Category: Education

Race and the Importance of a Quick Start

Posted on by andrew

Taylor Caldarino (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

Have you ever wondered what age is best to start a conversation with your kids about racism? It can require creativity to come up with a way to explain this topic that is age-appropriate and ensures your child grasps what you are saying, but discussing racism from an early age helps give your child the tools necessary to prevent forming certain ideologies.

 

I believe parents should start conversations with their children about race starting around one year of age, but of course, making it extremely basic. This is because starting as early as three months old, babies start to show preferences for people that look like them. This makes it more likely that children will develop friendships that are homogenous, even if the child is growing up in an ethnically diverse area. Developing friendships outside of one’s race may help them to experience more cultures, which can lead to less ignorance or a better understanding of which ways racism affects people who experience it. 

 

Children are highly malleable, they pick up what the media and their peers say very quickly, and they believe it. This means that, since some races are portrayed in negative ways and white people are portrayed as superior, children form ideologies that the colour of your skin determines whether or not you are beautiful, a good or bad person, or smart or unintelligent. This is shown in Mamie Phipps Clark’s famous doll test study, in which kids are shown a white and a black doll and the majority of the kids applied positive attributes to the white dolls while associating negative attributes to the black dolls. I highly recommend watching this video on the doll test, it is quite eye-opening.

 

It can be hard to come up with ways to make a discussion age-appropriate or comprehensive for little ones, but there are plenty of great books and shows available that do very well when it comes to explaining how to treat others from different races. 

 

—

 

My name is Taylor, and I am currently majoring in psychology and minoring in gerontology at Simon Fraser University. I also love to hike and cook!

Can’ts in a Box

Posted on by andrew

Shirin Malek (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

In an educational setting it is vital to give children love, positive reinforcement and support in any way that gives them confidence.

 

I remember when I was seven years old and I told my teacher that I couldn’t do math properly, and that it was really challenging for me. Later the same day she gave me a sparkly pink box and told me to write down all the things I didn’t think I could do.

 

She said, “I want you to put all of your ‘can’ts’ in this box.” 

 

I did the assignment, but during the entire time I was confused. After class, she took me outside and asked me to bury the box. She looked at me and smiled, and told me that every time I tell myself I can’t do something I should picture that thought in a box in my mind and bury it. Instead of worrying about what I felt I couldn’t do, she wanted me to focus on all of the things I could do and write each of those things down in a notebook. Now, as a twenty-four-year-old, I can look back at that particular moment and see how helpful that lesson was.

 

A year later, I found out why I felt like I couldn’t do math. I was diagnosed with some learning disabilities. Learning disabilities are neurological disorders which “affect the way a person processes information and thus how they learn information. Simply put, their brains are wired differently.”

 

Although there are so many individuals in the world who have learning disabilities, the diagnoses seem to cause misconceptions. Rather than focusing on the evidence that learning specialists have gathered, I feel as though there are still some myths that persist. Let’s debunk those, shall we?

 

1.)   If someone has a learning disability, they are unintelligent.

 

First of all, you are not unintelligent if you have a learning disability. Actually, individuals who have learning disabilities have average or higher intelligence. Having a learning disability does not reflect your level of intelligence. In reality, it only means you learn differently than other people.

 

If you think about it, it can be beautiful to see how your own brain works and processes things in different ways. You have a new perspective on how you approach different subjects, and finding which learning styles work for you is a key component of the experience.

 

2.)   Someone with a learning disability is lazy, or they can’t learn.

 

There are so many other talents that someone can possess, especially outside of a classroom. I feel like learning disabilities can be looked at as an excuse for laziness or an unwillingness to learn. Reality couldn’t be farther from that statement. Given the right encouragement and learning skills, a student with a learning disability can thrive and make good progress.

 

I also think it’s important to get to know what learning style works best for you! When I was in high school, I learned about the VARK model. Essentially, it divides students into four types of learners: visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic.

 

1.) Visual

 

Visual learners prefer to take in information through a visual medium. This could be in charts, graphs or images.

 

2.)  Auditory

 

Auditory learners learn better from auditory forms. Saying things out loud and being able to hear instructions and information seems to help them organize their thoughts and understand the concepts at hand.

