Transcription
Do you feel like your life was an accident, or that you're born into circumstances that you couldn't control that you deeply resent? I know what that feels like, so allow me to encourage you.
Hi, my name is Carla. I am a professional hater of evil, but an optimistic thinker for good. This is my Y Series, where I analyze every social issue from an objective lens. I studied finance and economics at Cornell University, and sociology and international relations at Boston University. So, if you ever looked around the world and wondered, "Why is the world so messed up?" allow me to explain.
Today's topic, we're covering how your weaknesses could be your greatest strengths. Since yesterday, we covered political radicalization. Today, we're going to cover something that's more optimistic. And right now, I'm reading the book *David and Goliath* by Malcolm Gladwell. He was the author of *Outliers*, and, um, which is also an incredible book. I'm going to do a review on that later. And what the book's thesis is, is that we misinterpret the story of David and Goliath, and how misfits, underdogs, and outliers can actually use the circumstances that they were born into for their strengths and to propel them into success.
And so, I'm going to go into three main points. First is going over what we get wrong about David and Goliath, the story. Two is the advantages of a disadvantage. And then, and then three is the disadvantage of an advantage. And then four, as a bonus story, I'll give a little bit of like, my own personal experience with this. So let's get started.
David and Goliath is a very famous story, um, from the Bible, but it is a historical account. And essentially, you had the Israelites and the Philistines. And on the Philistine side was a giant named Goliath. They say he's like at least 6'9", um, this super giant, heavily seasoned warrior. And then on the other side, you had the Israelites, and they were on this hill, and they didn't know who to send because they were terrified of this Goliath giant. And so there was a small shepherd boy named David, and he volunteered to King Saul that he would go down.
A little bit of context, um, David was a shepherd boy, which was considered to be like one of the lowest positions, um, and he was also young. And so you have these seasoned warriors that are terrified of Goliath, and here comes this small, essentially peasant, who comes in and says, "Look, like, because I had to shepherd the sheep, I had to fight up against lions and bears, and I know how to fight this giant." And so he volunteers, and they send him down. And Goliath and everyone was like laughing. Like, Goliath was mocking David, and saying, "Do you come at me with a dog?" Like, just crazy stuff, right? And he keeps telling David, like, "Come at me, come at me, and I will show that I am victorious."
And what happens is that David famously takes, um, stones into his slinger and he throws it, and it hits the forehead, the only area that wasn't covered by the armor that Goliath was wearing, and it kills Goliath. And the Israelites considered that a victory.
How we interpret that story traditionally is, we view that as kind of like this lucky triumph of an underdog beating this behemoth. Humans, like, we love hearing the stories of the underdog. We want to cheer for people that we consider to be like the lowest of society that make it. That's why, like, rags-to-riches stories are so inspirational for us because we're like, "Wow, okay, like, if they, if they did it, we can do it too."
And what Malcolm Gladwell argues is how, like, we got the story wrong, is that he was highlighting the fact that actually David had a tactical advantage against Goliath, but it was the fact that we did not perceive, perceive Goliath for the deficits that he had as the giant.
The book breaks down, like, the three different types of warfare in ancient times. So you had the, um, projectile warrior, so think of like the slingers. And then you had the cavalry, which were the soldiers on the horses. And then you had the infantry, which were the soldiers on foot that had the heavy armor and the spear. The three kind of had a dynamic where it was almost like rock, paper, scissors. So you had the infantry that was able to take on the cavalry, and, um, the cavalry was able to take on the projectile warriors, and the projectile warriors were able to take on the infantry. And so the three kind of balanced each other out. It was kind of common knowledge in ancient warfare at that time that a projectile warrior would be triumphant over, um, an infantry soldier.
We think about David and Goliath. Goliath was an infantry soldier, right? He had over a hundred pounds of this heavy metal armor on him, this giant spear, and, and a shield. And so that makes him slow. Like, he's not able to move as fast when he's attacking his opponent. And the mistake that he made, and that everyone else perceived, is that they thought that they would play by the rules, that David would also come in trying to fight the battle from an infantry soldier's perspective. So soldier to soldier.
