On Learning and Courage

Today, some of Gianpiero Petriglieri's tweets were about learning and courage – and difficult conversations.

“Real learning takes and makes real courage”, he tweeted.

To follow up with “How much grown ups learn, how fast, depends on how much courage and permission we have to look at, and talk about, what’s easier to ignore.”

How do we define or perceive learning? For me learning is about improving, growing, evolving and developing. With this in mind, what is the role of courage?

I was thinking of the courage to detach ourselves from everything that we know, or we think we know. Once again the Bruce Lee story came to my mind and the cup we need to empty.

But the second tweet got me thinking. 

I am not sure what were the difficult (or delicate) conversations Gianpiero Petriglieri mentioned; I'll be waiting for his new article to find out. What I am sure of is that any kind of learning requires a great deal of self-awareness, at least from my perspective. Any knowledge starts with self-knowledge. From that perspective, what are the things that are easier to ignore?

If we gave ourselves permission and we had abundant courage, what would be the difficult conversations that we would be having with ourselves? 

Real learning takes and makes real courage.
— GianpieroPetriglieri (@gpetriglieri) March 18, 2014