The courageous have humility in common

One thing sets the courageous apart.  It is the quality that allows them to rise up to counter the adversity set against them.  It is what separates them from the also-ran who gave up or who chose to blame others or who denied there ever was a crisis to be reckoned with.  It is the definer of persons.  It divides the top one-percentile from the rest.  It alone has the final say.

What is it?  
It is HUMILITY.

Humility is the dynamism of courage.  When all else is loss and there seems no hope whatsoever, humility borrows the required hope in the faith that there simply must be a way forward.  There is always a way forward.  

That way forward is what courage looks like.

Though it may take twenty years to fully recover from some major setbacks, the one with humility will have the courage to take the challenge deep within themselves.  

Only with humility is there the serenity to accept what cannot be changed with the tenacity to do what can be done—one step and one day at a time.

TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THIS LIFE

Though there are two kinds of people in this life, they are not evenly spread 50-50 through society.  Only a few go down the road less travelled.  In my experience it is more like a 1-99 spread. 

There are the one-percenters 
and then there are the rest.

There is life in striving as the one-percenter strives.
There is only despair and death in what the rest do.

One percent of people have what it takes to look within at the circumstance and say by their responses to the adversities of their life, “What can I do?”

One percent of people insist that there 
is something they CAN do to move forward.

One percent of people refuse to get stuck in a myriad of factors that ‘explains’ why they are where they are; they resist guilt, shame, bitterness, resentment, paralysis, etc.  But they are deeply interested in learning about the real explainers.

One percent of people refuse to believe the dialogue that is spun, that it’s hopeless, that there’s someone to blame, that there’s some conspiracy theory that explains it.  Or they acknowledge the dialogue and use it as impetus to move forward.  Life is replete with red herrings, and it serves nobody to get stuck anywhere that won’t facilitate progress.

Only when we rigidly stick to what WE can do are we able to resist externalising.

Only when we refuse to enter into the folly of falsehood and insist instead upon a way forward do we enter the trek of courage.  It takes humility to stop the voices coming to ‘our aid’.  

The easy thing is to listen to what seems comforting, what is personally vindicating.  When that’s all we’re getting—i.e., it’s unbalanced—it takes us nowhere good.  It is harder yet so much better to prefer an unsavoury view that with courage can be contemplated.

Using the higher order mind, the powerful pre-frontal cortex, not submitting to the hijacking amygdala response, we take the path few are prepared to take.  It’s a path with few sojourners, but it’s a path that leads to life. 

It is why prayer works.  
It is why contemplation is mastery.  
It is why pausing before responding works best.

Resorting to our own understanding is a poor modus operandi.  Surely wisdom would instruct us if only we would not prefer our default comfort-centred mindset.

Humility and humility alone will give us what we need to bear the discomfort of looking within in whatever adversity we find ourselves—that is courage personified.  It may not have the appearance of courage but there is nothing harder to do on this earth than that.

Take up the cudgel.  
Don’t go with the crowd.  
Go the lonelier path that leads to life.  
Don’t refuse the learning offered in this pain. 

The most courageous of persons 
don’t entertain any other option but asking, 
“WHAT CAN I DO HERE?”