The reason why that's important is because when we analyze giants, right? And this is not just in the context of war, this is in anything in life, whether it's corporations or our own personal obstacles. We tend to overestimate the power and danger that these obstacles have, and we overlook the potential deficits.
One of the points that the author brings up is the fact that when we analyze it in modern day, we realize that in that moment, when David came down and he took the stones out of his bag, everyone knew that David would win because, again, we knew that projectile warriors had an advantage over the infantry. But they never considered that David would choose to take that route. And because David was at a disadvantage because he was much smaller, he was younger, and he wasn't a seasoned warrior, they assumed that that would hinder him. But it actually made him stronger in that situation because he was able to think outside the box. He didn't have to play by Goliath's rules.
Crazy thing about it is, like, I don't know how we kind of twisted the narrative because I always knew that story when I was a kid, and I always just kind of thought of it as just kind of like a pebble. Like, I was like, "Oh, like he threw the pebble and the giant fell down, and it was like this like miraculous thing." That's how I always thought of it. But they were saying that slingers at that time, like, would reach like 34 meters per second velocity. That's basically getting shot like at gunpoint, and that would be over in a second. So from Goliath's perspective, thinking, "I got this in the bag," and then a second later, he's dead.
And also, experts think that Goliath may have had acromegaly, which is a disease where there's a benign tumor in the pituitary gland in the brain, and that causes an overproduction of human growth hormones. So they were saying that might explain why he was so large. And they also, um, hypothesized that he might have had vision issues because of that, which is why, um, in the story, he needed a servant to help him, like, pick up the shield.
And so what's really interesting is that we don't think about the glaring deficits that giants have. That the powerful, the rich, um, the large corporations, we don't think about their deficits because we only focus on the fact that they're so big.
The book hypothesizes that could it be that our weaknesses, personal tragedies, and negative circumstances of our birth, could that actually be the catalyst in which we can overcome that through resilience, and by doing so, become extraordinary people? And so that leads into my second point, which is that there are advantages to being disadvantaged.
I will give you an example in the book. So there was a man named Emil J. Freireich, and he was the son of Hungarian immigrants in 1927. So think about the Great Depression time, after World War I. His father died when he was a very young boy. His mother was very poor, and they were living in the very poor parts of Chicago. And, um, he was also sick when he was younger. So he had so many obstacles in front of him. Think that someone who has faced such great personal adversity would be severely handicapped in their ability to achieve great things in life. But, um, and that's honestly, it is the truth. Like, if you look at it from a statistical standpoint, like children who grew up with less, they do end up being, um, capped in their ability to overcome those obstacles.
But in the case of Emil, there was, I think, a professor, like a high school teacher of physics, that encouraged him to go to college and look into medicine. And they talked about how you would only need, like, I think $25 to make that happen, which is really crazy to think about, obviously, like, when we think about today's, like, currency. But at that time, $25 was still a lot of money. And, um, what ended up happening is that they got it from a friend who had, I think, an inheritance. And so they gave it to Emil for the $25, and he ended up going to college in Chicago. And he went through medical school.
And then he was in the hospital where he focused on child leukemia patients. And at that time, child leukemia patients were pretty much considered to be fatal, and there was no cure. So the medical community at that time was pretty much resigned in their efforts to try to cure leukemia in children. And so most children would die within eight weeks of the diagnosis due to uncontrolled bleeding.
So there were two major discoveries that Freireich did that completely changed the medical community. First is that he introduced the idea of separating platelets from blood and using that for blood transfusions. And why this was so revolutionary is that it helped stop the uncontrolled bleeding, which extended the lives of the children. And prior to that, no one had considered the idea of separating the platelets and blood, and they didn't really understand what the association was to that of leukemia. Um, and so that was the first thing.
