First things first: the index isn’t saying that you believe everything is futile. 

Rather, your responses indicate that you tend to believe that you have the abilities, opportunity, and desire to do brave work, but that you sometimes (or often) feel like your efforts would be futile because you feel somewhat pessimistic about your current situation. This means that you either can’t see a clear path to accomplishing your ambitions, or that you see obstacles in your way that seem insurmountable.

Bravery is more likely to occur when you believe in a better possible future, and you believe you have the capacity to bring it about. Put differently, there are two conditions that are likely to lead to brave action: Perceived Agency, and Optimistic Vision. 

Perceived Agency means that you have confidence that you can leverage your proficiency, your platform, and your relational network to pursue your ideas and vision. You have confidence in the face of uncertainty because you trust that you have the ability to shape outcomes.

Optimistic Vision means that you are driven by values, ideals, or goals that you are willing to pursue even if it costs you something. You take risks, do the hard thing, and are willing to sacrifice comfort in the pursuit of what you believe to be right.

While your Brave Index score shows that you have high Perceived Agency, it also reveals that you have lower optimism or a general lack of clarity about the future or how you might influence it. This means that while you believe that you have the ability to create change, you don’t know that your efforts would really matter even if you tried. Please note that these are not static traits.

If you find at any point that you are wrestling with taking action on something important, you can ask:

• Where is my vision for this project / relationship / task less than clear?
• What obstacles do I currently see as insurmountable, and what agency do I actually have to influence them?
• How does this relate to something I value or care deeply about?
• What matters so deeply to me that I’m willing to pursue it, even if it costs me? In The Brave Habit, this is called Productive Passion.

By developing your sense of agency and your vision of a better future, you create a fertile field within which brave action is more likely to occur.

Learn more about developing each of these capacities in chapters three and four of The Brave Habit.

We also have a custom, team-oriented version of The Brave Index. Contact us for details.