Arrogance and Being Right
are little understood self sabotage
They're not only a Problem of Youth!
"Oh bother!" I exclaimed. Yes, you're absolutely right, those are not quite the exact words I'd used. My glass hair shampoo bottle had shattered on the shower floor when it slipped out of my hand.
Feeling foolish, I went to get a broom to sweep the tiled shower floor in the student building after asking someone to warn people about the broken glass.
Although the steward wasn't unkind about my actions, I actually felt a complete idiot because I'd seen but ignored his notice. His warning which he'd put by the shower entrance. A very clear unequivocal notice which said: "Use only plastic shampoo bottles, avoid glass ones which can break."
Feeling foolish, I went to get a broom to sweep the tiled shower floor in the student building after asking someone to warn people about the broken glass.
Although the steward wasn't unkind about my actions, I actually felt a complete idiot because I'd seen but ignored his notice. His warning which he'd put by the shower entrance. A very clear unequivocal notice which said: "Use only plastic shampoo bottles, avoid glass ones which can break."
But my short while at university hadn't done anything to reduce my arrogance. Because I didn't make mistakes, how could this apply to me? At that age, I knew everything, including that being careful would ensure I didn't drop it. Ah, yes, the arrogance of youth.The warning was both visible and clear and I knew that glass bottles are a bad idea for shampoo, they become slippery and break if you drop them. I did understand that plastic only was a great idea.
But there's a enormous yet little-known difference between just understanding and real knowing. Dropping the slippery glass bottle gave me the experience which leads to wisdom.
My self-sabotage mechanism had said I know, pretending that understanding, even knowing are no different to wisdom. But this incident demonstrates the enormity of this lie. I have the experience and it altered my behavior immediately. Now I only ever take plastic bottles into the shower.
The Arrogance of Youth
Actually, it was rather amusing. Recalling this experience made me realize how arrogant I had been in my youth. How often I'd believed I knew for certain, even when it was clear I did not. There's a brilliant bumper sticker with a wonderful message:
Hire a teenager - while they think they know it all!
Back then, I believed the logic behind my thinking to be irresistible. I was convinced I know it all once I'd learned even a little about any subject. Okay, okay, I'll admit the truth, I was very, very full of myself.Everybody Believes They Know
"I have expertise in stopping self sabotage and overcoming the ensuing stress," said I to my friend years later. "That's why I can write about both so clearly. Yet not that many people are interested in overcoming self sabotage. Who are they and how do you find them?"
His advice stunned me, he'd obviously never dropped a slippery glass bottle in the shower. He thought he was being sensible, but instead showed his profound ignorance of wisdom.
Yes, I have vast experience of overcoming self sabotage and stress. Perhaps even some wisdom from the enormous amounts of practice I've given myself. It's the changes that experience brings which make you more effective. But those experiences do not necessarily translate to any other area, despite the beliefs of so many.
In my teens, I did not understand this valuable secret to success. Most don't! Many people seem to believe that since their body has grown up, this automatically gives them grown up perspectives and adult wisdom at the same time.
Accept All Help!
Some people even insist on refusing help and doing it all themselves, which results in far slower progress. Pretenders may even write books or try to teach others while insisting that no one else can help them. Yet if no one can help them, what makes them think they can help someone else?
Although the contradiction is very obvious, the self-sabotage mechanism tries to pretend there's no inconsistency! Obviously you are different to everyone else, and therefore special, but it's actually arrogant to think you are more special than anyone else.
Especially when it seems wrong, you need to investigate a new perspective and find out why someone else sees it as right. Invest the necessary time and energy to enlarge your context, and you gain wisdom!
How do you Know that You Know?
How can someone tell if you do really know? You do it when the right time comes. The mistakes that come when you only know about something can be very stressful. If you don't do it when appropriate, or you make mistakes, that's the proof you don't really know!
Discovering how to overcome such self sabotage is essential to becoming more effective. So investigate all anomalies in the results; unlike your mind, reality always tells you the truth. You do what works because you know the cost of overcoming mistakes. Clients and advocates of Life Strategies stop doing what doesn't work, which means you learn to stop believing your untrue thoughts!
People write articles to become well-known, but real articles share authentic wisdom. The more you learn from overcoming mistakes, the more effective your results. The secret of success is to realize experts share from experience - rather than regurgitating what they just understand. Masters know this summary.
As Mark Twain pithily explained:
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
Experience is Vital!
But with only your opinion, you have no experience. So you don't know how to avoid the mistakes, walk round the pitfalls, and overcome the stumbling blocks that inevitably occur. There's a lot of value in the definition of experience as:
“What you have immediately after
you needed it the most!"
Being Right - Believing Your Thoughts
When you think you're in the right or your behavior was right - and someone else wrong - your self sabotage mechanism hijacks your thoughts. It insists the other is in the wrong, although they also think they're right. It seizes on any trifle to support your case, and ignores everything that disproves it, no matter how compelling.
Then you think you know, and your thoughts reinforce this deceptive idea. The way out of this apparent conundrum is to stop being gullible, to stop automatically believing your thoughts. You instead need to investigate the evidence dispassionately, assess the situation objectively and determine which is more correct, more well-founded. Which viewpoint leads to strife, and which will improve the world?
It takes energy to research a subject carefully. Yet when your mind is quick, and understanding comes easily, you may think you know - and view spending any more time as a waste. But you can change your life by going way past the point where you just understand something to reach wisdom.
The world is full of politicians, economists, and fanatics who insist their policies are working while continuing to ignore the evidence of failure all around them. Yet - perhaps like you - they do believe their thoughts are completely rational. The secret of success is to realize that being right is an amazingly common disease!
Just because you have a thought doesn't mean it’s valid, you're gullible whenever you simply believe without checking. Some thoughts are true, yet many are not. Improve your mental fitness by investigating each one, then ignore the misleading ones. Check them out, don't self sabotage by automatically believing all your thoughts. Just like exercise, you can’t get fit by delegating your mental workout!
Food for Thought
“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience
and that is not learning from experience."
Archibald MacLeish 1892-1982, American poet, writer, three Pulitzer Prizes
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