I’ve chosen Susan’s catalytic guest post as a great way to start the new year, a time meant for action, not just contemplation. Hope you get to listen to the podcast episode with Margie as she’s leading “Courage is Calling: Reset on Your Bravest Path” Feb 15-19 in Santa Fe.
Chip’s recent podcast conversation with Margie Warrell, author of The Courage Gap, was excellent. The episode title — “The Hidden Cost of Playing It Safe in Midlife” — hit on a phenomenon I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about.
They explored why intelligent, capable people so often choose comfort over growth, how safety keeps us stuck, and the tension between belonging and becoming. As they talked about courage being a decision, I found myself asking a bigger question:
When does choosing courage stop being about personal growth and become a social responsibility?
Many of us are extraordinarily skilled at identifying patterns, expressing fear, and locating our wounds. We can name our attachment styles, trace childhood dynamics, narrate IFS parts, and articulate our emotional states with remarkable precision. I’ve watched friends spend years struggling in marriages or work situations that, by their own admission, no longer feel aligned. While they may become increasingly adept at labeling and sharing with each passing year, their lives remain largely unchanged.
I’ve lived and worked inside personal growth spaces for well over a decade now — immersed in environments devoted to healing, reflection, and expansion. During my time at 1440 Multiversity, I saw just how fluent we can become in the language of transformation — and how seductively stagnating that fluency can be. I’ve met many thoughtful, intelligent, genuinely kind humans — and I include myself here — who could name what was happening inside with clarity and vulnerability. Literacy is high. Intentions sincere. Care real.
I’ve also spent years in meditation practice, learning how to regulate myself — how to notice sensation, slow the breath, widen the window of tolerance, and stay present with discomfort. I ran a meditation space for years because I believe deeply in these practices. Learning how not to abandon ourselves in moments of intensity is essential.
But this is what took me far longer to realize:
Regulation is not a destination. It’s a doorway.
Regulation feels like progress because it is progress. The relief of finally being able to stay with ourselves can be so profound that we mistake capacity for completion. But regulation should be what allows us to stay present long enough to tell the truth — not just to ourselves, but also relationally. It’s what makes the hard realizations and difficult conversations possible. It’s the letting go of guarantees. Leaving misaligned situations. Stepping out of systems that no longer feel honest to our bodies.
When regulation is mistaken for the goal, it can become a sophisticated avoidance strategy — one that preserves our stability while quietly stalling our growth.
One thing I deeply respect about Chip’s work is his distinction between knowledge and wisdom, and his invitation into true modern elderhood. And wisdom, I’ve learned, requires more than understanding.
It requires tolerance for consequence.
I know this from lived experience. I didn’t leave my marriage to be brave; I left because my body refused to keep cooperating with a structure that I’d already grown out of. I had believed stability signaled maturity. I hadn’t understood that disruption was the wiser choice.
I’ve since watched this same liberation unfold in the stories of others who stepped away from misaligned relationships and are now thriving in ways that felt inconceivable from their previous vantage point.
Change that appears personal is also systemic. Systems don’t change because people understand them. They change because enough individuals begin to step outside them — often at personal cost. This is something the gay community understands deeply. Coming out isn’t an idea; it’s an embodied reorganization of lives that eventually reshapes culture.
Those of us with access — to education, platforms, financial safety, and psychological language — carry disproportionate influence. Privilege doesn’t just confer comfort; it confers choice. And choice, once informed, creates obligation.
Action will look different for each of us. It may mean speaking up in substantive ways, renegotiating relationships, changing how we parent, lead, vote, or listen. And always, it will require discomfort.
This is how systems truly change: from the bottom up, one life lived in alignment at a time.
So I’ll leave you with the question I’ve been asking myself:
Is wisdom really wisdom if we don’t use it toward active change?
Maybe the hidden cost of playing it safe isn’t just what we lose personally — but the patterns we pass down. I think about my sons and the template I’m offering them now: one rooted in truth, courage, and self-trust, not passive endurance and endless reflection.
-Susan
Susan Cole is an executive communications leader in Boise, Idaho, learning what becomes possible after choosing truth over comfort. She writes on Substack about desire, transitions, eros, identity, and what emerges when we stop performing and start living as ourselves.