Sometimes it is good to look at things from a different perspective and to tackle things from a different angle. Take “Courage” for example - it is considered to be rather a serious subject and most of us would really have to think about what the term courage really means for us? Are we courageous or not? What would our courage look like if it had a form, or if it was a living creature?

The other day, I was running a “new orientation” workshop. Towards the middle of the workshop I realised that most of the participants seemed to be battling fear and lack of courage. I was asked a lot of questions along the lines of: “What if I do something that is not in line with the usual process? What if I fail in reaching xyz? What if the relevant people do not respond to my contact request and ignore me? And so on. I felt that this group needed some sort of courage boost and decided to do the following exercise with them: If your courage were to take the form of an animal, which animal would it be?  

At first they all looked at me strangely as if I had asked them to do the impossible. Then one after the other they started to laugh and joke. They formed into groups and went about their task quite seriously. They really wanted to discover what form of animal their courage might take. If we had had the time we could have concentrated on this topic for the entire workshop. Needless to say I was very surprised as to how much energy they devoted to finding an answer to my question. The outcome of the exercise was amazing, so many different animals were credited as taking the form of an individual’s courage: dog, monkey, cat, penguin, deer, worm and many more that I can’t quite seem to remember right now. As a result of this exercise they had all a better awareness with regards to their courage and were eager to learn more about it. Even if only for a short period of time, awareness had been awakened. And should they forget about it then that’s fine, however I have the feeling that this is one exercise that will not be so easily forgotten!

I used this exercise to convey the following message: Discover your courage, learn its different aspects and how to make the most of them. Don’t let a lack of courage stop you from going, getting and doing what you want.

So now it’s your turn – Which animal would YOUR courage be? 

Take the courage to discover what form your courage might take if it was an animal, learn to “tame” it and use it to move forward.