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

- [Narrator] Principles for Success:

an Ultra Mini-Series Adventure

in 30 minutes and in 8 episodes.

Episode 6, 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 can 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 in betting 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 can 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 it.

Your deepest-seated needs and fears reside in areas

of your brain that control your emotions and are not

accessible to your higher level conscious awareness

and 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 weaknesses.

We are instinctively prone to 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.