You're standing on diamonds and can't see them

Russell Conwell founded Temple University with $7 million he made telling the same story 6,000 times.

The story was about a farmer who sold his land to search for diamonds, wandered Africa for years, and eventually threw himself into a river in despair.

Back at the ranch (farm) the guy who bought his land found a weird rock in the creek. Turned out the whole farm was covered in diamonds.

Everyone knows this "Acres of Diamonds" story. What most people don't know is that Earl Nightingale added something brilliant to it in 1956.

Earl figured out WHY that farmer couldn't see his diamonds. Why none of us can.

He called it "Intelligent Objectivity" and defined it as: "the ability to stand off and look at your job as a stranger might. A stranger who considers your pasture greener than his own."

Read that last part again. A stranger who thinks YOUR grass is greener.

Here's what this means for you today:

Every consultant I work with who has 20+ years experience says the same thing: "I don't do anything special." Then they describe solving problems in minutes that take others weeks. They literally cannot see their own expertise.

Try this right now. Ask yourself: "What would someone pay $500/hour just to watch me work?"

Not for your output. Just to observe your process. The things you notice. The questions you ask.

Your brain is probably saying "nothing." That resistance is the blindness Earl was talking about.

The better you get at something, the more ordinary it seems to you. Psychologists now call this "expert-induced amnesia." Your expertise becomes so automatic, you forget it's expertise.

Earl diagnosed this problem perfectly. But in 1956, he couldn't have known about the tool that would finally solve it.

Today we can use AI as our "intelligent stranger." Something with zero familiarity with your work, zero assumptions about what's impressive, zero blindness from repetition.

In the full article, I break down:

• Why becoming an expert actually makes the blindness worse
• The specific questions that bypass your brain's blindness
• How to use AI as your intelligent objectivity engine
• The 5 prompts that extract expertise you didn't know you had

But even without reading further, try this today.

Record yourself explaining how you solved a recent client problem. Then ask someone outside your field to listen and tell you what impressed them.

You'll be shocked at what they notice that you dismissed as "obvious."

​Read the full article here​

Your diamonds are already there. You just need the right eyes to see them.

Stay Curious,

P.S. Earl said to become an expert in 5 years. If you've been in your field that long, you already are one. You just can't see it. The article shows you how to finally recognize what everyone else already knows about your value.

Check out my SubStack to find the...

​​​

​