Learn Consistently by Silencing the Ego

If I can constantly learn something new without letting my ego get bent out of shape by errors or contradicting ideas, then I’m unstoppable.

Growth doesn’t have to be complicated.

Learn something new every day.

Boom – it can be that simple.

The Problem with Growth is Ego

So incredibly often our egos will get in the way and keep us from learning new things.

Ego is completely prevalent in this world and it is such a HUGE barrier to growth.

Learning from Errors

For example, learning from errors and mistakes is one of the best ways to learn. If I touch a hot stove and burn my hand, I’ll have a very clearly illustrated reason of why I shouldn’t touch that stove.

But the ego can get in the way and comes up with excuses as to why it wasn’t my fault – like someone pushed me and then I touched the stove, so it’s their fault. That egotistical justification prevents learning additional lessons – like it isn’t a good idea to roughhouse near a hot stove – and I’m the one who started the roughhousing! So it was my fault anyways in this imaginary example.

The ego holds us back in another way – trying risks new things.

What happens when we try something new? We don’t do as good of a job as when we try something we’re already good at. But the only way to get better at something new is to try and fall and try and fall less and try and eventually be good at it.

The egos keep us from experimenting, from trying, and from growing in new areas. I held off on digging deep into new programming techniques because they slowed me down. That held back my programming career until I set my ego aside and learned the new (and better) methods and became good at them.

Don’t be afraid of making errors or mistakes. Mistakes are how we grow and learn.

Learning from Others

Egos are similarly huge barriers to learning from others.

Other people have learned lessons before us. My mom told me to not touch a hot stove to save me from that pain. But if I thought she didn’t know what she was talking about because she thought ice cream for breakfast was a bad idea, I’m going to make a completely preventable mistake.

Learning from others provides HUGE shortcuts in life.

What about reading a books? I put off reading How to Win Friends and Influence People for years. I knew communication was a weakness of mine, but my ego prevented me from picking up the help. I ended up losing a job because I couldn’t communicate or collaborate well with my coworkers. That problem followed me until I began devouring books and podcasts on communication and then communication has become a strength of mine. Sure, I’m not perfect, but I can do a good job at it.

We can always come up with all sorts of excuses as to why we shouldn’t listen to this or that person – and those reasons come back to ego in one way or another.

Set aside the ego and skyrocket your learning opportunities.

A Positive Outlook Keeps Egos in Check

A negative outlook on life sees small mistakes as catastrophes or other people who want to help us as opponents trying to undermine us. That’s the ego stepping in and holding us back.

When we maintain a positive outlook around us, we can squash that ego and see opportunities all around us.

That error was a lesson learned so we can do better in the future.

That person offering to help is an opportunity to take a growth shortcut.

That book is a path to a big jump in a career.

and then…

And then that positivity can start leaking outwards towards others.

We can help coworkers see the lessons learned in the small errors and keep them from feeling like a catastrophe happened.

We can go out of our way when it is inconvenient to help them out and help them learn something new.

It’s all interconnected.

Learning means setting aside the ego. Setting aside the ego means adopting a positive outlook. Adopting a positive outlook means instinctive helping of others. Instinctive helping of others means the world becomes a better place.

Just get out there, turn off the ego and start learning at every opportunity – it isn’t complicated.