It can be hard to face facts when it comes to our own shortcomings. Always remember: even if you ignore them, the world doesn’t. And the farther you let your version of reality drift from the version the world sees, the less the world will consider you worthy of interaction.
If you’re a teacher and one person fails your class, you can say that it’s on that student or it’s a fluke, etc. But if you’re a teach and everyone fails your class, then you’re a bad teacher. And no matter what else you point to as evidence that you’re a “good” teacher, you have to face the facts. There’s ultimately one measure of how good a teacher you are, and that’s how well your students learn.
No teacher wants to admit that they’re bad – no one ever wants to admit that they’re bad at one of the primary things they identify as. I’m okay with admitting that I’m a bad golfer because I don’t care about being a good one. But if presented with evidence that I was a bad father, a bad friend, a bad coach – these would be harder for me to accept. But I have to face those facts if they’re presented to me.
If I loudly and belligerently proclaim “I’m a good father” while my children violently attack everyone around them, steal things, destroy stuff, do drugs, go to jail, and so on, then the world will (correctly) realize that I have no interest in changing my behavior as a parent. The world will then lose any interest in helping me. I’ll be written off, and likely so will my children. If instead I say, “I don’t know where I went wrong, but clearly I’m doing something incorrectly,” then the people in the world who might be able to help me do better are far more motivated to do so.
How much you want to be good at something isn’t a measure of how good you are. It can be a great input; wanting to be good at something is the first step. But it isn’t, itself, a measure. The results are the measure. And if you don’t face that, you’ll never actually be good.
The Opportunity Machine 