This chapter titled The Success Delusion, or Why We Resist Change concludes Section One of this book.

One thing that really struck me from this chapter was the powerful statement the author makes about how all of us in the workplace delude ourselves about our achievements, our status, and our contributions.

* We overestimate our contribution to a project

* We take credit - - partial or complete - - for successes that truly belong to others

* We have an elevated opinion of our professional skills and our standing among peers

* We conveniently ignore the costly failures and time-consuming dead-ends we have created

* We exaggerate our projects’ impact on net profits because we discount the real and hidden costs built into them (the costs are someone else’s problems; the success is ours)

He astutely points out that all of these delusions are a direct result of success, not failure. That’s because we get positive reinforcement from our past successes, and, in a mental leap that’s easy to justify, we think that our past success is predictive of great things in our future.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but our delusions become a serious liability when we need to change. We’ll sit there day-in-and-day-out with these feelings and when someone tries to make us change our ways we regard them with bafflement and resentment.

So, which of the above “delusions” applies to you?

I’m willing to bet that at one time or another we’ve all been guilty of each and every one of them.

I know I have!

Are you willing to change? In my experience, people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened.

Don’t wait and put off what can benefit you and your career today.