Building courage
When we hear the word courage, we most commonly visualise scenarios around defending ourselves or others from attack — physical, verbal, emotional or psychological. Yet our personal courage ranges deeper than just fight or flight and, when triggered, can have significant positive benefits for our health and wellbeing, opportunities for success and our ability to move forward from crisis.
The concept of courage has been a subject of much discussion for philosophers across millennia and is a source of interest and investigation within a range of research interests, including psychology, sociology, leadership and education. While there is some debate around the mechanisms that make up courage, there is a general agreement that courage involves persistence in the face of danger or hardship and that we draw on courage to affect some kind of change. There is also agreement that we tap into different types of courage in various contexts to manage the specific demands of that particular situation. These include physical, moral and, more recently, psychological courage.
Physical courage is perhaps the easiest that comes to mind and is generally defined as the kind of courage we draw upon when facing a physical threat. It relies on us to put our physical selves at risk to protect self or others from some kind of bodily
