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How to Be Brave

Enjoy!

While teaching a course in non-verbal communication recently, a thought struck me.  How do you act in a brave or fearless manner? Which specific pieces of body language can help us out here?

Smile. This is the most powerful piece of body language available to us!  As that well known psychologist Greta Garbo said, “Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening”.  Smiling gives you great power over yourself and others.

Raise your chin. If ever you are feeling down, raise your head and hold it in an upright position for a few moments.  Notice how your mood will shift almost immediately.

Maintain eye contact. When you hold someone’s gaze it means that you are in control, assertive, even challenging.  Narrow your eyes to be seen as strong and dominant.  Move your gaze smoothly and deliberately.  Of all bodily signals, the eyes reveal emotions the most accurately.

Be still. Small, inconsequential gestures show discomfort, inner turmoil or frustration.  Eliminate these ‘micro-gestures’ by taking action to solve the problems, or learning to be still by shifting your energies to thought.  Stillness and quiet signal to others that you are in control, and that it is up to them to make the move.

Stand straight. Posture reflects self-image, confidence, role and emotional state.  As Ray Birdwhistell noted, “A person’s posture reflects their past.  People who has experiences long depression may slouch and slag their bodies,  whereas people who have a positive outlook tend to hold themselves upright”.

Walk tall. However you walk you are being true to your internal rhythms and feelings.  By choosing to walk in a certain way you are presenting an image you want other to believe.  Quicken your tempt to increase your energy.  Or slow down to show deliberation.  Whatever you do, choose it.

Expand out. Take up space and look as though you are conformable in it.  Don’t shrivel up or cringe when others look at you.  Hold your arms away form your body and your elbows slightly out from your sides.  Plant your feet slightly apart.  Be significant!

Pump it up. The volume that is.  If you talk quietly you will ignored, you will sound unsure, others will talk over you.  Don’t be scared to hear yourself speak.  I don’t mean scream or fog-horn.  But try raising your voice a little and you will get the attention and time of others.

Try them out.  They actually work.  I dare you!

Why am I telling you this? Because it gives some context to one of the powerful quotes on courage and overcoming fear that I’ve ever read. These words come from Teddy Roosevelt, 26^th President of the United States of America, and an incredibly brave man.

Having been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was, as a young man, at first nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I had to train myself painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but as regards my soul and spirit…

When a boy I read a passage in one of Marryat’s books which always impressed me. In this passage the captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he were not frightened. After this has been kept up long enough, it changes from a pretence to a reality, and the man does in fact become fearless by sheer dint of practising fearlessness when he does not feel it. (I am using my own language, not Marryat’s.)

This is the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.

So, to put it in American English, you ‘fake it until you make it’!

In my opinion, it offers one of the chief ways to develop confidence in yourself as an individual. And it’s not just fluffy sentiment and wish-fulfilment. There is a sound psychological basis for it. Read what Williams James, American psychologist and philosopher, had to say about it.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can regulate the feeling, which is not.

Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.

So, to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all of our will to that end, and a courage fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.

These are some of my favourite quotes ever. What do you think of them?