Everything in Excess Is Good: English edition

By Diego Segura

Based on his personal experience and the knowledge he has acquired on his journey as an entrepreneur, Diego Segura tells us how to focus on the excess in people's lives and transform it into a propellant to generate good habits and achieve abundance in various areas (emotional, economic, professional, family...).

 

In these pages, the author invites us to take a twist on the statement "Nothing in excess is good" and choose, instead, those positive excesses that will strengthen our goals and lead us towards a life of intensity based on good habits practiced in excess. From the first pages, Segura engages the reader in a journey of self-awareness and self-reflection; through the five chapters that make up the book ("Do I have intelligence or stupidity?", "Know yourself", "Do you live or survive?", "Dreams, wishes, and goals", and "Focus your excess"), the reader will pose and answer questions to get to know themselves better, and thus be able to define their purposes and focus their excess.

 

Under the philosophy that when you give selflessly and generously, sooner or later this is rewarded in abundance, Diego Segura decides to publish "Everything in excess is good" so that it is freely accessible to anyone interested in reading it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diego Segura
• Release date: Nov 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215500583

Book preview

Introduction

Before starting with the reading of this book, I would like to tell you that the title Everything in Excess is Good is not a trick. This book does indeed aim to promote excesses. However, before you can understand why everything in excess is good and, in particular, how excess can help you in your life, you have to join me on this journey. Each page is like a puzzle: little by little we will assemble the pieces until in the end everything makes sense. To understand the why of the book and what I want to convey to you, you can’t leave it half-read, start it in the middle or, much less, read only the last part. To understand and take advantage of the teachings, you must complete the reading process from beginning to end, without skipping any steps because, otherwise, nothing it says will make sense to you.

In the first chapter, I want you to question and understand how intelligent you are, what intelligence consists of, and how we perceive it. In this chapter, I also discuss how intelligence or ignorance relates to how happy we are: is it true that ignorance is bliss? We will also reflect on the issue of unhappiness. From my point of view, I share my personal experience and my learnings over the years, what the causes of unhappiness are, how we can address the problem from the root, and start being happy.

The second chapter intends for readers to perform an exercise in self-reflection and introspection: I pose a series of very specific questions to see how well you know yourself. What matters is that, in answering, you are honest. Many people claim to know themselves, but this doesn’t always occur. You will realize how well you actually know yourself or, rather, if you do not know yourself at all. The next chapter goes hand in hand: we will reflect on what perfectionism is and the opinions of others; you will realize how much these issues affect your person and how they influence your decisions and everyday life.

Next, in the fourth chapter, we will delve into the core of this book: we will see what your dreams, desires, and goals are and how you can start to achieve them. To reach this point, it is decisive to have carried out the previous reflection, what we learned about intelligence, happiness, the opinion of others, perfectionism, and who we really are. In this chapter, I invite you to dialogue with yourself to know what your limiting beliefs are and what your why is, if your life has a sense or a purpose or if, simply, you are living for the sake of living. In this regard, we will analyze what your motivations are and if you have the ability to adapt to changes or, on the contrary, you are someone resistant to change who believes that things as they are perfect and that others are the ones who have to change.

In the fifth chapter, finally and after having assembled the previous pieces, we will see why everything in excess is good, how excess can help us achieve our dreams and achieve extraordinary goals. At this point, everything you read earlier will make sense. It is not possible that you want to have excess without first knowing yourself well, understanding what your limiting beliefs are, what makes you unhappy or happy, the why of your life... Once you know yourself better, you will understand that, when you do things in excess in the right direction, you will go much further than an average person. The excess will make your life change exponentially and you will see noticeable results. Remember that, to have abundance you need to act and not just immobilize yourself in your fantasies.

Finally, I would like to share that I published this book to be freely accessible, because I do not want to deprive anyone of the knowledge that I have obtained over several years, as it can impact and change many lives for the better. I firmly believe in the power of generosity, and that we can plant positive ideas in others to change the world. This is one of my purposes in life: to positively impact the lives of other people to generate change. I hope that this change begins in you and that you can help me create a better world. I wish that this book is of help to you and that, if it is, you share it with those you love most.

I. Do I have intelligence or stupidity?

Throughout my life, I have encountered countless people who tell me that they are very intelligent and know what they are doing, that they are sure of how things should be done and that they turn their beliefs into facts. In short, they proclaim that they possess a broad understanding of life and the universe.

So, before continuing and answering the question of this chapter, it is very important that you do the following exercise so that you can take advantage of the teachings of the book. It will take you no more than a minute to answer a couple of questions that I ask you not with the intention of offending, but to make you reflect. Please, get a pen or permanent marker and do the following self-assessment:

1. How intelligent do you consider yourself?

(Zero is the minimum and ten is the maximum)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2. How happy do you consider yourself?

(Zero is the minimum and ten is the maximum)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Thank you for answering the questions. It is important that your results are recorded with permanent ink or, if you are reading in digital format, that they are saved. Now, as an introduction, and to begin questioning whether we have intelligence or stupidity, I am going to quote an extraordinary phrase that Bertrand Russell pronounced in an essay titled The Triumph of Stupidity: The problem with the modern world is that the stupid are full of confidence, while the intelligent are full of doubts.

