Learn to see beyond the blind spot of your expertise

Can you see beyond the blind spot of your own expertise? The most successful people chose to.

Experience is a great teacher, but too much of it can trap us in a prison of our own making, unless we cultivate an awareness of it.

Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and a regular US Shark Tank guest, captures this perfectly when he says,

"Experience often deeply embeds the assumptions that need to be questioned in the first place.

When you have a lot of experience with something, you don’t notice the things that are new about it.

You don’t notice the idiosyncrasies that need to be tweaked.

You don’t notice where the gaps are, what’s missing, or what’s not really working."

(Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss, Page 167)

It's so easy to fall into this trap. We see a familiar challenge and instinctively reach for the solution that’s worked in the past.

It feels good, because it saves time, energy and validates our worth by demonstrating our expertise can solve difficult challenges easily.

But here's the truth: what worked yesterday might not work today.

Markets change, contexts shift, and sometimes a fresh perspective reveals gaps that experience blinds us to.

The way out of this prison? A beginner’s mindset.

Step back. Question assumptions. Have the humility to notice what you don’t know.

And the courage to ignore your fears—the fear that not knowing will lead to criticism or, worse, make people question your worth.

Because once you do, you stop looking inward and start seeing beyond yourself.

And that’s where inspiring ideas and radical innovation live.