Flourishing Organisations: Moving Beyond Performance (LnOD Conference 29-30 Apr 2024)

A sneak peek of what went on, in case you missed this!

What does it mean to flourish as an individual, team and organisation? How can we create the conditions in our systems to enable flourishing and sustain it?

I felt inspired by the speakers and energised by the various conversations and connections at the conference! In this blogpost, I will share my top 3 key takeaways, focusing on the overarching themes observed, accompanied by insights and practical tips/strategies for L&OD practitioners and leaders. I will also include my personal reflections in italics.

Three key takeaways:

1. Being Adaptive is key to flourishing.

2. Care for the People is critical to build a flourishing organisation.

3. Flourishing over time: shifting patterns in times of uncertainty.

This is my attempt to consolidate my learnings across all speakers. While not every speaker's contribution may be equally represented here, this summary provides a glimpse into the insights, reflections, and decades of research that each speaker brought to the table. For a more comprehensive overview, you can read my personal notes from the conference here.

Celebrating the end of LnoD conference 2024!

#1. Being Adaptive is key to flourishing.

#Learning #Change #Possibilities

“To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.”

— Winston Churchill

In her opening speech, Gee Keow underscored the significance of adaptability in navigating the challenges confronting the Public Service. With mounting public expectations and cumbersome bureaucratic and staffing procedures, the role of civil servants becomes increasingly demanding. Moreover, amidst competitive job markets in other sectors, attracting and retaining talented civil servants becomes a formidable task. Thus, it becomes imperative for the Public Service to embrace adaptability and effectively address these emerging challenges.

Opening Speech by PS Gee Keow

Keynote 1 - A Leader’s role in Building a Flourishing Organisation by Ravi Menon, Former MAS Chief

Ravi shares insights and practical strategies for leaders to foster adaptability and cultivate flourishing organizations:

• Look ahead: Horizon Scanning. Leaders at all levels need to look ahead and prepare. It’s a strength of the Singapore Public Service that has brought us far. Being anticipative is an important leadership practice that has been echoed by my boss! It starts small - even from finding out the context and having necessary conversations to clarify with various colleagues about an issue before preparing for a piece of work or for a meeting.

• Look across: Achieving coherence by recognizing the interconnectedness of policies and programs is crucial. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Policies and programmes are mutually reinforcing. E.g. Understanding how our CPF, HDB policies are interconnected to support home ownership. It is important to connect the dots so we don’t undermine policies and efforts. Joint efforts matter.

• Look again: Leaders should continuously question the status quo and seek deeper understanding by asking "why" and "why not." Maintaining a spirit of inquiry and detachment from outdated practices ensures alignment with the organization's purpose and prevents stagnation.

• Look within: Where are your convictions? What are your principles? Hold your principles lightly, as a hypothesis. Principles are a guide, not markers in which we can’t move, it’s essential to not get attached in an unthinking fashion.

• Reflect: How much of my time have I spent on the above for each?

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Change is inevitable, we need to continually change and improve. To do so, we will need to hold experiments and test things out. Ravi talked about ‘safe-fail’, the importance of sharing/celebrating our failures AND learnings from it, and what we will do differently moving forward. It’s about creating spaces where people feel safe to fail. We tend to punish ourselves, and feeling like we are “losing face” when we fail.

He emphasised that it’s not about ‘fail-safe’, i.e. failing safely - After all, how is a pilot a pilot when it must be successful? It’s also not about swinging to the other polarity of radically experimenting - we need to manage the risks that come with it and know what risks we are willing to bear.

“These barriers exists in our minds, not in our systems.”

— Ravi Menon, Former MAS Chief

It could be as simple as this: When your staff presents a new idea, even if it initially feels uncomfortable, instead of immediately responding with a 'No' or 'Yes but…', consider saying, 'Yes, let's explore how it looks like… how might we test it out?' This approach, highlighted during one of our group activities on Day 2, sparks possibility conversations that generate energy, autonomy, excitement, and a sense of safety to experiment. Such conversations contribute significantly to fostering an adaptive culture within the organization.

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#2. Care for the People is critical to build a flourishing organisation.

