Where Courage Lives, Life Awakens — Beneath The Surface
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You're not waiting for more clarity. You're waiting for more courage. This episode is a deep dive into one of the most essential and misunderstood capacities we can build: courage. Now, we're not talking about surface-level performative bravery. We're going beneath the surface to explore the kind of courage that doesn't wait for certainty, the kind that lives in the unseen moments, the kind that changes you from the inside out.

Now on this episode, we will explore why courage requires fear and why that's a good thing. We'll also explore how your most courageous acts might never be seen by anyone else. We'll talk about what it means to live with your heart on the line and how a single moment of truth can shift the entire trajectory of your life.

And finally, we will discuss why real growth demands that you enter the unknown and how not to avoid it. This is an invitation to finally stop performing for safety and start living with your heart fully awake. Welcome to Beneath the Surface. I'm Sean Delaney. This series is a space where I bring you the ideas I'm sitting with most, the

the ones I can't let go of, the ones I return to again and again in my own life, and the ones that show up constantly in the conversations behind closed doors with high performers, creatives, leaders, and people who are on the path like you, not just to do more, but to feel more alive while doing it. These episodes aren't about giving you another strategy or chasing another version of success. They're about going a level deeper, getting quiet enough to hear what's underneath the noise, and remembering what actually matters

So if you're looking for a place to slow down, think deeply, and reconnect to the part of you that most of the world forgets to speak to, you're in the right place. Let's begin. Let's go beneath the surface. May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love, to postpone my dream no longer, but do at last what I came here for, and waste my heart on fear no more.

This quote by John O'Donoghue, I feel sets the tempo and begins our descent beneath the surface. Now there's this question I've sat with for years, and it's a question that I've just returned to again and again. And I've started to use as a compass that navigates me towards what's real and what's worth doing in my life. Now the question is this,

What are the qualities, the attributes, the inner capacities that are so foundational that they are worth spending your life building? I'll say that again. What are the qualities, the attributes, the inner capacities that are so foundational that they're worth spending your life building?

One of those is courage. And that's what we're exploring today. Now, when I say courage, I don't mean the surface level, often glamorized Hollywood version of courage. We're not talking about false courage, which doesn't have fear. Not the kind that shows up only in the big moments and definitely not the ego fueled kind that are built on dominance.

We're talking about the real kind of courage, the courage to speak your truth even when your voice shakes, right? The courage to show who you really are and not hide behind a mask. The courage to begin again when no one's watching and you're at the bottom of the mountain. Because here is the wild truth. A shift in your entire life's trajectory can come from a single moment of courage. Think about that.

A shift in your entire life's trajectory can come from a single moment of courage.

One moment where you choose to step in instead of holding back. One breath where you move toward the unknown instead of running away from it. That's all it takes. One single heartbeat of courage to set the infinite wheels of change in motion. Think about how incredible that is. One single heartbeat, one moment of courage can shift the entire trajectory of your life. And what ends up happening for most of us is we miss those moments.

They'd walk past us. We walk past the doorways all the time. And instead, we stay inside this safe shell of regret. Not because we're weak,

but because we've taught ourselves to protect ourselves, to not open ourselves. So this episode, I hope, becomes a threshold crossing for you. From the old way of viewing courage to a deep dive into what courage really looks like in the moments that can actually shape us. The kind that doesn't wait for certainty. The kind where you don't need to ask someone else for permission. The kind that meets life with eyes open and an undefended heart.

heart because what if everything you long for, that freedom, that love, that aliveness is waiting just on the other side of a courageous moment you haven't taken yet. If there's one thing I really want to make clear though,

is that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage requires fear. Where there's no fear, there's no courage. And we've been taught to admire courage in the big dramatic moments, right? Those moments that seem like people don't experience fear, someone charging in a battle, the person who quits the job, the person who starts the next business, who gives the huge speech. But the truth is, the truth underneath all of those

is that in order to have courage, you first have to feel fear. And the most courageous moments of your life might never be seen. They might not even look heroic. They might not look impressive. They might even look like doing nothing, like not picking up the bottle when the hard news hits. Maybe it's not firing off that immature reactive tech. Maybe it's actually reaching out when pride says, phew.

