When someone says he/she is courageous, it means he/she is not deterred by danger or pain. Coming out of one’s habitual way of life when determined by some internal and external forces can turn out to be painful if not dangerous.  Leading a purposeful life is not as simple as going to sleep at night because the night has already knocked on the doorstep, and therefore, it’s time to sleep. It goes beyond having lots of money in banks or using sophisticated phones or driving expensive cars. Having a life purpose means living according to what makes you unique, with enriching value and brand. It means it’s not only you who benefits from your uniqueness, but rather the benefits from your life purpose are beyond self and its durable. It means doing something which is right, valuable, and beneficial. Living beyond self is not easy, but with a gift of courage, it’s possible. It fundamentally means one’s life purpose should lead to poverty reduction in communities.

The Importance of Courage in ensuring that your Life Purpose benefits more and more People for Generations

 Courage and setting your priorities right: a correct priority, a right priority galvanizes necessary action towards achieving something. It directs focus and energy. There will always be competing demands and interests in life. You need the courage to set the right priority out of competing interests. It will be a mistake to attempt to give attention to all of them. First of all, attempting to give attention to many of them becomes a source of stress, fear, and discouragement in the end. The crucial thing to do is to achieve quality in the area of set priority. One and sustained achievement may eventually support diversified priorities.

Courage and hard work: laziness kills because it creates scarcity in meeting your own dreams. Laziness deprives effective utilization of one’s energy and talent to make difference in the community.  Purposeful Agents of Transformation should be courageous to endure costs that may come with work. These costs may present themselves in form of long hours required to produce effective output. It may be working in order to ensure the community benefits more than the individual. It may involve having limited time for leisure because the community is in need of benefiting from your purpose. Courage enables Purposeful Agents of Transformation to value hard work at all costs.

Courage and sacrificial life for a meaningful life: firefighters are ready to sacrifice their lives to save the lives of others. Their purpose is to save lives. Health workers are still going ahead to save the lives of communities in the face of deadly diseases. They courageously sacrifice their own lives in order to save others. You will only sacrifice precious time, sometimes your own money to save lives, to promote the welfare of others, to promote the growth and development of others when action to make significant sacrifices are backed up by courage. Our life purposes most often have dangers associated, courage and sacrifices are needed in undertaking them if such purposes are to remain meaningful beyond individual confines.

Courage and peer influence: the better the influence of the peer, the better it is to accommodate such good influence in growing and developing your life purpose so as to benefit the community. However, should the influence of the peer be a negative one, corrosive to your purpose, be courageous to quit such negative peer influence especially if you have no influence in enabling them to transform themselves to do the right things in life.

Courage and your role model: there is no shortage of successful Purposeful Agents of Transformation in our nation and beyond. It needs some courage for you to identify one in our country and learn more about them, copy the path they have gone through, and courageously take a step to pick some attributes from them. For sure there is one common attribute they share: addiction-free life.

Courage and willingness not to fear failures: sometimes or more often than not, we fear to fail. We have identified our purposes but we fear to fail in realizing them. We fear what others speak about us, we fear being criticized.  We fear people’s attitudes, views, and opinions. Somewhere I read Martin Luther King Jr. saying:  “People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” Courage makes us understand each other and we positively impact others through our unique purposes. Fear not what people say about you when you fail at one point, rather learn from the failure and make corrections to the human mistakes. No one should attempt failing deliberately.

Courage and self-identity: what you are, who you are, your self-esteem, self-image, experiences, memories among others encompass your identity. Whether you are physically handicapped or not, man or woman, be courageous because you count on this planet, you count a lot in your country and the community. Stand up to be counted and let your purpose serve others.

Courage and the environment: in our environment, in our surroundings, as long as there is still humanity, we can always identify areas in which we can make our contributions to serve others.  Our environment is full of opportunities, full of potentials that should be taped and made use of. A lot of problems that need solutions. Our purposes are useful in this environment, in this plant where problems, opportunities, and potentials continue to emerge one after the other. Solving them or making use of the situation created by them modifies the legacy each one of us should make in communities.

 Courage and starting from nowhere: start with what you have. You have life, you have a life purpose, you have a dream or dreams. With what you have, you can always start. Be simple but courageous and start with what you have, you will see how you can change the lives of others.

Courage and love: love others and show this by ensuring your life purpose benefits them. There is a need to share Martin Luther King’s view about others in our communities: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” Any positive answer to this goes hand in hand with courage. Have courage and ensure your purpose benefits generations. This is true love.

Courage and the spirit of hope: if you stop hoping, life loses meaning. Hope with action is a driving force to achieve something. Hope drives our life dreams and purpose. It means going to the bed close to midnight with plans to make significant improvements the following day in order to express what you are created to do in the universe. Courage nurtures the unyielding spirit of hope. Courage fosters the spirit of hope in building on our life purposes in order to make this world sustainably prosperous and comfortable: free of fear, free of war, free of poverty, free of all forms of addiction in Rwanda and beyond.

Courage and audacity to take risks: it takes courage to risk traveling to an unknown place to do some business, it takes courage to venture into entrepreneurship that is characterized by fluctuations in prices and profit, and it takes some courage to risk borrowing some loan from the bank to put your purpose into practice. It is a risk venturing into agricultural development with volatile and unstable climatic conditions today. Some amount of courage is required to invest in our life purposes with a zeal to benefit others. Our youth should not fear risks. We need more and more Purposeful Agents of Transformation in Rwanda and Africa who are risk-takers for the benefit of their communities.

 Courage and ability to distinguish between what is righteous and evil: addiction is evil. Being lured into negativity is evil. Doing anything that disrupts the lives of others is evil. With courage, one can avoid becoming a victim. What brings harmony, justice, peace, and love are right and courageous; people cherish this.

Courage and discipline:  obeying rules and following codes of acceptable behavior is rooted in courage to respect others. Being disciplined is a virtue. It is wealth. It humbles, it makes one visible and distinct in the community. Good discipline enables Purposeful Agents of Transformation to value others as worthy and deserving to lead better lives. Indiscipline characters bread deadly vices such as corruption, addiction, robbery, murder among others. There is one choice all should make discipline, discipline, discipline.

Courage and adherence to set rules, regulations, and social norms: rules, regulations, and social norms are in place as a mirror to ensure we bear correct reflection and image of what our communities require of us. Individuals make the community. Any individual is a piece of the community. If this piece is affected, the entire community is affected. Therefore, conformity to the rules, regulations, and social norms of our community is an essential pillar directing us to ensure our life purposes benefit others in our families, communities, and the nation.

There is one central message to us all; be Purposeful, Positive, and Addiction Free