Muse International Core Value: Courage

In life, you will be tested daily. Build your mental, physical, and spiritual strength, and there is little you cannot overcome.

Courage is a Muscle - Flex it

Courage is often mistaken for a lightning bolt — a sudden surge of strength that

appears when danger strikes. But sustainable courage behaves more like a muscle. It builds slowly, through repetition. It strengthens with use, weakens with neglect, and responds best to practice.

Every day, life offers small weights to lift: an uncomfortable truth, a difficult decision, a boundary that needs protection, a dream that feels too fragile to voice. Each choice to act, to speak, or to stay open when it would be easier to close off, becomes a quiet form of training. Over time, these repetitions create endurance — not just physical or mental, but emotional and spiritual.

Courage is more than absence of fear. As Nelson Mandela famously said:

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” 

When you meet fear or uncertainty, the instinct is to brace or retreat. But the

courageous response begins with listening — not outwardly, but inwardly. The gut, the breath, the pulse — they signal when something matters.

Like a muscle, courage grows through tension and recovery. The moment of fear or doubt is the strain — the tear that challenges your limits. The moment after — when you breathe, reflect, and decide to move forward anyway — is the repair that makes you stronger. Courage expands each time you return to what once felt impossible and discover that you can bear it after all.

Flexing this muscle doesn’t always look heroic. Sometimes it looks like asking for

help. Sometimes it’s staying soft in conflict. Sometimes it’s changing your mind in

public because your heart has learned something new. Those moments aren’t signs of weakness — they are proof of growth. They show that your inner strength is flexible, responsive, alive.

Modern psychology defines courage as taking action despite fear, when a goal or

value demands it.  It is a deliberate act, informed by reflection, and anchored in

meaning.  It is no surprise that curiosity and courage are like mirrored identical

twins— both inextricably bonded to one another and yet independent at their core.

When courage and curiosity become a practice instead of a performance, life feels

different. You begin to see challenge not as punishment, but as opportunity. You

recognize fear as a signal, not a stop sign. You start to trust that whatever happens, you can meet it — maybe not easily, but fully.

Theodore Roosevelt, in his famous “Man in the Arena” passage, observed:

“It is not the critic who counts … The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena … who errs, who comes short again and again … who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

And like any muscle, courage remembers. Every act of bravery, every instance of

showing up when you wanted to disappear, becomes stored strength for the next

test. Over time, that strength changes your posture — not just how you stand in the world, but how you stand within yourself.

Carry grace through life’s fiercest storms — and let it be a reminder that courage is

not the absence of fear, but the strength to face each day with an open heart. What small act of courage can you practice today? Not to prove your strength — but to remind yourself that it’s already there.

Tip: Start small— take a few breaths, meaningfully inhale/exhale and give yourself

20 seconds of courage to step (back) into the arena.