16 Tiny Habits That Put You In The Top 5% Of Most Courageous People
These habits will bring triple the success into your life.
Miriam Alonso | Pexels It’s easy to look at some people and assume they were born with some kind of action-taking gene. The truth is that courage is a muscle we practice and flex like any other. The more courage we use, even in small steps, the more courage we will have.
After a while, the things we looked at as scary become almost effortless. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
Here are 16 tiny habits that will put you in the top most courageous people:
1. Regularly make the first move
Most of us either need permission or to see someone else doing something before we decide to act. It’s a herd mentality thing, and we’re more likely to act when we see others also doing it.
The problem with this is we deny ourselves the juiciest piece of the pie, and instead end up with crumbs. Have faith that your decision is a good one, and make the first move.
2. Do something every day that makes you a bit nervous
Feeling nerves might be thought of as a reason to avoid something. Flip the script and use nerves as a reason instead to do the thing. Your life will change dramatically if you do this daily.
3. Refuse to be weak
It’s so easy to fall into the trap of listening to the thoughts that belittle you. They’re just thoughts.
They can be ignored. Refuse to buy into them, and choose to act from the part of you that leads soldiers into battle.
We tend to believe what we think and that what we feel reflects reality. However, as Assistant Professor of Psychology Alia Crum tells Stanford News, “It’s essential to recognize that mindsets are not peripheral, but central to health and behavior.”
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4. Be more mindful
This means raising your consciousness by staying in the present moment when all you want to do is play in the past. Being mindful gives you more information to succeed in the right here, right now. This makes it far easier to act courageously.
Mindfulness involves self-regulating attention to remain focused on the present moment. Along with this self-regulation, mindfulness also requires focusing on the immediate experience with an attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance, a 2021 study published in the National Library of Medicine found.
5. Become a leader
Find something in which you can fulfill your role as a leader. This might be in starting a community, becoming a parent, or even writing a book to help others.
Every single one of us has the potential built into us to lead and to lead well. When you accept this role, you’ll be surprised how easily you settle into it.
6. Regularly go live
Get on a Twitter space, run a podcast interview, or get on a stage. Going live invites potential rejection, which is why so few want to go here.
But by doing this more often, we numb the part of us terrified of criticism. We get better at it, and we become incrementally more fearless.
7. Share and publish
Taking on the role of a consistent content creator, especially in sharing stuff about my life and my challenges, was one of the best things I did for my confidence. When we write about our problems or shame, we release a valve, and it’s cathartic, even if a little scary.
Creating and publishing is a vulnerable move because it invites criticism. But the funny thing is, you will gain more strength by stepping into the public arena, compared to evading and avoiding.
8. Take responsibility for everything
It may seem unfair to take on a seemingly huge burden — that of taking ownership of literally everything that happens in your life. But — somewhat ironically — the biggest burden we can take on is seeing ourselves as a victim and blaming others for our ills.
Taking responsibility puts you in the driver’s seat of your life. This is the truest way to regain a sense of control and balance that will diminish the blow of any challenge or setback.
When we don’t take our legitimate share of responsibility, we risk losing a sense of our power or sense of control over our actions. This sense of control over what we do and don’t do is called “a sense of agency” or, as psychologist James W. Moore has described it in a 2016 article published in Frontiers in Psychology, a “feeling of being in the driving seat when it comes to our actions.”
Research published in Clinical Psychology Review in 2023 has shown that a sense of agency provides us with a greater sense of competence, even when it involves taking responsibility for mistakes or negative behaviors.
9. Give more upfront
We live in a giving economy. Those who are succeeding like few others give the most upfront. This takes courage. Because so many of us think we need to be paid or compensated for everything we commit to helping with. But those who get far are okay with giving tons before seeing any rewards. Ironically, this is where most of your rewards are born.
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10. Understand the truth about fear
You’ll be far more courageous when you realize the reality of fear itself. Fear is self-generated in the mind. That pile of clothes you mistook under the bed for a monster is a clear example of self-generated fear. When you realize that you can minimize fear by befriending the feeling and putting your attention elsewhere, you have all the power.
11. Stop seeking validation
When our happiness is reliant on other people being nice to us, we’ve lost before we even get started. Your confidence must come from within. It’s never about externals, not even success or making money. You will be fearless when you drop the need for any external validation.
12. Do what others refuse to do
Instead of frolicking with the normies and picking up scraps, go against the grain. Use the insights gleaned from seeing what most people don’t do as your guide. You will rise further than most and develop a healthier relationship by turning uncomfortable things into precious things.
13. Quit a bad habit
Yeah, you know what I mean. That thing you keep doing that continually erodes your energy and sense of pride. Just quit.
Anything we’re attached to chemically may mean enduring a period of withdrawal. But anything that leads to unnatural withdrawal from its absence in the first place is not worth sticking to.
“Habits play an important role in our health,” says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Understanding the biology of how we develop routines that may be harmful to us, and how to break those routines and embrace new ones, could help us change our lifestyles and adopt healthier behaviors.”
Habits can arise through repetition. They are a normal part of life and are often helpful. “We wake up every morning, shower, comb our hair, or brush our teeth without being aware of it,” Volkow says. We can drive along familiar routes on mental auto-pilot without thinking about the directions.
“When behaviors become automatic, it gives us an advantage because the brain does not have to use conscious thought to perform the activity,” Volkow says. This frees up our brains to focus on different things.
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14. Eat cleaner
Processed junk spikes insulin and throws your body into disarray. An imbalanced body is closely linked to a mind that is spinning out of control.
There’s a reason your overthinking goes into overdrive after eating processed junk and too much sugar. Eat clean. Your body will calm, and you will find previously frightening tasks far more inviting.
15. Replace thinking with creating
This one’s tricky. Many of us feel we have more control over our lives by thinking things through and then cycling endlessly through those thoughts. Be relentlessly biased to creating and creating some more, even if you don’t feel ready. This is what it means to live courageously.
16. Re-assess your relationship with uncertainty
Uncertainty has plagued humanity since the dawn of time. We don’t know what the future holds, and so we compensate in all kinds of ludicrous ways. A common one is amplifying our self-consciousness in a bid to be better prepared for a talk we need to give, for example.
But this just adds more anxiety and makes us perform poorly. Instead, we need to nurture the faith we have in ourselves to perform when we need to. We can do so much more in the moment, plugged into inner wisdom, thank we know is possible.
Alex Mathers is a writer and coach who helps you build a money-making personal brand with your knowledge and skills while staying mentally resilient.