MEN THAT WILL SUCCEED 18: They are Teachable

"No height of achievement should take you to the level where you think there's no more to learn"  

Have you ever wondered why high-profile sportsmen and women keep their trainers?  Why do you think winning teams don’t do without coaches?  Well, I know that winners remain winners only if they remain under tuition.  Your potentials to be and remain great is determined mostly by how teachable you are.

It might not be easy but you have to do it.  The biggest companies in the world today are all committed to improving their staff quality through training.  Why?  There’s always more to know.  Life, at its best, is like an inverted pyramid.  Difficult to climb but at the top is wide and flat.  That’s how success is.  You learn and strive so much to get to the top only to get there and find out that the largest rooms for improvement are there.

Only teachable people remain on top.  In fact, the only thing that will stop you from learning at the top is pride.  Otherwise, it’s quite easy to do so.  I mean, the best resources are there.  The time is there and the incentive is there too.  

Follow-up on Two Major Things Part I

This morning I thought to start my day with some science-based inspiration (I do that quite often but not always). By that I mean to read or watch something that shares a profound truth with scientific proof. Usually I just think look up the first thing that comes to my mind. Now that is a bit crude and has led me to utter nonsense on a number of occassions. But I bet you that each time I find something exciting, like I did this morning, it's always worth sharing. 

For many centuries much has been said about how time is important and we should manage it, use it wisely, invest it and so on. But you hear or read very little about how our perception of time could actually influence us in no small measure. That happens to be the subject of these videos. The first is the animated summary and the second is the full talk given by Professor Philip Zimbardo. What touched me most in the presentation is how the professor shows the link between the fast-pacedness of today's society - our desire for control - and youth misbehaviour. That connection was subtly made when he presented the figures on school dropout rates in the US and how that is associated with seemingly harmless and fun-filled technologies! I couldn't help but link it with my January 26 post on the value of quiet.

  

 

MEN THAT WILL SUCCEED 17: They learn from Experience

Today I was preparing the next in the series on Loyalty. Somehow, I came to remember that the last time I posted on the Actions of Successful People was on last December, two days to Christmas. I don't seem to know why but I feel pressed to pause the ongoing series and resume the long-standing one. Hopefully, I will finish it this time with 7 more bi-weekly posts. If you've never read any of the previous posts I suggest you simply use the search bar on the sidebar with the text MEN THAT WILL SUCCEED. That is the standard prefix I have used for all the articles in this series.

 

 

Success comes from good judgement
Good judgement comes from experience
Experience comes from bad judgement  (Tony Robbins)

The most successful people are those who learn not to repeat mistakes.  Procedures may be worth repeating but only dullards repeat mistakes.  It’s allowed that everyone make mistakes but it’s not allowed that they make it every time. These is nothing as good as doing things right the first time.  And this is where the experience of others comes in.  You can’t do things right if you don’t know how. And you can’t know how if you don’t ask how.

Risk taking is primarily about defying the odds to go ahead. But the best risk takers (and who have pulled it off most often) are those who have seen others (or who themselves in the past did) make some mistakes in the past, and are wise enough to avoid repeating them.  In fact, the best and quickest way to learn is to observe and then repeat or avoid, depending on what is seen.  That is the default mechanism of learning built into man by God.  That is how babies learn.

Observe what others have done (or are doing) and make meaningful deductions. It’s much safer and less costly to do that. Why must you make all the mistakes yourself, even though you can’t avoid some?  That’s why Sam Adeyemi said that the experience that is the best teacher is someone else’s experience.

As it has been said, if a man cheats you once, it’s his fault; if he cheats you a second time, it’s the fault of both of you; if he cheats you a third time, it’s all your fault. Learn to make them count: what you've seen, heard and been through.

Two Major Things - Part IIa

As humans, we are incurably social. Everything we do is situated within the context of relationships and interactions. It is within this context that loyalty becomes a highly relevant virtue. Every marriage, friendship, team, army etc cannot thrive in the presence of disloyalty. Unfortunately, the world today tends to treat disloyalty as the norm and loyalty as the exception. And that is closely connected to the way we define success and honour. It is such that everything that matters is what we see, whatever is not seen does not count for much. That is why you see people investing so much in their façade - cars, houses, certificates, money, power...and they will do anything to save their faces and deny their wrongs!

It doesn’t matter how desperately you think you need to save your face and reputation in the present, you create much more problems for your future than you could ever solve if you are disloyal.  As far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong with being wrong, what is wrong is not admitting it when you are wrong. It is completely pardonable to err, but to pretend like nothing ever went wrong is what is inexcusable. If a man falls, it is wrong for him to stay down like nothing can be done. He needs to get up, deal with the issues and get going. But what we often see in today’s society is that people get caught up in errors – in short, they fall – and they pick themselves up, shake off the dust and pretend like nothing ever happened! Such men will always stop short of their ultimate destination, never reaching their greatest heights because one day, the prints they left in the sands of time will be discovered – and how lethal such discoveries are. 

Just two comparative examples: Tiger Woods was for 5 years the World’s No. 1 in golf until his marital disloyalty was discovered, mostly blown open by the many women he was involved with. In one year, the man slipped down 4 places and his entire family, let alone his wife could not help him. Dr. Ben Carson, the famous neurosurgeon, was once accused of extramarital affair by a strange woman. It was going to be a scandal because the woman claimed that she and Ben had a love affair but Ben’s wife came out to say it can’t be true; and that saved Ben.  The difference between the two men: LOYALTY!

More to come…