I don't know?sh**!
Vyshak K Iyengar
MBA Candidate at London Business School | Co-founder at Blufin Foundation
“I have no special talent. I’m only passionately curious”. — Albert Einstein
Back in 2013, when I was in first year undergrad, I was very intrigued by marketing and had started learning some basic concepts.
This is when I came across a show called L.I.M.E- Lessons In Marketing Excellence aired on CNBC.
L.I.M.E is a very popular show where every year, students from top B-schools take part in a marketing case-study competition.
I found strategies presented by the students not very great and thought to myself that I could do a better job!
Fast forward to 2018, I watched the show again. This time around, I loved it! Found all the strategies to be amazing, intriguing and importantly, I learnt something new with every pitch.
What changed this time?
My attitude.
Back when I studied some concepts of marketing, I thought knew all about marketing. Everything I saw around, I saw like an expert!
The arrogance that came with learning eventually killed my curiosity.
Things changed when I changed the way I saw things.
I went from ‘I know this’ to ‘I probably don’t’.
Result?
Curiosity.
Every new conversation, video, book, and article that I came across became a lot more interesting.
It was magical!
Retrospective of my learning over the years, I plotted the graph above. As my learning increased over time, I hit a phase where I thought I knew everything. That’s when the downfall started- I’d like to call this the “Arrogant phase”.
The key to consistent learning, I believe, is to be cautious of the arrogance and approach things with a child-like curiosity.
-Vyshak Iyengar
Relative plane facts: There is no end to knowing. True Vyshak, Arrogance is one extreme where learning stops and Fear is other extreme learning does not take off. Both blocks one from learning. Maintaining wide eyes innocence of a child helps. But maintaining innocence in this world of dualities is difficult but not impossible... Absolute plane TRUTH is one time knowledge. KNOW and BE. That brings in a natural innocence. Learning in the relative plane will be a joyous experience.