Finding Clarity and Courage in Divided Times

In a world marked by uncertainty and division, it’s easy to focus on what we should do next. But sometimes the more important question is who we want to be. Finding clarity and courage in divided times begins not with strategy, but with identity—within ourselves, our organizations, and our shared humanity.

Who Do We Want to Be in Uncertain and Divided Times?

“I’ve moved on from despair to denial,” someone told me last week.

I laughed—like many of us, feeling that I’ve been on that trajectory, too.

Despair and denial are typical stages of adjustment to unwelcome news. But there is a third stage that matters most because it marks the moment we get back in the game.

That stage is deciding.

I don’t mean making decisions about what now?—as in, what actions we’ll take to defend democracy, equality, and the natural world in the face of growing challenges. I mean making decisions about who now?—as in, who do we want to be in response to these challenges?

Some people, of course, don’t have the luxury of reflection; certain leaders must act immediately. Godspeed to them.

But for the rest of us, this holds true:

When confronted with a significant new challenge, deciding who we want to be before deciding what we want to do leads to wiser decision-making and more durable resilience.

From an organizational perspective, this is also about values-driven leadership and employee engagement. Research published in The American Review of Public Administration (2022) reveals a connection between identity, values, and engagement at work—a reminder that clarity about who we are shapes how we lead and sustain purpose over time.

So, let’s unpack the question.

If the incoming administration upholds its promises about 2025 and beyond, who do you want to be in the face of growing attacks on democracy, human rights, and the environment?

Do you want to be fearful or courageous?
A bystander or an everyday hero?
Someone who adapts to destructive forces—or someone who continues to honor the ideals of democracy, equality, and the safeguarding of nature?

Building Bridges and Staying True to Our Values

These questions extend to our relationships as well. Who do you want to work with, be inspired by, and inspire? More pointedly, who do you want to be in relationship to neighbors, family members, and colleagues who voted for a leader whose values you find antithetical to your own?

Last weekend, I was fortunate to reflect on these questions in the virtual company of several wise teachers during a retreat at the Upaya Zen Center. Roshi Joan Halifax, Terry Tempest Williams, and Rebecca Solnit each shared insights that spoke to both moral courage and emotional resilience.

But one moment stood out.

It came in a prerecorded message from Christiana Figueres, a heroine of the climate movement and a key architect of the Paris Climate Accord.

How to Build Bridges in Polarized Times

As she prepared for the birth of her first grandchild, Figueres acknowledged that she had considered cocooning with her family during these turbulent times. But seclusion, she said, leads to weakness.

So instead, she chose to look outward—to the work ahead—and to build bridges by engaging in deep listening with those who did not share her values on climate action.

“This,” she said, “is the toughest life challenge yet, and one that awaits all of us who want to till the ground for future generations.”

In other words, she decided who she wanted to be going forward.

That decision—to listen rather than retreat—offers a model of courage, compassion, and clarity for anyone seeking to lead or connect across differences.

Why Hard Conversations Build Stronger Teams and Communities

These are not the kinds of conversations we often have. Studies show that more than 70 percent of people avoid difficult conversations in the workplace. Yet avoiding discomfort doesn’t create safety—it breeds distance and disengagement.

Hard conversations are often the ones most worth having—because they help us make the decisions worth making so we can continue the work worth doing.

Research also reveals a clear connection between discussing hard topics at work and improved productivity, culture, and engagement. In times of uncertainty, the courage to talk honestly about values, purpose, and direction strengthens collective resilience.

Reflection and Discussion Questions for Leaders and Teams

Here are a few questions you might begin thinking about—or, better yet, discussing:

• What would you fight for, even if you knew you would lose?

• What gift do you believe you have to bring to this moment?

• Do you believe that among the uncertainties before us, something good can emerge—that we might grow through the very act of engagement?

These questions help individuals and teams rediscover clarity, courage, and connection—the essential building blocks of resilience in divided times.

This essay first appeared in my Substack newsletter, Savor the World: Reigniting Our Capacity to Save It. Subscribe here.

