How To Have Courage

Three lessons I learned about living dangerously

Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously is one of my favorite books. Of all time.

It’s one of those books that I like to keep close at all times. I keep it on my desk or on my nightstand.

I take it with me in my bag, even when I’m not planning on reading it. I just like to have it with me as a casual reminder:

Be courageous.

For those of you who are not familiar with the book, The Joy of Living Dangerously is a collection of Osho’s thoughts on courage and fear.

I know that there’s some controversy surrounding Osho as a spiritual leader (especially after the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country, which I would also recommend watching if you haven’t already).

But no matter what your views on Osho, or on his spiritual movement are, I’d recommend this book to everyone.

According to the book cover:

Courage is not the absence of fear, says Osho. It is, rather, the total presence of fear, with the courage to face it. This book provides a bird’s-eye view of the whole terrain — where fears originate, how to understand them, and how to call on your inner strength to confront them.

In the process, Osho proposes that whenever we are faced with uncertainty and change in our lives, it is actually a cause for celebration.

Instead of trying to hang on to the familiar and the known, we can learn to enjoy these situations as opportunities for adventure and for deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

This book has been especially important to me because I’ve been actively trying to be more courageous.

As I wrote in my story about getting out of my comfort zone, one of my new year’s resolutions was to try to get out of my comfort zone more often.

To hold myself accountable, I decided I should do at least one thing that was out of my comfort zone each and every day.

This book helped me to go through with it (on most days).

Here are the three lessons I learned from the book that were of vital importance to me in my process of getting out of my comfort zone:

1. Courage does not mean fearlessness

You’re probably familiar with the quote (attributed to both Nelson Mandela, and Mark Twain):

‘Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the triumph over it.’

Or, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it:

‘Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.’

The book starts with a similar quote, this time attributed to Osho.

Osho states that having courage is not about not having any fears. It’s about how we act upon those fears:

“In the beginning there is not much difference between the coward and the courageous person. The only difference is, the coward listens to his fears and follows them, and the courageous person puts them aside and goes ahead. The courageous person goes into the unknown in spite of all the fears.”

Why this was so important to me As I wrote in my story about getting out of my comfort zone, I don’t consider myself to be a very brave person. A lot of things scare me. Spiders, heights, public speaking, small confined spaces.

Because of this, I never identified as someone with courage.

I felt that having anxieties meant that I could never be considered a brave person.

Having anxieties and having courage seemed, to me, to be mutually exclusive.

But now I’ve realized that they’re not mutually exclusive at all. In fact, it’s necessary to have some fears in order to be a courageous person. If nothing scares you, you’ll never have the opportunity to be brave.

Having courage is about the way you deal with your fears. And the fact that I’m actively trying to address some of my fears, can be seen as an act of bravery.

Not only does this motivate me to do scary things. It also helps change the way I think about myself (yes, I can be anxious, but I can also be brave, and often I can be both of these things at the same time).

2. When the new knocks on your door, open it

According to Osho, to have courage means saying yes to the new.

Saying yes to the new is scary.

It is scary because there’s uncertainty: we don’t know what to expect. We don’t have our routines and structures to rely upon.

“One never knows where you will end with the new. The old is known, familiar; you have lived with it for long, you are acquainted with it. The new is unfamiliar. It may be the friend, it may be the enemy, who knows? And there is no way to know! The only way to know is to allow it; hence the apprehension, the fear.”

This quote reminded me a bit of the famous Lord of the Rings quote, where Bilbo talks to Frodo about leaving home:

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off too.”

But saying yes to the new also means saying yes to adventure. Saying yes to change. Saying yes to potential growth.

This is why saying yes is so important. It’s about relaxing, opening up, and letting the new in.

Why this was so important to me Getting out of your comfort zone is all about saying yes. It’s all about embracing uncertainty.

In my story about getting out of my comfort zone, I wrote about being scared of embarrassment.

Because one of the things that scare me most is embarrassing myself. I still wake up at night, cringing about all the times I said something weird, all the times I made a fool of myself, all the times I made a social faux pas.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m not a big fan of leaving my comfort zone. I love sitting on my couch in my pajamas, reading my favorite book.

I love my routines. I love knowing what’s expected of me. I love doing things the right way.

But I’ve realized that knowing what to expect might be comfortable, it’s not the road to growth and adventure. And my fear of embarrassing myself was actually holding me back.

As I wrote in my story about being embarrassed all the time:

If you’re always punishing yourself for every small mistake, you become cautious. You start over-analyzing your own behavior, and it gets harder and harder to take risks and be spontaneous.

But being courageous is about letting go of the ego.

“The ‘I’ is afraid, not really you. The being has no fear, but the ego has fear, because the ego is very afraid of dying. It is artificial, it is arbitrary, it is put together. And when the new enters, there is fear.

The ego is afraid, it may fall apart. Somehow it has been managing to keep itself together, to keep itself in one piece, and now something new comes — it will be a shattering thing. That’s why you don’t accept the new with joy. The ego cannot accept its own death with joy.

The ego has to be dropped. Shatter it on the floor.”

3. To live dangerously is to live

I’ve also realized how important it is to say yes, to have courage, to live dangerously. You have to keep moving, you have to keep changing, and you have to keep welcoming the unknown.

It’s not just a fun experiment, it’s vital.

As Osho said:

“If you don’t live dangerously, you don’t live. Living never flowers in security; it flowers only in insecurity. If you start getting secure, you become a stagnant pool. Then your energy is no longer moving.”

And this goes for every aspect of life.

According to Osho, you have to take bodily risks (go hiking in the mountains, for example), as well as psychological, spiritual, and financial risks.

And you have to take risks in love:

Love, but don’t take that tomorrow the woman will be available to you. Don’t expect. Don’t reduce the woman into a wife. I’m not saying don’t get married. But deep in your mind, never possess the woman.

Of course, courage has a different meaning to everyone. For some, it might be going for a hike in the mountains. For others, it might be going to a salsa class.

It can be quitting a job.

Saying I love you.

Taking a different route home.

It doesn’t have to be extreme or impressive. But it’s about saying yes and embracing the new.

As Osho states:

“Life is always in the wild.”

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