I would like to begin with stating that I’m not a religious person. I’m spiritual, but not religious. There’s an subtle, but important difference between the two.

You can’t grow from a victim’s mindset

Now that that’s out of the way, let me share what happened. While I was at work, a few days ago, doing what I always do, coding, I was listening to some house music. In stumble upon a particular I was listening to a remix of “Rejoice” by Steve Angello, famed member of Swedish House Mafia. I really liked the lyrics so I listened to the original song🔗 in its entirety a few times on the way home. I found the lyrics to be particularly interesting and motivating.

I know what you think about when you think of Swedish House Mafia, but this song was different from the rest of their repertoire. The lyrics to the song are the words of a bishop who goes by the name T.D. Jakes who was inspirational to Steve Angello, who is likely both the writer and producer of the song.

As someone who loves personal growth and ancient philosophy (cough, cough… Stoicism) it was a really interesting perspective.

I like how the lyrics begin with:

You have to fix the mind before you can bestow the blessing
Because until they get their mind right
Everything you invest in them is going to leak out
Of the crevices of a mind that refuses to change
Look at your neighbor and ask them: Do you have a mind to change?

The author, Jakes, addresses it as something you would notice in someone else. It’s possibly done like this, because it’s easier to see the lack of ability to grow one’s mindeset when looking at someone else than to see it in ourselves. So, he asks us to look at our neighbor someone like one’s neighbor. It’s not difficult to read this and think about ourselves.

We have dreams, we make plans, we promise ourselves that we’re done, that we’ll act differently. And then we fail. Everyone wants to succeed, whatever that means for them, but nobody wants to put in the work and effort. why do we fail? There could be many reasons, but what I found in myself, is that I was not ready. The old adage says that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. I would not call it insanity, I would call it comfort. There’s a reason why it does this, as I learned from certain books, but that’s something I will mention another time. The point that I’m trying to make is that unless we truly 100% want to change the way things are in our lives, you will not change. To our brain changing things is dangerous. Any attempt to change will be rejected and all the energy you waste on yourself will “leak out”.

I should mention right away, as “spoilers” that after reading the lyrics of the whole song you realize that he does not give a definition or examples of “blessing” or “being blessed”. It is up to interpretation. So, my interpretation (most likely not the author’s) is that to be blessed means to be lucky, or better said it means to have opportunities and to be able to take advantage of said opportunities. The crazy thing about opportunities, though, is that you can’t take advantage of the opportunities in your life if you don’t see them.

Some opportunities arise through manifestation (or as I like to call it, using neuroplasticity to make your brain susceptible to opportunities). Most of them, however, do not. If you want more opportunities you need to look for them in things that cause you frustration. Almost every challenge is an opportunity. There’s a book by Ryan Holiday, based on Marcus Aurelius’ meditations, that’s called “The Obstacle Is The Way”. The core tenet of the book is based on the quote:

“The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

I read this book and I learned that almost every obstacle (there are exceptions of course) is in itself a chance to prove yourself, a challenge to do better, an opportunity to succeed. These opportunities happen all the time. As long as you’re willing to grow you can turn these problems into challenges and challenges into successes.

Think about it, the lyrics earlier can be interpreted as: until you accept that you are lucky to have your challenges, you won’t be able to grow. In other words, until you replace the victim’s mindset with growth mindset your mind won’t grow. Literally and figuratively.

Let’s take an example: no matter how much you tell yourself that being stuck in traffic is not helpful, that is a mindset choice. Let’s change the mindset. Let’s change our life. (Yes! I’ve chosen traffic because it’s my archnemesis, because even on my best days, it’s hard). Every morning I have traffic on my way to work and traffic on my way from work. That is great! This means that I’ll have the opportunity to remain calm. I’ll be able to stay present and focus on the present, just like I learned in the guided meditations. It’s an opportunity to build resilience. Seeing it as stress and suffering won’t make the traffic go away. Seeing it as a challenge to stay calm and succeeding, though, will make your hippocampus grow and you’ll build discipline. See, in theory, it is not that hard to transform a negative into a positive. It’s something that you need to do over and over again, but hey… that’s a challenge in itself. You have the opportunity to take the challenge of transforming every negative experience into a challenge.

So, yeah that’s how I see this section of the lyrics. Until you are able to change your mindset to embrace change and accept opportunities, or blessings, if you will, you won’t accept them. You think winning the lottery or having no traffic on your way to work is an opportunity? It’s not. That’s just pure providence. Opportunities or blessings are those actions that we take when we are presented with a challenge.

I will be honest. This is hard for me, even though I talk about it. I am not perfect and I am still working on it. I’ve not reached a level where I always see challenges as opportunities, but this is the way. This is how we build a growth mindset.

How Can Frustration Lead to Greatness

The song goes on and there’s another frament of the song that really touched me.

War be onto you if you go into another year and
Waste another year with the old mentality
While somebody's in the hospital begging God
For the opportunity that you have right now
You better step into this moment

I was saying earlier, about how what you see as a problem, is actually an opportunity. It gets more interesting. Your problems, or better that which you see as a problem, might be seen as a dream by someone else. Not long ago, I was temporarily unemployed. I started coding more on small things, because I missed coding. I wished to be busy and stressed and exhausted after work. It’s a problem I was dreaming of.

