You may know the Aesop’s Fable called The Scorpion and The Frog.

If you haven’t, it’s a short read:

A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and begins to swim. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: “I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature.”

The scorpion knew stinging the frog would cause him to drown, yet that knowledge didn’t stop him from killing them both.

Scorpions can’t control what is in their nature. Even when their life is at stake.

Humans are exactly the same and our history is littered with “intelligent” people making incredibly dumb decisions.

Here are two huge ones:

• Archie Karas turning a $10,000 loan into $40 million gambling, and immediately turning $40 million back into $0.
• Bill Clinton having an affair with Monica Lewinsky while he was President of the United States.

For both, their choices were made not by them, but by their nature.

You might think they were doomed, but had they simply planned around their basic instincts, they could have avoided becoming examples.

• Archie Karas could have entrusted a portion of his wealth to a financial advisor, outside his control.
• Bill Clinton could have had only male interns assigned to him instead of Monica. (Extreme… but effective)

In the moment though, they succumbed to their nature because they didn’t plan ahead.

Bill and Archie had no systems or processes in place to help them when they were most vulnerable. Their choices were made for them, just like the scorpion.

Unlike the scorpion though, we have the ability to plan ahead and we need to use it to our advantage wherever we can.

With the right systems and the right plan, you can stop yourself from making decisions others might view as inevitable.

The better we prepare, the shorter we will fall when we inevitably make mistakes.

As my one of my favorite authors said:

You Fall To The Level of Your Systems.

– James Clear

Better make the level of your systems as high as possible.