Are you courageous as you walk the road to success? What a simple question? How you view what it means to have courage probably has a lot to do with your answer.

Many times we are exposed to people who have courage from the founding fathers of the United States, to historical figures, to family members, to absolute strangers. Yet, do we take the time to explore our own courage and how that relates to personal success?

One of my most favorite quotes is from the book Dune in which the young Duke Paul is tested. He places his hand into a box. One of the nuns or what some called witches held a needle weapon next to his neck in case he decided to remove his hand before the test was completed. After experiencing incredible pain from the perception of having his hand frozen to actually being burned off, he removed his hand and saw that nothing had change. Lesson learned was that the greatest fear is fear itself and it was lesson that he remembered as he moved toward success.

Maybe that is what Churchill saw when he talked about courage and the necessity for enthusiasm. How many times have we whistled to ourselves when walking down a dark street or tried to make something funny when we were truly scared, when we realize the greatest fear was within our own thoughts? Courage is absolutely one of the essential self leadership skills that every individual needs.

In business, courage to change is an absolute necessity because of the risk of investing incredible amounts of time, energy and money. Being a small business owner to entrepreneur demands being a risk taker and having the courage to see the risk through. Given that every minute in this country, one small business opens while another one closes suggests that a lot of people lacked the courage to continue and this may help to explain the lack of success.

Life also demands courage from doing what you need to do even when others believe something else. Speaking your mind with respect is a simple act of courage to change what you view is necessary to keep your integrity.

Courage is also keeping your humor alive even when life is kicking you in the gut. Living life is just a series of courageous behaviors that we consistently demonstrate through our self leadership skills.

So what behaviors do we look for when we think of courage or being courageous? Humor is one behavior. Having humor coupled with enthusiasm sustains our courage. We grow forward with an authentic smile on our face.

Another behavior is taking the right action. Courage to change demands a result. However, sometimes by not taking action this is the right action because the focus is on the desired end result. When individuals are courageous, their actions are selective and reflect what I believe is a higher level of emotional intelligence.

Tenacity is another observable behavior. Never giving up, keeping at it, making those dreaded cold calls are all examples of courageous behavior.

So, grab your H.A.T. (Humor, Action and Tenacity) and give yourself credit for being more courageous than you realized as you walk the road to success. For living life today still demands courage even though the behaviors may be different from yesteryear.