Ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice, or so they say. This success strategy has served me well for a long time but has cost me dearly for an even longer one.
My whole life I’ve been a dive into the unknown kinda gal. I do my best work in anything and everything I do when I know the least. I race to the top in whatever I do and faster than most because I am very comfortable wearing Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field and keeping my head down, my eye on the prize and look only at what I’m doing.
When I don’t know what I don’t know, there’s nothing to tell me that I can’t leaving only possibility. This has been a brilliant results oriented success system for me. From the outside everything looks great: I do, I achieve, I am applauded, and then I move on. Wait a minute… that’s the kicker right? The trap of this kind of success formula is that there’s little desire further the work once I’ve nailed the goal. Why? Because I’m no longer ignorance on fire. I’m now knowledge on ice, with no motivation to get warm. And then it gets cold, freaking cold, like anxiety driven, worry filled night kinda cold as I sort out:
What do I do now that I know what I know?
How do I feed this success animal I’ve built on ignorance when my eyes are open to the whole picture now?
You may have heard this before too because I didn’t come up with it, and the person who taught it to me probably didn’t either:
Stage one = Uninformed optimism Stage two = Informed
Stage three is usually = Informed pessimism.
Why usually? Because it takes walking the double edge sword of all things in order to get to informed optimism. It takes converting informed on both the positive and the negative side of it to give you wisdom. Most of us just want the shortcut. We don’t want wisdom. We want results. We serve the bottomline or the adrenaline of achievement, or the satisfaction of belonging because we’re ‘worthy’ due to our accomplishment. Come on now, ‘fess up. Why do you go for challenges and incentives? Why do you take risks? What is usually your motivation for diving into the unknown?
You might say: Because I’m curious Tina. I’m a life-long learner.
I say: Cool. Then what? How do you let that learning LIVE?
For most of my professional life (up until now), I’ve been happily doing and achieving as ignorance on fire. Wow… what a rush. There’s always something new to learn, the excitement of the unknown and then the reward of figuring shit out. You could feed me this recipe for breakfast, lunch and dinner and all deserts and drinks too. I EAT THIS UP!
But then I get a stomach ache. I’m frozen by what I’ve learned. I can see the pot holes, the areas of growth that are needed, the dark corners and the stinky stuff that if cleaned up would make things even better. Oh mannnn why do that when ignorance on fire has such a higher return? Why implement anything I’ve learned when I can just go on learning new stuff?
I’m in the network marketing industry and this is a slogan that is thrown around at every ‘getting started’ training out there. As organization builders in a sales and recruitment based business, our bottomline and our team’s confidence go up when we have new people starting their business with us. We WANT FRESH FACES because it reminds us that this opportunity rocks, and you know what – it freaking does rock. Ten years in, with all the knowledge I have and very little ignorance left, I can say without a shred of holding back, this is the best industry going out there if:
- you wanna make lots of money with low risk or overhead.
- you wanna work part time.
- you like people
- you’re a life long learner.
But here’s the deal: You gotta let go of the ignorance on fire thing and ditch the knowledge on ice thing too if you really want to enjoy the fruit. Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours to mastery. Well, that’s about 7 years in a 15 hour/week network marketing business. You sure as heck ain’t gonna be ignorance on fire for seven years.
Like any long term venture be it business, friendship, marriage, career, personal growth, whatever… the TRUTH of that story will always out over time and that means that the veil of ignorance will lift and knowledge with set in. Nothing is without dark corners. Nothing is without improvement needed. Nothing is perfect and that’s what makes the whole darn thing worth investing in.
So… if you buy this whole Ignorance on Fire is Better than Knowledge on Ice thing, I challenge you to step into WISDOM and see what kind of satisfaction, freedom and true wealth lives there instead.
My wish for you is true freedom, is peace, is long term success and feeling good about what you do.
What to check out my network marketing business? You totally can. Click here for an electronic business pack. Why not? You’re ignorance on fire for such a short time… wink.
xxT