I will never forget a story that I heard from my Greek language teacher during my high school days. Once upon a time, an old kingdom existed somewhere in modern Türkiye. Phrygia kingdom. A ridiculously small kingdom. It was, less, not an ordinary kingdom. Its fame lay in an antique wagon that was abandoned and dumped in the courtyard of one of the king’s castles. The relic was tied to a yoke by a sturdy hitch called the Gordian knot. Legends are that it was prophesized that whoever succeeded in untying the knot would conquer the world. For many years, many tried and many failed to untie the knot. Traveling from far and wide, magicians, sages, well-read academicians, mahashishis, prophets, sorcerers, generals of great armies, kings, and queens tried their luck but failed. Miserably.
One day, a newly crowned ruler, Alexander of Macedonia, visited the old kingdom to try his luck untying the knot. Unlike those who went before him, Alexander’s visit attracted a lot of attention. The atmosphere was thick with curiosity and skepticism because the spectators knew that what Alexander was up to was nothing but a young ruler’s overzealousness. It was just a moot attempt to solve an unsolvable challenge. After all, how special was Alexander - many had tried, many had failed to untie the knot. The exercise at hand was surely beyond the abilities of the young king.
Armed with nothing but strong belief and desire to take his place among the world’s greatest leaders, at an agreed time, Alexander moved forward, stood in front of the mysterious Gordian knot with a royal pose, slowly and calculatingly drew his sword and sliced the knot into two parts. Unbelievable! The courtyard was greeted with the noise of ululations and jubilation. The young leader received a standing ovation from spectators and admirers. The mysterious Gordian knot was, at last, unfastened. The rest is written in history - Alexander went on to conquer not only the kingdom of Phrygia but the whole Asia Minor and Mediterranean Sea area, as divined by oracles.
The moral of the story is that oftentimes, you and I seek and search for solutions to our problems and challenges outside of ourselves. We play down the power of instinct in favor of intellect. When faced with difficulties, we look for people who we think can solve the problems for us. We hire business consultants at a premium to find the underlying cause of our problems that we could have cracked ourselves if we had called upon the power of our instincts. We dive into the deepest part of the ocean; we scale the highest peak of the mountain; we run the widest measure of the continent seeking and searching for life and business solutions. We make pilgrimages to prophets and prophetess. We seek out sambangomas. Sorry to say, we forget that what we seek has already been given to us. It is already inside us. The solution to every problem that we encounter in life and business is within us. It is right inside us. All we need is to believe that we have what it takes to move forward – to use and trust our instincts. Just like the other people who went before him, Alexander could not have succeeded in unfastening the Gordian knot if he did not rely on his instincts. The sages from the Eastern put it better than I could when they said, “. . . instinct is wiser than intellect.” Sometimes, it pays to apply unconventional thinking. To experience individual greatness, we need to ‘slice the knots’ of problems, challenges, and difficulties, instead of untying them.
How many people do you know in your neighborhood, community, or country, who struggle to put food on the table, yet a neighbor who is equally endowed with the same amount and type of resources luxuriates in plenty? How many brilliant kids do you know who keep on blaming their parents for failure to finish their studies? How many business captains do you know who excessively blame the state of the economy for sluggish business growth, yet the competition across the street grows in leaps and bounds? What I have come to appreciate is that when an average man desires something great in life and is confronted with challenges, he looks for solutions elsewhere. He assigns blame to other people or a phenomenon outside his mandate. However, when a great leader wants something in life, he takes responsibility and searches for solutions from within himself. He demands more of himself than of others.
To achieve success, we must understand our inner selves. We need to discover and use the instinct with which we are born. Value ourselves. If we do not value who we are, we will perpetually seek and look for solutions to our life challenges and those of our business from the outside. We will always hunt and look for validation and approval from other people that we believe have more or think better than us. Let us remember the wise words of Alan Cohen, “. . . don’t give power away by making someone or something outside of you more important than what’s inside you.”
I wrote in my other article about a woman who lost a needle inside her house. Instead of looking for it in the house, she went outside the house and started searching for it right there. When asked why she decided to look for the needle outside while the needle was lost inside the house, her response surprised many, “. . . there is more light outside than inside the house.” The old lady forgot the wise words of Emerson, “. . . what lies behind us and what lies in front of us pales in comparison to what lies within us.”
Think about people whose names have been written in the Hall of Fame – they are people who refused to be victimized by anything less than their instincts. “Some people are more talented than others. Some people are more educationally privileged than others. But we all have the capacity to be great. Greatness comes by recognizing that your potential is limited only by what you choose, how you use your freedom, how resolute you are, and how persistent you are – in short, by your instincts. And we are all free to choose making use of our instincts,” remarked business philosopher Peter Kestenbaum. Trust your instincts. Always.
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