 

3.)  Reading/Writing

 

By reading and writing, these learners find their learning style through words. Text is powerful and creates a clear picture in their minds of the subject matter at hand.

 

4.)  Kinesthetic

 

Kinesthetic Learners enjoy a hands-on experience; by touching and engaging their bodies in their work, they are forming a deep connection to the subject matter that they are working with and are learning at a deeper level.

 

Figuring out your learning style is of utmost importance. Learning new skills like time management, organization and more can only strengthen the educational experience!

 

Personally, I try to remember what my teacher told me; I put all my can’ts in that pink box, and I try my best to focus on my abilities. Living with learning disabilities doesn’t have to be a hindrance. These experiences can leave students enriched and more in touch with how they learn and how their brains work. With the right tools, encouragement and guidance, a student with learning disabilities will learn in ways that leave them personally and academically as enriched as their other classmates.

 

Instead of focusing on your disabilities, always remember your abilities. You will surprise yourself with what you are capable of.

 

Sources Used

 

https://bau.edu/News/types-of-learning-styles/

 

https://www.foothillsacademy.org/community-services/parent-education/parent-articles/ld-educators-need-to-know

 

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/autism-learning-disabilities/learning-disabilities-and-disorders.htm

 

—

Leave your thoughts for Shirin in the comments below – better yet, start up a dialogue with the Low Entropy community in person, at a Conscious Connections meeting or online at our community site. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube to stay up-to-date with Low Entropy news!

Coping with High School

Posted on by andrew

Alexandra Dadivas (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

Adults often say that your years in high school are going to be the best years of your life. While in the end that might be true, it doesn’t mean that your whole time there will be full of sunshine and rainbows. Let’s be real – high school is hard. The constant juggling between maintaining your grades, keeping up with your social life and taking care of your mental health is bound to be straining for anyone experiencing it. As a person who is going through secondary school myself, I also had to learn the hard way of accepting the adventure and the struggles that come with it.

 

Growing up, we are always told of the importance of education. How it will take us far in life, should we succeed. But succeeding in high school is much easier said than done. Unlike elementary, secondary school is a place where you have to take care of yourself. Your teachers are not going to constantly check on you to see if you’re following along, there will be no designated studying times and you cannot simply disregard a class, for there will be consequences both then and in the long run. If, or rather, when, you find yourself in a subject where you are struggling to keep up with the relentless pace, it is your job to consult your teacher about it. If you have a big test coming up, it’s up to you to take the initiative and to make time to study for it efficiently. You must train yourself to focus in every single class, despite how uninteresting they may be. If you want to maintain your grades, you are the one who has to take the necessary actions to do that, because no one else will do it for you. The process of it may seem cruel and draining at first, but your accomplishments later on are going to feel so much sweeter, knowing that you achieved them all by yourself.

 

High school is where you will live out most of your teenage years. Me being a teenager, I can easily say that having a social life is one of the top priorities on a teen’s mind. We want to have fun, to make friends and explore the world with them. With its demanding schedule, school can definitely get in the way of that. Spending eight hours a day inside a cramped building and then spending the rest of your time vigorously studying leaves little wiggle room for you to do the things you want to do – the things you saw teenagers doing in movies. You may not be able to go to the beach or go shopping or go for midnight drives with your friends as much as you’d like, but it is not impossible to make lifelong friendships in just the simple setting of a classroom. While bonding over the difficulties of trigonometry may not seem ideal, it is those random surprise connections that make each class worthwhile.

 

High school is known for its mental strain. Every year, we are pushed to a breaking point. Grades drop, relationships are broken and we lose pieces of ourselves. Life comes at us wave after wave and we try so hard to stay afloat, but we just cannot seem to take a breath. It is terrifying. Unfortunately, this is an issue where even I could use some guidance, so I will only speak from experience and of what has helped me in the past. My advice is to find a tether. Find something that you can always rely on to bring you back. Find something that will keep you grounded, even when it feels like you have lost your footing. For me, my tether was reading. When reality became too much for me, I would escape into the worlds given to me through literature, and it would clear my head. Your tether does not have to be limited to a hobby like mine, though. It can be a person. These days, mental health is something that is much more openly discussed. Talk to someone. Someone you fully trust, because in all this mess of variables, you deserve a person who presents themselves as a constant. Be it a best friend or a parent, pick someone who will give you the warmth of their hugs and both of their shoulders to cry on. Your mind has been through many things, and you owe it to yourself to take care of it.