How do we care for the people in our organisation, and what does it mean?

#Purpose #Workload #Empathy

Leading with Purpose

Wellbeing is an important aspect that has been emphasised by our Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong. In her opening speech, PS Gee Keow mentioned that it’s about bringing out the best in others, driven by purpose and passion, and not by compliance (“cos xxx boss said so!” > “rolls eyes”). Ravi also mentioned about purpose being the strongest motivator, and he used the Induction programme as a platform to converse with staff about the purpose and values behind the work at MAS.

I personally find this so important - having the clarity of purpose and intent drives me. It can be frustrating if I’m tasked to do something when I don’t see the bigger why behind it. I also think that this is what the younger generation is looking for - meaningful, purposeful work - and sometimes this is not obvious at first glance, so the role of leadership is to help connect the dots and how even the smallest efforts matter. I don’t think the younger generation expects leaders to have all the answers and a clear why, but the purpose and overarching direction behind choices and decisions made needs to be articulated and not assumed or glossed over thoughtlessly. This ‘data’ laid on the table - and how it is framed - is useful for followers/teammates to work with the leader together to figure things out amidst challenging times and uncertainties. To all leaders, I hope this brings some comfort in that you don’t have to carry the burden alone! :)

The Public Service Division (PSD) has rolled out Wellbeing@Gov initiative, and most recently, the Intellect app which provides 1-1 coaching and counselling services, amongst others. I’ve recently used the coaching services and found it really helpful! The Leadership Competency Framework was also crafted to support leaders in developing the necessary competencies to lead well.

Ravi mentioned the importance of care, concern and regard to every person in the organisation. Caring for Wellbeing means also being aware of the Mental and Physical challenges that affect how staff work, and being understandable that each staff faces unique challenges in the various seasons of their lives.

Managing Workload

A particularly resonant (and possibly met with resistance) point centered on Managing Workload. Most Singaporeans are overworked! Leaders may face the challenge of creating psychological safety for discussing workload concerns. How might leaders create psychological safety to talk about workload? How to optimise the work we are currently doing, and reduce ‘unnecessary/non-critical’ work? It may feel shameful or wrong to raise up an idea to drop a piece of work - especially in hierarchical organisations where we feel like we do not have the permission to do so. This is a perception that can be changed.

Sometimes, this will need to start from the top leadership team:

“You can’t clean the steps by cleaning the bottom step only - it means we have to involve our leaders.”

— Chris Worley, Pepperdine Graziadio Business School

Leaders will need to use their power by convening conversations on most important issues faced by the organisation.

I encourage leaders to have open conversations with their staff on managing workload, primarily to understand where their staff is at, to better support them. You don’t need to feel the burden to resolve all issues that are raised up, hold these data lightly and communicate the constraints where necessary. Sometimes team members are more than appreciative of you checking in, they may not expect things to be resolved in the near term either. If you are struggling with heavy workload, explore having a conversation with your boss, and not suck it up My team recently had a conversation on this and I am happy to share the process if it helps! (Pm me or comment below!)

In our second panel dialogue on What enables people to flourish, Andrew, Chief Wellbeing officer at NUS reinforced that work and life is not a dichotomy - what happens at work affects our personal lives, and vice versa. Eileen Nah, Managing Director and Head of Futuresmart, OCBC, shares that she has a potted plant outside her doorstep, and before she enters her home, she touches the plant and leaves the work related worries at the door.

One might wonder: How might we flourish and balance the need for accountability? We need to hold people accountable in order to flourish. Prioritising wellbeing doesn’t mean that we let people get their way and in some situations, this may require holding a difficult conversation with the staff on how they are impacting yourself and others. There are links to this with Psychological Safety - In our first panel dialogue, Christian Chao, CEO of Care Corner mentioned that leaders need psych safety too. True safety comes with willingness to engage, and it is not about being overly sensitive and overwhelmed by the fear offending others. He encourages leaders to think about how can they ready themselves to engage in such conversations, and how to engage in conflict in a constructive way. Finding a balance of performance and well being - providing high challenge and support - is a hallmark of a flourishing team.

Some leadership practices mentioned to enable a flourishing organisation include:

#triedandtested by the panellists!