The second thing is that he introduced the idea of combination chemotherapy. So at the time, they would give one or two chemotherapy drugs, which are incredibly, uh, toxic. If you're not a cancer patient, right? So it comes in and it kills all of the cells. And you would think that one or two is sufficient, right? And, and clearly, it's not curing the cancer, but it's at least stopping the growth, um, a little bit. What Freireich did is that he said that this is not enough because clearly these patients are dying so quickly. And so he started testing three, four, multiple, uh, chemotherapy drugs at the same time.
And the medical community thought that he was insane. His associates, um, it says in the book, like the ones like from Harvard, would laugh at him and insult him to his face and say, "Wow, you are completely nuts, you're crazy, this is inhumane, you're basically experimenting on children," like, just completely going at him and tarnishing his, uh, medical reputation. But Freireich, he was completely determined. And you could argue that he was so determined because he knew what it was like to have nothing. And these children were in a similar situation where they were pretty much given impending death and no hope.
And so this guy, he would tirelessly, just around the clock, would be observing, monitoring his patients. He would look at every single, like, uh, laboratory test. It's truly incredible. And he was able to radically change the treatment and curing of leukemia. And now, I think it's 90% uh, success of curing leukemia in children. Like, that is an unbelievable medical accomplishment, and it was done by one man.
And his associates have to ask yourself, like, what gave Freireich the determination to go up against the status quo, to be bold and take risks in the face of massive adversity, obstacle that you have the greatest of the greats, like the mind, the best minds in the medical community telling him, "You're wrong, this isn't going to work, this can't be." What gave him that confidence? And I argue, and the book argues as well, that it's because of his upbringing. Because his upbringing was so full of adversity, that he was able to develop empathy for those who are suffering, and also the resilience to get through tough times, and then finally, the innovation to take risks that other people who didn't grow up in such environments would probably not take.
And so this is the advantage of the disadvantaged. Is that people, children who have grown up in situations where they knew that they didn't have much, and that if they don't take risks, they're going to continue in the same cycle of poverty.
Now, let's get into the third point, the disadvantage of the advantaged. So we typically think that if you're born rich, or you're born smart, or athletic, or whatever criteria it is that people typically find to be in successful people, we assume that those children and those people have so many advantages that we could never hope to have. And this book argues that that's not always the case.
And so he talks about the inverted U-curve when it comes to benefits. So basically, on the left, you do see that indeed, as you grow in the benefits, let's say, um, it's classroom size, for example. So if you have a small classroom size and you add more students, you do see the benefit of a more enriched education for the children increase. And then you get to the top of the inverted U-curve, and that's kind of where the benefits max out. So this is like the optimal point that you want the association between the factor that you're testing and the benefit that's the outcome. And so I think research shows it's usually around 18 to 24 kids is like the ideal classroom size.
But then they see that if you keep adding more and more kids, so you're so you progress further to the right of the graph, the benefits actually begin to decrease because now you have too many students and the teachers are stretched too thin, and they're not able to actually properly give the attention needed for each individual student. And so if you have a classroom that is too small, then you have the students not being able to have thoughtful and diverse discussions with each other because most of them tend to be from the same background. So if you add more students, you get a more enriched curriculum and interaction with other students. But then if you add too many, then that also detracts as well.
And so you can apply this, uh, curve to really anything. It's the same thing with money. We typically think that people who have lots and lots of money, like we envy them. But I have known from personal experience with interacting with many ultra-wealthy kids because I went to an Ivy League, um, that their experiences growing up were incredibly traumatic. And there are things that we take for granted that they didn't have.
This goes into my fourth point, which is my personal experience and how this resonates with me. I grew up in, like, a middle-class family in Kansas. And my parents are immigrants. And through, kind of, the similar mindset of, "You have to overcome adversity, you have to do better, you have to make a name for yourself," I put myself through extensive academic rigor, put myself into all of the extracurriculars so that I could get a scholarship. And so I ended up going to Boston University and Cornell University.
And through those experiences, I was now in a completely different environment. The environment that I was in, um, at BU and Cornell are these ultra-wealthy kids. And you could argue that at the Ivy Leagues, they do try to be more diverse, so you do see people who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. But let's just be honest, the majority of the people there are the ultra-wealthy. And so when I was making friends and, um, going to school with them, I would just see and observe their behavior, their stories, and their lifestyle, and it would be mind-boggling.