 

High school is a scary place. It is a maze that twists and turns and pulls the ground out from under you at any given time. It changes you, but you need to know that that is okay. You are supposed to change. You are supposed to make mistakes. You are supposed to shed your skin and grow into the person that you have been working so hard to become. You may not have taken the paths that you thought you were going to take, but you are still on a path. Granted, it is a wild one, but I have learned to embrace every second of it, and I hope you do too.

 

—

 

Hi! My name is Alexandra Dadivas and I’m going into Grade 11 with the goal of being in healthcare sciences. Avid reader of young adult fiction!

Educational Value

Posted on by andrew

Grace Cheng (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about education is knowledge. Education can be a powerful tool that gives us knowledge, skills, information and techniques that can expand our vision and outlook on life. Furthermore, education can help us to fight injustice, violence, corruption and other issues in our society.

 

Education provides us with knowledge of what is going on in our world. When we have education, we can develop the ability to think clearly, apply knowledge to the world and make complex moral determinations. It can give us a different perspective on the lookout of life. Therefore, education can play an important element in the evolution of our nation. Education should not be limited to books, but can be gained through life experience. There should be no end to continued education because at every stage of our lives we should be learning something new.

 

Without education, we would not be able to come up with and explore new ideas, which means we would not be able to develop our world, because without ideas, there would not be any creativity and no development of society. 

 

Education has intellectual value as well as economic value.  Since education promotes imagination, creativity and knowledge, it provides us with opportunities to get high-paying jobs. Education plays an important role in our modern and industrialized world. Because we live in a competitive world, we may need to have a good education to seek employment to make a comfortable living. Many modern conveniences were developed by people with significant knowledge of the world around them, which helped them to apply better solutions to problems.

 

The following are some of the benefits of having an education:

 

  1. A More Comfortable and Stable Life 

 

To earn a better living and live a more comfortable life, we can look to the value of education. Increased education often correlates with reduced poverty. When we can get better jobs, we are then able to meet our needs and raise our families.  If you want to have a happier and more stable life and be able to enjoy some of the good things that the world offers, education can help.

 

  1. The Ability to Read and Write

 

Since much important information is communicated in writing, we need to have the ability to read and write. Without basic education, we would not be able to read newspapers, signs, letters and books. We would depend on others to help us with our daily activities, such as banking and shopping, if we had low literacy.

 

  1. Better Communication Skills 

 

Education can help us to improve our communication skills, such as our speech, vocabulary, tone and body language. When we are more educated, we may feel more confident with public speaking.

 

  1. Increased Independence

 

Having an education can help you to become more financially independent. It can also give us the information we need to help us make wiser decisions in general. Being able to navigate life efficiently can reduce our reliance on others.

 

  1. Increased Confidence

 

Having a higher education can manifest in the way you communicate, and people may take your words more seriously. This may give you more confidence in expressing yourself and your opinions.

 

  1. Character Building

 

Education can help develop us into more mature people, with the ability to plan and make positive life decisions. It can also provide us with insights into living and teach us to learn from our life experiences. Education can make us more confident and increase our ability to think, analyze and judge. People can apply more ideas in developing their moral values and standards when they have more education, and, therefore, become more thoughtfully conscientious human beings.

 

  1. Understanding Life Responsibilities

 

With more information about the mechanisms of the world around them, educated people may have more awareness of their personal and social responsibilities. Having a higher education can teach people to think beyond their immediate interests and give them the ability to contribute to longer-term societal projects.

 

  1. Women’s Empowerment

 

When women are more educated, they can raise their voices against injustice. Women with education can make better decisions and are more likely to take charge of their lives.  Educated women can use the right to freedom of speech and expression in more complex ways. Education may be fundamental for women to achieve equality.

 

Are you convinced about the importance of having an education after reading the benefits I have listed above?

