Thinker, Master of Mindset, and Paradigm Shifter

Suh Yoon was born to an affluent family in Seoul, Korea. Her father was a third-generation businessman and her mother was a teacher. Sun Yoon surprised her parents, caretakers, and acquaintances from an early age by asking different questions than children from other wealthy families. She dedicated herself to philosophical questions, poring over adult-oriented classics at an early age. She even read Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis when she was six. The miserable end to the main character’s life, which he lived without being its protagonist, frightened little Suh Yoon. She thought deeply about living one’s life as its owner and about the anxiety of human existence.

Suh Yoon was born with another talent: empathic ability. Without learning it from anyone, she could feel others’ pain and sadness starting in early childhood. This isn’t the same as understanding or comforting a person; rather, when she is with someone in trouble, she erases herself to completely feel the other person’s emotion and heals his or her broken heart. At that time, Suh Yoon began to invent stories to comfort people as they suffered mentally. Though she was young and her stories childlike, Suh Yoon could also feel that adults were somehow relieved by the tales she spun.

When Suh Yoon’s grandmother announced intentions to teach her how to study the lives of many people at age 6, Suh Yoon’s mother was fiercely opposed Classics written in Chinese characters were difficult even for grown-ups. Nonetheless, Suh Yoon found this study interesting. “The sky has immeasurable rainstorms; humans have misfortunes and blessings that change in the morning and night. (天有不測之風雨,人有朝夕之禍福.)” These classic words touched the little girl’s heart.

She also began meditating at about that time. On the first day, Suh Yoon blindly kneeled and closed her eyes for about an hour. She wasn’t sure what to think, no matter how she tried. One day, Suh Yoon came down with a high fever and groaned in pain all night. In the morning, as her fever broke, her throat dried up and she drank cold barley tea her nanny brought. It was the same tea she’d had many times, but she sensed it as if she’d been drinking it properly for the first time. She realized that living in the moment changed everything.

The next day, after her usual morning meditation, Suh Yoon slowly opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Everything in her room seemed different from the way it was yesterday. Now she knew the feeling of staying perfectly in the here and now.

However, there was one thing little Suh Yoon didn’t know. It was the first day of her destiny as a guru.

Suh Yoon had immersed herself in her studies since the age of six. She spent several hours a day studying the classics and analyzing case studies and learned very quickly. Her grandmother had nothing left to teach her after only half a year. Since then, Suh Yoon had sought out famous masters and learned different techniques, but they could teach her only so much. In the end, she resolved to study on her own to answer her own questions.

Since childhood, Suh Yoon had started every day at 4 a.m. She discovered answers she couldn’t even find in books by comparing the lives of various people. She classified examples of rich people and divided people with the same amount of assets according to whether their assets were in real estate, financial products, or cash. When looking at financial investments, she examined ratios between stocks, bonds, and derivatives.

According to the data from tens of thousands of people that she’d analyzed up until high school, people with tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars had different glasses for their wealth. This analysis taught her that the “glass which holds wealth” is different for each person and that a person’s glass could be filled to overflowing or not even half full, depending on that person’s mindset.

Even while absorbed in her analysis, Suh Yoon never neglected her schoolwork. She felt she had to live up to her responsibilities as a student, since she had chosen to be one. Young Suh Yoon knew that she was the protagonist of her own life.

She started counseling rich people when she was in grade ten. Rumors of the “Teenage Guru” immediately began to spread among the wealthy. Rich people, exceptionally sensitive about money matters, wouldn’t leave her alone. In their luxurious sedans, they lined up in front of her school every day to hear from her, no matter how much or little she had to tell them.

There were long lines at her classrooms, too. These teenage worries could be serious or trivial. She gave them advice, even if it was just a few words. It didn’t matter to her whether the person had money or not, whether they were old or young. Suh Yoon didn’t judge the questions she was asked and didn’t take her friends’ concerns lightly. She’d known from seeing so many case studies since she was young: people’s pain is only different on the outside. At its root are similar emotions.

Suh Yoon sympathized with and soothed people’s pain, then found a practicable solution to it. She hadn’t learned these qualities from anyone; rather, she had been born with the gifts that allowed her to become a Guru.

“Suh Yoon, we’ve got a big problem. Creditors are here turning the house upside down. What should we do?”

They’re finally here, thought Suh Yoon as she heard what her crying little sister said. Their father’s business had gone bankrupt because of the Asian financial crisis. Creditors had arrived at her house and shouted that they were looking for her father. In fact, Suh Yoon had already known that this would happen.

“Dad, there’s going to be a business crisis two years from now. You’d better get ready to face it.” Suh Yoon had warned her father about the crisis several times since high school, but each time, her father wouldn’t listen.

After the bankruptcy, the whole family stood in the chaotic living room in despair, but Suh Yoon was calm. Her family was surprised at her peacefulness. Suh Yoon consoled her distraught mother and little sister and kept their spirits up.

