When we think about courage we often associate the word with; strength, fearlessness, and being tough. Sometimes courage looks like none of these things. Sometimes courage is that small voice telling you to keep trying one more time.
Mindfulness is a great way to cultivate a life of courage. Helping your student seek out courage can be as simple as taking some time to sit with them and teaching them to know and understand their own feelings.
Getting to know ourselves on a deep and honest level can take the very most courage we have. Avoiding feelings, avoiding challenges, avoiding understanding; all of this can be must easier than exploring the feelings, challenges, and things we need to understand.
Mindful courage can sometimes simply look like saying "yes, I am afraid."
A couple of weeks back I was working with a couple of kindergarten friends and asking them about fear. I was helping them think about how mindfulness can help them overcome fear. The young boys told me that they were not afraid of anything. They said that they were strong and brave.
I talked with the boys about fear and how it can help us grow and help others. When we see our fears as as an opportunity to grow we can help others do the same.
Mindfulness teaches us to accept a feeling, as is, don't change it, don't deny it. Feel it. Accept it. Understand it.
As I continued to work with the boys they were able to share about times that the dark scared them. We explored taking deep breaths, asking for help, listening to surrounds to understand the darkness and being brave.
The boys were able to be brave and share a fear and then be even braver and share how they would use mindfulness to calm their fear and work through it.
We can use our 90 second rule to feel our fear and then let it go and utilize courage. Courage is about finding our inner strength and accepting the feelings.
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