide to support other people, like you could support me in what we're doing. I could support you, but in order to support you, it's so important to know what is it you're working on? And as a coach, that's what I am. I'm the people's coach. The thing I'm interested in is where are you? How do you feel about where you are? Where do you want to go? Where do you want to go with your health? Where do you want to go with your relationships? Well, where do you want to go with your wealth and your work? Where do you want to go? And if that's really where you want to go? And can we help you to identify with that person? Can we help you to be courageous enough to start chipping? away at bringing that person bringing that character into the world? As we recognize that small actions, they go a long way they can transform our lives now. What I see with a lot of people is they don't have a compelling vision of who they want to be. Which when you don't have that it's so easy to procrastinate to ruminate to get distracted. Make excuses. And I want to ask you from someone who deeply cares for you what will be your greatest ever achievement in your life? Because if you decide to get better, we need to wake up to the reality and be courageous enough to accept the biggest returns that we want. They're always going to be delayed. There will be a delay to what it is that you want. And so many of us are just switched into the instant life. The instant success and we know it just doesn't work like that. So if you've already just listened to part of what I've just said, you've probably heard me use words that would be associated with acting. Because to act you know, as Shakespeare famously said something around that we are all but the world is a stage. This is our stage. And we're actors, and many of us are just acting as the way we've always acted. Rather than realizing hang on let's stop and look at the experience of being ourselves and let's not shame or blame or criticize or judge. This is where we are, this is the place to be. But what I'd like you to do, as we delve into the subject of courage is to take a moment to actually think about yourself being an actor, because right now you are right now you've chosen to be here. Our worlds have come together and what could happen on the back of this that's where it starts to get exciting for me. Because you are the writer you are writing your day to day by being here. You You're the director, you're directing your life, where are you directing your life, you're the producer, you're producing everything you you can choose your supporting cast but ultimately, you are the actor. And I want you to take a moment to listen to a few actors talking about taking on board, the different roles and why. And then I'd like you to think about what do I want to take on? Who do I want to become and how would I have to act? If that's the results I would like to produce. Let's start off with Keira Knightley.

Speaker 15:28
I'm really interested in challenges I want to play characters that I don't know if I can do I need to to feel that kind of walking on a tightrope. I find that really exciting and and I think that it's the only way that I can keep interested in therefore I hope an audience can keep interested in the films that I do. Powerful

Speaker 15:46
everything you do as an actor ends up taking you somewhere else I think the all the all of the emotions that you have to go through whether it's like loving a girl or laughing outrageously at something hilarious, or you know, everything I've ever done in a film, it requires this. This getting to some sort of emotional reality that that is contrary to the actual setting that you're in. I feel this is

Pete Cohen 16:11
why we need to connect to our future self emotionally that was Tom Hanks. And just knowing that you know we watch these films we identify with the characters but then there seems to be a disconnect I believe these watch these films because they talk to us. You know I see on Disney plus in May Kenobi is coming out which is all about Obi Wan Kenobi. And I watched Star Wars in 1977. It's now 2022. And I can't wait to watch that because I've already bought into the story of Star Wars. And I buying into the story of who I'm becoming and even though that's challenging, what is the story that you're buying into? Let's listen to Anne Hathaway,

Speaker 16:49
very lucky that I get to play characters that are so complex, I can't help but love them because they feel real to me. But that's that's most of the roles that I've that I've gotten to play and you love them because of their flaws not in spite of them. You have to

Speaker 17:04
just sort of feel feel it out, you know, and take the chances and if you feel like on some level is grounded in some sort of reality, that's really the most important thing I know that sounds like it might be an oxymoron into his crazy broad character that's grounded in reality but it actually is important to understand where the characters coming from, what his motivations are, you know, whether it's jealousy or insecurity or whatever it is, and then you just sort of like, you know, go with that and try to play these crazy big moments in a in some sort of real way.

