We All Start Out Ignorant
From the day you are born you are learning and there is no reason to stop in adulthood.
As we beat the drum constantly in the Know Yourself section, in order to succeed you have to be a life long learner; in order to out pace your ignorance, you have to gain a deep understanding of everything you endeavor to master. This will enable you to progress towards to your goals.
I am not talking only through the formal educational days - k to 12, college and post; as a matter of fact I'll go as far as to say that you'll need to expand well beyond those number of hours by 10 times what you did in school, and this just to be average!
To create your own really valuable intellectual knowledge, you must be well ahead of your peers in more diverse subjects so you can bring lessons from outside your industry and be truly disruptive and innovative.
To stay ahead myself, I have collected and read over a 1,000 resources and expanded the way I learn from just paper to reading, listening and watching.
At the core of our mindset, you must believe you are on a journey with no end in sight. You must foster an insatiable intellectual curiosity.
Just as with your talents, you must have the humility to acknowledge that no one can know everything. You should read everything you can get your hands on including the resources created by your competitors as well as your mentors.
Along with the learning from others, you must also be learning from yourself. Develop within you a great tolerance for ambiguity, accepting change, and experimenting to analyze the data. Listen to it and make the adjustments towards creative self destruction and renewal.
Ask big crazy questions that require you to stretch your intellect and gain new understanding of those things that will allow you to excel above all.
Be Well, DrJ
Dr. Gordon Jones is a serial entrepreneur with his creative work born through his innovation development company, Birddog.Ventures. Follow him above, connect with him on LinkedIn, and/or view all of DrJ's Pulse articles!