Let your knowledge, niche or expertise not become your enemy!

When niche becomes nightmare! Source: http://www.flickr.com/

“I know enough” is enough to pull you down in very area, you believe you know enough! Statistics show that cause of eventual failure of most experts is their expertise!! Is it difficult to believe? But you can’t disbelieve the numbers – my analysis shows it is 8 out of 10!

There are very effective marriage counselors, I have heard about, saving lot of marriages but are unable to save their own! Well known cardiologists eventually suffered from cardiac problems and lost life at an age, it should have not happened. There are legal luminaries and media whistle blowers engaged in eliminating immorality or infidelity in societies across the world; but they ignore what they do in their own backyard! A highly disciplined father would normally be blessed with rebellious children. You are more prone to accidents on the road you have traveled most!

All leadership, moral or spiritual materials exhort you in abundance to be expert or excellent in what you do; then why is that excellence brings you adversity; that expertise elicits extinction? What is it that promotes irony or double standards especially among those, who have acquired prominence, passion or par excellence?

It is like darkness under the lamp!

Everyone needs light and a lamp gives it. But lamp suffers from darkness underneath!However, nature also requires that there be a cause for every effect!!

So, here below is what happens, when you become very knowledgeable, known, expert or highly engaged:

1. It makes you dedicated.
   But, high dedication leads to addiction to what you do!
2. It encourages high degree of ownership.
   But, you don’t notice when your ownership becomes excessive. Excessive ownership promotes obsession!
3. In-depth information on your subject makes you expert.
   But, when you are not conscious, expertise encourages egoism and even arrogance!
4. More you know, more focused you become!
   But, high focus is invariably fraught with loss of flexibility.
5. Expertise and excellence can only come, when you converge on areas you operate.
   More you converge on your activities; more close becomes your mind! So, you fail to take cognizance of what and how you do outside of your areas of expertise or knowledge.
6. You are consumed by your passion.
   What you are highly consumed with, would create contradictions, which you are generally averse to manage! You become indifferent to anything outside of your area!!
7. When you know it all, it comes very easy.
   But, it also means you start taking things as granted. This is when you would make worse gaffe!
8. You fly high!
   So, you lose ground and humility!!

How to remove darkness under the lamp!

Our traditional thoughts would find it difficult to do it. So, go untraditional; go offbeat.

If light from the lamp can be reflected back to dark area/s, it would become illuminated!

Experts lose habit to look at reflections, which they receive from others; that is how darkness exists under their nose; their expertise becomes their own enemy!! They are unable to realize when their knowledge – an asset also works as a liability.

So, at no stage of our evolution and progress, we should ever stop or ignore to reflect and contemplate. Reflect on what we do; what others reflect about us and be aware about larger purpose beyond us and ramifications of what we are engaged with. That alone can keep us grounded and ensure that our expertise remains an asset through and through.

Another important fact is that nature demands balancing; neither left nor right! Just be around the center!! It is in this context that balancing between work and life, money and morals, spiritualism and materialism assume paramount importance!

Having said that, would you ever like to allow your knowledge to become your liability; your expertise to become your own enemy?