And then there comes a time when we realize that we are not just made up of dreams and endless questions. In us resides a great dose of courage that we have been forced to demonstrate at a certain point in our life, because we are light and hope. Great things await us.
Written and verified by the psychologist GetPersonalGrowth.
Last update: 15 November 2021
Scientists claim that humans are made up of 99% of four chemical elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. They also report that 73% of our atoms come from the explosion of huge stars. Yet, two elements are still missing, why life teaches us that we are made of courage and hope.
We are extraordinary beings. We are creatures who, as Stephen Hawking put it, inhabit a minor planet orbiting a medium-sized star. Despite this, we can understand the universe and write our history with great courage and creativity. And this even if we sometimes forget and neglect our psychological strengths, losing that original sparkle that the stars have left in our DNA.
Still, it is normal for this to happen and it is even desirable. You cannot be a hero every day, it is impossible to be strong in every circumstance of life. We have absolutely the right to fall, to curl up in the cracks of our failures and to take refuge in the depths of our defeats, for some time. There are experiences that necessarily require a deadlock.
The greatest heroes, after all, not just those who sport shimmering armor or brightly colored uniforms. True heroes are made of flesh and blood, scars, sad stories and hardened skin with a thousand experiences. We are stubborn beings who rarely lose hope. And this makes us unique.
We are made of courage and hope, let's not forget that
Do not let this message dissolve into nothingness: we are made of hope and courage. We are fragments of audacity mixed with fragments of enthusiasm and dreams.
We often protest because the world doesn't always live up to our desires and our expectations. Stubborn when we work for our goals and forgetful, sometimes, when we neglect ourselves a little, among the many pressures, duties and commitments.
Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor at Harvard University, says that one of our biggest flaws is the difficulty that sets us apart in coping with change. Those are the moments when we underestimate ourselves the most.
We are intelligent beings, but we hardly give up advantageous situations, some habits, our stability, that routine in which certain activities, commitments and people filled our days.
Perhaps we forget that the cycle of life is nothing more than an ever-changing process. There are defeats and there are successes. There are doors that close and windows that open.
A change is scary and we repeat over and over again that we are not ready for such a thing. Yet, as reported by Kakuzo Okakura, a XNUMXth-century Japanese philosopher, the art of living is nothing more than a continuous readjustment to changing circumstances.
Faced with the frightening change, it takes courage!
Two years ago the University of Alabama (USA) conducted an interesting study on the concept of courage. The managers of this project, doctors Mark Howell and Elaine Coshgell, have dealt with analyzing a large group of people who in the course of their existence had had to face difficult situations, traumatic changes.
From this starting point, it was possible to state that the personality endowed with courage has the following traits:
- Courageous people learn to be determined and proactive.
- They have goals in life and they remember them every day.
- When they have a problem, they don't stay still. They are looking for strategies to solve it.
- They are enthusiastic men and women.
- They know how to ask for help, they know how to express their fears and concerns to those they trust, and they do so to open up to other points of view.
- Courage is an innate quality. It is associated with resilience and is ultimately a response of our brain, driven by the survival instinct.
We are made of courage and hope: a mechanism to be activated in the most stormy days
We can take inspiration from the discovery that courage is an innate mechanism in all of us. We are made of courage and hope because it is thanks to this orientation and these gears that we move forward. This psychological strength guarantees our survival, allows us to stand up, with our heads held high, activating our mind, our heart and our will, and all this to stop fearing change.
Obviously it is not easy. And as we said at the beginning, maybe we won't be able to count every day on the energy necessary to overcome our fears. Yet our brain is endowed with fascinating qualities, which guide us in the so indispensable practice of the overcoming mechanism.
Intelligence and creativity urge us to solve problems in an original way. Stubbornness endows us with an engine in which there is no room for surrender.
We can't even forget our emotions. As Antonio Damasio points out, the latter stimulate our homeostasis, leading us to act, to survive, to adapt and to react. We are made of courage, hope and dreams. Let's not forget it.
We are beings with a DNA made of the same substance as the stars that gave us life. We are made to shine on the darkest days.
