Illusory Superiority

"Illusory Superiority", is cognitive bias, causing people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities, relative to others. Consequently, we live in the world where almost all the people are above the average. We quite often think that we are smarter, better and nicer than others.

Scientists were researching our brain and found out why this problem exists. They found out that the reason for it is connection between our frontal cortex and striatum. Connection between those two areas of our brain is called fronto-striatal circuit. The research showed that this connection is crucial when it comes to self-judgment and is effecting the way we think about ourselves. People, who think well of themselves, have relatively low connection. Just the opposite is true for population with low connection. Those people have problems with depression and have very low self-image.

Statistic is showing that people are more likely to have high self-esteem and overestimate their qualities. Before we dive into this problem, let me give you two interesting examples that are supporting the statement above:

-88% of Americans think they are above average drivers
-Average man thinks he is 5 IQ points smarter than he really is

It's like this weird guy on X Factor. He thinks he sounds good but you and Simon Cowell both know he sucks. This shows us that when it comes to Illusory Superiority, we think we know our talents although we usually don't. Like Peter Drucker once said “Most people think they know what they’re good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they’re not good at — and even then more people are wrong than right.”

When it comes to X-factor, the problem isn’t that serious since people don’t have much to lose. They may get embarrassed but this usually doesn’t have a big effect on their life. Unfortunately we have much bigger problems when it comes to business. There is many people who enter the wrong industry or try to build their career on weaknesses. This can mean 10 years or even a life time of struggling with something you shouldn’t have started at first place. Honestly, I’m not surprised why most of the businesses fail in the first 18 months. People say it’s hard to build a successful business, the truth that most of those people are doing the wrong thing.

I believe, we all have talents and a huge potential to do amazing things. Stop losing your time and get to know yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, find out how you perform under the pressure, how you learn etc.
Remember, ''A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone something one cannot do at all." Peter Drucker

In case you are wondering how to do it, I would recommend you start with different online tests and by analyzing your past. Ask yourself, what was I doing when I achieved my best results, what kind of comments did I receive from strangers (most honest feedback you will ever get), around what kind of things did I grew up, what makes my heart sing, what am I good at, what kind of value can I deliver to the world etc. Those kind of questions can help you find your strengths, passion and put you on a right path.