The Enemy Within...

A leadership lesson from Star Trek reminds us the greatest enemy to our success often lurks within ourselves.

Sometimes, you can be your own worst enemy. Me, too.

The voice we listen to, speaking between our ears, matters!

I've been re-watching the original Star Trek series with my granddaughter, Aubrey, as she's discovering the world of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and the rest of the Crew. She's loves science, and science fiction.

In the episode, "The Enemy Within", a transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into two separate beings, one cruel and animalistic, and the other kind and docile. The search for the "darker" version of Kirk leads to conversations about the voices we listen to and who is actually leading us from the inside.

Spoiler alert, the transporter is repaired and Captain Kirk's two halves are reunited so he can continue to lead the Enterprise on its 5-year mission to boldly go where no man has gone before.

There's a valuable lesson here. (Of course, there is.)

Your success in life, or the lack thereof, is often the result of listening to the wrong voice speaking between your own ears.

Louis Binstock, author of "The Road to Successful Living" summed it up quite well. "Very often, we are our own worst enemy as we foolishly build stumbling blocks on the path that leads to success and happiness."

We are our own Enemy Within!

Og Mandino, commenting on Binstock's book, noted we may have unknowingly erected major stumbling blocks that are impeding our success in life. Often these are failures to learn from our mistakes and we erroneously continue to listen to the same erroneous guidance from within over and over again.

Didn't Einstein refer to this as the very definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome?

I played football in school, as did a lot of young men growing up. Our offensive coordinator always opened every offensive drive with the same play, Split Right 52. It was a handoff to the tailback who would run just outside the right tackle, with the fullback leading the way.

The problem was that every team we played, who had watched our film from prior games, knew this was our opening salvo every single time we took the field for the first time. In fact, the opening three plays were almost always the same initial three plays every time we took the field.

So, let me ask you a question to which the answer is obvious.

If you know your adversary is going to make the same opening move every time you engage in combat, would you not prepare in advance to thwart that advance and shut down the offensive drive? Of course you would. And that's what our opposing teams consistently did at every game.

One day during practice, I asked the Coach why we always opened with the same series of plays at the beginning of every game. He replied he wanted to get a "feel" of the opposing team's defense and look for weaknesses. I followed up asking if our opponents knew we had a history of doing the same thing the same way every time we opened a game, would they not spend the entire week preparing for this?

My coach paused for a moment, a long moment. You could see, almost feel, the internal struggle he was having with himself. He then patted me on the helmet and told me to go back to practice. Nothing more was said.

The following Friday we took the field. As the offense started out for its first drive, the offensive coordinator grabbed the quarterback and said, "Open with Split Right 44." The formation looks identical to the play he'd always called, but this time the handoff is to the fullback who dives into the line off-center.

The opposing defense had shifted their focus to the outside tackle, as this was where the initial strike always took place. The cornerback had cheated up, as had the safety. The linebacker had also shifted to his left. The opposing team was in anticipation of a handoff to the tailback and his attempt to get to the outside running off-tackle.

The play caught them by surprise. Where we typically picked up 1 or 2 yards on a first down, if that, the fullback dove into the line, following the blocks of the center and the guard, and drove the ball forward for almost five yards. Half way to a first down, on the very first play of the game.

I caught the eye of my coach and he smiled, ever so slightly, as he nodded in my direction, and called the next play. Nothing more was ever said, nor did it have to be. In that moment, this veteran coach of many seasons had tuned out the familiar voice that continually told him to keep doing things the same way you've always done them before and to try something new.

My coach had discovered and conquered his enemy within.

Our own worst enemy often resides between our ears.

One of the ways this Enemy Within manifests itself is through the blaming of others. It's much easier to point the finger at others than at ourselves. Rather than admit we were wrong, we attach responsibility for our failures to our circumstances, situations, or (often) other people.

It's a recipe for failure.

I've been to Africa twice, Zambia in 2015, and Cameroon in 2017. I can't wait to go back to this amazing country and spend time teaching leadership to these incredible people. But the Enemy Within can be found in every country, every town, and within every person.

I was talking with a doctor who was there from the U.S. operating a medical clinic. He was telling me one of his greatest challenges was their strong belief in witchcraft and superstition and their initial distrust of medicine.

In the minds of the people, it wasn't WHAT made them ill, they always asked WHO made them ill. The Enemy Within seeks to blame others.

Rather than acknowledge a lack of hygiene, dirty food preparation habits, improper food storage practices, parasites in the drinking water, failure to quarantine those who were sick and contagious, a lack of immunization for infectious disease, along with unhealthy lifestyle practices, the people had grown up in a culture believing there was a supernatural explanation for what they could not yet understand.

They wanted to blame a WHO rather than a WHAT.

I saw similar things when I was in Guatemala. The same dirty machete they used to work in the jungles was used to cut fruit or carve meat for the family to eat. Villages drinking from contaminated water, full of parasites. Because of a lack of medicines, even general antiseptics like alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, along with a general lack of education when it comes to hygiene, even simple wounds often became infected, spreading sickness throughout the body.

Once again, they wanted to blame a WHO rather than a WHAT. It was easier to point blame at a nameless, faceless deity than to point the blame at their lack of education, knowledge, or admission they were often responsible for making themselves or their children sick.

But you don't have to go to a third-world country to see the Enemy Within. You have only to look at yourself.

If you grew up with siblings, it was easy to point the finger at a brother or sister and say, "It's their fault." It was easy to blame the dog for eating your homework or blame the teacher for talking so fast you didn't hear her give the homework assignment you failed to do because you were more interested in watching cartoons than getting your math done.

The Enemy Within started speaking to us early, and if we haven't learned to recognize and ignore this voice, we will continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again in our lives.

It has been said that the practice of blaming others accounts for nearly half of our failures in life.

Think about that for a minute.

Half of your failure in life is listening to the Enemy Within who keeps telling you to ignore the Truth and to blame those around you for failure to learn the lessons life is trying to teach you. You are failing to cash in on failure's lessons to learn, grow, and become a better version of YOU in the process.

As a result, you remain smaller than you could be, weaker than you should be, and less successful than you ought to be.

Until you realize the greatest battle you may need to fight today is the battle within yourself, against the Enemy Within, you remain defeated, living below your potential, and never rising to become the truly successful person on this planet you were put here to become.

And when greatness doesn't shine within you, it doesn't radiate to those around you who need you to be great for them.

So, take some time this week to go spelunking. Take a deep dive inside yourself to uncover your own Enemy Within. Learn to recognize its voice and the lies it whispers to you every single day that are holding you back, limiting your success, and stifling your growth as a Black Belt Leader in Life.

When you do so, you'll gain a new level of Mastery over yourself. You'll become more decisive, more insightful, and more successful as a result.

Who doesn't want more of that?

And maybe, just maybe, you'll also gain an even deeper appreciation for the words of Mr. Spock who so eloquently said:

"Live long, and prosper."