Most Unsuccessful People Lack This Trait
The Amplified Impact Podcast
May 19th, 2023
Today, I’m super pumped to talk about a sneaky trait that I’ve noticed in so many successful people that the rest of us seem to be lacking.
Crazy, right? Most of us go through life looking for confirmation of our beliefs and ideas, trying to prove that we’re right all the time.
Think about it, we tune into the same news channels, we friend people on social media who share our views, and we block the ones that don’t. We’re living in echo chambers.
But the ones that win…they’re not afraid to change their minds when new facts come to light.
They’re not afraid to say, “Hey, I was wrong about that, let me look at it from a different perspective.”
And let me tell you, I’ve struggled with this myself for a long time, but ever since I got on the personal development train, this has been something that I’ve had to work on constantly.
And it’s not just about being successful in your career, this trait permeates all aspects of your life.
So, are you willing to look for reasons why you’re wrong? Are you willing to challenge your beliefs and opinions?
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Our lives, I think, are best lived when we’re in pursuit of our own greatness. And to be in pursuit of your own greatness, I think you have to be brutally honest and truthful with yourself about who you are in relation to the world. And so the pursuit of truth is critical.” – Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
What’s up, all you beautiful people? Welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk about one of the the sneaky traits that I see in so many of the successful people in my life that that I don’t see very much outside of that. Like a lot of, I would say 90% of the population does not manifest this particular trait. And I know for myself personally, this has been something thing I’ve really struggled with forever. But definitely since I got onto the personal development train and decided that I wanted to become a better version of myself almost a decade ago, this was something that I had to wrestle with constantly. And this trait, it permeates, permeates, permeates, permeates all aspects of our life. And we see it everywhere, from social media, from people taking stances and beliefs about things to political discussions to the mainstream media. This one trait, I think if the world could embody this, if we could flip a switch and just overnight everybody suddenly had this one trait, then the world would be a drastically better place.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:11]:
So what is this magical personality trait that the successful seem to have and the rest of us seem to lack? It’s this the successful people tend to look for reasons why they’re wrong, not for reasons why they’re right. Okay, let me repeat that. The truly successful people in life are the ones who are looking for reasons why they are wrong and not for reasons why they’re right. Most of us go through life just looking to confirm our beliefs, our ideas, our actions. We’re looking for confirmatory evidence, right? And so we tune into the same news channels that are in alignment with our political beliefs. We friend people on social media who are saying all the same things that we agree with, and we block the people that we disagree with or that have competing views. And when we do get into conversations with people or debates, let’s call it that, we aren’t going in open minded with the idea that I want to be persuaded that I want you to change my mind that I could be wrong, or hell, I am wrong. And I’m expecting you to help present me with the facts and the story and the narrative in a way that I can see the truth, right? It’s so rare that we do that so often in life.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:35]:
When we have a belief, opinion, some sort of thought, or some kind of action that we’ve taken, we want to be right. And so we go looking for the evidence, for the facts, the statistics that support our cause, that support our belief. And as a result, we get into these echo chambers. We get into these worlds where all the people around us are all saying the same things and they’re saying might be all the wrong things. If everybody says the same thing, but it’s the wrong thing, it doesn’t make it right. And so the successful people, I found they have strong opinions, but they hold them loosely and they’re constantly looking for new facts, new reasons to swap out the things that they believe with new information. And one of my favorite quotes of all time came from John Maynard Cadence famous economist, who was being railed because he had changed his stance. He was kind of in the political realm, people knew him.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:35]:
I think he was some kind of advisor to some high ups or something like that. I can’t remember exactly what his scenario was, but he had changed his perspective on something. And in the world of politics, you’re never allowed to change your perspective on anything because now you’re wishywashy, now you’re a flip flopper. And he said something brilliant, which when somebody called him out on, why did you change your mind? He said, well, when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, good sir? And I’ve always thought that was such a bad ass response, like when the facts change, when the information that you have changes, are you willing to change as well? Or are you going to hold fast to the worldview that you had before? And we could get real crazy political with this and talk about COVID with masks, with everything. And there’s things in your life that you have probably taking a hard stance on that would be very difficult to change your perspective on, regardless of how much new information comes out to the contrary of your belief. Just because we get so ideologically locked in, we dig our heels into the sand and we refuse, we refuse to have our minds changed. Because if you believe that you’re right, then you have no reason to change.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:44]:
