This article is part of The Virtuous Human Series ^[1].

“The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from”
~Joanna Baillie

Bravery — A quality of spirit that enables you to face danger of pain without showing fear.

This virtue, like many others, has an inherent value in being kept private. It is not the man who runs around saying “I am the bravest” who is truly virtuous. The man who is virtuous is the one who performs when the time is right.

As Joanna Baillie mentions, if a man does not sense any fear, the man is not brave. For example, it would not be a problem for me to squash a spider. For someone else who has Arachnophobia, an irrational fear of spiders, squashing it may be the biggest ordeal they have ever had to overcome. In this case I am not brave, I am merely accomplishing a task, but our scared friend is truly brave.

Joanna also mentions that if one does not know to be scared, when they clearly should be, they aren’t brave, they’re just stupid. If someone is pointing a loaded gun at your head, and you try to run at them from 10 yards away with a knife, you are clearly not mentally stable.

There is no magic trick to obtain bravery because bravery is within each and every single one of us. Even those people you know that are completely spineless have the inherent capacity to be brave. Even so, there are a few simple things you can to to may help to bring you bravery out a bit from it’s hiding spot.

5 Ways To Bring Bravery Out of Hiding

1. Believe in yourself. It’s very important to know just how special and unique you are. Whether you know it or not you bring something very valuable to this world. You said something to someone who said something to someone who made a huge change in the world, and it’s all thanks to you. I’m sure this type of thing has happened to you without even realizing. Keep growing and developing yourself and your time to be brave will come and you will be ready!
2. Constant and Never Ending Improvement. Personally I get a lot of bravery from getting better at something on a consistent basis. To set goals bigger than I think are possible and to work towards them, slowly but surely, every single day allows me to overcome goals that are seemingly impossible at first.
3. Just Do It. Over thinking a situation could lead to you talking yourself out of taking the next step. Imagine standing at the tip of an Olympic height diving board getting ready for your first ever dive. The conversations going through your head could potentially talk you out of the jump. To just walk up there and jump, to just do it, is the perfect way to get over your fear and be brave.
4. Optimism. A great attitude about what you have to face will get you pumped up, motivated, and ready to break through the obstacle which you are facing. Our minds are very much operated by our self-talk, but instead of leaving our self-talk to irrational subconscious fear we could interject with talks of bravery, optimism, and results.
5. Greater Cause. Often times, when inspired by a great cause, such as the life of a loved one, we are pushed beyond our comfort zone and percevere past fear into the realm of courage and bravery. I had a fear of public speaking, but right around the time that I joined Toastmasters ^[2] I realized that the message I have is too important to not tell the whole world about. This helped me to get over that fear really quick.

This post is part of The Virtuous Human Series ^[1]. There will be many articles in this series — make sure you subscribe ^[3] so you don’t miss a thing!

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