Pete Cohen 17:40
So you know, how challenging this is. And again, that was Ben Stiller. You know what Anne Hathaway said about you know, loving where you are recognizing the insecurities like the character that you play. When you when you're an actor, you become that part. And my, my challenge to all of you is to really think about who do you actually want to become? Is that not going to be the most courageous thing you'll ever do? But you have to commit to that because if you don't commit to it, you won't convince yourself and the people around you won't be convinced yesterday I was at a meeting and the door wouldn't open for this guy. And he was getting frustrated. I said, you have to say the magic word and he went, Abracadabra. And I'm not joking. The door opened, and I said, Excuse me, excuse me. Why did you know what the word abracadabra means? And he went No, I said, it means it comes from a Hebrew word I create as I speak. And the reason I'm telling you that is it's courageous to stand up and say this is who I am becoming. This is who I actually want to be. I want to take this character on because you are the creator, the writer, the director, the actor, the producer, and you can choose your supporting cast. Maybe now it's time for a different movie. Maybe now it's time to kind of break the shackles of who you once thought you were and become a completely different person. And can you become a completely different person? Some people would say, No, no, no, no, no, that's not possible. You are who you are and that's the way it is. But I disagree. I'm fundamentally a completely different person to the person I was a few years ago. I don't maybe I look similar, but I don't think the same way. I'm better. What about you? Can you not see just how different you are? But what happens is it takes courage to recognize that it takes courage to wake up to the fact that you are a different person to the person you were. The question is, are you ready for another round?

Pete Cohen 19:46
Are you ready? Let's get ready to rumble because the fact is, if you really want to do this, you're gonna have to get the Eye of the Tiger you're gonna have to go back into training. That's why we thought well, that's why we created this challenge. I didn't create it I created for people who are acting, want to go into training, want to go beyond the novelty factor. Want to dig in, to carve something out, carve something out of greatness, is that you am I talking to you? Are you ready? Are you ready to become more active active? not passive. If you're ready, I'm ready. Are you ready to go the distance which is what this song is? Called? Go we are going the distance anyway. Did

Pete Cohen 20:53
so who are you choosing to come? Because ultimately, that's the greatest choice of all right? So let's just move on and let's let's take this let's meet the person that you want to become because imagine if like, this is what actors do I know I've worked with enough actors. They think about the role so much they start building a relationship and they get into character. They know who they need to be they know the virtues that they need to bring into play. So what role are you playing right now? Are you identifying with someone that you want to become? Or are you just identifying with the current version of yourself? Because to me, that's the biggest trap of all, just to identify with who you are being right now, rather than identifying with the fact that there's only one fact in life and that's change, and that's growth. And once you open up to the fact that probably be the most courageous thing you'll ever do. Let me ask you, who are you actually committed to becoming? And if you were to meet the person that you're going to become and let's look at the three domains of life that most people are interested in advancing. In? That's their health, that's their relationships, and that's their wealth and work those three areas and imagine that your future self came into the room you know, you in 10 years time and if you looked at that you hi how are you? I am fine. What do you think their greatest strength is? What is their greatest strength? It's probably courage, right? What does our hero stand for? Because for me, when I work with you, and I'm talking to you, when we talk about what you want, and who you need to be, I'm saying Look at that. Look at that person. They're that they're incredible. You know, you could be that person. What would be your greatest ever achievement? Would it be working towards becoming that person? I mean, we're in rehearsals, right? Just as Viktor Frankl said everything can be taken from a man but one thing the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given situation, to tune to choose one's own way. Where are we going? So when we look at courage, being able to take courageous action is one of the most important aspects of being human courage. What does it do? It allows us to live it's our fuel for growth, for our growth, I think, would you agree that courage is humanity at its finest? The courage to do what? Well, the courage to move through fear and this is where we look at the some of the science behind this around it basically, Courage contains two primary internal elements, right, to internal elements, the willingness to act and the ability to control fear. Let me say that again. It contains two internal elements. There's two aspects to this. I remember studying this years ago, I think the book The Courage quota, I think the book was called and the author of the book I think his name is Dina Robert Dean, I think, isn't it yet, Robert Dean, and he's actually known as the Indiana Jones of, of courage. And some of his research on this is really awesome. And I remember reading the book courage, quote, and many years ago, and I actually remember him thinking, really hearing when he talked about this and really getting it. That courage contains two primary internal elements, the internal ability to act to do something that is challenging, right, but also the ability to control fear. Now, I want you to say with me say out loud, I am courageous. I am courageous. And if you want, put your hand on your heart, or put one hand on your heart and the other hand on top of that hand and say I am courageous, I am courageous. Now, the reason I'm asking to say this and put your hand on your heart because the word courage comes from the Latin word, which basically means to have the heart and just like your heart pumps blood to your vital organs, courage was what how I look at it, it vitalizes all of the other virtues. So what are the other virtues when we look at religion and we look at positive psychology we look at the great virtues of any human being, it seems to revolve around wisdom, the ability to be wise enough to learn from experience, take the wisdom from others, the ability to have self control

