Random Stuff - Chapter 319

Ursula Burns was raised by her single mother in the projects of New York in the 1960s and ’70s. Back in those days, she was born with three strikes against her: she was black, poor, and female. Life would be hard.

Her mother scrimped and saved and worked extra jobs just to provide for Ursula and her siblings, but more importantly she constantly reminded them that where they were right now didn’t have to define them for the rest of their lives. They always had a choice. They could do the best with what they had.

Ursula worked her ass off. She stayed on top of her studies and got into engineering school at the Brooklyn Polytechnic School, which was, not surprisingly, made up almost entirely of white affluent men. She soon realized she had a lot of catching up to do, both academically and socially. She was an outsider in every sense of the word.

But somehow, she graduated from engineering school and worked her way up to become the CEO of Xerox, managing to turn the once-flailing company back to profitability. She also served as the head of the STEM Education Coalition under President Obama, and has been on the boards of some of the world’s largest companies, including Exxon Mobil, Uber, and VEON, the world’s 10th largest telecom company.

Inspired by her mother’s encouragement, Burns developed early in life what psychologists call a “growth mindset,” which is essentially just the belief that one has a certain degree of personal influence over their life.

Contrast this with a “fixed mindset,” which is the belief that you have little to no control over your life.

The truth is, there are things in life you can control and things you can’t.

You have absolutely no control over where you were born, your biological s.e.x, how rich or poor your family is, what color your skin is, how tall you are, etc. These things do matter and they will obviously impact your life in major ways.

But while you may not be to blame for your situation, you are always responsible for your situation.

It wasn’t Ursula’s fault that she was born into a poor family. But instead of defining herself as poor and being a victim of her own circ.u.mstances, she turned that on its head and let her story inspire her life. She owned her scars and wore them openly instead of using them as an excuse to not even try.

Similarly, it’s not your fault if you were born poor or fat or prone to mental illness. But it is your responsibility to figure out how to deal with your situation.

No one else can heal your emotional wounds but you. No one else can fix your toxic relationship with money but you. No one else can lose that weight for you. No one else can make that person fall in love with you.

That isn’t to say you have to do it all by yourself. You should seek out help if you need it, hire a trainer if you can afford it, and get financial help when your luck is down. But for better or worse, at the end of the day, it’s all on you.

You have been/will be handed some real turds in life. You will have some advantages over others, some of which you earned and others you didn’t. Dwelling for too long on either of these will only lead you down the fixed-mindset rabbit hole at some point, and that’s a miserable hole to be in.