21 May How to Find and Practice Courage
Achieving happiness requires little more than practising a few simple disciplines, each and every day.
That’s been my motto for several decades now.
Except what is missing from this motto is the recognition that practising positive disciplines isn’t always easy. Happiness isn’t just feeling good it’s also doing good; and doing good (or what’s right) isn’t always easy.
Which is why I’m excited to share this new article with you. Doing the right thing, doing good, sometimes requires COURAGE. And this explains how you can find and practice courage…
via the HBR by Manfred Kets de Vries
One of my former students, the CEO of a large, diversified industrial company recently sent me an email to say that he believed “the pandemic was the moment to show the people in the company that management really cared.”
That was why, he told me, that in spite of the serious financial implications and the opposition of some of his key shareholders, he had made the decision not to furlough anybody and had asked his senior executives to take a reduction in salary, in exchange for shares that would be bought back at a later date by the company at the issue price. In addition, he had offered credit to all of his suppliers that were in trouble and, with the help of his top team, he also arranged an airlift of personal protective equipment for the hospitals closely located to the company’s main premises. He was very proud of the fact that in a few days the top executive team, supported by other employees of the company, had successfully raised a substantial amount of money for that purpose.
He admitted that at the onset of the crisis he had been “set on a quite different path” but that he managed to “find the courage to do what was right.” He ended the email by saying that “the response from my people because of these actions has been humbling.”
I was touched by this note. Here, was a relatively timid, rather anxious CEO who had been brave enough to take actions that a number of his shareholders had disagreed with. He had clearly thought carefully about what the right thing to do in the circumstances would be, and he had found the courage to act on his conclusions in the face of opposition and difficulties.
But what was it that made him courageous? Was he always courageous or did he learn to be? This is not an easy question to answer, because courage, like personality, is a product of both nature and nurture, of both the individual and her society, of both the person and the situation…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE
#happiness #positivepsychology #courage