Episode Details

A tragedy occurs when you reach a certain level of achievement: The mind starts to reorder itself for destruction instead of growth. 

Worst part?

This happens so subtly that it goes completely unnoticed… until it's too late. As achievements accumulate, decision quality erodes. Feedback arrives later and later, so mistakes don't get corrected. They get built into systems and culture. By the time the error becomes clear, reversing it is costly or impossible.

That's the bad news. The good news?

There's a simple (but not easy) solution to this… but you might not like it because it forces you to finally slow down. And, the unfortunate reality is that this becomes far harder after success. 

When you let your true values guide you (instead of letting achievement become your governing value), you can avoid the fatal consequences that success brings. Again, it won't be easy - but it's the ONLY way to recover from the Tragedy of Achievement. 

That's what you'll learn how to do in today's show. 

Listen now. 

Show Highlights Include:

• The "Lost Ship" trap that explains the subtle way success corrupts your decision making (0:30) 
• How success tricks you into co-opting your values and quietly distorting them (2:10) 
• The insidious, step-by-step way that achievement reorders the mind (without your realizing it) (3:38) 
• 3 distortions that happen in your mind when you value achievement too much (and how each of these distortions plant the seeds of destruction - personally, professionally, and emotionally (5:35) 
• Why intelligent and principled (but successful) people drift away from their values without even noticing until they're smacked in the face by a mid-life crisis (7:29) 
• How treating values like courage, compassion, and integrity as "ethical decoration" instead of the key to growth in every aspect of your life is the single biggest mistake high achievers make (8:39) 
• Why losing playfulness fills you with a deep sense of humiliation and shame that results in developing blind spots that create more damage (15:09) 
• The cold, hard truth about why the most dangerous mistakes are made by people who move too fast (not people who hesitate too much) (18:43) 
• How experience only not only fails to protect against misjudgment, but in many cases, it actually makes it WORSE (20:38) 

For more about David Tian, go here:

https://www.davidtianphd.com/about/ 

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