Dunning-Kruger

There is a syndrome known as the Dunning-Kruger syndrome, which talks about how people with a low intellectual and cultural level tend to think that they know more than they do and consider themselves smarter than they really are; that is, it is a cognitive bias, a psychological effect in which their perception of reality is distorted.

These reflections date back to the time of Socrates and his famous phrase I only know that I know nothing. Well, let’s see why this phrase and what relationship it has with the Dunning-Kruger syndrome. At some point in his life, Socrates was accused by the people of his town, who began to criticize him because they said he was very wise. He did not understand why others had this perception when he himself did not consider himself a wise man. So, to prove his point, he decided to investigate and go to the people in the town considered the wisest: the poets, speakers, and politicians... Once he went and talked to them, he understood that those who considered themselves the wisest were not really so. On the contrary, the fact that other people considered them wise affected their perception of reality. They had created a distortion in which they felt more than they really were. Something like if their ego was so high that it gave them the necessary confidence to believe themselves wise.

After this reflection, Socrates understood that the accusations made against him were false. He did not consider himself a wise man and understood that he was accused of this because it was the reputation he had; however, unlike the poets, speakers, and politicians, Socrates understood something very important: he was aware of the limits of his knowledge.

So, instead of considering himself a wise man, he was very clear about how little he really knew in relation to all the knowledge that existed in the world. In contrast, the poets, speakers, and politicians, based on the little they knew, believed they had a broader knowledge. For this reason, Socrates establishes that he does not know more than the one who believes he knows more, but the one who is more aware of the limits of his knowledge.

This confirms that Socrates was right when he stated that «the more ignorant, the wiser people believe themselves to be». This simple phrase has given much to reflect on over the years; however, one of the reflections with the greatest impact, from my point of view, was the one that initiated the investigation of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which we will talk about in this chapter.

As mentioned at the beginning, this syndrome consists of the incompetent believing themselves smarter and the intelligent feeling dumber than they really are. It was proposed in 1999 by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger when they conducted several self-assessment studies in different individuals, and found that regardless of the study, the results were always the same: the incompetent felt they had great ability and performance, that is, they overestimated themselves; the opposite effect also occurred: the intelligent felt they had less ability and performance, that is, they underestimated themselves.

All this is due to the fact that individuals find it very difficult to recognize their own ineptitude. None of us likes to feel stupid or incapable, but we always want, in some way, to be told how intelligent we are, how much knowledge or how much capacity we have. This is, in part, because of our ego, since from a young age we have always been told that we have to get good grades, that we have to be the smartest in the classroom, that we have to stand out in society... So, in a way, people try to obtain intelligence trophies.

However, as Mark Twain said, it is easier to deceive people than to convince them that they have been deceived. What does this phrase have to do with the Dunning-Kruger syndrome? Usually, the most incompetent people are those who want to be right about everything and believe that others are wrong. This type of people tend to have the Dunning-Kruger syndrome, because the world is so small in their heads that only one reality, one truth, exists, and it is the one they know. Out of all the billions of human beings and all the billions of possible ideologies, simply theirs is the correct one because they believe they have a superior level of intelligence and others know nothing, are wrong or are fools.

That is why people who, usually, tend to be more intelligent, to have more knowledge, are those who understand that each ideology is different, that human beings have different possibilities and opportunities, that each person thinks in a completely different way, that all people are different and no one has the absolute truth or right, but that each one possesses a piece of truth that, together, form a higher level of knowledge.

You can do this same experiment with your acquaintances, with your close people, and you will see that the results are impressively similar: the most incompetent people will always tell you that they are very good, that they are know-it-alls, and those who have a higher degree of intelligence will feel with an average capacity. It is very difficult for someone to tell you that they have a lower capacity, because as people we do not like to say that we are inferior, but, generally, those who are more intelligent will tell you that they get average results or that they have an average performance capacity, compared to people who are very incompetent, those who you ask how intelligent they are from 1 to 10 and they answer 20.

On the other hand, the Dunning-Kruger effect helps us understand that excessive confidence is somewhat dangerous. Why is it dangerous? It is true that having confidence in yourself is very positive, it is a good quality that helps you achieve more goals compared to insecurity. The problem is that it is harmful to have excessive confidence in oneself without knowing the limits of our knowledge, because imagine someone who knows nothing, who has very little information and with that makes decisions that involve the well-being of a community or other people. This is highly dangerous.

That is why someone who knows well the limits of their knowledge and has a lot of confidence in themselves can achieve greater things than someone who watches a documentary on Netflix about a certain topic and feels like a know-it-all who, with excessive confidence, makes decisions that can be harmful to their family, their health or their community. That’s why I highly recommend to others that, not because they get a little information from some medium or source, they feel that they know everything; for example, that they read a news item on social networks and with that they believe they have a great knowledge about the matter. Remember that there is an excess of information in the world; we must know how to control our confidence and our relationship with the information we are exposed to.

On the other hand, David Dunning and Justin Kruger tell us that there are four stages of learning. The first corresponds to unconscious incompetents. What does it mean to be an unconscious incompetent? Well, it is the one who feels like a big shot, who feels like a jack-of-all-trades. In