I’ve recently been getting into a lot of entrepreneurial content as it’s something I’m actively involved in every day. I recently came to terms with the fact that I was leaving a lot of growth and potential progress on the table by having an ego about certain things even if I do consider myself to be humble externally.
I needed to start dropping my ego.
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Introduction
I’ll show you a few examples of what I mean – if you have some of the same tendencies concerning any subject then maybe this post will have helped you. My main point here is in terms of business and success in life generally having an open and positive mind is likely going to be a really big asset.
If you’re always closed off and feel like you’re above things you won’t grow. This is especially important to reflect on if you are like me and feel you should have been getting results but weren’t.
Influencers & Ego
Someone I didn’t like for the longest time was Iman Gadzhi. If I’m being completely honest I was jealous of his success at a young age especially because we are of a similar age. I could have done everything he has done but I didn’t for a large variety of reasons.
I thought about him as a grifter, scammer, etc, when all he was doing was taking consistent action towards success. He was starting an agency, making live sales calls, and making an education company, all while posting the entire process thus creating another business entirely snowballing his success exponentially.
I always avoided his content when it was recommended, assuming there was nothing I could learn from someone “like him”.
That all changed when one day I decided to just watch one of his videos just to see it. I learned so much from him for free in the realm of entrepreneurship, business, and self-improvement, and while I’m not in the business of making an agency (or buying a $2,000 course) I can say he gave me insane amounts of value.
If I had stayed so closed off I would’ve missed out on so much quality information.
Books & Ego
Bridging off from influencers is books – I’ve been obsessively reading lately and it’s going to have played such a huge role in my success. The amount of knowledge I’ve been able to accumulate in such a short time from reading has been amazing. I even wrote an entire post about it recently.
Something I faced in terms of books is not reading them at all. I thought I knew most of the concepts that popular success, finance, or self-improvement books would be talking about.
For example – why would I need a book about habits? How could someone have written an entire book about habits? It should be easy – just make consistent changes, right?
Wrong.
The book I’m talking about here is Atomic Habits and it’s one of the best books I’ve read recently. The sheer number of things in business and life overall that can be applied to concepts learned in this book is mind-boggling. I especially enjoyed the example about the British cycling team who was in last place for years but through the consistent and slight improvement in many aspects of racing, they were able to dominate for years.
Now that I’ve done the easy part and read the book I still need to remember to use the key concepts from it every single day. To help with this I wrote a post summarizing my thoughts on the book here.
To give another example I thought the same thing when starting “MONEY Master the Game” by Tony Robbins.
I thought “I’ve been working, investing, and saving like a robot since I was 15, what could I possibly learn?” – to think this about a 600-page book is pretty arrogant and while I haven’t finished it I’m sure I’ll have more than enough to talk about when I post about my thoughts on the book.
I felt physically ill while reading some parts of the book because it was painfully obvious I wasn’t playing optimally – that I wasn’t making the correct moves in terms of my monetary habits. I fell off in terms of my saving and investing over the past year or two and I needed this book even if not for the content itself as a reminder to stay on track.
I also discounted a lot of books because they were “old”, “esoteric”, or “boring”. One of the best books I’ve read recently was written in 1937 (guess) and another was written in CE 171-175.
Opportunity & Ego
Going back to the idea of jealousy – there have been so many opportunities I’ve technically known about and had access to but thought I was too good for. If I had executed some of these opportunities I could have leveraged that success into doing something I was more interested in meanwhile I was still working an office job waiting for things to happen on their own doing nothing.
Conclusion
So whether this comes down to having a more open and positive mindset, always being aware of the fact that I can learn more, or just giving things a shot, my framework in terms of thinking about these things has changed for the better.
I think having an “ego” can be good in some ways but if you are allowing it to limit yourself similar to how I was then it’s something you should look into fixing. Hopefully, if you relate to some of this it shows you what you may be missing out on, and if not then hopefully it motivates you to always continue learning and being open-minded.
I know personally this is something I need and will allow me to reach a level where I’m actively efficiently working towards my goals.