1.Creating Connection

• Have regular 1-1 time with team members - Christian has done it for over 2 years, and attests that it makes a world of difference in terms of their willingness to collaborate.

• Crafting personalised emails for promotees, highlighting expectations to prepare them for the role, while infusing with a touch of humour. E.g. “I regret to inform you that you cannot gossip anymore.. as your words carry more weight - though you might not intend it to be so. I regret to inform you that you will now experience more stress than before. So it’s important that you care for self. ” [from Clarence Ti, Deputy President, Administration at NUS]

2. Running effective meetings

• Meetings that overrun: plan for agenda to take up 66% of the time and have a 1 min introduction about presenters themselves, a fun fact - so people can relate to them. [Clarence Ti]

• At Senior Management Meetings, an unconventional approach is taken: no tables, just members seated in a circle. Everyone comes prepared, and slides are assumed to taken as read, allowing the focus to be on clarifying and engaging in conversation. To encourage open discussion, an Elephant soft toy sits in the middle, signaling permission to address any lingering issues or concerns (the proverbial "elephant in the room"). There are also check-ins designed during the meeting for people to feel safe to pick up the elephant. This setup heightens awareness of interpersonal dynamics and promotes more authentic interactions. [Christian Chao]

• In addition, Quarterly Pitstops are integrated into the meeting schedule. These designated sessions provide a safe space for addressing any lingering concerns or issues. It's a time for reflection and an external practitioner is invited to offer constructive feedback on how the team interacts with one another, fostering continuous improvement and growth. [Christian Chao]

• Create a fun atmosphere when talking about serious topics e.g. get icecream [from Shie Yong Li, Commissioner at SPS]

3. Managing Self

• Personal Routines - time with family, exercise, sleep - discipline to help us manage our day to day challenges. [Christian Chao]

• You can also take the Free PERMAH Wellbeing survey here to develop your own wellbeing plan. The PERMAH framework, developed by Prof Martin Seligman is widely used and also adopted by ILOD for our wellbeing interventions.

“Take care of your people, and they will take care of the work.”

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#3. Flourishing over time: shifting patterns in times of uncertainty.

How might we sustain performance and flourish over time?

#Noticing #Learning #ActOnIt #RinseandRepeat

Chris Worley's keynote on "Building Agility and Resilience in the Singapore Public Service" emphasized adaptability as a crucial capability for organizations. The ability to adapt repeatedly is essential in navigating changing circumstances, a characteristic often referred to as being an "agile" organization.

Defining Agility - Chris Worley

OD Practitioners must adopt a systems perspective - orchestrating multiple changes, not just one, when and where it makes a difference. The Burke Litwin model, widely utilised by many OD practitioners I know, facilitates the design interventions across interconnected areas, at three levels of the system, to maximise the chances of ensuring that change is sustained.

Similarly, the Action Research cycle highlighted below is a cornerstone of the OD field, facilitates continuous learning. Through multiple learning cycles embedded within the diagnosis and design phases, practitioners gain insights into the organization's evolving dynamics, answering the critical question, ‘What do we know about the organisation now that we didn’t know before?’

Action Research Cycle shared by Chris Worley

Chris echoes Ravi’s point on ‘safe-fail’:

“When dealing with uncertainty, best way is to test stuff out and see which is best!”

— Chris Worley, Pepperdine Graziadio Business School

And he also builds on Ravi’s note on ‘Looking ahead’:

“Get leadership teams to look outward - when organisations are stressed, they typically look inwards - but to adapt, we need to look outwards, bring information from outside to learn better.”

— Chris Worley, Pepperdine Graziadio Business School

I really enjoyed Chris’ sharing of the case study, there were practical tips esp for OD practitioners. Highly recommended to check it out here (under Day 2, Keynote 3).

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To sustain change over time, it’s also important to be cognisant of the patterns in interpersonal and group dynamics. The tricky thing is, they often become ‘invisible’ over time, and taken for granted. When issues happen, they tend to be seen as a singular part or problem to be solved. One simple thing to differentiate problem from pattern, is to notice the times of occurrence - three times forms a pattern.