You have no reason to go out there looking for this confirming information. And we’re seeing this more and more just in all aspects of life. But the one area where we should never see this is in science. And yet we’re seeing this a lot as well there. But science is really about the scientific method is all about having a hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis and then reviewing what went right, what went wrong right. And so you are looking in so many cases not to confirm your hypothesis, but to try and prove it wrong. That’s what good science is, is to make a hypothesis and then try to prove it wrong. And if you can’t prove it wrong, then that’s a pretty good explanation that you have on your hands.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:25]:
And David Deutsche and Naval Ravicant talk about this recently on a podcast with Tim Ferriss. And I thought that was a really brilliant episode. I would go listen to that one where they talk about what makes for a good or a bad solution or a good bad explanation. And an explanation, a good explanation is one that can be falsified, that it can be proven wrong. And yet all of our information all of our data does not prove it wrong, right? So a really bad explanation for things is like deyu Smokina, which the Greeks love to do back in their plays, where they would get into all these foibles for their characters, and they would have all this tragedy befalling them. And there was really no way for the playwright to fix the situation at the end and resolve the story in a satisfying way. And so, recognizing that they couldn’t fix it because they had just thrown so much at the wall, and they didn’t have a cohesive narrative or plot, they would descend a god deus machina, I think, god of the machine. They had a machine that would lower an actor from the stage, and they would be a god, and the god would just fix everything, right? And that’s not a satisfying resolution.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:36]:
That’s a very bad explanation. God coming down and just fixing everything or making things like, why is gravity the way it is? Because God made it that way. That’s not a good solution, because you can never disprove it. You can’t disprove the existence of a god. We could prove it if a god would appear, but we can’t never disprove it. And so if you can’t disprove a thing, it’s not a good explanation. And so I would challenge you to think about this in your own life. What are those things that you hold so tightly to that nobody can disprove it to you? No amount of facts or information could ever disprove it in your mind.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:11]:
And you might say, Well, I take it on faith, and that’s okay. That’s an answer. But it’s not a good answer in the sense that if there is disconfirming evidence, which you should be open minded to the possibility, because our lives, I think, are best lived when we’re in pursuit of our own greatness. And to be in pursuit of your own greatness, I think you have to be brutally honest and truthful with yourself about who you are in relation to the world. And so the pursuit of truth is critical. And you should want this disconfirming information if it is out there, because it will help correct your worldview so that you can live more in alignment with the accuracy or the truth of reality, which is what you need if you want to actually approach your true potential. Greatness. And I’m not saying stop believing God or religion is wrong.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:59]:
I’m not saying any of that, guys. That’s not the point here. What I’m saying is I want you to challenge your systems of belief. I want you to look for reasons why you might be wrong and to genuinely entertain those reasons, to go out and find the people who disagree with you on a topic and then try to understand their argument so well that it almost becomes your argument. And I’m not saying let them convince you. I’m saying you should go out trying to be disproven. And then in the process, if your solution, if your narrative can’t withstand the scrutiny that they’ve presented, then maybe it’s time to do as John Maynard and Cain said and change your mind, right? So that is the trait that I see again and again with really successful people, is they’re very open minded and they might have very strong opinions. They are very learned in many ways, but they are open to being persuaded and having new information, statistics, context, change the narrative that they hold to rather than just blindly taking a stance and then putting your head in the sand and your fingers in your ear and going, la la la.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:13]:
Which I think is probably the default for most of us on many, many topics. So hope you guys found this valuable. If it did, if you did, then do me a favor. Go share it with somebody that you think is maybe needing to hear this message. I’m just kidding. Don’t go causing any riffs in your relationships on account of me, unless you want to. But I do appreciate you guys taking some time out of your day to be with me. As always, I’m looking forward to seeing you back here bright and early tomorrow.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:41]:
Until then, it’s the hyper focus, my friend.
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