Fact: The world is getting more complicated by the second, but our habits are stuck on the level of hunters and gatherers, the stone age, the simple times.
The complexity, the amount of stuff to deal with, even if you are just using the modern appliances and technical gadgets of the day, is almost higher than the complexity of engineering used to be, 40-50 years ago. I should know, I have two engineering degrees… and I can see it every day. Mind boggling.
But your relationship to learning didn’t keep up with the world: your main attitude about things is: “I should already know this” or “I should be able to do it without learning anything new.”
There is a huge disconnect between the you that you think you are, and the you that is out in the world, consistently failing, falling short, and experiences other, largely ignored, feedback from the world.
You think that nothing in life is more complicated than throwing your dirty clothes on the floor… after all they can be picked up when you want to do laundry.
You think you are smart enough to know without work, and you behave if that were true. You don’t understand why you are not getting from A to B… why you are left behind, why others have and you don’t…
Here are a few typical examples:
- You come to a webinar where I teach something important that has taken me 30 years of hard work to learn and fully understand. It is a program that can change your life, it is a program that asks you to do practices between sessions.You don’t bother to listen to the webinar replay, because you are soooo smart… but:
- you never actually got what was said
- you have no idea what you are supposed to do
- you come back to the next session thinking that you are golden.
- you are surprised and dismayed that I call you on it: after all you did what you understood. never ever suspecting that I said something totally different.Your faculties of comprehension are at best average, and the material is on the level of a ph.d.. You, thinking that one listening is enough, successfully labels you as a moron.
Now, being a moron who knows they are a moron is a good thing. Do you think that a moron that wants the ph.d. will work their butts off? You betcha!. I am a moron and I know it… and I work like no one’s business.You think you are a genius, and you don’t work at all.
- You want to build a website for your photography business. You look around and choose a site that will ask you to pay, for the life of your site, $10 a month for the privilege to use their services. You can’t move your stuff… ever… because they actually own your site.You didn’t read what you are buying, and you still haven’t. You made a decision without any data… You can’t ask for help, because you don’t know what you have… and finding out the stuff you have missed will take talking to people. Gasp.
You think yourself so smart that you will NEVER consider asking questions… how does a life of public assistance sound to you? Unless you become willing to learn something, that is your future.
- You come to every class I lead. You listen. You come away with the same exact thing every time: it has nothing to do with what I taught, you got none of that.You didn’t even notice: you think you are a diligent, good student…
Unless you declare yourself stupid, dumb, average, the ph.d. level life will not be available to you, and most things today are on that level: on the level of ph.d.. Including my classes.
You better wake up and smell the coffee… and stop following the stupid advice of the “gurus” that your self-esteem being high is a good thing: it is the worst. It keeps you stupid. And a total underachiever.
