yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Principles for Success: “Your Two Biggest Barriers” | Episode 6


3m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Principles for Success: An Ultra Mini-Series Adventure in 30 Minutes and in Eight Episodes

Episode Six: Your Two Biggest Barriers

I can't tell you which path in life is best for you because I don't know how important it is for you to achieve big goals relative to how important it is for you to avoid the pains required to get them. This is the courage I spoke of earlier, and we each have to feel these things out for ourselves.

After my big mistake in calling for a depression, I had come to one of life's forks in the road, as we all do. If I made the choice to take a normal job and play it safe, I would have ended up with a very different life than the one I had. But as long as I could pay the rent, put food on the table, and educate my kids, the only choice for me was to risk crossing the jungle in pursuit of the best life possible.

My big mistake inventing on a depression gave me a healthy fear of being wrong. In other words, it gave me deep humility, which was exactly what I needed. At the same time, it didn't stop me from aggressively going after the things I wanted to succeed. I needed to see more than I alone could see, but standing in my way of doing that were the two biggest barriers everyone faces: our ego and blind spot barriers.

These barriers exist because of how our brains work. First, let's explore the ego barrier. When I refer to your ego barrier, I'm talking about the parts of your brain that prevent you from acknowledging your weaknesses objectively so that you can figure out how to deal with them. Your deepest seeded needs and fears reside in areas of your brain that control your emotions and are not accessible to your higher-level conscious awareness.

Because our need to be right can be more important than our need to find out what's true, we like to believe our own opinions without properly stress-testing them. We especially don't like to look at our mistakes, and we instinctively react to explorations of them as though they're attacks. We get angry, even though it would be more logical for us to be open to feedback from others. This leads to our making inferior decisions, learning less, and falling short of our potentials.

The second is the blind spot barrier. Everyone has blind spots. The blind spot barrier is when a person believes he or she can see everything, but it's a simple fact that no one alone can see a complete picture of reality. Naturally, people can't appreciate what they can't see.

Just as we all have different ranges for singing, hearing pitch, and seeing colors, we have different ranges for seeing and understanding things. For example, while some people are better at seeing the big picture, others excel at seeing details. Some are linear thinkers, and others are more lateral. While some are creative but not reliable, others are reliable but not creative, and so on.

Because of how our brains are wired differently, everyone perceives the world around them differently. By doing what comes naturally to us, we fail to account for our weaknesses, and we crash. Either we keep doing that, or we change.

Aristotle defined tragedy as a terrible outcome arising from a person's fatal flaw— a flaw that, had it been fixed, would have instead led to a wonderful outcome. In my opinion, these two barriers are the main impediments that get in the way of good decision-making. My fear of being wrong gave me the radical open-mindedness I needed, and that changed everything.

[Music]

More Articles

View All
What if there was a black hole in your pocket?
What would happen to you if a black hole the size of a coin suddenly appeared near you? Short answer: you’d die. Long answer: it depends. Is it a black hole with the mass of a coin, or is it as wide as a coin? Suppose a US nickel with the mass of about …
How To Make $1 Million Per Year
What’s up, you guys? It’s Graham here. So, a few years ago, I had this insanely impossible goal to one day make over a million dollars in a year. At the time I made that goal, an amount like that just seemed ridiculous. I didn’t have a plan to make that h…
Baker v. Carr | National Constitution Center | Khan Academy
[Kim] Hi, this is Kim from Kahn Academy. Today we’re learning more about Baker versus Carr, a landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1962. Baker versus Carr grappled with an incredibly important issue: whether one person’s vote is equal to another person’…
Solo Escape from Iraq | No Man Left Behind
I was a 28-year-old guy loving life and everything else. And uh, I was in the Special Air Service. I can remember flying in; the first thing that came over the headset was the pilot saying, “Welcome to Iraq.” From that point, a new game was on. The 8-man …
Preview Get Ready for Grade Level
Here’s an example of a Get Ready for Grade Level course. In this case, it’s Get Ready for Sixth Grade, and there are a couple of interesting things here. First of all, you can see that the course is broken down into units, like all of our courses are brok…
I am making Axe Ghost
Hey, my name’s Thomas. This is unusual content for this channel. I realize I’ve been working on this video game called Ax Ghost. Just recently, I’ve published a demo of it on Steam, and I’m just going to play it here—play the current build—and let you see…