The courage to learn, overcome and be more effective

Not always, of course, as many people are either ravenous to be educated and empowered or are receptive, because they know they have to pursue new information and skill development. 

Yet sometimes, more often than you think, there are people who have a critical need to learn improved thinking, more helpful beliefs and attitudes, new or improved skills, better decision making and smarter choices, not only to thrive but to correct and protect their business, career and personal lives.

They don't want to do it though. They will resist, with aggression or passive aggressiveness. They will be offended, negative and at times, blame shift. That's when it takes courage, growing out of maturity, to learn, improve upon if not conquer our weaknesses and become more effective in one area, different ones or all parts of our lives.

Why though do people resist wanting to learn? Embarrassment. A discrepancy between who they are and who they are convinced they really are, despite significant evidence to the contrary. Stubbornness. What they're thinking and doing now is providing benefits and they assume it will always do so, without any dangerous risk of consequences.

How can people become courageous? 

It has to be rooted in some emotional driver that is of sufficient strength to move us in the direction that we may not want to go, may make us uncomfortable, may make us feel vulnerable, may anger us. 

Change can be painful. It may require us to face "truths" about ourselves that we don't like, don't want to hear, don't want to believe. It requires us thinking and doing "life" differently, interacting in a way that might seem foreign or go against what we prefer and believe is "right" for us. 

We can talk all day, night, week, month and forevermore about the benefits of having the courage to learn how to improve and build new, healthy skills and alter or stop doing what we're doing now yet benefits and rewards do not always resonate and excite every person. 

Knowing what we have forfeited, are forfeiting or losing now and what we will continue to do without, surprisingly, might not inspire us one bit either. 

What if though we knew how perilously close to that danger we insist quietly or outwardly will not happen to us? What if we knew that others before us once thought as we did and then fell, as we might too, into a pit of pain, or worse, ruin?

What vivid examples can you provide that are eerily similar, that we might relate to on a personal level?

What if we ask ourselves these questions about the worst of our thinking weaknesses, beliefs, attitudes and behavior that is likely hurting others, but if it isn't, is hurting ourselves?

What news headlines with our name in it scares us and do we want to avoid? What other consequences do instill fear in us? We often experience overconfidence effect:

"A well-established bias in which a person's subjective confidence in his or her judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high."

We know we can often be courageous when our well being depends on it, in matters of life and death. Yet what about when immediate death is not the catalyst to action? Can we then, will we act courageously? We can learn to do so. 

We have to choose not to lie to ourselves or even moderately deceive. We have to choose personal responsibility, if not to others, then to ourselves. 

When we decide to be personally responsible, if only to ourselves, we will choose to be courageous in the face of our egos (who are not our best friends or protectors) and choose to learn, improve, grow, correct our challenges, protect our lives and improve  our strengths, reputations, influence and persuasion.

Michael Toebe is a communications leadership practice for reputation management, risk, crisis communications and crisis management for companies and individuals. 

He has contributed to Chief Executive, Corporate Board Member, New York Law Journal and American City Business Journals. On LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.