Audacity to Pursue What We Like
If there's one resource indispensable for living a meaningful life, it's undoubtedly audacity. Audacity for what? Simply to pursue what we have in mind and believe will make us happy.
Many people live two parallel lives at once: a real one and an imaginary one.
The real one, the everyday life, is not bad, but deep down, they know it could be much better if they dared to do, choose, decide, begin, or end what occupies their thoughts.
The imaginary one is where they project desired scenarios. In this fantasy refuge, they imagine what their life would be like if they dared to take that giant leap or those small steps that seem so scary: moving abroad, changing jobs, separating, truly committing, starting something of their own, studying a career, practising it, turning the page to begin a new life somewhere else on the planet.
The bridge leading from a desired life to a real one is the courage to live the life given to us with a single goal: to be happy with our lives, no matter the cost. Indeed, building a meaningful life that satisfies us and makes us proud is not easy. It requires transcending fears and conditioning, putting in our best effort, exercising freedom, and, thereby, the courage to take responsibility for each decision, also leaving out what is not chosen when we opt for something, and daring to be authentic, running the risk of not pleasing others.
Being happy is a daily decision. The feeling of being comfortable with who we are does not happen by itself; it is a sensation that blossoms from inner work reflected in each external move we make to shorten the distance between real and imaginary life.
Audacity lies exactly on the same line at whose opposite end all our fears nest, both real and irrational. This means that if we dare to face our fears and keep moving forward despite everything, we are increasingly approaching the bravest zones of our personality. In this journey, irrational fears vanish, and real ones find us much stronger because, along the way, we have learned and become empowered by taking action.
We empower ourselves every time we take action, not every time we think about taking action.
Once, I heard a phrase that deeply resonated with me: “I am free because my greatest fear came true, and yet I am still alive.” The silver lining of facing fear is that we become stronger and more resilient. Most of the time, we conclude that what seemed so immense and difficult from afar can be broken down into manageable pieces when approached.
I am free because my greatest fear came true, and yet I am still alive
When we do not exercise daring to fulfil our deepest desires, life passes us by without truly living it because a lived life is chosen consciously, not repeated by inertia. Sometimes, we forget that we are children of impermanence. We spend our days thinking of ourselves as eternal, and from this fantasy, we postpone our desires... And life goes by so quickly! We cannot waste all our chances of missing the target; we need daring to aim precisely. And if it's hard to define what we want, have the audacity to work on ourselves and decide where we like to go.
I encourage you to ask yourself... if you were more aware of your death, wouldn't you dare to do more? Wouldn't you prioritise better? Wouldn't you lose your fear of making mistakes? People who have the courage to live the life they want stop fearing death. Those who don't deeply fear that death will find them still rehearsing how they want to live or forever training for that match they never dare to play.
Life must be consumed, even if it is founded on error, because through error one often reaches the truth
Carl Gustav Jung spoke these wise words, and they are a clear invitation to be bold, to venture, to permit ourselves to make mistakes. There are no ways to rid ourselves of the possibility of making mistakes because even by not deciding what scares us, we err in letting slip the possibility of feeling happier and more fulfilled. When this happens, we foster a kind of internal disloyalty with which it is challenging to live. Thus, what is easy at the beginning becomes more complex over time, and what is difficult becomes easy when we take the first steps hand in hand with daring.
What is easy at the beginning becomes more complex over time, and what is difficult becomes easy when we take the first steps hand in hand with daring.
Sometimes, we don't dare or back down because we think taking that step is a matter of life or death. However, we can decide again on what has been agreed as many times as we deem necessary. Whoever dared and failed is undoubtedly one step further in their evolution than those people who, from the comfort of their homes, think and rethink hundreds of times. And if we think sensibly, it often turns out that one regrets more what one did not do out of fear than what one did and did not work out. In the second case, there is accumulated experience; in the first, frustration condemns an empty and diminished life.
At the end of life, one tends to regret more what one did not do out of fear than what one did and did not turn out as expected.
Audacity has no age or expiration date. Those people who justify themselves by saying that "their train has passed" can go to the nearest station and see the available options when excuses give way to possibilities, and ideals are renounced to be stated in more realistic ways. Stagnating in resignation when our longing is possible breeds enormous pain for the inexperienced and anger for betraying ourselves.
Audacity can be compared to jumping into a pool when one knows the water is cold; it's not the recklessness of jumping without knowing if there's water but the capacity to endure that first shocking sensation destabilising a previous state of balance.
People who dare are willing to endure a moment of instability because they bet on superior and more gratifying stability.
Audacity towards life is trained and enhanced every time we dare to do what we did not before. Conquering the small prepares us for proposing more challenging objectives for which we need courage. Daring is that vital impulse that energises us to make our way and overcome difficulties, mobilises internal resources unknown to ourselves and that appear just when we need them most—why? Because that bold movement awakens them from the lethargy in which they were to put them at the disposal of a life that wants to be lived. When we think something will be complicated, we forget that along the way, solutions, skills, possibilities, and people will appear that make that transit easier.
Daring people develop a realistic optimism that protects them from the human tendency to think of the worst possible scenario.
What attitudes allow us to awaken our audacity?
- Question and ask yourself, why not?
Those who do not question their reality end up acclimatizing to it, and fall asleep to their established conditioning. Asking yourself questions, looking at the same thing from different perspectives, not always being complacent, encouraging yourself to think differently, enables you to think about possibilities that were not contemplated before.
- Make decisions when uncertainty is great.
Uncertainty is the space where fears abound, and insecurity dominates. In this situation, daring to make the first decision saves us from drowning in a sea of doubts. The right decision is often more about deciding than getting it right. That first bold move makes us feel that we have taken the reins of our life.
- Take full responsibility for how you choose to live.
Make a pact of honesty with yourself where excuses and justifications do not have the power to envelop you. When we don't go after what we want many times (not always) it is not a real limitation but rather the decision to prioritize other things that also matter to us. Recognizing it puts the problem but also the solution in your hands.
- Learn to look beyond what you have to face here and now.
Behind daring, a great reward awaits. Thinking about the feeling of gratification and satisfaction we will feel when we conquer what scares us so much is a great motivation to take action.
We are not born with psychological audacity; we come into this world feeling vulnerable and full of fears that initially help us survive. Audacity results from maturation and inner work that encourages us to live a meaningful life and not limit ourselves to the primitive desire to survive.
It's not pride to leave this world more armoured than expanded. We are here to unfold, dare, and discover all the potential within us. To conquer this purpose, we need the audacity and daring to live a life chosen from absolute responsibility and full awareness that our life is ours and that we have the decision over it.
I invite you to ask yourself, what am I doing today, no matter how small, to develop audacity and get closer to the life I want to live?