epistemic status: ongoing
The last few days I have been journalling about Courage. Especially the type of Courage that links to doing the right thing in terms of habits: Embrace the [suck/grind/graft/whatever].
On days I would journal about Courage, it was pretty easy to stick to the habits, resist impulse. Even finding the courage to redesign environments to avoid having to resist anything in the first place. Whereas days without journalling about Courage, things slipped. This led me to contemplate, and now write, about the strong motivational power of Big Courage and its twin, Small Courage.
For now, Big Courage is to mean explicit acts of heroism, bravery, fear facing. While Small Courage is not anything less or inferior (these adjectives are not value claims) as it is representative of the everyday choices to do the right thing.
Days where I journaled about Courage increased salience of the idea, often defaulting to Big Courage. Nonetheless, Small Courage was very much available and transmutable to my finding the days 1%. On days without, this salience declined, and therefore it became harder to manifest Small Courage in moments.
This begs the question, how are Big Courage and Small Courage related? So far, the salience of one behoves the manifestation of the other. Yet not vice-versa.