From laughed at to legendary - How courage turns ridicule into your greatest triumph
Running from fear takes a deep psychological toll, rotting you from within. True wholeness comes only through courage—and courage always pays off in the end.
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No one is coming to save you
What you might be expecting from others or hoping for from others, you need to find within yourself.
In this post, we're talking about courage versus cowardice and what that means long term for both. We're going to jump into it starting with a quote, which I'll explain after.
"I am having so many conversations with people in positions of power who are exhaling in relief and making changes they wanted to make for years."
That was a post that was written by Mark Andreessen, who is a really decent software billionaire. I didn't do, and I'm not going to do a deep dive on him and all his accomplishments because they don't matter.
Aside from the fact that he has power and leverage because of his money. As do the people he references in his post.
And what he's talking about is all of the bullshit that's been going on in the Democratic Party in the US. Now, this is not a political episode, but I have to make these references as it relates to the point I'm trying to make, which is having courage.
And in order to have courage, you've got to be your true self.
The importance of being true to yourself
Because when you're your true self, you're less inhibited by the actions or reactions of others. When you're your true self, you trust yourself to know that whatever happens, you can handle it.
You have the skills, you have your inner power, the skills and abilities to know and to do what needs to be done next.
But more than all of that, your being true to yourself means being in alignment. And when you are in alignment with yourself, you can move mountains with your inner strength alone.
And by alignment, I mean when your heart and your head is merged and you're staying true to your beliefs, your values, and what you hold precious.
It means staying true to your beliefs and not being a coward like the people Mark is speaking about in his post.
And in a minute, I'm going to share some comments from his post expressing just that.
But first, this all came about when Mark was on a podcast talking about many things. And one very specific thing was how the Democrats who are in office were through backdoors and back channels canceling people who threaten their power through innovation.
So, for instance, if there were developers out there thinking of new banking systems, then the government doesn't want that.
They want the banking systems that they have that they control. So they're going through back doors and back channels to shut these people down and debank them.
The debanking is where this openness started. So by Mark saying this out loud on a very popular podcast for millions of people to hear, it finally gave the relief to people to say out loud, "Holy shit, this happened to me."
And that is what I want to talk about.
The consequence of cowardice
The cowardness of people in power to let the few people that stood up take the fall. Some are in jail (I'm talking broadly here. I'm combining all of the injustices that everybody knew was wrong, but only a few stood up for), some have lost all of their life savings because of it.
While these cowards sat back afraid to say anything because they might get targeted. Well, these cowards have the money where they could afford a lawyer to go and represent them in jail as they stood for "the truth".
These cowards just sat back and allowed other people to take the fall while they pretended to go along with it all.
Their silence, signaling acquiescence.
And as you can hear, I'm pretty passionate about this, and here's why:
This is where self-reflection comes in.
The need for self-reflection
You've got to go back to times in your life where things worked out. And I could almost guarantee you that they worked out because you trusted yourself.
Because you listened to your inner guidance. Because you dismissed other people telling you how you should or shouldn't do things. Maybe you asked for advice, but you weighed that advice and went with your own instincts.
This is also a good time to realize you don't and never do know what somebody else is thinking and why they do what they do.
Because these, let's say, Silicon Valley types, they're supposed to be the rebels, aren't they? Aren't they the ones that are supposed to be the fearless creators that go against the grain and they take risks? Yeah?
Except when it comes to standing up for what they believe in.
I know more housewives or mothers that have more courage than these cowards.
Now, on a point of empathy, yes, I understand. They have made a ton of money. They don't want to lose their money, so they've got to play it cool.
They saw other people getting debanked or going to prison, and they didn't want to become a target themselves and potentially lose everything or lose a fair bit of what they've earned.
But they were perfectly happy to let you do it, to watch you lose everything. Maybe somebody, probably somebody with a lot less to lose than them finance-wise.
But more to lose in the sense that they have the money to pay for lawyers, to set their families up should something happen to them.
Whereas the average Joe or Joan, fighting this battle alone, lost their homes and their ability to financially support their children.
Any of these billionaires - had they stood up and potentially been persecuted, would have at least had the funds to fight a fair fight.
As I mentioned, I'm throwing everything in the bowl here. So for example, in Canada, we had the trucker's convoy, the bank accounts got frozen, seized there.
People lost their driver's license, their insurance, while at the same time, the ability to tend to their family.
So many other people knew it was wrong, knew what was going on, said nothing, and watched as these people got persecuted.
The cost of silence
And now that the dust is settling, they think it's okay to say something?
Cowards, all of them are cowards. Again, I want to bring it back to this is why you must trust yourself.
Find that trust in yourself, be your true self, and with that, you will be able to withstand any storm that comes your way.
Yes, there will be rocky roads. But when you have unwavering confidence and belief in yourself, and you refuse to go against yourself, you will win in the end.
Because even if they were to imprison you, imagine living a life, no matter how much money you have on your knees, a coward.
