The older you get, the more you find yourself begrudgingly accepting age-old wisdom. Don’t get me wrong — there’s plenty of useless information that’s somehow managed to make it past the gag reflex of multiple generations and snatch up the label of “wisdom.” But one valid concept has persisted for thousands of years and is becoming more and more popular these days: self-sabotage.

History's most dangerous enemy is almost always internal. Athens sadly lived out the essence of Greek tragedy’s hybris (excessive pride) by overestimating their military abilities with expeditions. Rome suffered a similar sort of suicide, as they overextended themselves on military conquest and neglected the values that had made them great in the first place. After conquering most of Europe, Napoleon, not one to be sated with such simple feats, foolishly pursued Russia. His greatest strength (conquest) was his greatest weakness (pride).

The Greeks tried to warn us against the perils of excessive pride giving way to self-sabotage. As economist Maia Mindel writes, “Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that tragedies should focus on highborn characters whose excessive pride or self confidence (hybris) leads them to commit a fatal mistake (hamartia), which causes a subsequent fall from grace (peripecia) that only ends once they acknowledge their error (anagnorisis). In almost all cases, the hybris is believing themselves mightier than the gods, leading to the defiance of their fate (moira), which is nevertheless inescapable.”

What I find most interesting is that many people don’t even make it to the stage of hybris. Not even close! Sometimes, self-sabotage happens at the starting line. Founder Sari Azout wrote “self-doubt kills more ideas than competition or lack of funding ever will.” Michael Dell said “most entrepreneurs fail because of themselves.” Given the modern trend of increasing anxiety and analysis-paralysis from our phones, this may explain the viralization of “you can just do things” with the midwit meme.

Hell, even some people are writing whole ass books on just doing things.

Anyways — all to say that empires, companies, and people often suffer from self-sabotage. History gives us many examples of empires and individuals living lives akin to the Greek tragedy — self-sabotage via excessive pride. But what about those who fall to things other than pride? Those who are losing themselves on a totally different path than pride - what about them?

Here we can at least take on the notion of hamartia, or fatal mistake, from the Greeks in a sort of new light. Traditionally, the fatal mistake/hamartia follows excessive pride. But for your sake, try and interpret it more as your own unique fatal blindspot, related to pride or not. Oftentimes, your fatal weakness is more so an excessive version of a natural strength or quality of yourself.

So, what is your hamartia?

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

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