Success can be the enemy of future success.
We tend to make the grave mistake of giving ourselves lots of credit for success and not examining the circumstances. Our opponent may have been weak or made foolish mistakes that day. Maybe the financial markets were ripe for the taking and we stumbled into an arbitrage at just the right moment. Perhaps the huge client was having a great day when they signed on and became your biggest customer.
We cannot control the markets or our competition, but we do have a degree of control over our deficiencies and shortcomings.
To safeguard against this conceit that appears in us, we should adopt a system of rigorous self-criticism. It’s not enough to see the weakness or advantages in a situation, we must find the weaknesses in ourselves and improve them.
“Focus on improving yourself” is a valuable lesson for us all.
But few can do this because the nectar of victory is both sweet and intoxicating. You have to find a way to force yourself to believe that conceit is bad and that you could have done better–even when you win. Self-importance or vanity does not put a person in the right frame of mind to do work. If you win and don’t improve, you’re only waiting to lose.