Social Courage means to be unapologetically true to yourself in the face of social settings. We all know that adolescents and teenagers get caught up in something called peer pressure. What is peer pressure? In adolescence, in their environment and their friends are doing something or saying something that might not sit true to them but they lack the social courage to say something because they don’t want to be judged, they don’t want to be perceived as weak or different or an outcast, so they just swallow their authenticity, just so they can blend in with the environment. Now I get when that happens with adolescence, I really do – it’s one of the hardest periods of life. But as an adult in the face of society if you don’t stay true to who you really are, then who are you really?
Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.
If around you people are doing things, saying things in society that doesn’t sit well with you and you just swallow your authenticity and swallow who and what you are, because you don’t want to ruffle the feathers, or you don’t want to be a person that’s swimming against the grain, and that moment you lost yourself. And the important part here is to know this – that social courage is something that is learned, is developed, and the more you are yourself in various settings the more power you’re going to be, to be able to actually accomplish stuff.
Human Beings Wear Different Hats
I have this analogy that I really love and it’s this – that all of us human beings wear different hats. You might wear a different hat around your friends, or a different hat around your family, or different hat around your spouse, or a different hat at work. We do different roles, we talk a little different, we act a little different, we engage a little differently, but it’s important to remember this. All of those hats have to go on the same head. All of those hats, no matter who you are with or where you are at, you must stay true to yourself. If you lose your character and you lose your essence and your being because of the environment it’s not the environment’s fault. It’s yours social courage. It’s something we all got to practice.
Social Courage to Stand Up Against Stigmatized People
When it comes down to society and all the stigmas they have on mental health and mental illness, if you’re around people that are saying things that are derogatory to addicts or what I call a person experiencing addictions, if you’re hearing things that are derogatory to people that are crazy, which I call a human being experiencing challenges with their mental health, if you’re around people that society calls weak and soft, what I call is someone that’s endured and experience a lot of pain and trauma in their life, and you don’t say something or you don’t do something when you’re around people talking negative things about the homeless population for God’s sakes, people that have lost it all, that everyone in their life has given up to them, and people talk to them as if they’re trash or dogs, and you don’t say nothing, it ain’t their fault.
You gotta look at yourself in the mirror and say, how come I didn’t stand up for these human beings? How come, in the face of social pressure, I just folded? So social courage is something that’s so important I hope all of you tap into it there.
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