Have you ever met someone who found one method that worked once, and then just kept using it everywhere? It worked, so they got confident. Then, when it stopped working, they didn’t blame the method—they blamed the people, the environment, or bad luck.
This is more common than you think. Sometimes, it’s us.
The more success you have with a single approach, the easier it is to mistake what worked for what’s always right. History is full of people who learned this lesson the hard way.
Take Shang Yang. He wrote the strict legal code that turned Qin into a powerhouse. But when he himself was fleeing, he was turned away from an inn because his own law required ID for lodging. He was caught, executed—by his own rules. The law didn’t change; his position did.
Or Emperor Huizong of Song. His real talent was art—he could spot a fake painting instantly. But he used that same aesthetic intuition to judge people and policies. He saw a "great presence" in the corrupt official Cai Jing, and greenlit a disastrous war. His artistic eye failed him outside the studio.
And then there’s Emperor Yang of Sui. His strength was moving fast and breaking through. He conquered Chen in months, built canals in half a year. So he applied the same relentless pace to three massive military campaigns against Goguryeo. Each one failed, the country collapsed, and he was killed by his own guards.
What they all shared is what machine learning calls "overfitting." A model that fits its training data perfectly becomes useless in new situations. Your past success can become a trap that keeps you from adapting.
How do you break out?
Ask yourself three questions.
First, when was the last time someone genuinely disagreed with you? If you can’t remember, your feedback loop is broken.
Second, would the version of you five years from now still approve of your current methods? If the answer is too quick, you might be in emperor territory.
Third, are you using the same intuition for two completely different types of problems? Knowing the boundary of your skill is rarer than having the skill itself.
These stories aren’t just about ancient figures. They’re a mirror. The point of studying history is not to learn what happened, but to see what’s happening in you right now.