“High winds do not last all morning. Heavy rain does not last all day.” Lao-Tzu (飄風不終朝驟雨不終日, 老子)”

She knew that fortune could grow bigger, depending on how a person made up their mind during a crisis. There were eight civil suits with the family’s house and assets as collateral and they endured financial difficulties but were able to muster their courage, thanks to Suh Yoon.

The next year, she started to endure the same difficulties other people did in their twenties. Suh Yoon entered ill-fated relationships even though she knew she would have to undergo pain from them. She was stalked by a former boyfriend and betrayed by a friend she’d trusted. She accepted suggestions she knew would go sour and endured failure. She knew that she could have avoided this emotional anguish, but it was still real.

Still, during these difficult situations, Suh Yoon never faltered in her mental study. She recorded and reflected on how she felt and how she had to overcome her pain during those times. Through this experience, she could relate to the suffering of people who had experienced a bad relationship. She often thought about how to soothe other people’s minds.

Several years passed and Suh Yoon’s father managed to resolve his problems with bankruptcy. Later, her mother began to improve the family’s finances as well. Suh Yoon was more mature for having gone through this crisis.

She was already a complete Guru in her twenties. As the world entered a new millennium, a new Guru was ready to meet it.

At the new millennium, Suh Yoon was starting to reach out into the world. She began to explore human wisdom from not only Eastern Asia but also America, Europe, and India. She visited the United States, Canada, France, and India during this time and met masters from around the world, matching wits with them in conversation like generals jousting on a battlefield. Suh Yoon shared her wisdom with them as well and became even more insightful.

Suh Yoon didn’t neglect her academic studies, either. She majored in business administration and studied public administration in graduate school to further explore the principles of running businesses and countries. In her early twenties, she had already become a full-fledged Guru, having mastered Eastern and Western classics, modern academics, and countless real-life case studies.

She was called the “Guru to the rich” and was spreading her wings. It’s said that talent instantly recognizes genius. The people Suh Yoon sought out were first-generation founders of multinationals. These elderly people recognized the barely twenty-year-old Guru’s insight right away. Rumors quickly spread, and many rich people came to meet her. As a result, she has advised and analyzed 30,000 people who are in the upper brackets in terms of income and financial assets.

After consulting Suh Yoon, these rich people couldn’t help but admire her penetrating advice. Individual investors wanted advice on when and where to invest in stocks, bonds, commodities, and real estate. Leading managers and executives asked her for management strategies, advice on deploying manpower, and crisis-resolution strategies.

She had a string of public successes as well: at twenty-two, she was the youngest person ever chosen to speak at the Federation of Korean Industries CEO Lecture, and her name appeared on its list of most famous lecturers for several consecutive years; a book she published in her mid-twenties was a personal finance bestseller; and major newspapers published dozens of interviews with her.

But in contrast to her glamorous career, the Guru’s inner thoughts were full of underlying concerns about the reason for existence. Just before she entered her thirties, she began to investigate this problem in earnest.

Wealthy people who followed Suh Yoon had a string of successes. They won out over their competitors, overcame crises, and attracted exponentially greater assets. People who knew Suh Yoon all faced important times in their lives; in many cases, they faced great opportunities or serious crises. Suh Yoon helped them seize opportunities that hung by a thread or divert approaching tornadoes. Her followers later came to understand that Suh Yoon had set them on the right track. Her number of wealthy followers exploded.

But as she approached thirty, Suh Yoon began to question whether her advice had a sort of butterfly effect. If a rich person who followed her won in some competition, what happened to the person who lost? If a CEO followed her advice and restructured, what happened to the people who were laid off as a result? Just as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can raise a storm, she feared for the many people whose lives were changed by her advice. She spent time alone questioning the meaning of her existence.

Her mental stress led to illness. She suffered from unidentifiable health problems. But the more she suffered physically, the deeper Suh Yoon’s insight grew. She felt a lot of things more clearly, just as you can sense the force of a storm’s rain and the power of its wind more easily when you’re exposed. She could sense where this era had come from, where it was going, and how individuals had to live within it. That wasn’t something she learned, but something she knew by opening a door and entering another room.

At that time, she considered something a teacher she’d met in her teens had said: “The most valuable thing in the world is to know a person, trust them, and invest in them.”

The followers who sought her out and expressed their thanks also changed her mind. She was especially moved by the story of a businessman in his forties. The man had been advised not to travel overseas at a particular time and canceled his vacation plans. The man later learned that a serious accident had occurred in the area he’d planned to go to. He said, “Thank you so much. How could I ever repay you for saving my family’s life?”

Then, early one morning, Suh Yoon began her daily meditation as she always had. She made a new resolution that day.

“If making people rich is my destiny, then I’ll accept it. I’ll do my best to help the people who trust me.”