“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others.”
Pablo Picasso
The minute you begin to “believe your own press” you are choosing to surrender the edge that helped you build any advantage you might have previously created. Suddenly every problem begins to look like something you have tackled before, and previous solutions or thought processes are applied based on historical efficacy, not on current understanding.
Some questions to consider:
- Is the answer I am choosing “right” or easy?
- Have I done the hard work to understand the situation entirely?
- Is the challenge worthy of genuine effort and not just a pale facsimile?
The old saying, “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” seems particularly appropriate here. Never settle for a copy of previous success. Much like a paper that has been copied far too many times, you begin to lose your clarity.
