5 Dark Truths About Human Nature That You Must Embrace To Succeed In Business and In Life

All great leaders in history have understood one thing very well – human nature.

They say that business is easy, except for the people part of it.

If you look at the skyline of your city and notice the biggest tallest buildings, they are usually owned by the banks or the government, and nearby there are towers filled with lawyers and law firms.

Entire towers of lawyers enforcing agreements and broken agreements by human beings. If humanity kept its word and operated out of integrity all the time, there would be no towers filled with lawyers downtown.

When you step out of the safety of a safe secure job into the world of entrepreneurship or real estate investing you become exposed to the darkness that is human nature.

Human nature, the natural state of humanity is a state of poverty. The beautiful, higher faculties of the human mind like generosity, spiritual growth, love, charity, art, creation, music etc. are not the natural state of mankind. Billions of dollars and entire fortunes have been donated to charities around the world to attempt to reduce poverty or change humanity from it’s natural state. Sadly, humanity, without outside forces of training, education, religion and management will always revert back into a natural state of poverty.

Here are 5 dark truths of human nature that drive people naturally into poverty and away from prosperity:

  1. People Don’t Do What They Say They Are Going To Do – Generally, people do not do what they say they are going to do. This is why the faintest ink is better than the best memory. Written agreements, lawyers, judges, police, armies and jails all exist because people do not do what they say they are going to do. To operate out of integrity and make your word worth it’s weight in gold is a wealth building principle and a higher use of the human mind. Integrity is a skill, doing what you say you are going to do, and to practice it is to go against the natural tendency of human nature which is to do whatever is convenient for you.
  2. People Default to Doing Nothing, even if you pay them – Human nature only seeks to conserve energy and thus, most people will generally do nothing, even if you pay them. I used to be shocked as an entrepreneur to hire consultants, contractors, or employees, pay them and find out later that they took my money and did nothing. Such is the natural state of humanity. Human nature seeks to conserve energy, which means lying around in bed and watching Netflix all day – not working or expending energy. Human beings wish to avoid pain, avoid exertion, avoid spending time, effort, energy or money and if human nature is followed then man produces nothing. Paying someone still does not produce results, motivation must always come from a higher want, or an intrinsic self desire for more. When left to their own devices, most people do nothing because they just want to conserve their own energy.
  3. People Do Not Think For Themselves – There are two things you can never pay a person to do 1) Think and 2) do things in the right order – Famous words by the billionaire Ross Perot. All thinking must be done by you, the leader or the entrepreneur. When left to their own devices people do not actually think with their higher brain. They will think about their next meal, how hungry they are, how sleepy they are, how they wish there were doing something else or maybe they will think about their lover, their spouse or their child, but they will not think about you or your project. They certainly will not access the creative side of their brain to solve complex problems on your behalf, they will not do it for themselves generally and certainly will not do it for you. This dark fact about humanity is why we have governments, religions, schools, universities, the media etc. telling people what to think. They do not think on their own and thus, need someone else to tell them what to think.
  4. People Do Not Do Things In The Right Order – Even if given explicit directions on how to do something, there is always this fallacy in the human mind “I think it’s different for me” or “I think it’s different this time”. This fallacy will always make people challenge the proven system on how to do something and try to “reinvent the wheel” and do the proven steps out of order. Sometimes you will find man not thinking at all and other times he will be thinking wrongly and in the wrong order. This is usually an attempt to save energy and find a shorter way which can lead to innovation but usually does not.
  5. Even with Written Directions, People Will Not Follow Them – Written directions on how to live aka: The Bible and other books on life older than the bible (Greek and Roman texts and many others) have been around for thousands of years. Proven written paths on how to live a good life exist everywhere, we claim to know those paths, we claim to have “read that before” or “heard that before” and yet we do not follow the directions. The paradox of humanity is that we are just self-destructive enough to keep ourselves from reaching our potential but just self-preserving enough to keep ourselves from dying. Simple written directions are not followed because of the desire of humanity to conserve energy. Reading directions and following directions takes energy and thinking and we wish to avoid that at all costs.

But is humanity all darkness?

The answer is no, there are many good parts to humanity as well. We do have a good side. The danger though lies in being too idealistic and seeing the world through rose colored glasses. To be an effective leader is to be grounded in reality, not pessimistic, but not optimistic, instead realistic with the limitations of what people are.

All great achievements in history have always defied the darkness of human nature, that is what makes those achievements great. In Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich, the entire text is a manual on how to defy your own human nature and achieve great things in life as well as commanding great riches along the way.

To live naturally with the low vibration of human nature is to live a life of poverty, to live in a higher vibrational state of thinking and reason is what lifts mankind up to the light, becoming a creator, a genius and one of the gods.

Although man is an animal, and has an animalistic side to him, he is the only animal on the planet that has a thinking brain; a neocortex or a brain that can create. You choose how to live your life. Will you choose to let your animal instincts and human nature take over to conserve energy and produce nothing? Or will you defy human nature, use your energy towards creative means and live the life as man was destined – to produce more than he consumes. We are the only animal on the planet who can produce more than we consume and that is the gift of being human.

You decide how to live; the choice is up to you.

Respect The Grind,
Stefan Aarnio