You 2.0: Cultivating Courage
1/5/202652 min
Why do some people act bravely in a crisis, while others flee or freeze up? Today, we bring you the second part of our You 2.0 series on the mental obstacles that can block us when we're charting a new path. Behavioral scientist Ranjay Gulati argues that courage is a choice, and that we can strengthen the reflexes that will help us to be brave when it matters most.
Once you've listened to this episode, be sure to check out our companion conversation about how you can help the people around you to become more brave. You can hear that episode with a free seven-day trial to Hidden Brain+. To sign up, go to support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co/hiddenbrain. Your subscription helps to cover the research, writing, and audio production that go into every episode of Hidden Brain, and we appreciate your support!
Episode illustration by Eva Wahyuni for Unsplash+
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsShankar Vedantam· Host0:00
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, one of the central characters is the Cowardly Lion. He cuts a figure that is recognizable to us all. He longs to be brave, but when his courage is tested, he shrinks in fear.
Ranjay Gulati· Guest0:18
Look at that. Look at that. (laughs) I wanna go home.
Shankar Vedantam· Host0:26
The Cowardly Lion eventually discovers his true nature. When he is given a medal to honor his courage, it helps him see that he is in fact a lion, that he was brave all along. (instrumental music) The moral of the story is clear. The lion always had the capacity to be brave. He just didn't know it. The Wizard of Oz is a work of fiction, but every day we see the Cowardly Lion's dilemma in tales from real life, situations where people are called upon to be brave. Sometimes they rise to the occasion, but many fail to do so, often with disastrous consequences. Fear, of course, is not always a bad thing. Evolutionary biologists find that circuits in the brain that govern the fear response are ancient, but fear can keep us from living our best lives, reaching for our dreams, and upholding our values.
Unknown speaker1:27
(instrumental music)