Here are a few techniques to help build your courage. Number one: put all remote possibilities out of your mind. Don’t worry about things you have no control over. Don’t spend your time thinking about all the bad things that might happen to you. Don’t spend your time plotting and planning ways to make sure these things will never happen.
Courageous people don’t worry about things that are out of their control or things that are unlikely to happen. They concentrate on what they can control.
Number two: face your fears before you start something. Imagine difficult situations before they occur. Make a list of the worst that could happen, and you’ll probably see that the situation is not so bad after all.
Doing what it takes to achieve personal success is more than an exercise in discipline; it’s also an exercise in courage. Just getting through the day–let alone reaching for the starts–requires courage. That’s why true courage is a priceless commodity.
In examining the true nature of courage. I (Jim Rohn) can’t put it any better than the Greek philosopher Aristotle did more than two thousand years ago: “A truly courageous person is not someone who never feels fear, but who fears the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.”
What does it mean to fear the right thing in the right way at the right time?
In many ways, you are already a tremendous success. And it’s important to take the time to appreciate what you’ve accomplished on the path to becoming all you can be. So I (Jim Rohn) would like you to take a self-appreciation inventory. Ask yourself a few questions. Start with: “What have I achieved in the last four days, the last two weeks, the last six months, the last year, the last ten years? What have I achieved during these time periods?”
Write the answers down. Take a self-appreciation inventory of all you’ve done and all you’ve accomplished and all you’ve become. Take inventory of yourself, then compare this list to your goals. Have you accomplished all you set out to do in the last four days, two weeks, six months, one year, and the years? Compare your lists.
Enlightened self-interest leads to wealth. Selfish self-preservation leads to poverty. Somebody says, “I can’t be concerned about other people, I can only be concerned about myself.” Well then, you’ll always have to be concerned about yourself. Somebody says, “I can’t be concerned about other people’s bills, I’ve got enough worries trying to pay my own.” Well then, you’ll have to worry about them for the rest of your life. The best way to get that monkey off your back is to turn your attention to other people.
Once I (Jim Rohn) understood this perspective, it revolutionized my whole life. Self-interest is necessary, of course. But here’s what self-interest must be if you truly want to be happy: it must be enlightened. Don’t keep your attention only on yourself if you want your life to work out well. All the possibilities of greatness–great wealth, great reputation, great satisfaction–come only if you turn your attention from yourself to others.
There are two parts to positive self-direction. Part one is self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge is knowing who you are and what you want to do with your life. It is knowing how you feel about yourself. Self-knowledge has a lot to do with your philosophy, and your philosophy has a lot to do with shaping your attitude. It helps determine how you feel about yourself, about life, about your direction, and about others around you.
You’ve got to gather up enough knowledge and information to know what’s right for you. How do you gather up this information? Well, you can start with your own experiences. The best way to know if something works for you, to find the right way, is to do the wrong way. You can’t keep doing it the wrong way. You’ve got to be smart enough to say, “Hey, this isn’t working,” and change it. Start doing it the right way.
When you are a person of character, you know who you are and where you want to go. You’ve already spent a great deal of time thinking about it. You’ve been working on the parts of your personality that will make you better–your attitude, your health, your time-management skills. You’ve been putting it all down on paper. And you’ve developed positive self-direction.
As you talk with yourself every day, how often do you ask, “Is what I am doing today getting me closer to where I want to be tomorrow?” Because here’s what you don’t want to ever do: kid yourself. Kid your neighbor and kid me and kid the marketplace if you want to, but don’t kid yourself. You can’t wait around with your fingers crossed hoping you’ll arrive at a good destination when you’re not even headed in the right direction. You say, “Well, maybe the wind will take me.” There’s a chance, of course, but it’s about as likely as winning the lottery. You’ve got to take charge.
Charisma is a word that is often confused with character, but charisma is really quite different. Charisma is derived from a Greek work meaning “an ability to elicit favor in other people.” It’s a magnetic quality of personality that people respond to as if it were magic. Charisma is almost like a magic wand that confers power over others.
Character has a very different origin. Character comes from a Greek word meaning “chisel,” or “the mark left by a chisel.” Of course, a chisel is a sharp steel tool used for making a sculpture out of a hard or difficult material, like granite or marble.
So in its origins, the word character isn’t related to charisma, which is described as a kind of magic wand. Character isn’t a magic wand; character comes from chisel, and I (Jim Rohn) hope you’ll remember that. You’ve got to chisel your character out of the raw material of yourself just like a sculptor has to create a statue. The raw material is always there, and everything that happens to you, good or bad, is an opportunity for building your character.
Personal success is built on the foundation of character, and character is the result of hundreds and hundreds of choices you may make that gradually turn who you are at any given moment into who you want to be. If that decision-making process is not present, you’ll still be somebody–you’ll still be alive–but you may have a personality rather than a character, and to me (Jim Rohn), that’s something very different.
Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and that you must take responsibility for forming.
