1.

Physical Courage
Physical courage is the type most people think of first, the one that allows us to risk
discomfort, injury, pain or even death—running into burning buildings as a firefighter,
facing an enemy on the battlefield, undergoing chemotherapy, climbing a mountain,
protecting a child from a dangerous animal. We are right to be wary of pain: pain tells us
where our boundaries and limits are. However, sometimes there are things more
important than pain, and our physical fear becomes a border to be crossed. Physical fear
is often blown entirely out of proportion: pain is often greater in anticipation than in fact,
and that dread can become an insurmountable barrier. Physical courage also involves
recognizing that your body is how you participate in the world; keeping it healthy, strong,
and resilient prepares you for all kinds of challenges, not just physical ones.

2. Social Courage
Social courage is standing up tall, being able to greet the world with your head held high, feeling
comfortable in your own skin. Social courage means not conforming to the expectations of others,
being willing to show your true self even if it means risking social disapproval or punishment. It
means being able to express opinions and preferences without checking to see if they are in line
with “everyone else’s” opinions and preferences. It helps us apologize and move on. It is not
about attracting or craving attention, it’s about not minding attention. It’s about asking for what
you want or need and offering what you see others want or need. For parents, it means not
comparing your child’s achievements with another child’s achievements; for teens especially, it
means understanding peer pressure and standing firm against it in its destructive forms. Social
courage often involves helping others, developing a charitable consciousness, and acting on
behalf of others—whether anyone else can see or not. Social courage is also involved in both
leading and following.

3. Intellectual Courage
Intellectual courage means being willing to grapple with difficult or confusing concepts
and ask questions, being willing to struggle to gain understanding and risk making
mistakes. Sometimes what we learn challenges previously accepted ideas, or contradicts
teachings of family or cultural group. Intellectual courage will be required more and more
in the future, as complex structural problems of the environment, economy, and society
challenge conventional problem-solving. Intellectual courage means being intrinsically
motivated to learn and question, rather than extrinsically motivated. Given the information
explosion of recent decades along with easy and indiscriminate access to it, being a
critical thinker will only become more important, not less. Being passive recipients of
information, forgetting to track sources or cross-reference data can quickly turn even the
brightest minds into moldable mush. Integrity and authenticity are interwoven with
intellectual courage; it means telling the truth no matter how uncomfortable.
 History offers great examples of intellectual courage. When we picture Galileo standing
before the Inquisition, insisting that he could not recant the ‘heresy’ of his evidence that
we don’t live in a perfect universe, we see intellectual courage in action.

4. Moral Courage
Moral courage means doing the right thing even at the risk of inconvenience, ridicule,
punishment, loss of job or security or social status, etc. Moral courage requires that we rise
above the apathy, complacency, hatred, cynicism, and fear-mongering in our political systems,
socioeconomic divisions, and cultural/religious differences. For parents, it frequently requires us
to put aside compelling but momentary pleasures or comforts in order to set a good example for
our children and be the parents we aspire to be. Doing the right thing means listening to our
conscience, that quiet voice within. Ignoring that voice can lead to feelings of inadequacy, guilt
and diminished personal integrity. Moral courage requires us to make judgments about what
actions or behaviors are supportive of our highest ideals, and which ones are destructive. It asks
us to recognize our responsibilities and see the consequences of our own actions.

5. Emotional Courage
Emotional courage is being open to feeling the full spectrum of emotional experience,
both positive and negative. Oftentimes, the terms “emotions” and “feelings” are used
interchangeably, but it’s worthwhile to be more precise. A simplistic, but helpful distinction
between emotion and feeling is as follows:
· Emotion is the complex psychophysiological experience combining our internal (biological)
response to external (environmental) stimuli.
· As that emotion crosses the threshold between unconscious to conscious awareness, the
verbal and non-verbal language of “feelings” comes into play as we engage higher,
prefrontal cortical processes to seek to understand, label, express, suppress, and/or
make choices based on the lower and middle brain regions’ generation of core
emotions. All emotions evoke feelings, but not all feelings evolve from core
emotions. Some feelings are subtle variations like ecstasy which is related to joy, or
melancholy which relates to sadness. Other feelings are associated with the states
between core emotions and are not directly traced to one core emotion as opposed to
another.
For example: let’s say there is a loud crashing sound, a stimulus which triggers an
emotion. Immediately, the pulse accelerates, the breathing quickens, and a number of
other physiological things happen in a cascade without our conscious participation. Then
the mind creates a feeling based on thoughts about that stimulus: “Hooray, the fireworks
are starting!” or “Oh no, the scaffolding collapsed!”
Researchers such as Paul Ekman and Antonio Damasio posit approximately ten core
emotions: anger, fear, sadness, enjoyment, disgust, surprise, contempt, shame, guilt,
embarrassment, and awe. Some are genetically-driven. Others (like compassion,
admiration, pride which may also share some of the same core emotion attributes) are
social adaptations based on genome potentiality. The most universal are happiness,
sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. All are associated with biological intelligence and a
drive to survive.
Our emotions are an evolutionary adaptation to help support our survival. At a highly
unconscious level, the limbic system generates the physical arousal associated
with each emotion. Once an emotion intensifies, thoughts begin to form about the
emotion, cognition is engaged, and behaviors are generated to deal with the
emotion and the needs that must be met.
Feelings can help guide us back to the core emotion we are experiencing; they can help
answer our need for connection, wellness, and ultimately survival. Emotional intelligence
is, in essence, a study and practice devoted to supporting human insight and evolution
based on emotional awareness

6. Spiritual Courage
Spiritual courage fortifies us as we ask questions about purpose and meaning. Of course
many people find the foundations of this courage in an organized religion, but there are also other
ways to develop spiritual courage. Spiritual courage means being available to the deepest
questions about why we are here, what is my life for, do I have a purpose? These are profound
existential questions and can be quite frightening, which suggests why fundamentalism of all kinds
can gain mastery over us; thus we yearn for definite answers to these questions and are attracted
to ideologies that offer resolution to our uncertainty. Spiritual courage means accepting that you
are unlikely to find the answers, but asking them anyway. We all must call upon our spiritual
courage when we consider our own mortality. Spiritual courage means opening ourselves up to
our own vulnerability and the mysteries of life.

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