Like, I had friends that lived in $32,000 a month penthouses in New York City on Billionaires' Row. I also knew people that were commuting in two hours into the city because they couldn't afford to live in Manhattan, and they were living with five roommates. So I feel like I, I know so much of the spectrum of people from the most educated, the most wealthy, all the way to people that come from rural areas that don't make as much money. And it's honestly, like, very shocking when I think about it because I, I also felt that feeling of, "Wow, I wish I had different circumstances. Like, I wish I was also born into a very wealthy family. I wish that I had, uh, prestige and all of these things attached to me."
And what I've realized is that same thing that this book is hypothesizing, that there are advantages to the disadvantaged, and there are advantages, and there are disadvantages to the advantaged. Um, and so one example would be family care. So my parents are, they were very loving. My dad always treats my mom with respect. I've never seen my parents get into these, like, very tumultuous fights. It was generally peaceful, never divorced. And my dad is very deep in Christian Ministry. And so he was a very, what I would think is like, the ideal kind of man of God that leads his family.
And as such, I had a childhood that, at the time, I didn't appreciate it because I was young and stupid. But now that I'm older, I look back and I really appreciate how much my family sacrificed for me, for me to have a stable environment and the ideal conditions for me to become the best person I can be when I'm an adult. And that care, that level of care, that level of sacrifice, that I know my parents would do anything for me, that instilled so much confidence in me. Like, I realized the reason why I can be so unhinged and so unafraid to speak my mind and do whatever is because I don't perceive myself as someone who has much to lose, you know? Because I don't, I don't come from an ultra-wealthy family. I don't have, like, all of this reputation and prestige, and I can just kind of do whatever I want. And my parents gave me the environment for me to feel safe enough to explore that.
So I do the craziest, most unhinged things all the time. Like, if I want to move to a different city, I just go. I've done that. I've lived in seven different cities. I would just be like, "Today, I kind of feel like going there," and then I would just go. Um, and that confidence that I would have in myself, that no matter what environment I'm in, I can thrive in it, that came from my parents instilling that confidence and security in me.
But then I talked to some of my ultra-wealthy friends, and their parents put them in a boarding school that was like $80,000 a year. And since they were pretty much like kindergarten to high school, they were living at this boarding facility with all of these other ultra-wealthy kids. What happens when kids are separated from their parents? There's an element, there's a psychological element where they start to question, like, if their parents love them. And so some of my friends, like, they told me that they feel like their parents are strangers. Like, they don't know how to talk to their parents because they just didn't see them growing up. They only saw them for, like, holidays and breaks, and then they went to college straight afterwards.
And so a lot of them, like, would tell me that they feel like very awkward, especially when it's like Mother's Day or Father's Day or the holidays, because they're like, "Uh, I don't really know how to talk to my parents. This is like weird. And I know I'm supposed to love them, but I don't really feel like they love me, or that I love them." And this is a real, like, experience that I've heard from multiple friends of mine who grew up in this environment. And so, yeah, they got to have, like, the best education, large amounts of money, to have a lavish lifestyle, and all these things. But then there's that inner child in them that still wishes that they were coddled by their parents more.
And so every person is kind of thinking of the other person and only looking at the highlights. Like, they only see the highlights of me, which is that they wish that they could be as unhinged and carefree as me. And then I look at them, and I only see the highlights of them, which is that I wish that I had, you know, just unlimited amounts of money to do whatever I want. And so every person is only seeing the good things of the other person, but they don't realize the deficits that that person has.
And so if we try to reframe our perspective and mindset to think about what we do have and be grateful for what we have, and then take whatever deficits that we perceive to have, whether it's adversity or insecurities or, um, gaps in our knowledge, our skills, our understanding of the world, we can use our lifetime, our journey with others, to try to develop to be the highest form of ourselves that God wanted us to be.