How to Cultivate Hope in Hard Times

Hope has long had a bad rap, as if it’s the sandpit of the naïve. Yet in times like these, when many feel despair about the state of our democracy, climate, and future, cultivating hope may be one of the most radical acts we can take.

After all, to hope that 2025 and beyond will not usher in more suffering, division, inequality, cruelty, and setbacks on critical issues like climate change—well, that would be naïve indeed. 

The incoming 47th president has made his intentions clear. And he will have more power at his disposal than any human being ever should, most of all one driven not by public interest but self-interest.

But that does not mean it is naïve to cultivate hope. It means it is more important than ever. Joseph O’Neill observed in The New York Review of Books this weekend that “a hopeless population is more vulnerable to autocracy.” 

So, how do we develop the “radical hope” philosopher Jonathan Lear described nearly twenty years ago that we desperately need now? 

We will need to learn much about this in the months ahead, but here are a few thoughts for the moment: 

1.    Respect the fear without letting it rule you.

Fear and despair are genuine and understandable emotions, and squashing feelings or asking others to never leads to anything constructive. But let’s also provide a container for them because we have work to do.

If you run a dispirited team, give people an opportunity to have a facilitated conversation, or two or three, to talk through what they are experiencing. 

If you are running solo, connect with like-minded friends as you likely already have, and permit yourselves to talk it through until you feel an energy arising or a conviction, in the words of Michelle Obama, to “do something,” even if at the smallest of scales.  

2.    A New Kind of Maturity for a New Chapter

Like countless people worldwide, Americans have been pummeled by challenging events in recent years. But unlike people in many other nations, we seem to have a mythology that says it shouldn’t be this way. 

Many of us want to believe, as the t-shirts say, “Life is Good.” We want to believe every generation should earn more and enjoy more than the prior one. We dare believe happiness is our birthright. 

And what about those who have lived on the margins, long denied access to the American dream? Many have clung to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Perhaps we have underestimated just how long or how circuitous that arc is.

As others have noted, America is a relatively adolescent culture, both chronologically and as a consequence of having been spared throughout most of our history from the sobering events so many other nations have experienced—such as deadly wars on our own soil.

Today’s younger generations have come of age having to reckon with climate change—and as my son told me recently, knowing no president who truly inspired him. Meanwhile, those of us who have been around longer may still cling to illusions about the specialness of America, which makes this new chapter all the more heartbreaking. 

So perhaps we, above all, need to develop a more mature perspective. One that reflects, as political philosopher Hannah Ardent made most clear, that people are capable of great darkness–some with eyes open, some with eyes closed, some bit by banal bit.  

Life is good, in other words. And life is hard. Now, it is up to us to learn how to live through a more dramatic airing of this reality, closing our eyes to neither aspect and doing our best to make things better. 

3.    Learn from History’s Resisters

On Election Night, I Googled “anti-authoritarian movements” to remind myself of the people who have resisted strongman regimes before us. 

Among the many that came up were the French Resistance, the White Rose movement, and the Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance during World War II. The Algerian National Liberation Front in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the anti-Pinochet Movement in Chile during the 1970s, the Polish Solidarity Movement of the 1980s, and the South African Anti-Apartheid Movement that culminated that same decade.

Of course, closer to home, there was also the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which (in a time of a healthy democracy, at least for some) courageously stood against authoritarianism, racism, and the violation of civil rights. 

Ordinary Heroism in Extraordinary Times

“So what?” you may think about this. “I am shocked, angry, and sad that we are suddenly facing what appears to be a clear turn toward authoritarianism here in the United States, long considered the world’s beacon of democracy.”

“And,” you may think, “I’m especially disheartened that it is happening when we urgently need to progress on vital challenges that are in the best interest of us all—again, such as climate change.” 

To this, I say Me,Too. 

Yet here we are. And so, now we must honor each other in our responses to this new reality, learn and grow from it as we can, and stand on the shoulders of those who have kept the light of hope alive in dark times before us. 

What that looks like remains to be seen, but it will almost certainly require resilience, resistance, and wise role modeling. 

