Why are people cowardly

Who remembers the name of a coward? Who remembers the name of someone who chose to be safe, when they should have been the opposite? No one does! I know a lot of people always like to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It goes:. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right. Cowards have no backbone. Cowards have no conviction.

Cowards have no guts. Cowards have no testicular fortitude. So listen up cowards, confession time is over. I hope you choose to be different. Jeffrey L. When leaders choose the latter, they eventually take everyone down with them. And they expose a team that lacks the courage to trust and respect its people. They require us to step outside ourselves, to become vulnerable and bare who we really are.

Sometimes, people take advantage of these relationships. Other times, we may not want others to know who we really are. As a result, these leaders never get the most out of them. Relationships take time. But numbers are far easier to manage than those unpredictably creative people who create them.

You see this disconnect when employees rebel or leave an organization. Thus, they disparage the screening process or bad influences. And that takes real courage. First, they crawl into a shell.

Then, they try to cover it up. When that fails, they blame or bargain. Some persevere and come out wiser. Others get stuck, carrying the same swag and repeating the same mistakes. A few just give up, laying blame on timing, circumstance, and fate. Want to find courageous leaders? Look for the people who sit back quietly. They care little for the trappings of leadership, focusing instead on setting the example for their peers. They seek out opinions and build relationships.

To them, mutual respect fosters trust. And gathering ideas only helps them identify challenges sooner. In short, they anticipate and act before they need to do so. That is true courage: Making the decisions and modeling the behaviors that keep organizations out of life-and-death situations in the first place.

This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Nov 11, , am EST. Edit Story. Apr 8, , am EDT. Jeff Schmitt. One of the laws of life is that you rule or are ruled.

So the question is: Are experiencing a momentary laps of determination or is this a pattern? Have you ever stopped to notice how often you make decisions based on fear? Fear-based decisions are mostly about giving our power away. We let other people make the decisions for us. We leave the decisions to our parents, our children, our partners, our companies, our managers, our clients, our governments. The worst part of fear-based decisions is when we feel we have no decision to make at all.

We feel trapped. We feel there are no options. We settle for fear and we get comfortable with it without even realising. There is nothing intelligent about not standing up for yourself. You may not win every battle. However, everyone will at least know what you stood for—YOU.

Cowards are the opposite of straight-forward. They beat around the bush, tell half-truths and whole lies. They live a life of smoke and mirrors, creating a false image to present to other people. This is typically so they can sit on an imaginary pedestal, towering over others. Deluded, they revel with their fake mask in their fake world. Strong honest people will call a coward out on their BS. So cowards tend hide away from strong people so they can maintain a fake persona.

All of this pretending allows them to avoid pain and feel good in the short term, but it exacts a heavy price over time. There is always a price to be paid for necessary actions not taken. Cowards avoid taking bold, decisive action because it makes them uncomfortable. Cowards prey on people they think they can take advantage of. They will typically act super nice towards them at first and then bare their fangs later on as they start to extract favours like borrowing money and not returning it.

Cowards choose not to say no to distractions because what they should be focusing on may be difficult, unpleasant, or anxiety producing. Anyone can stay busy. It takes real courage and fortitude to stay focused and on task.

A brave person will take action, make shit happen and let their achievements speak for themselves, whereas cowards need to talk themselves up — they need words to show off. Cowards fear punishment. They use all kinds of distractions to avoid taking responsibility and apologising, including adamantly and righteously denying any wrong-doing, or by creating abandonment threats to make the other person back down or take on the fault instead.

It takes both facts and intuition to analyse situations effectively. When a coward hurts your feelings, you might calmly express that to them and ask them to stop.