Do not stand in your own way

Many of the successful people in business, academe or in the different fields of profession come from humble beginnings. Starting from scratch they beat the odds, faced trials, went through challenges, adversities and arrive at where they are today.

We have lots of articles written about them. Some of them even published in books to share their life experiences. Many have also guested in popular talk shows and I have been inspired by their stories.

The starting years were always difficult. The competence level was low, skills were limited, network of friends and acquaintances are few and knowledge inadequate. But through sheer arduous work, a wealth of experience both good ones and the not so good ones increase the knowledge. And the person begins to grow while entering into different levels of success and achievements. This is the critical moment of the person’s life that would define whether the success journey could be sustained or the victories experiences would only be temporary and might even lead to defeat.

One of the most fascinating philosophy I have learned in my life pertaining to business is the thought expressed by Physicist, John Wheeler. Wheeler developed the hydrogen bomb. There is no doubt to his brilliance in the realm of physics. Wheeler observed that “as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

In other words, each victory and advancement that makes a person smarter also bumps him or her against new situations that are never encountered before. And with the new experiences that confront the person experiencing success, it takes an enormous amount of humility to learn new things, admit ignorance or the lack of knowledge and to go through the basic course of study and patient learning.

But here is where the rub is. Accomplishment and situational success exerts an unhealthy pressure, to pretend that one knows more than he or she does. There is the temptation to pretend as if the person knows everything. And then wrong decisions are made, wrong presumptions are kept and then all these negative factors combined together will cause eventual demise or destruction.

I have had the privilege of interacting with our country’s top leaders and achievers from tycoons to taipans, the one thing I have observed about them is that they keep on asking questions. I knew obviously that they know infinitely more than I do, and that they are not asking questions because they do not know but they are asking questions to validate what they know, perhaps to test me if I know and most importantly, to perhaps increase a little bit of something they still do not know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson says: “Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.” This was “a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined and focused will.”

Wynton Marsalis is a nine-time Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning jazz musician and he offered an advice to a promising young musician on how best to learn music and this was what he said: “Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on. It leaves you open for truths to reveal themselves. You don’t stand in your own way.” 

I have met people who would never admit they do not know. There are those who would predicate their sentence with “I know… I know…” But in all actuality they don’t. Eventually you would see that they stand in their own way.

The humble they improve, they do not assume, they are not shy in asking question and once they learn something new, it is like winning a prize during the raffle draw except that the vaue they get from it builds them up and prepare them for the next level of progress.

We need to be perpetual students of life. Always learning. Always reading. Always asking. We learn from business successes, we learn from failures. We learn from our experiences and we learn from other people’s experiences. Businesses should behave the same way too. Let me just put this succinctly: “No learning equals dying and decline.” Never allow ego block progress such that we end up standing in our own way.

There is a threat to our own success when we reach the part of thinking that we know it all and then pretend to know things we don’t. This is a door that leads to disaster. Knowledge has to be sought and rarely does it come to interrupt you while you are watching another season of your TV series. Read books, attend seminars and be a perpetual student. Same thing with the spiritual life, we cannot just claim to know God. We need to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ.

And so… do not stand in your own way. We cannot afford to and don’t respond by saying, “I know…”

(Bestselling book author and productivity expert Todd Henry, Francis Kong and a host of successful leaders will talk about Passion, Productivity and Purpose in a whole day conference entitled: “Die Empty” on November 9, 2017 at Samsung Hall, SM Aura. For registration or inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798)