Courage is the most important characteristic for success, achievement, and happiness – Especially when looking for a job.
Without courage – nothing of substance is possible.
If desire is your wishbone, then courage is your backbone. Your backbone provides the sheer determination to achieve your desires – inclusive of fear, adversity, setbacks, pain, danger, hardship, and uncertainty.
Harry Truman said, “To succeed without risk, to attain experience without danger, and to achieve reward without work is as impossible as it is to live without being born.”
Sir Winston Churchill said, “Courage is the first of all human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.”
Responsibility requires courage. Discipline is impossible without courage. Persistence and determination are fueled by courage. And even faith requires courage. Indeed, all principles of success, without exception, are rooted in the soil of courage…. (continues below)
Courage is Invaluable For Everyone!
Whether you are a mother, father, brother, teacher, coach, manager, job seeker or just an everyday person like most of us, the concept of courage must not only be understood – it must be mastered and taught – self-taught if nothing else. The challenge today is that there is a significant void in understanding and addressing the all-important quality of courage.
Seek first to do – then to teach: It takes courage to keep fighting when you’re losing, to rebuild your business when it’s struggling, to stick to your game plan when adversity consistently attacks your will, and to plan and orchestrate a job campaign when doubt and uncertainty attempt to derail success.
It takes courage to push yourself to places where you have never been before – physically and mentally; to test your limits and to break through barriers to see and achieve all the possibilities that await you on the other side of fear and despair; to be the very best you can be when others around you settle for mediocrity; to change and be an advocate for positive and effective change. We live in a world and work in a profession that requires massive and constant change. Without question, it takes enormous courage to look truth in the face and embrace it. And it takes courage to empower others to look truth in the face and allow the truth to set them free so they can then better pursue and achieve their goals.
Those who consciously or subconsciously avoid the study and mastery of courage are doomed to fail or, at best, settle for less. Fear is the greatest nemesis to success because it is debilitating and incapacitating. That said, courage is the antidote to fear. Courage, according to Mark Twain, is, “Resistance to fear, mastery over fear, but not an absence of fear.” That is what success and happiness require – courage in the face of, not the absence of fear. And that’s what facilitates a successful business, a thriving profession, and a successful and rewarding job campaign.
Check out MY favorite practice I call Supercharge Your Job Campaign. Even if you are not currently looking for a job I KNOW this simple practice will help you develop your courage and resilience in less than 10 minutes a day. It is my gift to you… simply provide your email 
address in the box at the top right hand corner of this page (desktop) or at the bottom of the article (mobile).
The 2 Greatest Pains in Life
Arguably, two of the greatest pains in life are the loss of a loved one and the loss of a job. What emotions are experienced? People grieve the loss of loved ones and jobs; they are stunned, terrified, infuriated, and experiencing high anxiety and depression. They think: “I can’t believe this is happening to me; this must be a bad dream.” These are just some of the emotions experienced by people, in particular, job seekers, whose lives have been turned upside down when they lose their jobs and find themselves desperately seeking new opportunities in troubled economies and highly competitive job markets.
Worry takes over and emotions get out of control. Initial questions will pervade thoughts, such as: Will I survive this? Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Will I be able to endure the pain? How long will this last? Where will the money come from? Will I be able to keep my home? How will this affect my quality of life? Will I be a burden to my family? The worse case scenario takes center stage in the theater of our minds; and fear plays the starring role. Courage is the only viable remedy for fearful and destructive emotions.
What good are great resumes in the hands of depressed job seekers? What good are revised business plans for companies if the owners doubt themselves or lack the discipline and fortitude to invest necessary resources to make changes in order to become profitable? What good are interviews or sales training when job seekers and sales professionals are terrified by the prospect of being rejected or turned down?
Wisdom Is the Foundation for Becoming Courageous
The missing piece for most advice on developing a courageous constitution is HOW! How do I teach my clients to believe in themselves, to never give up their dreams, to maintain a good attitude, to make the best of a bad situation, to open new doors of opportunity when existing doors have been slammed in their face? We must first study and master these techniques before we teach them. The new professional mantra must be – “listen to me carefully; but watch me more closely.”
Below are two techniques that when used effectively, build courage while conquering fear and negativity:
1) REFERENCE VALIDATION
Reference validation is a technique where people compare their situations to others who have successfully dealt with, and overcome, what they are currently experiencing. By doing so, they find strength and hope by learning strategies and concepts used by others so they too can effectively work through and resolve their issues. Reference validation is a technique that instills a feeling of certainty and a feeling of confidence because someone else or a group of people have successfully overcome similar adversities and challenges that they face.
A support group is a good example of reference validation. People in a support group share their experiences with one another. They gain strength and hope by validating that they too can effectively deal with the challenge at hand. Private, public, and faith-based groups offer venues for job seekers where former out-of-work employees address them and share their experiences and strategies that led to new jobs. In this way, job seekers have a new “frame of reference” that provides genuine hope and transforms fear into courage.
2) TRANSFORMATIONAL ASSOCIATION
This technique sounds complicated but is simple and amazingly effective. It’s not the events in your life that matter; rather it is how you react or respond to them based on the associations you make. In other words, it’s the meaning you associate to what happens that is important… not the event itself. At any time, if you want to change how you feel and become courageous, you simply need to transform or change the association (meaning) you give to the events and situations in your life.
Is the glass half empty or half full? When you change the meaning of a circumstance or situation (transform the association) from half empty to half full, fear is replaced by courage to better address the situation at hand. Nothing has to change in order for you to find your innate courage except the meaning you give to it.
Two Vietnam Veterans return home after the war. Both spent a year in POW camps and experienced the same harsh, inhumane treatment. One veteran associates massive pain to this event and feels lost in a lost world. Some 30 years later, he is still struggling to make sense of life. However, the other veteran associates a sense of obligation to this event and has the need to share his experiences and make a difference in the world. He is courageous and becomes a well-respected motivational speaker, traveling the country in a wheelchair to inspire others. The same situation occurs to two different people and there are two entirely different responses. This occurs because each veteran linked different meanings (associations) to the same event.