Now, I always say people don't do things to you, they do things for themselves. So - you may not care, and rightfully so, that other people call you a coward because it's not about you.
If you do cowardly things and you're okay with it, that's fine. For other people to call you a coward, it's not about you. The problem is, unless you're a psychopath, you will feel like a coward and you will have that looming on your shoulders for the rest of your life.
And that is a horrible way to maneuver yourself through life. I know that you know this.
You know what it feels like to stand up against something or for something that is fundamentally right, regardless of the consequences.
When you're not a coward and you do the right thing against all odds or against public opinion, you always come out on top. Even if nobody ever recognizes you, you come out on top because you can live with yourself.
You can walk the streets with a clear conscience. You can sleep easy at night. And that, my friends, means more than being liked by the masses.
True courage in the face of adversity
But I'm going to give you a couple of examples of the people that withstood the storm, that had the courage, who stood up, stood their ground.
And while all the cowards are losing now, they're the ones that people are shunning because who the hell wants to be around a freaking coward?
I mean, look at Zuckerberg. He's now fawning all over Donald Trump now that Trump won. And what did Zuckerberg do?
He did exactly what the government told him and suppressed voter information. He suppressed the conservative voices. He suppressed factual information, calling it miss and disinformation and banning people for it.
And now that the tides have turned, he wants to be in Trump's good graces because Trump has threatened accountability for nonsense like this.
Who stood up and took all the shots? Elon Musk, when he bought Twitter and he allowed free speech on Twitter. That's who rose above the crowd.
He took all the shots. Everybody was out to get Elon Musk. But look at the position he now has in the government.
And look at the positions that are now being filled in the Trump government. They're mostly all truthers, people that had the courage, that withstood the storm of people coming after them.
And it paid off.
Versus the cowards who are now reaping what they sowed and reaping what they watched happen to everybody else while doing nothing.
Other than giving the illusion that they are voting Democrat and therefore in favor of all of these policies of theirs. See, their silence is complicity.
And they've also misled people because everybody knows that the tech world votes Democrat.
The dangers of silence - perpetuating false illusions
And for those that blindly follow and idolize these people, hearing no retaliation from them, not even hearing that there was a problem, gave the false illusion that they were okay with the Democrat platform.
Look, I get it. Not everybody and not every business needs to broadcast to the world who they vote for and who they don't, except that's That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is to stay quiet when there's injustices going on in your field, you allow things to perpetuate and leave everybody else in the dark thinking because we don't hear anything from you, everything's cool.
Then you must be okay with it. And yes, there are blind followers. There are people that because these tech billionaires are billionaires, because they've fulfilled the American dream, many people look up to them.
They want to emulate them. So they think things like, well, if he or they think it's okay, then maybe I'm misguided in some way thinking that It's not.
Now, I want to make it very clear that the American people are very smart. Not that many people get sucked into this. I'm just trying to make a point.
And ironically, one of the points is - one of the reasons why the voters are so smart now is because of the upset of the last four years.
Because it has driven so many people to come back home to themselves. To trust themselves more, and stop believing all the propaganda or people that you so-called trusted in the past to tell you, (or not) to maybe tell you what to do or how to think.
But that may have had influence over your decisions because you maybe were a little bit insecure. Or maybe you were uninformed about a specific topic.
You went to one of your people and they gave you their advice because you didn't know much about it. You just trusted and assumed that they were right.
And you found out later you had a completely different set of beliefs and values about that topic once you learned more.
The fear of consequences
Let's go back to debanking for a minute. You could rightfully say, yeah, but holy shit, they're millionaires or billionaires, and if they get debanked for opening their mouth, what are they going to do? How are they going to get access to their money?
Well, first of all, if they know what's going on, they're smart enough to build systems systems for a living. They could do something else with their money, have a plan. Clearly, they have a plan to build their systems and whatnot.
They know what it's all about. So you'd have a plan, put your money somewhere safe in case you have that concern, maybe leave a little bit in there just in case - to test it, and do all this before you come out.
You get together with your peeps (or not), you be the courageous one and make your plans, have everything set, and then come out and say, "look, what's happening is not okay." Call it out.
And yes, I know. Easy for me to say behind a computer screen and a microphone. I get it, but that's why we're in the mess that we're in. That's how we got here. Because too many people stayed quiet.
If everybody that had a problem with this would have stood up... Yes, they would have had law fair against a select few. But if everybody still did not back down, this would have ended years ago.
And, certain people would have saved their reputation. Because if you look at Zuckerberg, nobody respects him anymore. Who gets the respect? Elon Musk. Am I an Elon fan girl? No, I'm not. I admire his courage. That's it.
Same with Donald Trump. I never used to be a fan of Donald Trump, really. But I admire his courage and when he got shot in the head and stood up and said, fight, fight, fight, that's the kind of courage that gives me courage.
I don't get courage from billionaires hiding in the background because they're too afraid of getting called out. Well, if you see the way it's happened, they're getting called out now, and the whole world sees them as cowards.