There is this very popular meme:

the person in the sports car is jealous at someone flying in a helicopter
the person in an SUV is jealous of the person driving in the sports car
the person in an Sedan car is jealous of the person driving an SUV
the person in an old rusty car is jealous of the person driving the Sedan
the person riding a bike is jealous of the person driving the beat up rusty car
the person waiting at the bus stop is jealous of the person who is riding the bike
the person in a wheelchair is jealous of the person who is waiting at the bus stop

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You see, perspective is everything. While one person may be complaining about the problems in their life, another person is struggling and wishes they had the same problems. Change the mindset to one where you feel grateful for your challenges. Be happy that you’ve got your opportunities.

The lyrics, further in the song, say the exact same thing:

Oh, yes, it's gonna be some struggles
It's gonna be some challenges
It's gonna be some tests
But even the struggles are an opportunity for me to show off
The victory if my mind can handle the change.

The struggles are an opportunities to shine:

Martin Luther King Jr. was frustrated with racism in the US. He led the movement that led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Steve Jobs was frustrated with bad technology. He co-founded Apple and revolutionized the IT industry.
Henry Ford was frustrated with expensive cars and that only the rich people had access to them.
Greta Thunberg, Richard Branson, Mahatma Gandhi, Jeff Bezos, Florence Nightingale, etc.

They are all people who were frustrated with the status quo. What made them different is that they took their problems and frustrations and turned them into an opportunities. So, yeah, don’t complain about your problems. Others wish they had your problems. Be grateful for your challenges. Use them and then finally succeed despite them.

Happiness is a choice, if you allow it to be

Finally, we arrived to my favourite part of the song. I loved how the author decided to speak the truth:

Do you have the mindset to be blessed?
You have to decide to be blessed.
You have to decide "You know what, this is a day
That the Lord have made, I will rejoice,
And be glad that I will rejoice"

As mentioned in the beginning, I am not one for religious connotations, but I can easily read a large part of that pargraph as: “You know what, today is a day that I am lucky to be alive and I will choose to be happy. And you know what’s more? I will be happy that I realized that it is my choice to be happy and I have chosen to be happy”.

Let me unpack this. Happiness is a choice, but only if our mind allows to see it. There are people out there, who despite being in severe poverty are happier and enjoy life more than those in the 1% who have billions.

I remember when I was in school we studied Histories by Herodotus. One particular excerpt was one of my favourites. Croesus, the king of Lydia meets with Solon, who came to visit from Greece. Croesus shows all his wealth in an effort to impress Solon and then proceeds to ask him if he is not the most fortunate man he ever met. Solon answers that Tellus the Athenian is the most fortunate as he was from a prosperous city, had good and noble children, lived a prosperous life by the standards of the time and died a glorious death. The 2nd place and 3rd place choice were more or less similar. Poor Croesus did not even make the top 3. Croesus got frustrated that Solon wouldn’t call him fortunate or lucky to which Solon gave a very beautiful reply. I will try and paraphrase it, because the original translation by A.D. Godley can be hard to read:

“Croesus, you ask me about human affairs while knowing that the divine is troublesome. In a human lifespan, it’s possible to see many things that you don’t want to see and suffer from. Suppose a man lives 70 years, that’s about 25,000 days. Out of these 25,000 days not one day is like the other. So, Croesus, as you can see, man is entirely by chance. To me you seem to be very rich, today, and to be a king of many people, but I cannot tell you whether you are a lucky man before I learn how your life has ended. A rich man is not more fortunate than the man who has their daily needs met.”

As long as we keep pushing the carrot forward and keep dreaming of being happy one day when we get that promotion or save that much money we will never be happy, because there is always room for more. You will never feel fortunate or “blessed”, because there is always more.

Replace the above approach with gratitude. Replace it with the happiness within and you have a complete game-changer. Your very existence is a source of internal happiness. You get to be happy and, as Jakes said it himself, if you allow it, to be grateful and happy that of all those people out there you are capable of accessing this level of happiness. You get to be happy and happy that you are happy.

Epilogue. The moral of the story

We need to first be willing to change. Truly think about the current status. Do you want to change? Why? What is bugging you about your current state? What’s your problem with the current state of affairs? Take this problem. Turn into a challenge. Be happy that you have the opportunity to grow. As long as it’s a problem you can handle you can surpass it.

A final disclaimer. Remember, how I said that almost every problem can be reworded into an opportunity? Well the key word is almost. You can safely transform the “Ugh, I have to do dishes” into “I am grateful I get to do dishes”. You can’t transform “I lost my pet to cancer” to “I am grateful that I got to experience losing my pet to cancer.”. Things like, losing a loved one, pain and suffering, war, abuse, trauma, severe poverty with no way out, are not concepts that can be transformed. We need to be clear about that. These are exceptions. Don’t dwell on them. There are other elements of your life, over which you have control. Challenges that can be overcome. Focus on those. Turn them into challenges and succeed despite them. Most importantly choose to be happy, because if not now… when? See you next time!