In my last article, I talked about how I was part of a women's panel discussion and talked about my leadership style. In the same discussion, I made a point that women, as well as all of us, should be brave, and lean in. Then I got a follow up question: how do you become brave? I gave kinda a pointless answer: just don’t be afraid. Lol🤣. Later on, when I was reflecting on this conversation, I realized that my answer wasn’t that pointless. Confucius said: The wise ones aren’t confused; the kind ones are not worried; and the brave ones are not afraid ( 智者不惑， 仁者不忧， 勇者不惧). So how do you not be afraid?
1. Build your confidence, know your self worth
To not be afraid, you have to work on your confidence. Oftentimes we are afraid because we doubt ourselves, we don’t know whether we are not good enough, and worry what if we are not.
To start, know who you are and acknowledge your self worth. Get all the doubts out of your head. That’s how you can stop worrying about whether you are not enough, lose all your inhibitions and charge on. Sun Tzu wrote in his famous book “Art of War”: when two armies encounter, the strong one wins. When two strong armies encounter, the brave one wins (两军相遇强者胜， 两强相遇勇者胜). Being brave and not being afraid is a spirit, is mental toughness, is a conviction that you are there to win. You are not afraid to endure all the pain and overcome all the obstacles to achieve it.
2. Acquire skills that can be used anywhere
The natural next question is how I can build the confidence and know my self worth?
You have to build it. You build it by working really hard to acquire skills that are not replaceable and not fungible.
One reason we are afraid is to think about the what ifs. What if I get fired? What if they find someone better than me and replace me with that person? What if I tell them the truth and piss them off?
But once your possess actual skills, the fear just goes away. Of course, one could argue that everyone is fungible and replaceable. However, if you possess actual, quantifiable skills, replacing you is so much more difficult and complicated. And even if they were to replace you, with your skills you can go work somewhere else where your skills are highly desired. If you know that you possess tangible skills that can deliver value, you will no longer afraid to take on the next challenge.
Acquiring skills is difficult. The last thing you want is to spend all your time working through corporate politics and end up becoming a person with no actual skills. You must stay curious, open minded and constantly learn to acquire new skills. You must train for it. It’s like running a marathon. It doesn’t happen overnight. But if you keep on doing it, one day you will arrive at a state that your skills can no longer be replaced by any one at a whim.
3. Be kind but not just nice, refuse to please
Another reason that we are afraid is what if they don’t like us?
Granted, it’s great to build those relationships based on kindness, collaboration and mutual good will. However, don’t confuse being kind with being nice. Ultimately, we are here to win and deliver results, not just to be nice and be liked.
We should resist our urge to please. Women have specific struggles about this, which I will address in a later occasion. Naturally, when we set out to achieve certain goals, we may get into a conflict with someone and they may not like us. So what?. We can acknowledge their frustration, but ultimately we must do things to advance. Oftentimes we are competing for power, resources, time, among other things. Our goal is not to play nice and be liked, our goal is to win.
4. Often times it’s not about hitting, it’s more about how to take the hit
If you have ever watched a boxing game, or “Rocky”, you will understand what I am trying to say here. To be brave, sometimes it's not about attacking the enemy and winning. It’s often about not being afraid to take the hit and can still carry on.
Competition is fierce. There are many obstacles and drawbacks on the way to victory. Instead of dreaming up a rosy path forward, being brave often means not being afraid of the harsh reality and being able to sustain the pain and suffering on the way. If you build that grit that doesn’t get diminished by adversity and setbacks, then you are brave enough to keep on going despite all the tears and blood.
5. Being brave doesn’t mean being reckless
On the flip side, being brave doesn’t mean you are reckless and don’t know your limits. Fear is a natural protection mechanism. Sometimes it’s good that we are afraid of things that we don’t have control over. We must know our limits and don’t recklessly take ourselves to destruction. Laozi said, “勇於敢則殺，勇於不敢則活”. Hard to translate this line, the point is to find that fine balance being brave yet not becoming reckless.
We listen to our trusted friends and advisors to advise us about what the danger is and consider their perspective carefully. If we take our self confidence to an extreme, it becomes arrogance and we will soon pay the price.
Ultimately, we must be brave yet optimistically cautious. We must be leaning in while knowing our own limitations. But being brave is about not being afraid of what others think, whether we are not good enough in their opinion, whether they like us. The night dark is dark and full of terrors, but we fight our fears and insecurities to move forward.
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