No, just stay quiet. Or maybe it's telling the truth when it would be easier to lie. These moments are so small that they often go unnoticed, but these moments are the true tests of courage because they happen in silence, in solitude when no one is watching. No one's clapping. No one's awarding you or rewarding you. And yet these little moments are what shape us. They're the moments where something deeper gets decided. And that deeper thing that gets decided is this. Who am I going to be in this?

In this moment, who am I going to be? Am I going to choose what's comfortable and what protects me? Or am I going to choose the harder choice, the one that challenges me and sets me free?

bottle, the silence, the lie, the scrolling, the business, they all feel and are easier. They're the familiar paths, right? There are coping mechanisms, there are shields, but courage does not take the easier path. Courage is the part of you that stays eye to eye with discomfort and chooses not to look away. Let me say that again. Courage, it's that part of you that stays eye to eye with discomfort and chooses not to look away. Not because you feel fearless, but

but because you've made a sacred pact with yourself not to no longer allow fear to stop you. Fear is now a signal. It is no longer the stop sign. It is the entryway, that signal that says that what you're facing matters, that what's on the other side is worth it. It's the signal that you're stepping outside the version of you that's been playing small for too many years.

And here's a paradox. Fear is a doorway. Fear is a portal. Fear is a threshold. Courage is choosing to walk through it. That's what I want to invite you to do in this episode, to stop waiting until fear goes away. That will not happen. What I want you to do is start realizing that the presence of fear is an invitation itself.

Because if you want to live a meaningful life, a purposeful life, an enriching life, you will have to disappoint comfort in order to step into the next moment fully. So the question becomes, where are you being invited into courage right now in your life? Where are you being invited into courage right now in your own life?

Is it that conversation you've been avoiding? Is it the pattern you've been trying to break? Or is it that truth you've just been too afraid to admit, even to yourself? Don't skip over these moments. They are the birthplace of your transformation. As Anis Nin wrote, life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Don't miss the moments or shrink your life. Don't reach for that coping mechanism when the discomfort hits. Put down the phone, put down the bottle, put down the numbing and face it and begin to give your life its pulse back. Now, let me expand on this pulse. All right. So the root of the word courage is actually core, which come from the Latin word for heart.

And what does your heart do? It pumps life. It circulates vitality to every part of your body. It keeps you alive. That is how I see courage. It's your heart's pumping power, but not just your body. Courage is pumping life to your dreams, to your values, to your truth. Without it, there's no pulse, no life in the life you could live.

Makes me think of the great line by Van Gogh. He said, what would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Man, that's a simple question, but man, that stops you in your tracks. It's like, oh shit, Van Gogh. Was this free ear or after ear? Because if you really want to live a meaningful life, if you want to create, if you want to serve, if you want to love deeply, you're going to need courage.

courage to go first, courage to speak the truth, try again to be seen, to risk failure, all of this, all of this, all of the things you want in life, courage is required. It's not optional on the path in a meaningful life. It's the gate. It's the entry point to everything deeper. So I want you thinking about your own life. And to do that, I'll actually speak about my own. And I think yours might mirror mine. The greatest joys of my life, every single one of them,

has come downstream of courage. Let that sink in. The greatest joys of my life, every single one of them, has come downstream of courage. And every time I had to risk something, my comfort, my image, my certainty, my heart, that is the price of aliveness, right? I had to risk being rejected to ask my girlfriend to marry me. I had to risk looking like an idiot and a beginner anytime I started a new business or this podcast.

Having kids. What did I risk? I risked losing comfort and freedom. And they created the greatest joys in my life. Now this is one of the greatest tragedies I see. And that is the unlived life and courage. Courage is your key to living fully awake and fully engaged life.

Makes me think of the playwright Samuel Johnson. He wrote, courage is the greatest of all virtues because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others. Think about that. Without courage, your kindness is going to stay hidden. Your wisdom, silent. Your creativity is locked away.

This also makes me think of the Visa founder, Dee Hock, a brilliant thinker who passed away a few years ago. He said, for every difficult destination, there are thousands who stand aside and point the way for one, one with courage and capacity to go before and show the way. Think about just how valuable courage is.

Cervantes said it. He said, "He who loses wealth loses much. He who loses a friend loses more. But he who loses courage loses all." Whoa. "He who loses courage

Loses all. There is a reason I'm spending so much time and creating the entire episode on courage. And it's this. You don't want tools that work in only one situation. You want to learn the deep underlying principles that make every tool work. Those surface level tactics, the trimming of the branches on a tree. Sure.

