You need to use your precious mind in valuable relationships for its light to shine. If you use your precious mind in bad relationships, you may sustain incurable wounds and lose that light.
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.
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.
“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
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
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
I'm a writer for useful ideas. The central question I explore through my work is, “How can we live better?”
In other words, I want to find great ideas and explain them in a way that is easy to use and apply to daily life.
My writing focuses on topics like…
Most of all, I write about how to put these ideas into practice in daily life.
Most of the concepts I write about aren’t my own. They are ideas I discover and build upon after many hours of reading and research. I look for insights from all fields: architecture, biology, economics, history, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and more. I consider it my job to find the best ideas and explain them in a way that is actionable and easy-to-understand.
Humankind progresses by adding layer upon layer of knowledge. We all benefit from the insights of our ancestors. I like the idea of leaving a great “intellectual inheritance,” and I’m trying to add a little bit of knowledge to the pile by creating this website and sharing my work.
I don't claim to have all the answers and I still have a lot to learn, but I'm happy to share what I've discovered so far. My work isn’t the only way to think about life, but it’s how I think about it. Hopefully, you’ll find it useful as well.
You can start by reading my articles or check out my books.
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