I’m at a point in my life where I’m leaving university, going down a new career path, and I’m beyond looking forward to it. However, something struck me the other day. I’m once again going to be put into an environment where I was the least experienced. The runt of the litter. My initial reaction to this was pure terror. “What if I say something stupid on my first day?”, “How will I recover if I mess up my first task?”, “What if I’m not good enough?”. I took comfort in the words of Stoic philosopher Epictetus who once said “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid”. Within the context of his quote, I believe he was talking about dedication to the stoic philosophy but I think it may perfectly align with this situation. Let’s talk about:
- How humans were fearless and curious as infants.
- Why that changed as we became older.
- What we can do to improve ourselves.
