Get comfortable with the uncomfortable

The price of conformity

Imagine that a friend of a friend of yours has a child. Let’s call him John. At age of six, John is a smart young man, but he has some difficulty doing his handwriting homework.

One day, his teacher asked him “you’ve been practicing for so long, why your handwriting is not improving?” John replied without hesitation, “Don’t you understand? The damn lines are bothering me.” His teacher finally realized John needed a different approach to make handwriting enjoyable again.

How many times in our lifetimes are we confronted with the same situation as John? While conformity can provide a sense of belonging and acceptance, it often comes at the expense of personal authenticity and individuality. To comply with societal norms we ended up restricting our personal freedom, limiting our self-expression, and stifle our creativity.

I believe we're here to find our pace, our tone, our own voice learning from our mistakes and successes. But for that to happen, it is needed to remove distractions, separate the wheat from the chaff, and direct our attention to what matters to us.

John’s story completely resonates with mine. Just copying patterns well structured in a piece of paper were quite boring for me as a child. I resisted, cried, complained and got frustrated.

My attempt to stay within the lines while writing on the paper resulted in me ruining my entire homework. Until I found the solution to the enigma of my frustrations. I organized the disorder within me and I did what needed to be done. I got over the task as fast as possible. What was the point of all this?

Today I know that exercise contributed to develop my fine motor skills and my literacy process. However, back then, I did not know I was just fighting psychic entropy, the natural course of things. Everything in the known universe tends to chaos, disorder, expansion.

Here are some examples found in our daily life: ice melting, sugar dissolving, making popcorn, boiling water for tea, a forgotten garden.

To evolve to a higher state of mind or consciousness, it’s necessary to deploy a certain amount of energy. It is not magic; it is physics. Growing requires effort, resources, energy from us. It’s both painful and rewarding.

Our broken systems

Five decades ago, technology knew its place. It was a mere servant to us. We drove cars, flew on airplanes, used telephones and cooked with microwaves.

Now, people create imaginary identities in digital worlds and spend countless hours in parallel realities. Technology became more intimate to us than our own specie.

Our educational and organizational systems did not accompany this evolution. I reckon it’s not a surprise to anyone. We’re trained to follow rules rather than to stimulate independent thinking. Although we are in the digital age, we live in a system designed to prepare individuals for industrial-era jobs.

Conformity. Specifications. Routines. Protocols. Repeat the cycle.

Tell me a person who did not experience this model in schools, college or workplace. Of course, there are a few exceptional cases.

We’ve created complex systems to fight entropy (state of disorder) in our lives, but these structures are being disrupted before our eyes. It's happening right now.

Following rules offers predictability and order, minimizing risks and uncertainties. It facilitates performance evaluation and management of groups. It’s not evil at all.

However, it leaves little room for free-thinking, problem solving and creativity which is a tremendous handicap in the digital era. Our workforce is ill-prepared to meet the demands and contemporary challenges.

The current landscape requires individuals who can challenge the status quo and build solutions and products never thought before.

Collaboration. Adaptability. Critical thinking. Innovation. Agility.

You’ll most likely better navigate the complexity and ambiguity of our world if you adopt a transformational mindset.

If you want to seek job security in the upcoming years or decades, be a life-long learner, evolve, adapt and thrive in new environments. Create innovative solutions, lead digital transformations where you are, and positively impact your local communities.

Changes will happen you like them or not. But growth is a choice. So, which one do you choose? I choose to advance.

Become irreplaceable

Fifty percent of jobs vacancies you see today in the market will probably disappear ten years from now. I don't want to cause panic here. Reality is brutally hard and just plain brutal. It is what it is.

The world is advancing at an astonishing pace, redefining every aspect of our daily lives. This is a not a new trend. We are seeing it happen right before our eyes.

But is the human consciousness evolving at the same pace? What is the point in having the last piece of technology at your fingertips but our mindset is stuck in the last century modus operandi?

To navigate in uncharted territories of the emerging digital economy, self-actualization is imperative. Your relationship to your own knowledge is the same as a relationship of a farmer to the wheat. That's the current form of value.

The future belongs to the creative minds. People who can leverage your problem-solving skills based on a unique set of experiences. And I don't mean that everyone should become artists, designers or writers. The point here is to find the sweet spot between your genuine interests or field of expertise and your personalty.

To proceed to next phase of the game, you will need to evolve your character and collect new resources and skills like in the video games (edition 001). Position yourself as a valuable asset in the digital age by sharing knowledge, practical advice, and unique perspectives that help people solve problems and create positive change. Here are some strategies to consider:

1. Embrace continuous learning: stay ahead, commit to lifelong learning.

2. Cultivate a growth mindset: adapt to new technologies, learn and grow from failures.

3. Develop unique skills: identify emerging trends and technologies within your field and master them (i.e. coding, machine learning, writing).

4. Fostering creativity: creative minds become more valuable as automation raises.

5. Building relationships and network: enroll in events, and engage in online networking platforms.

6. Adapting to change: be agile, be open to learning new tools and technologies.

Welcome to the digital age, where information and attention are the new commodities. Let us be the vanguards of this new era, wielding our digital pens with creativity, responsibility, and purpose. Together, we can navigate the uncertain by getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Talk to you next week.

Light and peace,
Dum Spiro Spero! ⭐

—FMV

🧠 My Mental Download:

📕 (1) What I'm reading:

-Antifragile: a blueprint on how to navigate in a world of uncertainties.

🎧 (2) What I'm listening to:

-Inner Light: this music stuck to my mind for the entire week.

🤓 (3) What I'm studying:

-The craft of writing effectively: essential components of writing by Larry McEnerney, former Director, Writing Program at University of Chicago.

📩 About the Intellego Newsletter:

💡 Intellego is the process of gaining insights to better understand the world.

✍️ Letter is written by Fabíola Maia-Veres every Tuesday at 7pm.

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