I watched it happen again yesterday. An educator I respect - someone genuinely good at what they do - has started to become insufferable. Every credential stacked makes everyone else seem smaller. Every recognition earned makes curiosity optional.
This is the credential trap, and our industry breeds it perfectly.

Here’s how I see that it works: You learn something. You get certified. People recognize you. You teach. More people recognize you. You get invited to speak. You stack another certification. Your fee goes up. Your identity shifts from “person who knows things” to “person who is known for knowing things.”

That little shift can be poison.

Because once your identity lives in your credentials rather than your work, you stop being a student who teaches and become a teacher who’s stopped being a student.
The wonder dies. Everything becomes “I already know this” or “this doesn’t match what I teach.” 

You sort people: certified/not, credentialed/amateur, recognized/unknown.

You lose the ability to learn from unlikely sources because you’ve trained yourself to evaluate the messenger before hearing the message.

The jaded quality creeps in because you’ve arrived. The pompous edge appears because you confuse your resume with your character. The dismissiveness toward others becomes necessary, if your value comes from being higher in the hierarchy, you need others to be lower.

And there’s this: 
more credentials = more speaking fees = more course sales = more need to protect that position. 

Maybe staying teachable threatens the brand. Admitting you’re wrong, changing your mind, saying “I don’t know”….these become expensive luxuries.

I’m not immune to this. I catch myself doing the mental math,  measuring my experience against someone else’s, using my books or my platform as evidence I’m worth listening to. It’s easy to slip into. 

Maybe this is true. The moment you start believing your own credentials is the moment you stop earning or deserving them.

The antidote is simpler than the disease: 
Stay a student. Let what you know serve the work, not your identity. 
Treat frameworks as tools, not trophies. Learn from everyone, especially people without letters after their name.

The moment we think we’ve arrived is the moment we start leaving.

Einstein kept questioning Einstein. 

Maybe that’s the real win. 

Cheers
Klark