Hello everyone, today I want to share insights from a book I recently rediscovered called Mindshift. The English title perfectly captures its essence - it's about transforming your thinking to unlock your life's second journey. No one should be limited by their past circumstances. We need to break through, and this breakthrough relies on our ability to shift our mindset.
How can we achieve this mindshift? There's a crucial underlying principle: turn your useless past into an advantage. Take Tania from the Netherlands - she worked as a clerk at a university, handling emails and administrative tasks. She felt invisible, but she had one advantage: she loved gaming. When the university started offering online courses, professors complained about forum management - trolls, inappropriate language, and personal attacks. Tania spoke up: 'You need to manage the trolls.' The professors didn't even know what trolls were! With her ten years of gaming experience, she was promoted to network administrator, managing all students and users.
The book dedicates a chapter to Singapore, explaining why its economy is so competitive. Singapore follows a principle of creating π-shaped talents. We used to talk about T-shaped talents - people with broad knowledge and one deep expertise. But Singapore believes T-shaped isn't enough. You need π-shaped talents - like the Greek letter π with two legs, representing two deep skills. The first skill is work-related, the second skill is passion-related. This dual expertise creates more versatile and valuable professionals.
When your career stagnates, the author says you must first be alert to this stagnation. Many people don't react to being stuck - they think it's fine because they're getting paid regularly each month. But this stability can kill you. If you want stability in life, you're actually going backward. Learning is like rowing upstream - if you don't advance, you retreat. You must maintain an aggressive attitude and continuously enrich yourself. You need to be vigilant about stagnation.