They might work occasionally and they clean the tree up. But when you really want to transform that tree, when you want real growth, when you want real change in your life, where do you go?

You've got to get to the roots. And courage is one of the deepest roots there is because without it, nothing strong is going to grow. But with it, with courage, every branch of your life, your performance, your leadership, your relationships, your creativity, your love has the space and the strength to thrive. Tactics might help you win in the moment, but principles, they shape how you show up in every single moment. And courage, that's a principle worth building a life on.

I'll pause there and just let you breathe because I need to breathe in that. So we've explored courage, courage as the pulse of a meaningful life, as the root system, right, that helps everything thrive and grow. But now I want to bring it even closer, more intimate, more human, more beneath the surface. And no one captures this more beautifully than poet David White. This is what he wrote.

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything, except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply, and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. I'll read this again. Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life.

To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. Let that settle in for a second. Those lines stop me every time because it flips so much of what we've been told. We're used to thinking about courage as loud.

as bold action, you know, reaching the peak of the mountain, but White completely flips it in a way only he can. He says, courage is not how far we've climbed, but how deeply we've participated with life, with our truth, with ourselves. Not about what you did, but how real you were while doing it. I fucking love that.

It's one thing to do hard things because it's on your to-do list or it's going to get you public recognition. It is a whole other thing to let your heart be involved, right? To open up, to go in unarmored, exposed. Courage is when your heart is on the line. It reminds me of the great line by Anne Sexton. She says, put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. And what I find so powerful is

in Sexton and White's lines here about courage isn't necessarily external at all. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything.

This is a massive shift in the world that's obsessed with hustling and proving and likes. It's not always about leaving the job, launching the business, posting that video, making that speech. All of these, yes, they can be forms of courage. But what White says, real courage happens before any of that. It happens in the quiet, in the dark, in the silence, in the solitude, in that moment when you finally admit to yourself, this matters to me.

When you've stopped pretending that I'm fine. When you allow yourself to feel what you've been avoiding. Courage is to make conscious what you already feel deeply. And here's the hard part, and also such beautiful writing. To live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. Because once you let yourself feel deeply what you know is true on the inside, you can't unsee it. And maybe that brings to the surface, you know, that relationship,

that you realize isn't right anymore, or that career that doesn't align, all of a sudden, you start facing these real challenging elements in life. And the moment you acknowledge those truths, your life starts to move. And that movement often brings pain, grief, fear, uncertainty. That's the price of being real.

When White says that's the real shape of courage, it's not absence of fear, it's feeling the fear and staying in the game, still showing up, still loving, still trying, not giving up on life, no matter what.

To me, this is where we really start to see high performance and deep living actually meet. Because when you lead, when you create, you speak, you serve, you live from truth in spite of fear and vulnerability and risk, that's when your life has weight. That's when you become someone people gravitate towards. And that's the kind of person I want to be. Not someone who looks brave,

but someone who is brave because I'm participating fully, because I'm not numbing, I'm not avoiding, I'm not escaping the parts of life that scare me. That's what courage looks like to me now. And that's the type of courage I think you're looking forward to. Not the next leap, but the next honest moment. The next time you don't turn away from what you feel, because that's how we live a life that's not just productive.

but fully participated in. That's courage, which brings me into thinking about Brene Brown. She is one of the most deeply researched people on this topic. And a line that she has that I just love, she says, you can't have courage without vulnerability. You can't have courage without vulnerability because if there's no risk, there's no uncertainty, there's no emotional pressure.

then it's not courage. It's known. It's comfortable. Real courage requires vulnerability. And Brown, she defines vulnerability like this, the willingness to show up and be seen when you can't control the outcome. And that's going to be where most of us pull back. We want to control. We want to know. And so all of a sudden, we start to realize that, whew, I thought I was tough.

But look what I'm doing. I'm always trying to control. I want to know what's happening. So vulnerability is not soft. Let me go into one of the favorite examples of how vulnerability shows up. So I heard Brene Brown tell this story. And she said she was out at Fort Bragg working with the special forces. And she asked this really simple question. She said, if vulnerability is uncertainty, risk,

and emotional exposure, give me a single example of courage in your life on the battlefield or off the field with troops or other soldiers. Give me a single example of courage that you've witnessed or experienced yourself that didn't involve vulnerability, that didn't involve uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. And Brene said everyone just sort of sat there. And then finally, this one veteran stands up and he goes, ma'am, there's no courage without vulnerability.

