Courage Before Confidence
This week I listened to this James Altucher podcast with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. It was a fascinating conversation, and one of the things that stuck with me is their description of the “Four C’s”- Commitment, Courage, Capability, and Confidence. In order to start a new project, we can’t rely on confidence. As a matter of fact, if the project is big enough or new enough, we won’t have confidence at all. The important thing is to commit to it; have the courage to begin; slowly gain capability; which will eventually lead to confidence. I would actually put courage first, because sometimes it takes courage to even commit to a new venture. Whether it’s signing up for a race, starting a blog, finding a new job, deciding to start a family (eek! Who feels confident about raising kids before they have them?) or any number of adventures, courage is the first requirement. Albert Einstein said “Imagination is more important the knowledge.” Yes, and courage is more important than confidence. I still haven’t decided on a race (although I got some great advice in the comments on that post!) As a matter of fact I’ve added another possibility to the mix, Death at Dupuis. It’s a “last person standing” format. “All runners will be running a 4.166667 mile loop to be started at 8:00 am. The race restarts at the top of the hour every hour until only one runner can complete the loop on time, or everyone quits.” The race is held in a natural area about an hour from me, that I’ve never been to. I checked last year’s results, and the winner ran 133 miles. But there were a lot of people who ran a 50K or shorter- so it would be perfectly fine to show up and do as much as you can. I’m intrigued! I know that I just have to choose a race and sign up. Once I sign up, all the lingering doubts (“I don’t know if I can run 50 miles! Can I run a 50K all on sand? Will I really be able to get to a race four hours away?”) will fade away. Whichever race I choose will become a reality, and I’ll figure out how to make it work. But right now, I’m still dithering. Have you ever started a project fueled by courage, before your confidence kicked in?- I think if I waited until I felt confident, I would never start anything at all.