You Don’t Just Need Therapy, You Need a New Mindset
Are you satisfied with yourself at this moment? Not to get all self-help on you, but I’d like to know, are you who you want to be? Are you how you truly are? If not, I challenge you to read on and figure out what your personal concoction of success is.
This year has been pivotal in my personal growth. I have grown the most in this year than I have in my almost 18 years of life. The Knowledge Society (TKS) is the one thing that has caused this change along with all of the lessons it has taught me. If I could sum up TKS in three words it would be mindsets, innovation, and relationships. For me, mindsets have been the most impactful.
Throughout TKS we learn about a new mindset every week. Many I had heard before but never took the time to really think about them. With those, came new ones and before I knew it, I was a mindset expert.
Here’s what I learned:
For my own personal development, I made a formula of Anti-fragility, Stoicism, and Perspective. Let me break them all down for you and then tell you how they changed my life.
Anti-fragility:
a category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it to survive and flourish
This idea was founded by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. From his perspective as a hedge fund manager, he determined that some things benefit from the worst possible circumstances. While it is a good economic term, TKS interprets it in a slightly different way. They say to be antifragile in all respects of your life, physically, emotionally, and mentally. For me, this has been paramount and by far the most impactful mindset I have learned. For most of my life, I thought that I would always feel lost or sad or numb. That I had no choice over what affected me, that I was a victim to the circumstances surrounding me. I’ve learned to enjoy pain and suffering as it brings me joy. It’s like when I exercise. In the moment I hate every second but there’s light at the end of the tunnel and joy to be found in the suffering. It’s like being told that you’re not good enough and continuing to fight one and prove them wrong. It’s being told that you will never amount to anything and showing the world that you can be everything you’ve ever dreamt of. It’s the story of my life. Antifragility taught me that I didn’t need to be anyone but the person I want to be and that my future is destined by my choices, not the choices of others.
Stoicism:
the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.
Created by Zeno of Citium at Athens, this school of thought began as a philosophy where virtue is based on Knowledge and rejects the vice of pain. It’s essential to be in a perpetual state of being unbothered and not giving into hedonistic pleasures. While hedonism is not much of concern for me, I have been continuously affected by negative forces. The distinction is that now I have a choice to be affected by it or not. I can now hustle opportunities without letting the details bother me. I grew up in a suboptimal environment as a child. I was an aunt at 8, had a drug addict father, and I ended up with divorced parents in the middle of high school. Those things plagued me and made me miserable. Life became “Woe is me” and less “Wow, I’m me!” I was not happy to be who I was and this was due to how much life had distracted me from what really mattered — me. I took the time to foster stoicism in my own life. My aunt said how I would constantly whine as a child and complain. She told me “Women be strong. And don’t ever whine ‘’ and I’ve lived by that since then. I revel in the fact that I am stronger than my circumstances now. Without distraction, I have become able to grow and develop into a more powerful person.
Perspective:
a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view
Perspective has been something I’ve been talented at harnessing for most of my life. I have a knack at understanding what people feel by putting myself in their position. But this had also caused me to internalize what people had told me while confiding in me. TKS teaches us to put ourselves in the position of others so we best know how to help them and ourselves ultimately. When you have a world view and a deep understanding of the people around you. You are invincible and truly a force to reckon with. For example, what has taught me to become an almost fully-realized version of myself was the manifestation of different perspectives on my life. I started to identify the facets of myself. I’m a geek, a boss, and a lover of Japanese city pop. I’m obsessed with renaissance art and Rococo fashion. I adore old Chanel fashion shows, studying economies, and virtue ethics. What was important for me to realize though was that I would continue to grow and develop and I would be able to add new perspectives to my personality, changing every day. TKS showed me how to use what I thought to be my weakness as a strength and harness its power to make me a better person than before the program.
TKS is for me, life-changing and truthfully, nothing can quite compare to the amount of growth I’ve experienced in these 8 months. You are not who you were last year, yesterday, or a minute ago. Your growth is a culmination of all of your experiences, even the ones you try to forget, and to me, the best way to improve your life is to embrace this moment — to live with no fear of the future or dwelling on the past.
Takeaways:
- Antifragility isn’t just a dope economic term, it’s a way to navigate your life and prove the doubt in your head wrong
- Stoicism is the 🔑to navigate the worst parts of your life and amidst all of this chaos, it’s a strong asset to have
- Appreciate that you’re unique and continue to develop your perspective to accommodate for all circumstances
About me:
I’m a 17-year-old innovator based in NYC. I’m fascinated by finance and economics which utilize emerging technology in their development. I’m a lover of philosophy and learning more about the world around me.
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