Page 139 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

That was how the book began. It was a novel I was reading not long after I

had graduated from high school, and those first words staggered me. I remember
staring at those words, unable to continue reading, I was so stunned. Never had a
book connected with me so quickly. I was a coward, too. I just never admitted it
so openly as did the author of A Walk with Love and Death. The author was
Hans Koning, and the book was a medieval love story later made into a movie
by John Huston, but none of that mattered. What mattered was that there was
another coward on the planet other than me. Even if he was fictional, the words
were real enough for me.

My self-image at the time I read that book was based on my fears and
nothing else. In my mind, I was truly a coward. And if someone were to tell me
I’d done something brave, I’d think they were wrong somehow. Or that they
didn’t know how easy that thing was.

Where did this self-image come from? I don’t blame my parents, because I
believe we create our own pictures of ourselves, and I had a choice whether to
stick with this self-image or not. Although I don’t blame my parents, I can trace
where I got the idea of my being a coward to their encouragement.

My mother, too, was afraid of everything. She lived to the age of 66 without
ever having made a left turn in traffic; she was so afraid of oncoming traffic.
(She always knew how to make a looping series of right turns to get where she
was going.) She consoled me and told me that I was just like her. A coward, I
thought. She was very loving and empathetic about it, but my self-image became
unshakable. However, my mother said she’d try to be there to help me do the
many things she knew I wouldn’t be able to do.

I met my father when I was two and a half years old. He was a war hero,
home from World War II, and it is reported that when he walked into our home
and saw me for the first time, I looked up at his imposing uniformed figure and
said, “Who is that?”

“John Wayne,” my mother should have said.

My father was afraid of nothing. He was a decorated soldier, a star athlete, a
tough and successful businessman, and the list goes on. But he soon knew one

thing about his little boy—no guts. And it was distressing to him.

So, both parents and the child himself were all in agreement about it. The
father was upset about it, the mother understood, and the boy was just scared.
That is possibly why, as I grew older, I discovered “false courage.”