The Underused Power of Flipping Your Perspective
It only takes a 180-degree flip
Words not only inspire thought. They prevent it.
I learned that from Garret Hardin.
Once you understand his logic, you begin to notice this subtle message everywhere you look.
What Hardin does is empower readers with filters against folly. I would like to take you further. I’d want you to switch the words so you can flip the perspective.
The uphill climb to change perspective — you see more uphill than downhill
I gained inspiration from the same author with the idea of shortage.
Shortage implies a finite resource. It also assumes the resource is ever-present. Nobody ever mentions longage.
Longage doesn’t exist in English. A word gains existence and acceptability by public approval. We can start by trying to use it, at least twice.
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It will help with countering the effect of words in preventing thought.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb flipped the idea of fragile and introduced a word previously absent in English. There was no such word as Antifragile.
Robust, yes. But no antifragile.
But it is now a common word in business.
Like exclamation points, flip it
Here’s another example of a flip:
Between someone with $500 million and another with half a billion, who’s richer?
The lesson?
Like exclamation points, switch it, to flip it.
Then you’ll see the frame
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