Can you build Character through Courage?

[Innersky]

Do circumstances in your life contribute to the courage that helps shape your character?

[ButterflyWoman]

Of course. How else would character be formed?

[Bengal Blue]

all your past experiences, and your reflections upon them, help you to shape the person you want to become. ask any experienced business manager, for example. if they're conscientious about becoming a better boss, they try to learn from past failures and successes in order to help them make better choices, including taking more courageous stances, in the future.

[RonSouther]

Originally Posted by Innersky

Do circumstances in your life contribute to the courage that helps shape your character?

Building "character" is "ego development". The ego has no courage. It takes courage to stop hiding behind ego and just be yourself.

You don't need "character", you need authenticity. Society doesn't support authentic people because authentic people don't support the egos of others...they simply call it like they see it. So that requires courage to be true. Your true self is not a coward but your ego is!

[Moriarty]

Originally Posted by Innersky

Do circumstances in your life contribute to the courage that helps shape your character?

I'm going to put a twist on that. I reckon our character creates the circumstances that embellish and display our true being.

[RonSouther]

We have good "character" if we make ourselves live according to the social conscience drilled into us since we were young.

"Character is who you are when no one is looking" That's nonsense. That speaks to the double lives we all lead....the true being inside self vs. the personality we display outside.

No one is allowed to be true....true people get crucified by the those with a vested interest in having an image or power, which is nearly everyone. Truth tellers don't respect the facades we create to hide behind.

We have bad character when we don't live to social norms when no one is looking.

Character is a particular type of personality that is expected of you to be maintained on your own. You're to police yourself when no one is looking.

Where in society are we encourage to be authentically true to self? Nowhere. Society is a fiction and creates fictions in us called conditionings, mental habitual programs of behaviors, attitudes and actions.

Not for me. I can't realize the joy that is me if I'm merely a programmed robot citizen. It's the tension of not being self, of fighting self, that drives us to addictions and to all the evil manifestations of trying to escape those tensions.

[neilpage]

Originally Posted by Innersky

Do circumstances in your life contribute to the courage that helps shape your character?

Absolutely!

If I was afraid of drowning and I happen to be in a boat and it was about to sink... there is only 2 options.

1- Sit and watch I as go down with boat
or
2-Jump out of the boat and try to swim to prevent drowning.

Choosing to overcome the sensation of fear is courage.