You Are the Easiest Person to Fool
The late great scientist Richard Feynman authored a number of notable quotes in his life. The one we are going to focus on here today is this: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
All of us are living with illusions about ourselves, our relationships, everything, all the time. An important step in our growth as a human being is to acknowledge it, accept them and then start to live and act with that understanding.
We benefit and can grow when we uncover areas of self-deception. When we ignore reality and embrace our illusions, it may be comfortable, at least for a time, but it keeps us stuck and keeps us from moving forward, finding the highest and best life we can live.
I’m reminded of a distinction about “reality” from my days in the Christian church that is fitting here. It goes something like this: “We can not break God’s laws. We can only break ourselves over them.” I’m not trying to dip into religion here. I’m only trying to point out that our lives get more fulfilling when we better align ourselves with “reality,” and many (most?) of our real challenges in life occur when we ignore it.
We can’t argue with reality and win.
I remember working as a coach with a roofing company a few years ago that had an estimator who left them because he wanted to be a salesman. Estimators tend to be introverted, risk-averse and often without great people skills.
This estimator had plenty of all of that. Without me explaining why, you all recognize that he was not a good fit to be a salesman. He lasted 4-6 months at his new company before being fired because, well, he hadn’t sold anything. This is perhaps a very obvious example of where lack of self-awareness and perhaps an inflated ego lead to a lesson in the importance of not fooling ourselves. (And you also have to wonder about the guy who hired him. I knew this wasn’t going to work after talking with that estimator for 5 minutes.)
Where in your life do you see evidence of some version of this in yours? In my life, the more I dig, the more I aggressively self-examine, the more I uncover. I don’t think I am unusual in that. I think I’m the norm.
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