 

—

 

Grace has an accounting and finance background. She enjoys reading, writing, listening to music, watching movies and playing sports.

Why: The Importance of Curiosity

Posted on by andrew

Anais Delépine, Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

Parents are sometimes annoyed with their children constantly asking “why” and being nosy about everything and anything. Is curiosity a bad thing? 

 

How could it be? It is a natural human trait! Curious people look for answers to the what, the why and the how. They explore, learn, question themselves, invent and, by this, make our world move forward!

 

Imagine a world without curiosity …

 

Every ocean, territory and everything humankind has discovered would be unknown. 

 

No technical breakthroughs and therefore no cars, no planes, no trip to Mars!

 

Every person on this planet would be living their lives without letting anything happen in them, living dull lives.

 

No connections between people, therefore no languages, no books, no cultures! 

 

See what a world with curiosity looks like …

 

Near the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to Asia around Africa. By the start of the 19th century, the spice trade was well developed and all kinds of spices started enhancing the flavor of our food dishes … cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, saffron, turmeric!

 

In the late 1800s, Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and microbiologist, discovered the principles of vaccination. Thanks to vaccines, humankind was protected from many diseases!

 

Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” He is now famous for his theory of relativity, published in 1905, which revolutionized our understanding of space, time, gravity and the universe.

 

More recently, in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, invented the World Wide Web which today facilitates millions of industries and lifestyles around the world.

 

Our choice is obvious: let’s all be more curious!

 

—

Leave your thoughts for Anais in the comments below – better yet, start up a dialogue with the Low Entropy community in person, at a Conscious Connections meeting or online at our community site. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube to stay up-to-date with Low Entropy news!

Toward Kindness

Posted on by andrew

Christina Liao (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

Kindness is such a fickle thing – it’s hard to come by, but it’s easy to give. It’s important to be kind to others, especially during a global pandemic. A simple act of kindness can brighten someone’s day, maybe even week. Giving somebody a compliment or telling them how good their outfit looks can change their day from bad to good. When someone is experiencing tough times, being understanding about their situation can help them through their difficulties. It’s important to be kind to everybody and, as Harry Styles would say, treat people with kindness. 

 

One way to increase the amount of kindness that we experience in our society is by eliminating discrimination. Being cruel to someone purely because of their race or sexuality is easier than being accepting of them, but we need to be accepting in order for our society to progress. We need to be aware of people in minority groups and not be discriminatory to them. We need to treat all people of colour and members of the LGBTQIA+ society with the same amount of respect that we would any other person. People aren’t born homophobic and racist, it’s taught. And just as easy as it is taught, it can also be unlearned if people are willing to take the necessary steps. 

 

Self-respect and self-love can also lead to more kindness. You need to love yourself for who you are before you start loving others. Accepting yourself for who you are – your faults, strengths and everything in between – is the first step to loving yourself. From there, you can learn to accept others for who they are as well. What’s most important is that you need to be confident in your own body. In order to do that, you need to stop worrying about what other people think of you. Just focus on what you think of yourself. Learn to see through the faults and reach the good parts. Everyone is unique; everyone has their own parts that shine and problems that they need to focus on. Loving every part of yourself is the first step to loving and being kind to everyone else. People are mean because they project their insecurities onto others, so start loving yourself. It’s not hard if you really want to change the way you treat others.

 

Once you love yourself and know how to treat yourself, you need to know how to treat others with equal respect. To do that, you should treat the people around you how you want to be treated. Be empathetic towards the situations of other people. Be respectful to people who are experiencing tough times and please, don’t discriminate. Tell someone that their shoes look nice, or tell them that they’re doing a good job at something they’re working on. Engage with them like how you would want to be engaged. Overall, just spread more positivity than negativity. If you don’t have anything kind to say, don’t say it. 

 

Being kind shouldn’t be a chore, nor should it be something that you don’t do already. Most people just need to understand how their actions can harm others. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect, everyone should be treated equally. Treating others equally starts with treating yourself fairly. Just remember to be kind to others, especially in tough times like now. Never forget to be kind and understanding toward other people. We shouldn’t need a daily reminder to treat people with kindness, but here’s one for you today. 