Glenda Eoyang, a pioneer in the field of Human Systems Dynamics, suggests that perhaps many of the emerging challenges we face are not problems, but ‘wicked issues’. Wicked issues are not problems to be solved, but a pattern or polarity to be managed.

Keynote 2 - Flourishing: Excellence in Uncertainty (Glenda Eoyang, Human Systems Dynamics)

If you think about your problem as a pattern, how does it shift the way you approach it? What would look different?

Some examples below:

How might we shift patterns? (A frame for consideration)

Container x Difference x Exchange = Pattern

• Container holds the system together, marked by boundaries and similarities.

• Difference holds the energy and meaning, it allows you to see the pattern. Tension is formed around difference, and opportunity emerges from them.

• Exchange is the flow and movement of energy within the system.

Some reflection questions:

• What was the container I have to hold for the change to happen? As a leader - what are the narratives or purpose that holds us together? What is the most generative question or image people could gravitate towards?

• What is the quality of exchange? What is the quality of conversations? Introducing new people (referencing earlier example as to how Christian invites external practitioner to provide feedback on their team conversations) changes the container and the exchange.

Differences that are irreconcilable are termed as ‘Dualities’

I see parallels between Glenda's concept of dualities and interdependent pairs and Barry Johnson's concept of Polarities Management. While I'm not entirely clear on the distinction between both models, their overlap suggests a valuable insight: when we experience recurring tensions, what is the duality or polarity that might be playing out? Once we are able to name it, it would be easier to work with it, manage it and leverage on them constructively.

More about the workshop can be found here under Day 2: Problems and Patterns: Living with and Learning from Intractable problems (Glenda Eoyang).

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Thanks for reading till the end!

I am curious to know how this blogpost landed for you, the insights you have gained, or if you have any burning questions! It’s quite a wordy piece, so I tried to make it more fun to read with some pictures and quotes; and i also wanted to add a personal touch by sharing my reflections.

Also I’m still thinking about how best to structure my posts, and if you have any suggestions, please share too! Feel free to connect with me over LinkedIn or comment below :)

From Uncertainty to Insight: Perspectives on Crafting Effective Learning Experiences (from my personal journey)

Dear reader,

Have you ever found yourself inadequately equipped to fulfil your work responsibilities? That’s how I felt when I first started designing programmes. Where do I even start!?

Here I will share some of my personal learnings with you on how I navigated through this ‘gap’, and offer tips for facilitators who are embarking on a similar journey. 

I started as a facilitator, following the facilitating guide for a pre-designed program. However, when I transitioned into a role that involved design work, I faced a new challenge. While I had experience designing shorter programs of 2-3 hours, creating a 2-5-day program was a completely unfamiliar territory for me. I felt a mix of nervousness, lack of confidence, uncertainty, and occasional feelings of being stuck and helpless. I observed that many of my colleagues relied on their experience and intuition, making the design process seem somewhat chaotic (at least in my perception). Seeking resources to aid me in this area, I wasn't just looking for discussion structures but also wanted to understand how to craft and deliver a meaningful experience that participants would find relevant and valuable.

How did I cope with this? I just kept looking. I believed that if I persisted in my search, I will eventually arrive at the answers I needed.

And I did! (somewhat!)

Recently, I attended the Power to Train workshop by Advancing SG, and found it insightful.

(I don't frequently write about my experiences, only doing so when particularly inspired by certain workshops I attend. Based on Amelia's 'dipstick,' it seems to be a noteworthy one. I'm excited to share my thoughts with you! XD!)

Power to Train Workshop by Advancing Sg (27-29 Nov 2023)

In accordance with Sun Tzu's wisdom, "Know thyself and know thy enemy," it is crucial to start with an understanding of fundamental principles. Principles, as fundamental truths, serve as guiding lights. While these principles may seem basic, it's essential to reflect on whether we truly comprehend, believe in, and apply them in practice.

Adult Learning Principles

• Adults are autonomous and self-directed.

• Adults bring knowledge and experience to each learning activity.

• Adults are Relevancy Oriented.

• Adults are practical about their learning.

• Adults are Goal Oriented.

