It is pathological to go through life thinking that you are always right. It is healthier to understand that sometimes your course of action is wrong. A productive life-style necessarily includes a process of self-assessment and occasional redirection. That being said we are hard-wired to believe that we are morally upright, well-meaning people. When we do wrong our brains will naturally go into overdrive trying to justify to ourselves why what may seem wrong is actually right. So to admit that we’ve done something wrong is fundamentally unnatural and difficult. But it is so important to growing as a person because if we can’t acknowledge our mistakes then we have very little to no chance of fixing them or avoiding those same mistakes in the future.
Along these lines I was speaking to a colleague of mine at work the other day about the “sphere of influence.” Basically there are only a limited number of things we can control and worrying or complaining about the things we can’t control only hamstrings our own progress. For instance I have no control over the weather. I can complain that it is hot or cold but ultimately all I am doing is stealing time and emotion from myself. By accepting the weather for what it is I can then move forward to things I can control. I can get my grunt-work done in the morning when its cooler and then do my desk-work in the afternoon when the temperature is blazing.
This is just a dumb example but the point is that by only devoting energy to those things we can actually control or influence we actually expand that sphere of influence. Our power grows because we are using it wisely.
No comments:
Post a Comment