Hi,
I'm Brent Michael Phillips,
And welcome back for our series on the six most important spiritual lessons I learned when I was at MIT.
And so our lesson today might be the most important and the most valuable of all of them.
You may remember some number of years,
Decades ago,
There was a really popular book.
The name was something like this,
That all the important things I really needed to know I learned in kindergarten.
And that's a really powerful concept.
Why?
The most transformative things are generally not the complex ones,
They're the simple ones.
And so this last lesson is quite simple.
It's easy,
It's straightforward,
But it will completely change your life if you're willing to slow down and do the work.
And it's this,
RTFM.
All right,
So what does that mean?
Well,
That's what we used to say at MIT,
And any engineering school has that saying.
RTFM means this,
Read the fricking manual.
And of course,
Depending on the context and the people you hang out with,
You might not be saying fricking,
You might be saying something else.
But we'll use polite language here,
Read the fricking manual.
And you may be thinking,
Brent,
What does that have to do with me,
Right?
I'm a doctor,
I'm a housewife,
I'm an accountant,
I don't need to follow the instructions.
That's for technicians and engineers.
No,
This is for everybody.
I guarantee you,
If you can simply take the time to slow down and follow the instructions,
You will be ahead of 90% of the world.
No joke.
You will make more money,
You will be healthier,
Your relationships will function better.
Why is that?
It's simple.
Most of us think we're too advanced or too smart or too important to stop and follow the instructions.
It really is that simple.
A very common way this shows up,
I'll pick on men,
Because I'm a man,
I feel that's okay,
Right?
Most men will refuse to stop and ask for directions when they're lost.
Now,
Of course,
Nowadays,
This is less of an issue,
Because you can just use your navigation system on your car and your phone most of the time,
Right?
But back in the old days,
Before we all had seven navigation systems on our bodies at all the time,
If you were going somewhere,
You needed directions.
And there are infinite stories out there of people riding around looking for something.
And when a man is driving,
He doesn't want to stop and ask for directions.
He wants to figure it out for himself.
That's pure ego.
That doesn't work very well,
Does it?
Sure,
You may feel that you're weak or feel stupid if you have to stop and ask for help.
But that's exactly the behavior that's going to get you to where you want to go.
That's what works,
Right?
Most of us don't realize it,
But we got this gigantic pile of ego holding us back from achieving in life,
From making more money,
From experiencing better health,
From living longer,
To finding our purpose,
To having great relationships,
To developing intuition,
You name it,
Right?
And if we look around,
You'll see this principle everywhere in life.
It's really interesting that we have this idea that,
Oh,
Technology is easier for young people,
That the older you are,
The harder it is to learn things.
That's nonsense.
Do you really think that a 40,
50,
60-year-old man or woman is smarter than a 10,
11,
12-year-old child?
No,
Of course not.
More mature people have larger brains,
Far more experience,
A vast amount of knowledge that the younger people,
Especially children,
Do not have.
But yet,
Why is it that a child can learn to use a new cell phone or new software so much faster than most adults?
It's simple.
The answer is not that the child is smarter.
It's that they're willing to follow the instructions.
They don't think they already know it.
They don't think they're too good or too important to sit down and read the instructions and figure it out.
It really is that simple.
Albert Einstein once said that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.
That's such a beautiful saying because that's been my experience too.
Most of the great achievement is not just a great insight,
A great talent,
A great idea.
It's the implementation,
It's the effort to create it,
To make it real.
That it is again 99% perspiration,
Meaning work.
And if you're willing to set aside your ego,
If you're willing to realize you might need help,
You might need instructions,
You're willing to spend the time on it,
I think you'll be amazed.
And what will happen?
Let me give you an example from my own life.
When I first started doing online classes around 2013-2014,
I had a technician and he said,
Hey Brent,
Don't worry about it.
When you do your classes,
Just let me know,
Get me the raw video and I'll put them all on one.
I'm only gonna charge you $200.
And I was like,
Great.
And so for the next two years or so,
I paid this guy 200 bucks,
What,
Nine times a year when I was teaching.