 

***

 

My name is Christina and I am currently a student at Simon Fraser University in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I love listening to music, reading, writing and, honestly, anything Marvel. In short, I’m a total nerd. I volunteer as a blog writer here at Low Entropy. 

How It All Began

Posted on by andrew

Fatima Malik (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

Just a few years ago, a lot was going wrong in my life. It was a very hopeless, dark time where nothing seemed to align with my happiest self. 

 

At the time, my happiness was dependent or conditional on my environment, the people that surrounded me, the things I had or the lack of things I wanted. Once I realized that happiness could not be conditional on the external, but needed to come from within, my life began to change.

 

It’s not easy to go from being anxious and in a pit of depression to being happy and changing everything around in a day or two. Realistically, it could take months or years, and for me, it took months to rewire my brain to find small moments of happiness, regardless of what was happening in my life.

 

More than anything, I wished for contentment. Not extreme joy or extreme ecstasy – I just wanted to be content with my life. But to go from unhappiness to happiness, there needed to be a drastic lifestyle change.

 

I was conditioned to having my happiness dependent on my external reality, and it was tough for me to step out of that conditioning. So I evolved around it. I began looking at things that were working well or gave me even small amounts of joy, and I concentrated on those more than what was going wrong. Even though the things going wrong were much more significant and had a much bigger impact on me, I managed to find small moments throughout my day that I would capitalize on.

 

For example, if I got a moment of 10 minutes outside, where I could hear the birds, the wind and the trees, I would try and take my shoes off and stand on the grass to connect with Earth (it’s funny, but connecting with a planet felt easier than connecting with other humans). I would consciously feel the existence of joy or bliss or just subtle happiness, and then try to continue that feeling throughout my day.

 

Every day, I began writing down what I was grateful for or things I appreciated in my life (including those 10 minutes I had with the birds and trees). This was followed by what I wished for, which always began with “contentment.”

 

These lists of gratitude and wishes began changing my outlook on life. They gave me the ability to find happiness inside me rather than the external. And that was the first step of my transformation.

 

My lifestyle change began when I went through a journey of self-love, self-respect and self-worth. I had to get rid of a lot of toxicity in the form of people, things, habits, jobs and social media, and rearrange my priorities. My drastic lifestyle change is a whole other topic that I’ll address in another post, but how it began was just by finding small moments to be happy and grateful for.

 

Fast forward to a few years later, and I am content with my life overall. I am happy most of the time and in control of my wellbeing. So now I’m on the other side, and there is some depression and anxiety, but there is no pit that I fall into. It’s all very manageable, and being human, I have my emotional ups and downs, but it is never a dark, hopeless place, and I’m closer to my happiest self than I’ve ever been before.

 

There is, of course, no end or destination to this journey of transformation. It is an ongoing, lifelong process where you and your life just keep getting better and better. It is an adventure I look forward to every day.

 

***

Leave your thoughts for Fatima in the comments below – better yet, start up a dialogue with the Low Entropy community in person, at a Conscious Connections meeting or online at our community site. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube to stay up-to-date with Low Entropy news!

With Hindsight

Posted on by andrew

Jihu Lee (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

It is only normal that we cringe at our past selves. As human beings, we are not meant to live with a spotless moral slate, meaning we will never be one hundred percent satisfied with our past choices and actions. Perhaps you wish you could have treated your siblings with more kindness, or you regret saying hurtful things to your friend out of anger. What is considered a wrongdoing to another or to oneself may differ from person to person. But it is important that we master the balance between holding ourselves accountable for past choices and forgiving ourselves for not knowing better at the time. 

 

If you cringe at your old self, it means you have grown, because the acknowledgment of an unsatisfactory choice is key to change. The important step afterward is turning our regret into accountability and action. That way, regret becomes motivation for growth and discipline, rather than a price to pay. The only way to move forward and evolve is to actively work on ourselves, instead of letting our old choices constrain us and convince us that we can’t change, or that it’ll be too difficult to change. 

