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The Key to REAL Success? Admitting You Are Ignorant
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” — Epictetus.
I had a classmate in college who acted like he knew everything.
He would regularly interrupt the professor to share his “wisdom” and would argue with anyone who disagreed with him.
Needless to say, he was not well-liked.
I always wondered what he could possibly have been thinking. He was missing out on so much by pretending to know everything.
It’s a common problem, especially in the business world. We see it all the time: people who think they are too experienced or too successful to learn anything new.
But the truth is, we can always learn something new — no matter how old or successful we are.
Epictetus’s Key to REAL Success
The stoic philosopher Epictetus once said, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
In other words, we can only learn when we admit that we don’t know something. As soon as we think we know everything, we stop learning.
This is why it’s so important to have a beginner’s mind — an open mind that is willing to learn new things.