Pete Cohen 25:28
to get yourself to do what you need to do justice, standing up for the rights of others, and then zest hope, optimism, these virtues, but in order to bring those virtues into play, what do we need? We need courage right? And this is what Robert Deena talks about in his book, the courage, the courage, quote, he said, If you think of it like an equation, Courage equals and you have one on top of the equation, the willingness to act, and underneath the ability to control your fear and I think we want to drive up the willingness to act and drive down the ability to control fear. The challenge that we have today is that our necessity to act isn't always there because there's so many things that we could do. That take our attention away. And I see, and we've, you know, I used to think to myself, I don't know if anyone agrees with this, but I used to when I used to watch television that used to be adverts and I used to get bored of adverts. There's only three or four television stations that I remember going to America is at 50 and then there was 100 and they're all of these adverts that are basically that's why the television is on unless it's the BBC which you're paying for or some people are I am by the way, if anyone from the BT is listening, but I don't know how long that's gonna last. But now we have all the social media and more media around selling us something to take our attention away and our attention is being sold to the highest bidder. So it's a challenge for people to be courageous to say, I'm not buying into that. What are you buying into? We are built with two motivational systems, right? And this is again the science around this for those of you that are interested the behavioral inhibition system. And what this does this this is activated by part of the brain. It's called the hippocampus. And this helps us to stay very wary on our toes. Be on defensive, especially when we perceive harm or punishment. And I think most of us know that that system is activated a lot throughout throughout the day living in fear, a lot of uncertainty. You can imagine that some people in parts of the world right now that system was on such high alert. But the other motivational system is the behavioral activation system and this is rooted in our brains. pleasure centers. And all this is about is about progressing towards our goals. But for most people, their goals and this is where it starts to get really really really important. It's not that we forget some people don't have bigger goals. Some people do, but they just forget about them. Well, they don't even forget about them, they just lose sight of them, which is kind of the same thing. They just get short sighted and narrow sighted by something else that takes their attention. That's why the novelty factor just That's why this has been known for such a long time for 1000s of years, to the point where there's a Sanskrit word which means hero in the beginning that people would start something and not finish it. How many times have you started something and not finished? How many times have you started? Or maybe because you felt it wasn't for you? You're watching a YouTube video or listening to a podcast or watching something and you just scroll away scroll away because your attention has been taken away. Where does your attention need to be? My challenge in the work that we do is to help you get the motivational system especially about the behavioral activation system that is really laser focused on the processes that if you did them every single day, and this is where you start taping becomes a goal less thinking and more process driven that you fall in love with the process, even though some of the processes might be a bit boring and mundane but they lead to the sublime and each of these systems that we just talked about the behavioral activation system and the behavioral inhibition inhibition system. They're basically looking at for two different things. One's looking out for fear and one's looking out for what some people might call happiness or progress or fulfillment.

Pete Cohen 29:39
And then as we move on, I want to just talk about also just so you know, we talked about this when we've done podcasts about confidence that the different types of confidence, confidence in your ability to do what you say you're going to do and confidence to believe that if you do this, you will get the results that you're looking for. And then there's two types of courage. I think there's general courage and personal courage. personal courage is basically taking on your fears. Overcoming something for you personally, that would that is a challenge. And then you've got general courage that we see people like you know, firefighters or people that go into a do something that's very difficult for others. In fact, brunette Brene Brown, she talks a lot about this in terms of, you know, vulnerability, and she talks about some of the challenges that people face when it comes to dealing and going towards something that is that is challenging. In fact, let's just have a listen. I've got Brene Brown in the studio. No, I haven't I thought I did. Let me see if I can bring Brene Rene into the studio. One of the things that she which I love the way that she talks about this is every go you're ready for this guys. I have got Brene Brown issues. She just got held up

