Ego - Protection

In the article “Modest Assumptions” I laid out why people often prefer a less appealing alternative over a better one that entails the risk of failure or defeat. As it is an important issue that can significantly affect your life, I’m going to discuss it in some greater detail.

First, it is interesting to ask why people prefer to protect their ego by acting timid. Don’t they realize that they will miss out on many great opportunities? This starts even on a smaller scale. Let me give an insightful example here: One of my friends has recently taken up Muay Thai, and devotes at least two hours on it per day.  He’s progressing well, and is already better than some of the people in his dojo who have been training for well over a year. His sensei took him aside the other day and said, “Do you know why you’re doing so well? It’s because you don’t take criticism personally.”

Maybe you want to let the previous sentence sink in for a while. It is indeed very common for people to react offended if you point out how they could improve, no matter how non-confrontative your approach is. In their mind, they just can’t be wrong. I am not sure where this comes from, but part of it probably has to do with the current climate in schools where kids get “gold stars for good attendance,” meaning they hand out some kind of trophy no matter how bad they were. Of course, sending the message, “You are alright no matter what you do,” can lead to inflated egos. Why should they listen to criticism anyway if they collect one “gold star” after another? They think they are doing well already.

Some people don’t ever grasp mathematics not because of bad teachers, but because they aren’t willing to listen. If you now substitute mathematics with “X”, you’ll have a pretty good explanation of why many people never fully reach their potential in anything they do. But isn’t this utterly nonsensical? I mean, how can someone develop an ego around a skill they haven’t mastered at all? On the other hand, you’ll often find that people who have had great success don’t shy from reevaluating their actions. Once I read about chess player Viktor Korchnoi, who belonged to the world elite for about half a century, was contender for the title of world champion several times, and, unbelievably, was still ranked among the best 100 players in the world at age 75. (This is not a typo!) By any standard, he is a titan in his field.

Yet, what surprised me most was when I read that at the age of 40, he began to systematically rebuild his approach to chess, starting from the very basics. This was when he was already an acclaimed player. Only afterwards did he manage to become a contender for the world title. Now, if one of the strongest players in the world can say, “Maybe there’s a better way and maybe I’ve been wrong about some assumptions.”, then we shouldn’t be so sure about ourselves either. Maybe we unknowingly defend wrong assumptions that only hold us back.