Yup... huge.

School plays a big part in this... it's entirely geared towards cleverness  - get A's in Maths and English = success/approval, as opposed to get things done, shipped, put together, etc.I could wax lyrical about business concepts, and love it.  But there's someone out there saying "ok fine, now let's just do this" who is making 10x more money than me.

What's even more screwed up, is the kids who don't do well in school and drop out and take menial jobs and go through life thinking they are failures because they aren't clever.  Beliefs like "I can't earn good money, I'm not clever enough and didn't go to university"... ugh!  Toxic.

Nice.  If improving yourself is too intangible, how about improving your systems 1% each day.  i.e. personal/business processes.  "Work the System" is a great book that gets into that, but I hadn't seen the 1%/day = double in 70 days result.  That's awesome!

Ha totally.  Funny, also, how the difference of opinion can be internal - different parts of your personality can have entirely different standards, depending on which part of you is "active".

Random example from my life:  English teaching.  Part of me is really drawn to it - I love language, love teaching, would love the opportunity to live abroad and save a bit of cash - and another part is absolutely averse to it, because that part of me sees it as low-status, only for drop-outs and outcasts, and would be mortified having to explain what I'm doing to friends and family back home who (it feels like) have higher expectations of me.

How I feel about it depends which part is "running the show" when the thought comes up.

We dont like to admit it, because of the associations with  "multiple personality disorder", but every human has "parts" that run the show at different times (and it's being verified by neurosci / psych findings). And they all have different standards! lol