We’ve now seen that willful blindness to our shortcomings can set us up for failure. And yet the self-awareness unicorns in our study showed a remarkable pattern: in a few very specific situations, they strategically put on their rose-colored glasses, and it provided them with tangible benefits. To quote one such unicorn, a brilliant project manager who recently dealt with a devastating medical diagnosis, “You can visit denial-ville, but you can’t build a house there.”*2