Why did I do that?
Well,
It's not wrong to do it,
But I never bothered to stop and look at the instructions.
And then one time he was unavailable and I panicked a little bit,
But then I thought,
Wait a second,
Maybe this isn't so hard.
So I went and typed into Google and I realized,
Oh my gosh,
It's so effing easy,
Right?
It'd take you like three minutes for a video,
Right?
Each time I was teaching,
I was literally paying this guy $200 for five minutes of work.
That's a lot,
Right?
That's over $2,
000 an hour.
Why?
I wasn't willing to stop and follow the instructions.
I didn't RTFM.
I thought,
Oh,
I'm the teacher,
I'm too important,
I'm too clever.
Now,
Again,
If your time is really worth that,
There's nothing wrong with that,
Right?
If your time is worth $1,
000 an hour,
Please,
That makes business sense.
But that's not true for most of us.
Certainly wasn't true of me when I started doing that,
Right?
And you can see that cost me a lot of money.
My unwillingness to take three minutes to read the instructions,
To read the manual and figure out what I was doing cost me several thousand dollars.
The important thing is don't think you know better.
Everyone likes to think they're advanced.
Everyone likes to think they're ahead of the curve.
Everyone likes to think they're in on some secret part of the inner circle,
Right?
The way I say it is we all live in prisons constructed out of what we think we know.
So I'll say that again,
Because I think it's enormous.
We all live in prisons constructed out of what we think we know.
Now,
I'm not saying you're wrong about that.
What I'm saying is that you may not know as much as you think you do,
Right?
Everyone tends to overestimate.
Well,
Maybe not everyone,
But humans in general tend to vastly overestimate their abilities and their knowledge and their competence.
All I'm saying is let's get a reality check here,
Right?
Let's see what's really going on.
Psychologists have a term for this.
They call it the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Basically,
It means that the less you know about something,
The better you think you are at it.
What this means is people that think they know a lot usually don't.
Specifically,
If you know a little bit about something,
You're going to think you know a lot and you're not going to want to be bothered to stop and follow the instructions.
It feels too basic.
I used to practice a lot of martial arts as a young man.
One thing I discovered was what my teacher called Green Belt Syndrome.
And it's really dangerous.
That's why I'm making this to share with you.
I don't want you to make all these mistakes.
So what is Green Belt Syndrome?
Green Belt Syndrome is a great example of this Dunning-Kruger effect.
So here's how it goes.
When you're first learning martial arts,
I was learning Taekwondo,
You're a white belt and you know you don't know anything,
Right?
So you go in and you're actually able to listen and learn.
You practice your blocks and your kicks and your forms and all that,
Right?
Well,
After you've been practicing for a while,
Maybe one,
Two years,
At some point you get to what in my system was the Green Belt,
Right?
First,
You had a white belt.
After about six months,
You get a yellow belt.
After about a year and a half,
You get your green belt.
And this is what we found.
Green belts were the most dangerous.
Not the black belts,
But the green belts.
Why is that?
Well,
It's pretty simple.
The green belts had been practicing for a while and had learned a little bit.
As a green belt,
You knew how to block,
You knew how to punch,
You knew how to throw the basic kicks,
You knew how to do the basic forms.
But that little bit of knowledge gave you an overconfidence.
You thought you were a badass,
Right?
And so there's a lot of green belts in karate,
Taekwondo,
Whatever,
That go out and end up in a fight and get their butts handed to them on a platter.
Why?
They're not nearly as badass as they thought.
And it's interesting that when I got my black belt,
That arrogance that I felt as a green belt,
Because I experienced this too,
I thought I was a huge badass,
That disappears.
Why?
As a black belt,
You actually know a lot,
But you're also aware of what you don't know.
And that's so important.
When you're aware of what you don't know,
Then you can really start moving forward.
Then your life can transform.
Then you can start making money,
Experiencing love,
Higher consciousness,
All those things.
I hope you found this series to be some combination of enjoyable,
Entertaining,
And transformational.
And I hope to see you again very soon.
Until then,
Take care and namaste.
