Confidence is complete trust.  It comes from the Latin com, meaning complete and fidere, meaning to trust.

Self-confidence means full belief and trust in your own abilities.  No doubts.  No uncertainties.  No wavering.  No needing to know what anyone else thinks.  Certainty.

Courage is a quality of mind that enables you to encounter danger or difficulty with firmness, without depression of your spirits, with strength.  It’s bravery in the face of danger. Danger means you’re at real risk of harm or injury, you’re removing yourself from protection or shelter, you’re exposing yourself, you very possibly could get seriously hurt.  A difficulty, very simply, is something that’s hard.  It’s not easy.  It’s hard.

Courage came from the Latin word cor which meant heart, the innermost part of our body that keeps us alive.

So, what’s the difference between the two?

Courage is way beyond confidence.  It’s a staying true to your heart in the face of danger, difficulty, doubt, uncertainty, criticism.

To have courage, you first have to know what is in your heart.  You have to know yourself, who you really are.

Many people live lives that don’t require courage.  Lives that embrace security, dodge difficulty, lives devoted to predictable outcomes, dedicated to approval and group agreement.

Lack of courage in personal relationships creates married couples who go out to dinner and have nothing to say to each other.

Large corporations preach confidence but discourage courage.

Entrepreneurs manufacture courage as their first product and nurture their dreams with it.

We admire courage possibly more than any other human trait, much more than we admire confidence.

I know many confident people.  Not so many who have courage.

That’s why I help people develop it.  I take them beyond the confidence they’re seeking and help them cross into the realm of living, and fully expressing, the courage of their convictions.  They’re perfectly capable of it; they just need a helping hand to bring it out.

A life of courage is much greater than a life of confidence.  The rewards have greater power.  The meaning you create is more worthy.  You are bigger.

Your dreams require courage.  Your imagination feeds on it.

For everyone, it awaits within, it is the ever-beating heart of our character.

Love,

Ingrid