I hope that this makes sense to someone out there who feels like, "Man, I wish I had these things, and life sucks, and I just don't have anything." Like, trust me, I know what that feels like. When I went to school, I would go on dates with guys, and I'm not even joking, like, some of these guys still follow me on Instagram. I remember I went on one date, and he would give me like half of his food, and he would like put it on my plate. And I would be like, "Why are you putting this on my plate? Like, you can just eat it." And I thought he was trying to be like cute and sweet. And he told me, "Oh, you know, it's because like I know you're from Kansas, and I know there's like nothing there, and there's only corn, and you probably grew up on a corn diet, so you're malnourished." He's like, "I want to make sure, like, you know, you're fed."
And I remember thinking, like, I was a freshman at the time, so I was 17, 18. And I remember being like, "I had like grocery store Target, I had regular food. My parents never starved me." Like, what? But like, to them, you have to understand that they're so, uh, sheltered in their bubble of wealth that they, like, they really think that people are, the people that kind of come from my background, that like we're malnourished and that we only eat corn. I know that sounds crazy, but that's really how they think. And I had to not take that personally and not be like, "Okay, like, this is, does this mean that I'm lesser than him?"
I'll give you another personal story of someone who actually exemplifies what this book is talking about. When I was at Boston University, I met someone who was at Harvard University. And the really cool thing about Boston is that you're in such close proximity to such a high number of colleges. Like, you have BU, and then across the river, you have Harvard, then across the other side of the river, you have MIT, then you have Northeastern. And so you just have so, so many different, like, colleges, and it's all kind of like one melting pot. Um, and so I was very, like, curious. And so I would always want to, like, go out and, like, meet other people from other schools.
He was so remarkable. Like, I remember being so inspired by him because he was so intelligent. He told me that when he was younger, he was just living in poverty. His family was making minimum wage. He doesn't have his father. Like, it was just a very bad situation for him growing up, kind of outcasted. Like, you had all these people that were in the Hamptons, and he would spend that time working to try to, like, make ends meet. It's really hard for people who try to make something of themselves when they didn't have much, especially when people who have it, it's just thrown in our face constantly. And he told me the same thing that this book is talking about. This is how I know that there has to be, like, a pattern of behavior that, like, very successful people will all share because they all kind of independently tell me the same thing.
But at the time, I was too young and immature to really appreciate the totality of what he was saying. And so I kind of like tabled it in my head. But now that I'm thinking about it, it's like really profound. I have things that you don't experience. Like, they have so much pressure to fill in the shoes of their parents. They have so much pressure to be like on the cover of, like, Forbes Magazine. They want to be Forbes 30 Under 30. They want to be like CEO of big companies. Like, there's there's genuine pressure. And that pressure leads to a lot of insecurity and, like, mind fracturing in their personal identity. And so a lot of them don't feel like they can go and explore their genuine hobbies because they're tied to this, uh, expectation to fill in the role that they were essentially born into.
And so he was saying, "Don't you think that, like, they also resent the fact that they had to do that?" So he told me, "Use the fact that you are from Kansas and that you are from this particular environment to your advantage. You can use that to be personable. You can use that to be relatable. You can use that to make friends. You can also use that to stand out. So you can be like, 'Okay, well, I have this unique experience. Here's what it was like living in that environment,' and you can share that as valuable insight to others, and other people will like you because you're authentic to yourself. You don't try to hide it." And so I was like, "Wow, okay, that's really interesting."
And then he also told me that I am the only one responsible for my success and destiny. I told him, "Well, it's easy to say that when you're doing really well, and I don't really know what I'm doing with my life yet. Like, I don't know what I want to be when I, you know, graduate from college." And he said, "I mean, yeah, I, I thought the exact same thing. But the reality is, is that we all of us have the individual burden and responsibility to actualize in the highest form possible. And there is no one that's going to come to save us. And we have to accept that responsibility and use that to be the catalyst to propel us forward to the destiny and life that we've always wanted."