 

Growth is only possible through setbacks and mistakes. Many people even advocate for the idea that there are no such things as mistakes, but rather turning points for change. If we were to see only perfection in hindsight, that would exclude any possibility for our growth in the future. It is so important that we recognize setbacks as new chapters in our lives, so that we don’t punish ourselves for being imperfect, as if any person is free of flaws. 

 

By forgiving ourselves for choices we wish we could have made differently, we are freeing ourselves from the prison of rumination and guilt. When we are trapped in the past, we miss out on living in the present and lose the opportunity to make a difference for the future. Thus, forgiving ourselves is one of the optimal forms of self-care. I think one misconception regarding self-forgiveness is that, by refusing to punish ourselves, we are avoiding responsibility for our actions. There seems to be this prevailing idea that beating ourselves to the ground is the only acceptable form of repentance. However, self-punishment zooms our attention to the parts we find wrong about ourselves and is ultimately problem-oriented. Forgiveness and grace, on the other hand, accounts for both responsibility and our capacity to grow. 

 

If we can master the knowledge that better versions of ourselves arise from empathy towards our pasts, we can extend a similar understanding to those around us. If someone has hurt us, we could benefit by trusting that they will make amends in the future, whether or not it will directly involve us anymore. That doesn’t mean we have to come to terms with the other person’s actions and the impact they had on us. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same. Instead, by simply recognizing that others can have the potential to grow, we detach ourselves from the pain they caused and ultimately keep them from having power over us. 

 

Thus, not surprisingly, the level of respect we garner for ourselves affects the quality of our interpersonal relationships. It can strengthen boundaries and improve the circle of people we allow in our lives. We will also heighten our sense of empathy and become better at apologizing or taking responsibility for our actions. 

 

Be aware that not every action has the same degree of impact, therefore it becomes our responsibility to make amends accordingly. The bottom line is that it is the nature of humanity to see better in hindsight, but we have the power to use the lessons and newfound knowledge to make an impact on our future. On top of it all, kindness towards oneself is highly important in bringing about progress. Like the way a plant can’t grow without light or water, you can’t foster personal growth if you constantly deprive yourself of hope and encouragement. Self-punishment is not the rent you have to pay for being human in this world. So remember that the next time you advocate for kindness towards others, it should include you.

 

—

 

My name is Jihu, and I’m from Salt Lake City, Utah! I have been with Low Entropy since May 2021. Some of the things I love are reading, writing, listening to music, playing with my dogs and spending time with my sister!

The One Habit of Highly Successful People

Posted on by andrew

Spoiler alert: it’s happiness. Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Christina Liao explains why.

 

Different people measure success in different ways. Harry Styles, a Grammy award-winning singer and former member of the band One Direction, says that “if you’re happy doing what you’re doing, then nobody can tell you you’re not successful.” That is, in a way, true. If one is not happy doing what they’re doing, then they cannot say that they’re successful without lying to themselves to some extent. It does not matter if that person is living in a mansion or a run-down cabin; they will feel success and at ease if they’re happy with the way that their life is going.

 

However, happiness is, in itself, a social construct. The stereotypical, fairy tale image of happiness for a girl is marrying a prince and living in a palace happily ever after. That’s what has been pushed onto young women who consume Disney content for decades, from the original Cinderella movie in 1950 to Tangled, released in 2010. Only in 2014’s Frozen was this narrative shifted. In that story, Anna does not find happiness with a prince, but with an ordinary man living an ordinary life after they ended up forming an unlikely friendship.  

 

On the subject of Disney movies, it seems that they’re seemingly changing what their version of a happy ending is. We see this in Frozen, as mentioned above, and the Pixar movies Inside Out and Coco. The narratives of these kinds of movies are shifting because the views of our society as a whole are changing. A happy ending to young people no longer means marrying into royalty and a kiss to seal the day. A happy ending means different things for different people and cultures, whether it’s one’s family accepting them for who they are or understanding the value of friendship and family. 

 

As history progresses, our society and its values tell you what being successful means. Its definition is constantly shifting: maybe it’s owning a farm that profits, working a high-paying job or having a university degree. However, what really defines “success”? A person like Styles would say that doing what makes you happy means that you’re successful. Someone else might say that becoming a CEO of a highly lucrative company makes you successful. It’s seen differently by different people because, like happiness, success is also a social construct. There is no true definition of “success,” only what people across history have coined it to be. 

