The knowledge barrier — when your knowledge blocks your success
My son handed me an old drawing book this morning which he found stored in an old pile of books. I flipped through it and I found two of my entrepreneurial projects sketched on it, with their business names, interfaces and what value they will bring for their uses. They never materialised. It was a 3 years old book, and the painful aspect is that 3 years ago I was thinking on the same lines as I am today. I am still starting a project with similar progress on it.
What? 3 years of struggle and no materialised output? Something was wrong somewhere, with me or with my approach, and I didn’t understand where I was wrong and how may I fix it — until I learned from Robert Greene this valuable bit.
“Why are children able to learn, and adults cannot? The reason is children don’t think they are superior, they don’t think they already understand the world, they are small, they are weak, they are defenceless. They have to learn or they’re gonna die. They have to learn to speak the language, they have to learn what’s going on with their parents or they are gonna die.”
And here’s the learning…
Children begin their journey with…
- “I know nothing, I got to learn or I’ll die,”,
Adults begin their journey with…
- “What is the best I know yet and what are my gaps which I should fill for my project.”
- “And what else is out there in terms of knowledge and experience which I need to gain so I could equip myself with right tools. Its an important journey and I got to do it right.”
What has been blocking me wasn’t lack of knowledge, but too much knowledge. The more you know, the more pitfalls you know of, more wrong ways become visible, and visibility of more danger zones ask you to study even more so you understand how things go wrong, what one must do, must not do and how to come out of a pits when you fall in one.
Dr. Estacio in her book “The imposter syndrome” has identified the same as one of the barriers which prevents you from gaining confidence and makes you feel “wrong”, “non-deserving” and “behind”. She says;
“The trouble is, the more I read, the more I feel the need to read more, because it makes me realize how very little I know!”
and
“Attempting to learn everything at the start may not be possible, because there are things that you know that you know; things that you know that you didn’t know; things that you didn’t know you knew; and things that you didn’t know you didn’t know!
The Realisation
That realisation about me has led me to a painful conclusion that the biggest blocker in my success hasn’t been the economy, shortage of time or my responsibilities, but the main blocker has been — I. I myself, my knowledge and my own wisdom has been standing in my way. Like “death by 1000 cuts”, I was blocked by “1000 doses of cautions”.
Is knowledge not required?
My acquired knowledge is a burden, it is shackle which prevents me from moving forward. I will need knowledge for sure, but I must synthesise my own knowledge which will be helpful to me alone and no one else will make use of it as they will have to synthesise their own knowledge for their success. If others think my knowledge is their beacon, they will be as wrong as I have been.
It’s like reading a book of a body-builder how he built his muscles, but by reading his book and what has worked for him will not build my muscles for me. I will have to do it myself. And when I will be working out in the gym, I will discover better approaches which are a better fit for my weight and body type. I will eventually end up building my own knowledge “how to build muscles” which will be the best fit for me alone.
In order to succeed, I must embrace that;
- The knowledge that I need to succeed is not found anywhere yet, it must be synthesised by me while I am working.
- “My knowledge” and “my success” are two outputs of the same activity — “my action”.
- As someone else’s success doesn’t become my success, someone else’s knowledge is not my source of truth.
It is only through experience that you will gain knowledge and skills which you would never have acquired if you hadn’t tried something new in the first place! — E. V. Estacio
The lock with the key
The following lock can only be opened when you start looking for key outside the lock. But as a simplistic human, we tend to think we know where the key is, “it’s inside the lock”. In reality, it is not that. The key that will eventually open the lock is not inside the lock — but it is out there somewhere. So you got to reject what is locked inside the lock and start your journey by saying “I don’t have the key, I don’t know where it is and I got to find it. When you will start looking “outside”, you are likely to find it and open the lock of your success.
And when success = survival
An equally valuable bit that kids follow is that they know their survival depends on their learning and doing. They don’t have a backup plan, and they don’t have a side project to hurl besides their main. They know their life depends on their ability to learn and do, they go all in — and they end up learning and doing. But there comes a time in their life when they start learning from other kids, other humans and other’s success, and when they start finding doing and succeeding was hard. Innocent enough by then they had grown into adults.
The solution
“I know nothing, I got to learn or I’ll die”.
This little line of text is powerful and carries the secret of success. I thank the children of the world finding it and letting the adults re-learn about it.
