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cerebrospinal fluid nourishes the developing nervous system. He also vowed to look for the joy in everything,
including failure, as this could help him learn about his research and himself.
One thing that can hold joy back is a person's concentration on avoiding failure rather than their looking
forward to doing something well. 'Focusing on being safe might get in the way of your reaching
your goals,'
explains Kashdan. For example, are you hoping to get through a business lunch without embarrassing yourself,
or are you thinking about how fascinating the conversation might be?
H
Usually, we think of courage in physical terms but ordinary life demands s omething else. For marketing
executive
Kenneth Pedeleose, it meant speaking out against something he thought was ethically wrong. The
new manager was intimidating staff so Pedeleose carefully recorded each instance of bullying
and eventually took the evidence to a senior director, knowing his own job security would be
threatened. Eventually the manager was the one to go. According to Cynthia Pury, a psychologist at Clemson
University, Pedeleose's story proves the point that courage is
not motivated by fearlessness, but by moral
obligation. Pury also believes that people can acquire courage. Many of her students said that faced with a
risky situation, they first tried to calm themselves down, then looked for a way to mitigate the danger, just as
Pedeleose did by documenting his allegations.
Over the
long term, picking up a new character trait may help you move toward being the person you want to
be. And in the short term, the effort itself could be surprisingly rewarding, a kind of internal adventure.