And so he was telling me, "Take everything that you experienced and use that to your advantage. And if you do that consistently, and you execute it, but is bold enough to take risks, but don't be like reckless, like actually take calculated risks that will have a good outcome to it, then you will see the fruits of your labor." And that is what happened. Like, I feel like that's what happened to me. I was able to go to a great school, get a good job. I was able to be financially independent since I was 18, which I think was junior in college. Um, I was able to work at some of the largest companies and financial institutions. I got to meet so many different types of people. And so I experienced something that if I had allowed the mindset of, "Wow, I can't believe I don't have as much as them. Um, I feel insecure about it." If I had allowed myself to be in the confines of that perceived reality, I would have never been able to experience the wide breadth of life that I could have if I had just let myself be, you know, the person that I always wanted to be.
And so I guess what I'm trying to say is that we control so much of our destiny than we give credit for. And that's not to minimize the struggle that you have. You have indeed valid struggles. Like, it really does suck. It genuinely does. Um, but if it helps to uplift you and encourage you, I want you to know that there are people who figured it out. I'm still figuring it out. Like, I don't feel like I have fully arrived at my highest actualization. But that's why I'm taking on the journey to always acquire knowledge, to think critically, to challenge myself with different viewpoints, to get out of my comfort zone, do content creation, like talk to a camera, which is freaking weird for me. Like, just really just challenge myself in different aspects and not care what other people think.
And this is the other thing too, that I want people to understand is that your environment can make or break you. But you can also choose what environment you want to be in to some degree. So if you're not, for example, you can always choose your friends. So if you have bad friends around you that are keeping you stuck, you have to let them go. Um, because your environment is more than just the circumstances of your birth. Your environment is is also your free will choices that you made that invited people into your space.
And so, for example, when I was in college, I had, like, I wanted to be popular. So I had so many friends that I would just like meander through, like, I didn't have a clique. I would just be friends with this person, that person, this person. And in doing so, I exposed myself unfortunately to quite a bit of chaos because I'm just indiscriminately being friends with everyone and trying to be popular and cool. And these people are really dysfunctional. And so if I had the courage to just be like, "You know what? I don't agree with what you do. I'm going to go my own way." At the time, I probably would have saved myself from making decisions that I felt peer-pressured into.
A good example of this is that I, I don't like alcohol. I don't like partying. I was never, like, in high school, I never drank alcohol. I grew up in a very Christian conservative family. And so I didn't want to, like, drink, um, alcohol. And to this day, like, since I graduated from college, I don't drink. Like, I'll maybe have like one celebratory drink at, like, an event a year. But when I was in college, when I entered freshman year, I felt like I had to drink because that's what everyone was doing to make friends. Like, and I really wanted to be also like a part of, like, the Korean American society. And if you don't know, Koreans, they love Soju, like they love to drink, they love going out and having barbecues and drinking. And that culture is very big. And so I compromised my values to try to fit in to that environment.
And looking back, that was so foolish because why did I not just stick authentically to my values? I know I'm not someone who likes to drink alcohol. I know I'm someone that likes to control the faculties of my mind and not skew it just to have a quote-unquote good time, which wasn't even that good. And, you know, like, why did I do that? And it's because I chose to, through my free will actions, create the environment that wasn't allowing me to flourish. And so I had to take accountability for that because I control my destiny.
So do I want to be friends with people that are going against my values and doing things that I don't agree with? Or do I choose to put myself first, put my well-being and my interests first, and take ownership and accountability of my life? And in doing so, I can actually start to mold the real environment that I want to be in, which is to be surrounded by people that I really respect, who inspire me to be the best that I can be.
Right now, I feel like I have that. Like, I feel so blessed because I started doing a pruning process. And now, like, I can say confidently that I have friends that I know would go to war for me. Like, they will always support me. If you look at my YouTube videos, it's always like the same two, three people that are commenting. Like, those are my best friends, and I know they have my back, no matter what. And that's because I chose to put myself and I created the environment that made me feel safe enough to then be unhinged and take risks that are good for me.
So yeah, that's today's video. That's pretty much it. I hope that was encouraging and helpful. And then since today was the optimistic thinking part, tomorrow is going to be the Whiplash Effect. So we're getting back into the evils of the world, which is very heavy. So I will see you tomorrow.