 

Happiness, like success, is similar in the way that it has no singular meaning. If a person is content with their life, then they’re happy with it. They would not feel the pull to become more successful if they were already satisfied with their life. There’s no “true” meaning of success because as long as a person is happy with the structure of their life, then they are successful in their own eyes. It’s only one’s own eyes that matter, because they are the author and primary audience of their life. 

 

Everyone deserves success. Everyone deserves happiness. Whatever life throws at somebody, sometimes they forget the simplicity of finding things in their life that makes them happy. At the end of the day, Styles was right in saying that a person is successful if they’re happy with what they’re doing. Success, after all, is a social construct that has no true meaning. Only with happiness is someone successful, so do what makes you happy.

 

What are your paths to success? Let us know in the comments below or on any of our social media platforms!

Life Lessons: Emotions, Acceptance and Experiential Learning

Posted on by andrew

Ling-Yee Sze, Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

I have been, for the most part of my life, a person who is very meticulous about not making any mistakes, not allowing myself to be hurt or punished, or even just trying to ensure that I am spoken of in a respectful manner by other people. I feel a bit underqualified to write about learning from experience, because at this age and time I have found that the predominant strategy I used to learn from upsetting life events – becoming even more hypervigilant about potential triggers and even more avoidant of them – is not serving me these days as an adult who seeks to live more in alignment with my authentic self. 

 

I have a strong need for acceptance and approval. It probably has something to do with my upbringing. I did not live with my mother until the age of five, and when I moved in, I needed to adjust from being a wild, carefree child in a small village to being a socialized child at schools in a new hustling city. It was only a couple of years ago that I found I have the high sensitivity traits defined by Dr. Elaine Aron. Without skillful parenting, highly sensitive children tend not to cope with changes and difficult childhoods well. Now that I think back on it, I processed many things as a child quite deeply and tried to learn every lesson I could to avoid experiencing upsetting emotions. My biggest wish during primary school was to be invisible, but I led a double life and when I returned home to my grandma, I would become the only object of her attention and receive tremendous amount of love and significance from her, who was living in the city without legal documents and barely stepped outside our home. She passed away when I was 14 and I have since tried to seek ways to fill that significance and attention bucket through sources and people other than myself. I have often caught myself ruminating, for instance, about what I had said that might make an auntie dislike me, and how could I correct this the next time. It was never enough. When people do approve of me, I undervalue their approval. The rate at which others filled my approval bucket was way slower than the rate at which the bucket was leaking. 

 

It was only months ago on my self-help journey, when I came across the Personal Development School site, that I realized that trying to correct and avoid every mistake, especially in interpersonal relationships, was actually doing more harm than good for my personal growth and life fulfillment. I thought, as a hypervigilant and detail-oriented individual, that I should catch as many clues and micro-expressions as I could and walk on eggshells to avoid repeating the same mistakes. But when I step back, I observe that my patterns of self-sabotage, violating my own boundaries, and projecting my needs and opinions onto others (stemming from my need to satisfy the standards of my parents and society) have always been there and are repeating themselves, even though my circumstances vary – I was not learning the real lessons from my life events.

 

To be honest, I have little to offer in terms of how to break through old patterns and remove unhelpful emotional and behavioral imprints, but I have some suggestions of approaches that I have found very helpful.

 

The first thing is that if overwhelming emotions arise when we think about a past event, we should try not to judge them or beat ourselves up for not being able to get over them. Many therapists or mindfulness professionals stress that emotions are neutral, and it’s the way we react to our emotions that might be undesirable to others or ourselves. Emotions can even be seen as precious feedback, showing us where in our current life we have some unmet needs or limiting beliefs. Identifying these things is important because we might want to set intentions about working on them.

 

Secondly, accepting that negative past or present events are parts of our stories might be more encouraging than it seems. My counsellor sent me a quote from Brené Brown: “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.” I pondered this and thought, yes, if I resist changing my reality my life will not improve. My past has dark spots that will exist regardless – I have to hold them closer to my eyes in order to have a chance of painting a different color onto them. There is a difference, in my perception, between pushing the problem out of sight, versus pulling it closer to improve my relationship with the mistake and work on it.