Revealing the public's sentiment
Speaking of cowards, let's get to those comments under the post. Here's the first one:
"Funny people who had 'power' needed so much social permission to be truthful."
There you have it, folks. It's not just you. Even these guys with billions of dollars are afraid to speak up. They're afraid to step out and rock the boat.
Even though they went into business specifically to be a disruptor. Yet when the world needed them the most, they cowered away.
Here's another comment:
"So the people in power kept their mouths shut and went along so they could continue to rake in the bucks.
It's because of these cowards that we are so close to losing our freedoms. (Exactly what I was saying.) They get no admiration from me. Self-centered lemmings, not leaders."
Next comment:
"They couldn't summon up the courage to take a stand for the changes they wanted and the changes we badly needed. Cowards in positions of power would be the downfall of this great nation, if not for the few courageous ones."
And the last one that I chose... there were hundreds, but I only chose a couple.
"The idea that they were or are in positions of power, but were afraid or hamstrung to make changes says more about them. It's this fear of losing power that creates chaos."
Well, ain't that the truth?
There's one person I want to talk about just for a second that is not a coward, and that is JK Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books. She has stood up against the trans issue from the get-go.
She's respectful of who wants to love who or whatever. But when you start wanting to chop off body parts of children, she's got a serious problem with that. When you want to allow men into women's spaces, a huge problem with that.
She's in Scotland, and at the time, the mayor of Scotland had the laws changed so anything offensive could get you landed in jail. And I think they were going after her. And she said, Bring it.
If I have to go to jail for my stance, I will gladly go to jail, but I will not change my language, change my thinking, or my beliefs about this topic.
Well, it turns out that he got voted out. In fact, all the complaints about language went toward things he was saying. And if I'm not mistaken, he got voted out shortly after that.
Jk Rowling has money, power, influence. She did not hide. She stepped up and she took, just like Elon, shit and abuse from every angle. And she stood firm and never once wavered. That's courage.
Now, on a similar note, there's a gal in Canada who lost her job because she would not affirm the pronoun brigade bullshit. She lost her job and was charged and taken to court.
She doesn't have the money for court, so she's had to fundraise. They tried to compel her speech in court even, and she refused to do it.
And she, too, like Elon, like JK Rowling, of course, she doesn't that level of popularity, but her story has gotten out to the masses.
And yes, all the left-wing lunatics are attacking her from all around the world, and she has found it tough, but she will not bend the knee.
She will not go against her values. She will not go out of alignment with herself to please somebody else.
Even at the risk of being charged and going to jail.
And in a funny twist of fate, here's another example of how courage pays off.
The unexpected rewards of courage
Turns out J. K. Rowling follows this gal on socials, and this gal was messing around one day and posts a picture of a purse. And she says something to the effect of, "What are the chances the only purse you like is $5,000?"
Well, get this. Jk Rowling gets in her messages and says, "I'll buy it for you for Christmas. You deserve it." Moments like that make me tear up.
That's courage, folks.
You know what else warms my heart? The people that Donald Trump is bringing into his cabinet, because some of them were those courageous ones that got canceled, ridiculed, laughed at, debanked.
And I'm not 100% certain about this, but I think they may have even been put on a domestic terrorist list. I might be wrong about that, and if I am wrong, I'll tell you for sure who was on a domestic terrorist list.
Moms trying to protect their kids from the lunatics at school, trying to cut their children's body parts off and teach them porn at a very young age.
A lot of people stayed quiet during this time because they didn't want to endure what these moms were enduring by standing up.
But had these moms not stood up, we would be in a very, very dark place as it relates to our children, as it relates to COVID and all the freedoms that were lost as a result.
The personal cost of courage - moving forward
Anyway, back to President Trump's picks. They endured four years of ridicule for having the courage to stand up and go against not only the narrative, but the masses. Courage won out in the end. And now they're getting a position with the US government.
I'm going to finish with one final true story of courage. Daniel Penny was charged with second-degree manslaughter for saving people on a New York subway from a drug addict who was threatening to kill people.
He put him in a chokehold and held him until the police came and was still alive when the police came, but ended up dying later. And they wanted to peg it on the white guy because (I think his name is Jordan Neely) was black.
So they're trying the whole Black Lives Matter thing all over again. Thankfully, Daniel Penny just got his verdict in yesterday, I believe - not guilty. So he is a free man.
He did the right thing.
And the reason I bring this up is because I want to read to you what he said, specifically. And keeping in mind the amount of abuse that this man went through for doing what he did.
They're calling him a murderer. They've been calling him a murderer since this happened.
They wanted him in prison forever. I don't even know to the extent of the abuse he took, but I'm sure you can imagine. But here's what he said after he got let free.
Quote: "The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do. I would never have been able to live with myself. And I'll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed."
I hope through listening, you were able to maybe draw upon some of your own memories of courage.
And if you've been feeling less than courageous, maybe bring those in, those memories of courage into the present moment and start acting on that courage today because it's far more painful not to.
And it's one of the many things that feeds your inner demon.