One helpful framework that grounds me is ordinary heroism in extraordinary times. This is about rejecting the roles of victim or bystander and embracing what is within reach of us all: the cultivation of courage, altruism, and integrity. 

Until recently, I considered courage and altruism the most essential of these three elements: developing the courage to face our fears and the altruism to take action for the well-being of others. 

But now, I recognize that integrity is equally important. I do not mean only the integrity to align ourselves with truth and goodness but the integrity to strive to be and do our best with whatever life serves up. 

As one of my heroes, the late Toni Morrison, said: “The grandeur of life is that attempt. It’s not about the solution. It is about being as fearless as one can be and behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances.” 

This essay first appeared in my Substack newsletter, Savor the World: Reigniting Our Capacity to Save It. Subscribe here.

Why Courage Is the Key to Leading Through Uncertainty

Courage isn’t something you’re either born with or without. And believing it is can quietly hold you back—especially in uncertain times. While we still have more to learn about how the brain processes courage, science already shows it’s something we can cultivate through action and awareness.

Consider the example of Alex Honnold, the world’s most renowned free-solo climber.

In 2017, Honnold became the first person to scale Yosemite’s 2,700-foot El Capitan without ropes. The vast majority of the climb took place in what’s called the death zone. One mistake and he would have been dead in ten seconds.

Few people, other great climbers included, can imagine doing this. 

So, why could Honnold? Clearly, he has the physical skill and intellectual problem-solving capabilities that rockclimbing demands. But is he also simply more courageous than most of us?

Neuroscientist Jane Joseph persuaded Honnold to allow her to put him in an MRI tube to try to find out. While there, she and her team showed him 200 mostly disturbing photographs.

“At least in non-Alex people, these [photos] would evoke a strong response in the amygdala,” Joseph said, referring to the part of the brain that processes emotions including fear and anxiety.

But in Alex Honnold’s brain, nothing happened.

And this raised an important chicken-or-egg question: Did his courage precede his climbs, or did his climbs fuel his courage? (Dr. Rowan Hooper writes more about this in The Wall Street Journal.)

Lessons for the “Non-Alex” People Among Us 

While researchers continue to sort that out, there are some practical lessons for the “non-Alex people” among us—by which I mean those striving to lead with courage and compassion in mission-driven organizations, purpose-driven corporations, and well-meaning communities, schools, and families.

We Can Cultivate Courage. 

Deborah Finfgeld-Connett, PhD, RN, FAAN, a Professor Emerita of the Sinclair School of Nursing, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA, is a pioneering researcher in the cultivation of courage across the age span. 

More than 20 years ago, she studied the courage of individuals from the age of 14 to 94 and published her findings in a study that continues to be cited by the National Institutes of Health and others. 

Her conclusion: “The ability to be courageous develops over time and includes efforts to fully accept reality, problem solve based on discernment, and push beyond ongoing struggles.” 

Teaching Courage as a Leadership Skill

Among the reasons courage matters in leadership is the power it holds to strengthen adaptability, relationships, and problem-solving.

And organizations have a key role to play in activating courage in the workplace—and not only for occupations typically associated with risk, such as firefighting or law enforcement. 

The point is: While courage has long been recognized as an important trait for leaders, the extreme uncertainty and challenges of our day make it not only practical but vital that we normalize courage throughout the workplace. 

One might even suggest that workshops on courage should be as big a focus as, say, productivity or project management. And it certainly should be a growing cornerstone of leadership development programs. 

After all, as a study published in 2022 in The European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education concluded: activating courage benefits both employers and employees. 

“In a world characterized by transitions and insecurity, in which prominent features are risk, uncertainty, frequent changes and transitions in working experience, and the instability of future perspectives,” the authors wrote, “intelligent risk management and courage can be positive resources to deal with feelings of fear and to respond effectively to demanding work (and life) contexts.”

Put simply, teaching more people what it takes to develop courage just might provide the fog lights we need to see through the current clouds of uncertainty.

This essay first appeared in my Substack newsletter, Savor the World: Reigniting Our Capacity to Save It. Subscribe here.