 

Thirdly, I think reducing the practice of blaming others and taking full responsibility for who we want to involve in reparenting our wounded inner child is helpful too. Yes, other people are involved in our wounds, but they are not the key to healing. In fact, it would be another layer of concern if they were, because that means we would not have much control over what values or parenting styles we want to bring in to heal our wounds or reparent our inner child.

 

I believe all of the above things are easier said than done, and I am definitely at a stage of getting better and progressing. One cognitive distortion I often find myself falling prey to is all-or-nothing thinking: because [my past life event], I will never […]. I often need to remind myself that this black-and-white thinking stems from my fears or other emotions, and they are like the clouds – there is always a clear sky in the background, and it coexists with the clouds all the time. I can take a variety of different actions even though I feel the same emotion, and my restrictive belief -> emotion -> action cycles can then be broken.

 

***

 

Hi, my name is Ling-Yee Sze and I am a personal development enthusiast who began a self-help journey four years ago. Along the way, I have met many inspiring people. I hope to share my personal stories and collected learnings with you!

Off the College Track

Posted on by andrew

Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Sejin Ahn offers a glimpse of the South Korean high school system, and argues for a more flexible approach in our attempts to maximize the potential of young minds.

 

As a Korean who spent 18 years in South Korea, I often saw students having hard times in high school. Being unable to adapt to life in high school often leads many young, beautiful souls to the edge of a cliff. Why does this happen? How can we solve this problem?

 

Every country across the world has its own educational system, and they all place value in different areas. South Korea’s educational system tends to focus too much on academic performance, leaving anything else they should learn at that age behind.

 

A high school is a place that is supposed to provide students with various opportunities to explore themselves. They deserve to learn how to socialize with others and experience many things. But unfortunately, in South Korea, the percentage of students who are admitted to colleges is considered the highest priority. Going to a university is treated as the first gate to winning at life. Otherwise, you will be a loser who failed to pass this basic level of achievement. Due to this social atmosphere, most Korean students feel enormous pressure, increasing undesirable and unhealthy competition between them. This increased competition fails to support students in widening their horizons and gaining new perspectives.

 

I remember when I was a high school student, I got career counseling with teachers. Most high schools in South Korea do this in the name of helping students find out what they are interested in and support their careers. However, all they talked about during the counseling was going to a university. If students said they wanted to have other experiences instead of going to a university, teachers kept pressuring them until they changed their minds.

 

I was no exception. I was a student who had interests in various fields, including photography, writing, composition, etc. The common ground among them was that they were not profitable fields. So when I talked about my dreams and asked teachers for their advice on what I should do, what they said was, “Okay, you can take a photo, write a novel and compose a song, but leave them just as your hobby.”

 

This harsh reality led to some hard times for me. I was confused due to conflicts between what I was interested in and what high school taught. One question came up in my head was, “What should I live for?”

 

Even students who wish to go to college to study a specific field are often not taught by high schools how to shape their future and avoid losing interest and passion. One of my high school friends wanted to declare a major in history at a college, but she was treated like a student who was ignorant of reality by teachers because, compared to other fields, what she wanted to pursue was an area that was not widely recognized by the public and not an easy one in which to make money. Individuals’ strengths, desires, dreams and aspirations always come second.

 

Time spent at high school is critical because it is often when people start forming their self-identities and preparing to step forward to the broader world as a grown member of society. In this sense, the absence of diverse options makes many people confused about who they really are and the direction they should be heading.

 

Not every student can be treated the same way. Not having excellent academic performance does not mean you are a problematic person. Not going to college does not mean you are a loser. Choosing your passion and interests does not mean your life is going to be miserable. High school is just the beginning of your life, which consists of thousands of chapters you can fill in by yourself. As institutions that take care of teens standing just right in front of the door to the world, high schools need to let students know that there are various ways of living a life, rather than showing only limited options.

 

If you’re in high school, what are your hopes and dreams? And if you’re not, what kind of advice would you give your high school self? Let us know in the comments below, or on any of our social media channels!