Courage

"Courage is bravery in the face of fear. You do the right thing even when it is hard or scary. When you are courageous, you don’t give up. You try new things. You admit mistakes. Courage is the strength in your heart."

From The Virtues Project™ homepage at http://www.virtuesproject.com/virtueslist.html#courage

Thanks to Mike Marvin of Olean, NY, for this month's guest article about gender and virtues:

As she sat across from me, obviously agitated, fear showing through her eyes, I never imagined that what my courageous friend was about to tell me would have a major impact on the rest of my life. She hesitatingly explained that when growing up, her father was tyrannical and that sometimes I spoke in a forceful and even dismissive way that triggered a response from her childhood. She told me this because she valued our friendship but was having trouble working with me on things when I triggered her. My heart melted. There was no where to run. Internal changes would need to be made.

That conversation was over 20 years ago. I remember it to this day. I’ve had variations of it with her and many other friends over the years as I tried to be courageous enough to look inside myself and develop new virtues that would allow me to assertively state my opinions without unintentionally disrespecting and hurting my friends.

A key point in this story is that both my friend and I had to have the courage to develop the virtues that society had not recognized in us. It was easy for my friend to show her love and compassion since those were “womanly” virtues but she had been socialized to believe that assertiveness was not a valuable part of being a woman. As for me, “real men” are allowed to be assertive, purposeful, and powerful, but I was out of my comfort zone when developing virtues of empathy and compassion.

A really interesting part of exploring gender and virtues is that many of the qualities that men are encouraged to develop are not encouraged in women and vice versa. If we can develop real bonds of friendship and have the courage to try to develop virtues that we haven’t been encouraged to look for, we often have strong allies and role models in our friends of the opposite sex. My friend and I accompanied and supported each other in the development of our more neglected virtues. I am happy to say that 20 years later, we are still good friends.

Questions for reflection:

1. What one thing about my life would like to change, but I wonder if I have the courage?

2. How can I use courage to work on myself this week?

3. How I use courage when working with others this week?

4. Combining virtues that we are comfortable with and those we are still working on can be very powerful. For example, how can I exhibit tactful assertiveness? Is there another pair of virtues I can work on this week?

If you would like to write a guest article for A Virtues Moment, please contact betsy@virtuestraining.com