Simplify Courage: These Eight Seconds Will Change Your Life

How to grow courage in everything you do by practicing one simple technique

August Birch
6 min readApr 11, 2019
True Courage: These 8 Seconds of Discomfort Will Change Your Life

Bravery has kicked my ass since I was little. I’ve got no issues with physical bravery (running races, martial arts, rappelling off cliffs, roller coasters), but social and psychological bravery has always troubled me.

I don’t like confrontation. Period.

If there’s a way over, under, or around a confrontation I’ll take it. It’s not healthy. I know I should face my fears, but my fight-or-flight wins almost every time. I don’t even like making uncomfortable phone calls, let-alone deal with something squirmy in person.

Recently, I’ve been working on a whole-self makeover. I look in the mirror and haven’t been happy with the guy in the reflection for awhile. I found David Goggin’s book Can’t Hurt Me, and everything changed.

Inside the book, Goggins explains if we want to improve ourselves, we’ve got to be honest about what’s wrong and what needs to change. Then he suggests we create an alter-ego, or superhero version of ourselves and start living as that person (the one who already possesses the characteristics we want).

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August Birch

Blue-Collar Marketing Mentor for Writers and Creators | Get a copy of my free email strategy book, the Big 100 here: https://augustbirch.com/big100