Resolutions - On Courage
Courage isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s the quieter act of living in alignment with what your heart already knows. In a culture obsessed with hustle, efficiency, and certainty, courage asks something different of us — especially at work.
Hey – and welcome to 2026.
I hope you had a good break and are settling into the year ahead.
This is the time when many people start making resolutions, setting goals, and mapping out the months to come. I tend to do that work a little earlier, late in the year, so I can begin January with some clarity and momentum.
This last year, though, was different.
There were fewer goals. Fewer ambitions. But much sharper focus.
That focus is on courage.
So I wanted to share a perspective on what courage really means to me — why it matters, not just in our lives, but in the way we work, lead, and choose what we give our energy to.
For those new to the Meeting Notes newsletter, welcome, I’m Rob, Chief Courage Officer at Cultivated Management. This newsletter is about mastering the art of communication and creativity - and cultivating a bright future of work.
On Courage
The word courage comes from the Latin cor.
The heart.
To listen to what your heart is telling you – and follow it. That is courage.
The origins are not the "fearless leader" type (I did used to work with someone who called himself that.....carnage followed).
Not the chest-thumping kind.
Not the loud, cinematic bravery we’ve been taught to admire.
Not the rush in and take control.
That definition of courage, as the heart, feels almost subversive now.
Radical, even.
Bizarre in a culture built on hustle, grind, and relentless optimisation.
Most modern systems — especially work systems — are not designed around the heart.
They are designed around control and prediction.
Safety.
Efficiency.
Getting things done.
And to be fair, that side of a business does matter.
As I explore in the Idea to Value work, there is a domain of work that is complicated. With enough time, effort, and energy, we can bring parts of it under some form of efficiency. We can design systems, processes, and flows that help ideas move toward value.
But workplaces aren’t just systems full of processes.
They are made of people too.
And people are complex — not in a way that needs fixing, but in a way that makes work vibrant, engaging, and meaningful when we choose to honour it.
When we don’t, something subtle happens.
Slowly.
Surely.
Almost politely.
Our workplaces ask us to trade aliveness for certainty.
We don’t notice it at first.
We get good at the language and the jargon.
We get good at slotting into our role.
We get good at focusing on efficiency and cost reduction and getting things done.
Good at the meetings.
Good at explaining ourselves.
Good at saying “this makes sense” even when it feels hollow.
So we keep going.
But something recedes.
People don’t lose motivation because they lack discipline.
They lose it because they stop recognising themselves in what they do.
They lose it because the organisation has a climate that crushes our hope and spirit.
They lose it because there's no painted, bright, compelling and exciting, picture of the future.
They lose it because the work carries little meaning.
This slow disengagement isn’t a productivity problem.
It’s a meaning problem.
It’s what happens when the heart stops being consulted.
Courage, in its original sense, isn’t about charging forward.
It’s about listening.
Listening to the discomfort.
Listening to your heart.
Listening to the small, persistent tug that says:
“This isn’t quite right.”
Or, "this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing".
That kind of listening is often inconvenient. To us. To the business.
You can’t spreadsheet it.
You can’t always predict it.
You can't create a HR policy around it, or defend against it in advance.
It doesn’t come with early warning systems.
Which is why it so often gets edited out. Ignored. Trampled down. Sidelined.
But courage shows up anyway — just not in the places we expect.
It looks like:
- choosing clarity when vagueness would be safer
- saying no to work that drains you, even when it looks good on paper
- staying with an idea long enough for it to reveal its shape
- sharing something unfinished because it’s honest
- creating something for the sake of the creative process
- being kind to others to enhance the culture
- building a body of work instead of chasing attention
- realising your life is heading down the wrong path, and putting in place small adjustments to get back on track
It’s rarely dramatic. It's equine in nature.
Most courage happens quietly, over time, in a series of small insights and subsequent decisions that slowly re-align a life.
This year, my intention isn’t growth or scale or optimisation.
It’s courage.
Which, for me, means:
- trusting the pull toward publishing rather than pitching
- making work that feels alive before it feels marketable
- letting a body of work emerge instead of forcing outcomes
- resisting the urge to perform certainty when curiosity is more true
- letting my creative instinct guide, not be squashed
Courage doesn’t eliminate fear.
It simply refuses to let fear have the final word.
And courage doesn’t arrive all at once.
It’s practiced.
Daily.
In conversations.
In choices.
In what we give our attention to.
In what we quietly walk away from.
The heart rarely shouts.
But it does repeat itself.
And courage, it turns out, is nothing more — and nothing less —
than the willingness to listen to your heart,
and act accordingly.
I was inspired by this slightly more poetic stance to start the year after reading Paulo Coelho's magical book The Alchemist (aff link). It's a cracker.
From the Studio (Behind the scenes)
The holidays were full — family, friends, long walks, and festive noise — but there was also a surprising amount of quiet creative work happening in the background.
I spent time photographing and filming, recording new episodes of Stationery Freaks, and writing. Work that didn’t feel rushed. Work that felt nourishing.
I also launched a new YouTube channel: Cultivated – Notes.
This one is deliberately different.
It’s a work channel. The videos are short, calm, and digestible. No cinematic shots, no music, no filmmaking flourishes. Just a quiet, steady space for insight — reflective, practical, and human.
This is part of a wider shift for me.
Creative Soul Projects now gets to breathe fully as a creative outlet.
My business work has its own clear home.
Both parts of my life are better for it.
The channel has two playlists:
- Explainers — practical methods, approaches, and systems to help you lead, manage, and move ideas toward value.
- Notes — more philosophical reflections on creativity, work, and being; quieter pieces that sit beneath the surface of practice.
I hope you find them useful, or at least enjoyable.
The channel is here. Each video has an associated post on the site here too.
Support Cultivated
This newsletter is a labour of love and will always be free, but it's not free to create - if you’d like to support my work:
🚀 Explore books and courses
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Until next time.
Take care of yourself and others.
Rob..
