The greatest leaders have all been students of life. They always maintained a certain curiosity but moreso, maintaned the descipline to constantly be learning. Individuals have the tendency to get overly confident in one area and forget that they know very little or absolutely nothing about everything else. Your ego tries to tell you that you have achieved so much by mastering this one thing, but it witholds you from learning more. You have to keep in mind: You need to have your attitude readjusted, you’re not as good as you think you are, and everything you have learned might be outdated and more than likely can be wrong since the last time you learned about it.
There are many things that will determine your success as you’re starting out. One of them being your willingness to listen to feedback, especially tough feedback. In Ryan Holiday’s book Ego is the Enemy he goes on to explain that “an amateur is defensive and critical to feedback, but a professional delights in being challenged to learn more.”
To beome the best and to maintain that greatness, you need to have a student mindset. You need to continue to learn. Every minute in life has something to teach you, but ego gets in the way. Ego will tell you that shadowing your colleague to find ways of improving your work won’t do anything that you already know. Ego will tell you that doing the grunt work is too good for you. Ego will tell you that joining seminars is a waste of time. A good student will ignore the ego and appreciate the opportunity at hand. The book goes on to explain that: “Humility is what keeps us there, concerned we don’t know enough and that we must continue to study. Ego rushes to the end, rationalizes that patience is for losers (wrongly seeing it as a weakness), and assumes we’re good enough to give our talents a go in the world.”
Marcus Aurelius always used the word “Sympatheia” as a “Connection with the cosmos”. This connection forces the question of “Who am I? Why am I doing the things that I’m doing?”. The book explains that success pushes you away from the idea of sympatheia. Allowing you to feel as though the world revolves around you. Don’t let your success feed your ego. Be a lifelong student, especially after your major accomplishments.
– Eric Romero