I did three tours of duty. There is no courage without vulnerability. Let that sit in for a second.

Courage is the willingness to put yourself out there when you can't control how it's going to go. If you already know how it ends, if the outcome is guaranteed, that is not courage. And here's one of the trickiest paradoxes that I see again and again, but I also need to take some ownership. This shows up for me so often, shows up in elite leaders, in athletes, in high performers, so

We often try to control everything, you know, on the field, off the field, in our team, and from the outside. It ends up looking like confidence. It looks like bravery. It looks like someone who's got it all under control. But underneath that, underneath the need to control like that, what is it? It's fragility. Because what we're really doing is protecting ourselves from outcomes we don't want to face.

We say we're strong, but only if things go our way. But true courage, the kind we're talking about, says this, I'm willing to show up even when I can't control the outcome, even when it might not go how I hope, even if I might get hurt. And in this space, this beautiful space is where we meet our edge. And that requires vulnerability to enter the room. I said Brene was one of the most researched people here.

She and her team have gathered more than 400,000 data points studying courage. And you know what they found? Zero evidence, not a single shred that vulnerability is a weakness. In fact, she says the opposite is true. Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage. That line hits me every time. Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage because most of us, we were taught the opposite.

We were raised to believe that vulnerability is soft. But here's the thing, if you want to live fully, if you want to perform at your highest, you're going to have to be vulnerable. And I'll be honest, for me, vulnerability, that might be the hardest thing. It's easier to work, to push, to achieve, but to open yourself up, to risk not being enough, to saying something emotionally, saying I'm wrong instead of being right, this, this, for many of us, especially men, is the real work. But the thing is, and that we must remember,

vulnerability isn't nearly as scary as something else. Getting to the end of your life and asking, what if I had just freaking shown up? Remember a few episodes ago, we talked about Bonnie Ware, the power of care nurse, who wrote the great book, The Five Regrets to Dying, who helped thousands of people and interviewed them at the end of their lives, what their greatest regrets were. And the number one was, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself.

That's the cost of avoiding vulnerability So if you're gonna walk this path if you're gonna live if you're gonna lead and love with your whole heart then courage is required Vulnerability is required because those the moments you'll look back and say that's when I actually lived That's when I felt my pulse and here's one of the beautiful things about all this Courage doesn't just change you it changes the people around you

I know there's a lot of leaders listening right now. There's a lot of coaches. There's a lot of parents. Let this section settle in. Anytime we witness someone living with real courage, something stirs in us, right? Our own sense of possibility. What does it do? It begins to expand. We've got those invisible walls we've built around what's real or what's safe. All of a sudden,

they start dissolving because courage is freaking contagious. Show me anyone who's living it and I'll show you someone who pulls others forward. And I'm not talking about force. I'm talking about by example. There is a gravity to the courageous people in life. Courageous people stretch the invisible edges of our lives and I freaking love those people. You know, they widen that circle that we thought we had to live inside.

That's why models, that's why mentors, that's why coaches, teachers are so important. Not because they give us answers, but because they help us remember what's possible. They remind us that there is a version of ourselves that we've sensed, we feel deeply internally, but maybe we forgot to believe in. And they help us believe again. The beautiful thing about courage is this. It doesn't care how many times that you've shrunk,

that you've gone into the fear, you've numbed yourself. It doesn't care how long you've believed the lie that you're fixed, that you're limited, that you're not enough. Courage doesn't wait for some perfect track record. It only needs one moment, one moment of truth, one freaking breath where you say yes to something deeper. And in that breath, the infinite begins to move. Everything changes. Not because fear is gone. We talked about this in the beginning. Not because fear is gone, but because you've stopped finally living.

letting fear lead you. The most life-altering thing about courage is this. It's always available right now in every moment.

