Microdosing Courage: Taking Small Risks To Make Big Changes

Change takes courage, whether you want to steer a new course after an emotional trauma or addiction, or you simply want to freshen up your life and get that sparkle and sense of excitement back again. However, a courageous act doesn’t need to involve a grand gesture, such as taking up bungee jumping or selling up and travelling the world. 

Here’s a look at how small but brave everyday choices can help you build the momentum for real and lasting change. 

Why dramatic actions don’t always deliver results

People often confuse numbing themselves to fear in order to do something big, with the real courage that it takes to let the fear in and accomplish something, even if it is smaller or less significant. This can especially be true for high-achieving individuals who are used to a direct and swift relationship between effort and results. 

However, meaningful and enduring change is rarely the result of one immense burst of effort and willpower; it’s a gradual process of becoming more emotionally agile and resilient. Think of it like getting physically fit: you wouldn’t attempt to deadlift twice your bodyweight or run a marathon without any prior training (unless you are recklessly overoptimistic).

To avoid the risk of physical collapse, you would gradually build up your fitness levels over time until you reach your goal. It’s the same when you want to grow emotionally: microdosing small acts of emotional courage that allow you to become more tolerant of uncomfortable feelings rather than attempting to push them away.

Examples of microdosing courage

So how does this theory translate into real life? Everyone is different, but for example if you usually reach for comfort food or a cigarette or vape when an uncomfortable emotion arises, pause and just sit with it for a couple of minutes first. If you have a habit of chatting to fill a silence, try staying quiet until you feel genuinely ready to talk.

If you always say ‘yes’ to requests even when you don’t really want to, try saying no and be prepared to acknowledge the disappointment or annoyance of others without burying it. If you feel sad or underwhelmed by life, allow yourself to feel this and begin to explore the reasons. 

None of these acts involves psyching yourself up or quelling your fears to do something huge, which takes up a lot of mental energy and carries significant risks. Even if you do achieve your goal by these means, you’ve got there via the wrong route; bypassing the necessary emotional spadework that lays the path for lasting change. 

Instead, by practising smaller acts of quiet courage, you have broken the cycle of avoidance and faced your fears, which opens up the path to real inner healing rather than just material or temporary change. 

Why taking managed risks works

By training yourself to tune into these micro moments, you can gradually build up your tolerance levels for uncomfortable emotions without reaching for comfort or distraction, or automatically shutting them down. Over time, this can retrain your thought processes, so that you become more skilled at identifying and expressing your emotions. 

This allows you to respond more authentically to events, people and situations, and become more emotionally resilient during challenging times. You will develop a much clearer sense of what you want from life, and what you want to move towards rather than merely away from. 

Why it isn’t always easy

The concept of taking small steps rather than a massive leap seems simple enough. However, high-achieving individuals often struggle with it, because they have been conditioned to value independence, action, control and stoicism, with no place for feeling vulnerable, sad, bored or overwhelmed.  

However, we all feel these emotions sometimes, and never unwrapping them and letting them breathe can result in mental health disorders such as anxiety, anhedonia, or burnout. 

If this sounds familiar, try a few different ways of accessing your emotions. This could be through journaling, talking to someone you trust, or just allowing yourself to sit with your fears for a minute or two and identify what you are feeling. 

If you have a deeper issue that you are finding difficult to manage alone, you may be interested in trying Internal Family Systems therapy, which we offer at our London clinic.