Kanye West once said that his power is his ability to not be influenced. We all like to call ourselves independent thinkers, but how many of us actually are ones?

Throughout our life, we tend to form our opinions based on other opinions, which were also based on some opinions. Our mood and how we feel about ourselves depend on how other people treat us, on their opinions, feelings, moods, and emotions. People get influenced. By power, by money, by love, by their own emotion and ego. Therefore, every human thought is biased. Additionally, everyone has a unique set of experiences behind them — you can only hope that it’s positive.

The only thing you can put your faith in is science. Yet, even science is often corrupted. Science and technology are controlled by humans which means there is always some unwanted bias, outside influence involved. It is important to distinguish a biased, tendentious, or wrongly interpreted piece of information. More to that, art, culture, law, and all humanities — all of these were created by biased humans who are, more often than not, wrong.

Thinking in this direction, you can challenge the first principles of “fundamental” science as well. People used to think Earth was flat because they didn’t have enough evidence. And for real, how and when can we ever be sure that WE do? That we do have enough evidence to claim something. We can never be sure that empirical evidence is truly empirical.

To facilitate my remark, what I am leading to is — question everything, kids. Curious people move the world, and curiosity is about asking questions. Although, learn how to ask the right questions. There’s a theory that you should spend more time figuring out the question than the answer — because once you have a question, the answer will come relatively easy.

A long time ago, Pythagoras declared the Earth was flat, and people believed this misconception for centuries until someone wasn’t brave enough to challenge his point, ask «why?» and prove everyone wrong. Even the brightest minds make mistakes. Don’t trust everything ‘credible’ people say. Be open to change your mind.

Getting back to Kanye, I want to say that it’s possible to develop his greatest superpower in you. You will ask me: Dasha, but how? Weren’t you saying that humans are always biased and influenced by each other and the circumstances around them?

What if I tell you that I have already given you the key to becoming a superhuman?

It’s pure and simple.

Question everything.

• It’s raining, I am sad. Is it raining? Do we even exist? We might be just another simulation. How can you be influenced by shit you don’t believe in? (Love this example, wrote it lying on the veranda at 1 am, freezing)
• My colleague is being rude to me, saying I’m hopeless. (First, you should ask yourself whether you even want to continue working with them) Next, ask yourself why are they acting in such a way. Could they be going through something you are not aware of that can influence their behavior? Feedback often depends on how one is feeling at the exact moment. Try to filter emotions and feelings from their words, then you will get somewhat practical feedback.

Truly, it’s a brilliant technique to strip language down so you can get the real meaning of an utterance. Not just for feedback, for understanding people too.

I remember how I’ve attended YC Female Founder Talks last year, the YC partner then said: when we read your applications for Y Combinator, we strip your language down — stop using fancy words and sentences to make yourself sound cooler and save us some time. We can see through your copywriting anyway. Learn to see through when reading someone’s story — article, tweets, personal website, LinkedIn profile. A good algorithm that I found to work is: 1) erase the fancy words, rephrase in normal language, 2) with the environment and resources available to that person, how impressive are those achievements, really? 3) how hard was it to achieve?

You should just block yourself from outside negativity. To do that, you have to block everything else. The inflow of information should stop and/or be carefully filtered.

“The reason so many struggle with negativity is because they overvalue positive reinforcement” (Gary Vaynerchuk).

Your inner you should not depend on any outside factors. If you overvalue the compliments, the praising then you will overvalue the negativity. Close your ears for everything if you want to live in peace. Remember the filtering technique? Erase words of personal praising/hating and leave the constructive feedback you will use to grow.​

Furthermore, it makes sense to block too many opinions from going through your mind. Spend less time reading stuff and more time reflecting.

Social media is evil. It has more power than you could ever imagine. It gets inside your head to control your thoughts. Additionally, “every time you read them, you know you feed them”. To rephrase, the more you are on social media, the smarter their algorithms get.

I strongly recommend watching “The Social Dilemma” & “The Great Hack” on Netflix. I would say you must watch these movies to become an independent thinker.

A new kind of social media might be Telegram — a messaging app where you can create public channels. There are no evil algorithms, no FOMO. You only see what you subscribe for and only when you want to see it.

I started this essay with a question. We all like to call ourselves independent thinkers, but how many of us actually are ones?

I hope that you were able to transform yourselves into mini-Kanyes. (Mini because his level of pofigism is basically unachievable and sometimes toxic)

In a nutshell, ask a terribly huge amount of questions and learn to filter wasted words to get to the real meaning. At least that’s what I do and it seems to be working.

The famous quote “My Power Is My Ability To Not Be Influenced” is taken from an episode with Kanye West on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman. Available on Netflix.

Another good piece of content with Kanye is his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

My personal website: dashanikolaeva.com

The Power Of Not Being Influenced was originally published in The Power Of Not Being Influenced on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.