The Science of Courage

Anyone who tells you that they don’t get scared from time to time is not telling you the whole truth. The truth is there is no courage without fear.

What is fear?

Fear exists for an evolutionary reason. Fear protects us from danger. It is called the ‘fight or flight’ response in the body. As hunter gatherers, early humans would have had to venture out to find food, and so were under serious physical threat all the time from bears, lions, tigers and leopards that wanted to eat them. The ‘fight or flight’ response exists in our body as a reaction to this genuine threats. If an early human was to encounter a bear, the amygdala would tell the adrenal gland to release the stress hormone, adrenaline, all over the body. This trigger is known as the ‘fight or flight’ response. This intense injection of adrenaline increases our heart rate, our breathing, makes our sight and hearing become more focused, and prepares our muscles for action. When we are operating from the amygdala, we react quickly, and decide if we want to either stay and fight for our life or to run for our life.

The amygdala is the part of our brain that is responsible for our emotions. It is tucked inside the center of our brain and is the most primitive part of our brain. Our amygdala protecting us was very useful when we lived in prehistoric times but nowadays we are unlikely to encounter a lion that wants to eat us. This is part of our physiology that still exists but is not really relevant to where humans are at right now. Nowadays we believe threats to be, fear of change, fear of uncertainty, fear of failure or rejection. All these things that exist now in our society can trigger the ‘fight or flight’ respons