Speaker 30:52
I remember being at Fort Bragg and asking a group of special forces troops. Give me example, give me an example of courage that you experienced in your life on the field or off the field or you saw in someone else that didn't require uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. And there was this long silence and finally, a young man stood up and said three tours, ma'am. There is no courage without vulnerability. Yeah. I don't think you could get to courage without the capacity to deal with uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. And we've mythologized vulnerability. We've created this idea. That's ultimately unrealistic. Yeah. And it's like it's weakness and it's oversharing. If people will say to me, I read data lead. I'm going to be a brave leader. How much should I cry? How much should I share? Yeah, like, if there's a cheat sheet right? And again, as if we want you know, oversharing crying leaders. I mean, like, if it's a genuine thing, do it but I'm not saying be vulnerable for vulnerability sake. I'm saying when things get hard and uncomfortable, don't tap out of difficult conversations. Right.

Pete Cohen 31:56
And I think this is so input, there's so much in there. But tapping out of the difficult conversation to make a decision on who you're choosing to become. And the difficult conversation that maybe you're having around. You're living a future today, and you don't want that future. And most of us are fortunate enough to still have that choice. See personal courage is taking on your fears overcoming something that's difficult. And we have that power. This is where our growth happens. And as Brene Brown says, you know, the willingness to act in the face of risk, uncertainty and fear and to be able to say, hey, look, this is me, this is me. You know, where you can be courageous enough to have a soft front, a soft heart, but a strong back as opposed to the other way around which a lot of people they put on a front that wanting they don't want to reveal anything about themselves, but the greatest people I've worked with, they acknowledge where they are, they accept they love where they are. They don't look at it from lack. It's like this is it. I'm in the game, get to do something. Courage is such a valuable commodity and something that we want to promote in our lives and in others. So what is it? It's the willingness to act and the ability to control fear? And I promise you people's inability to recognize courage is one of the it's just what it is and this is where I want to kind of land on this is courage, blindness. What does that mean? I think it's being blind. Just to recognize all of the great things that you've already done. In your life to get to this point.

Pete Cohen 33:59
encouraged to think about all the things that you could do that if you did them every single day, regardless of how you felt. So for me personally, getting up at four o'clock in the morning. That's a non negotiable. To come down here to do some work to get on my bike. I don't feel always like getting on my bike, but I recognize just how important it is. To be strong mentally, physically, emotionally. To keep my journal. Meditate, to ground myself in being grounded. I think it's time for us to stop overlooking the extraordinary things that if we do them over time, the greatest things happen to recognize it the ultimate purpose of life. It's like Courage, blindness, there's purpose blindness. And that's something that I've been fortunate enough to be working with someone recently who's really helped me understand that more to shed light on your purpose and shed light on the courage that it takes to carve out that person who's ready to see me at the courage gym. I'd like you to do every time you behave in a courageous courageous way say say that's like me, but that's like me because that is in line with the person that you're choosing to become. And that's why we created stock one stock one, we created it specifically to help people identify who they want to be in this world and having the courage to act in that way and every time you act with what we've created, you build capital, you build capital, we give you a coin. We reward you for staying on track with the choice of who you choose to become. Let's stop waiting for difficult situations to occur. And let's start like never before. What do you reckon?

Speaker 36:06
There's a quote by girdle and it says if you look at a person as they are, they will always remain that way or maybe be worse. But if you look at a person is good. If you look at a person as they could be, they will grow into what they should be. Right? You have to know what we stand for.

Pete Cohen 36:33
So what do you what are you

Speaker 36:35
talking about what your company stands for? I'm not talking about your family values. I'm talking you as an individual. When you walk into a room what do you represent? As you as you as an individual, when people around you see you What feeling do they get how do you leave your energy impression on the people around you? As individuals, we have to do that. That's the first step that we have to do when we're talking about make your mark.

Pete Cohen 37:02
So are you ready to make your mark like never before? What's your biggest takeaway from what you have just heard? The time has come for us to identify with who we want to become and go out and call that person. Bring that person into the world every single day. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate every single one of you. Please feel free to subscribe to it, share it tell the world about the Future Self podcast. We will see you next time.