Not later, not when you've healed more or you've achieved more or you finally feel ready. Courage is available right freaking now. In a single act of daring, I don't care how small it is, you fracture the illusion that you're bound to who you've been. You rewrite the story and these are not stories written in words. They are truth in motion that can never be unlearned. So in doing so,

When you show up with courage in a single moment, you awaken a force, a force that has no memory of your past limitation, only the recognition of what's present, the potential that's present right now. Courage creates a new reality for you. Every single breath you choose it. Let me say it again. Courage creates a new reality with every breath you choose it. And that moment, it does not just change you.

it ripples outward, bending the arc of your entire life. One single moment, one decision, the entire arc of your life can be bent. Now here's another one of the paradoxes, and these episodes always have paradoxes in them. And this is one most of us never see when we're in it. The more we resist problems, the less courage and wisdom we have. Think about that. The more we resist problems, the less courage and wisdom we have.

And the more problems we create, it's a loop. It's a self-fulfilling cycle because when we avoid difficulty, we avoid the very conditions that help us grow. So we temporarily avoid discomfort, but in doing so, we also avoid the developing of our inner tools that would help us grow past this limitation. So the problems don't go away. They end up multiplying. They deepen.

And all of a sudden, what happens? The more of those that we've resisted, they add up and they start to feel permanent. Not because these problems are permanent, but because we haven't evolved into the version of ourselves who can actually meet the problems we are bound to face. Avoidance does not keep life smooth. It keeps you small. And the smaller we get, the more we feel overwhelmed by life. So ironically, what we wanted to do, we wanted to resist these things and resist our edges and

and they end up defining us more. But the moment you stop running, the moment you finally face the thing you've been avoiding, that trajectory gets changed again. You don't develop courage by waiting for it. You grow by walking into the thing you thought you can't handle and staying there. That's where wisdom comes. That's where your life expands. So the question isn't, can I avoid this? The better question is, what would be possible if I stopped avoiding this? Because the real problem isn't the problem.

It's your refusal to become the person who can meet it. The key is finding the problems and challenges worth facing and going into them. Because it's in our encounters with our edges we come to know ourselves more deeply. But where do your edges live? Where does wisdom live? Where does the liveness live? Where does it all live? Well, it lives in the unknown. The unknown is where we learn. It's where life teaches us. This is where life is lived. In the unknown.

that place we try to avoid with everything we can. But the interesting thing is, nothing is exciting when you know the outcome. It's one of the paradoxes of the unknown. We fear it and yearn for it simultaneously. And here, as Teresa Avula said, to have courage for whatever comes in life, everything lies in that. Let me say that again. To have courage for whatever comes in life, everything lies in that.

Whatever comes in life, don't fight it. Don't wish it to be different. Just know that you have the courage to face whatever comes. And this spirit of courage will transform your life. Not because you'll always know what to do, but because you'll stop needing to know in order to begin. And this unknown, this needing to know, it's really sad how we've lost our reverence and appreciation for the unknown over the years. Because all of the most beautiful things in life, where do they come from?

The unknown. Love. Art. Laughter. Discovery. Purpose. Wonder. All of them.

birthed in the unknown. But most people today, they want perfect clarity before acting. They want the next five years mapped out before taking a single step. They want certainty. They want guarantees, no risk. But life doesn't work like that. The soul doesn't work like that. If you wait for your fear to leave, if you wait for total clarity, if you wait for the path perfectly laid out, you are going to be waiting forever. And the real tragedy, you'll end up circling an unlived life.

So here's the invitation. Don't try to control the unknown. Enter it, not recklessly, but wholeheartedly, courageously, with eyes wide open, with your heart awake, because the unknown isn't your enemy. It is where life begins. And as my dear friend and confidant Thomas Castle said, the unknown is the greatest gift. And maybe that's the truth beneath all of this. That the version of you you're becoming, the life you can live, that peace, that power, that privilege,

that presence that we all yearn for and crave for is not above you or ahead of you. It's waiting for you to enter in the next moment with courage. This is the work, this is the way, and this is the life that waits for you beneath the surface. If this episode resonated with you, if it stirred something, opened something up, or even challenged something, I'd love to hear about it.

You can connect with me directly at whatgotyouthere.com. That's where you'll find my writing, my books, more about my executive coaching work I do with the people who want to live and lead from a deeper place. And if this episode made you think of someone, a friend, a teammate, a partner, someone who's been into grind and might need to hear this, send it to them.

Because sometimes all it takes is a single conversation to shift the direction we're heading in. Again, it's whatgotyouthere.com. You can reach out, learn more, or just say hi. I always love hearing from people walking this path. Thanks for listening, and until next time.