How to challenge your own beliefs
On a very high level, there are only three things to master in business.
- Understand yourself
- Understand others
- Act upon your understanding
And there is no true mastery in any of them.
Technology develops at an ever increasing rate. We sometimes believe, that we primarily need to master technology. And to a certain extent, that’s true.
But in the end, there is only one type of business:
People business.
Everything a company does is done by someone. Every decision is made by someone.
Even with technology: Someone has to build things. And if that’s you, there are loads of other things, someone else has to do.
The difference between freelancing and business: Business is a teamsport.
- For teams, culture defines success.
- Individual action defines culture.
- So every behaviour matters.
Your sphere of influence is only yourself
This raises one big question:
How to find out if I am wrong?
Challenging your own beliefs is hard. Thinking new thoughts is close to impossible. But learning the hard way hurts.
To me, there are mainly two ways to question your beliefs.
- Ask yourself
- Ask others:
Both have the same issue: Your current believe defines the question. This in turn often defines the outcome.
One question that helped me greatly with this is:
What do I think I know and how do I think I know it?
Apply this to some major aspects of your business.
The speed at which you’ll find blind spots is amazing.
