Do not hold back your progress with what you already achieved

Posted by Weitao Wang on May 17, 2021

“Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self criticism.” — Albert Einstein

Most of the people with some achievements have curiosity, concentration, and perseverance. It seems like the self criticism is the hardest thing for them to do frequently. But, why?

Proud or Conceited?

People, who are smart and can out perform others easily, are usually born with confidence. The knowledge they have and the success they achieved make their confidence even “worse” — over-confidence.

An proud man may get mad easily if someone else proved that he is wrong, while an arrogant man may even feel upsets when he find himself to be wrong.

Proud people don’t want to negate himself, cause it would lead to self-doubt, the most painful things for them. But a man cannot fight the nature (I am always talking about the nature), which shows that a single man cannot be correct all the time. Along with the time, the environment changes, the society changes, and people also grows. What hold true in the past time may not be able to save you this time. Thus, those people succeed in the past and not willing to give up their previous achievements would be obsolete by the times, only who are willing to abandon all the past glory and rise from the ashes survives.

The reason why I wrote this

Simple, it is because one of my ideas was deemphasized in the paper based on the group discussion, I was upset at first, but soon realize the group has lead me to the correct way.

Actually I am not one of those guys who hesitate to self-criticize and change themselves, instead, I wrote this post to prevent me from becoming one of those.