• Adults like to be respected.

(adapted from ACLP)

Do we believe that our participants possess the capability for self-directed learning? If so, why do we often find ourselves chasing them for submissions?

Do we trust that our participants can accept responsibilities? When adults are competent, they would naturally want to do it and embrace responsibilities.

Do we hold the notion that there is only one right answer? Facilitators can sometimes affirm specific responses as “Brilliant!” while overlooking others because it’s not the response they were looking for.

Now the world is imperfect, and that’s the reality we need to work with.

Many would resonate with the principles outlined for adult learning.  

This leads to the next question: So how do I help Adult learners learn effectively? 

To begin, it’s helpful to anchor ourselves in design principles. These principles are adapted from various sources and I have found it helpful from my own experience. Feel free to challenge them if you think it’s not true for you. I welcome your perspectives in the comments.

Learning Design Principles

• Curriculum is more meaningful if it is emergent.

• A rigorous inquiry method leads to deep learning.

• If I am interested in something, I will go deep.

• Good questions lead to depth of thinking.

When learners are free to ask questions based on their own curiosity of the world, motivation becomes automatic. Good questions, beyond just looking for the right answers, will lead to a level of depth that varies from person to person but that normally results in greater depth than in prescribed curriculum.

(Sources: School of Thought Victoria - Inquiry Process; Power To Train workshop)

However, people don’t really give themselves permission to engage in inquiry fully, perhaps because we are afraid to make mistakes, or afraid of looking stupid.

The challenge at hand is: How can I develop a design that facilitates deep learning for participants?

The Structured Inquiry Process

In the workshop, I learnt about the Structured Inquiry Process and found it to be a useful model to guide my design. A notable mistake I made was focusing on solely the content I wanted to deliver, and paying less attention to guiding the participants through a process where they could discover answers themselves. The impact is that it can sometimes feel like I’m delivering a lot of content, but learners aren’t hungry so the learning doesn’t stick.

The Structured Inquiry Process lies on a spectrum on the 4 Types of Inquiry:

Here is the example of a Structured Inquiry Process – by a Professor from the Harvard University:

Notice how he poses a question and invites participants to take a stand, challenging their thinking, affirming their efforts (and not the quality of answers). And how he only has 2-3 slides which lands the powerful distinction (to categorical vs consequential reasoning).

The Structured Inquiry approach is based on the Socratic Method. Simply put, asking questions to draw out unexamined assumptions.

“An effective socratic teacher is not only well versed in the subject, and also modest, genuinely curious, affirming of every contribution.”

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNDYUlxNIAA  (short 5mins video on the Socratic Method)

Here’s a couple more reasons why Inquiry based learning is recommended:

Why Inquiry based learning?

• It’s how our brain is designed – we learn through inquiry and figuring out the ‘how’

• Results in Deep learning (Because it focuses on Concepts and Application than Facts and Skills)

• Retention is much higher (compared to traditional education with facts)

• Growth in Social-Emotional Learning (promotes self-direction, meta-cognition – understanding one’s own thinking, ability to focus, taking feedback from peers)

• Slow, then Fast (takes time and space at the beginning, but after groundwork is laid, learners can then move through content more quickly)

(Source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQoxgYCdgj4 )

So how do I go about designing an inquiry process?

In the lecture by the Harvard Professor, you may have noticed the following. The inquiry process could be broken down to 3 main parts:

• Part 1: Inspire, Tap on Active prior knowledge, Highlight Relevance

• Part 2: Inquire, Active Learning, Highlight relevance (where we facilitate), avoid given them the answers; challenge here is to ask good questions that bring learners to bring them to the edge of their understanding

• Part 3: Reflect, Cement Understanding, Share and discuss – Introduce the distinction here

There are many other processes, such as ORID, Circle of Viewpoint, Compass Points. The MOE uses the model called ‘Clarifying, Sensitizing, Influence’:

So, the next time you design something, ask yourself: What’s the Inquiry Process?

Essentially, try not to tell learners something they can figure out on their own, allow them to do the ‘work’.

My next biggest challenge is that sometimes I’m not sure where exactly I want participants to land. Yen Kai brought up the concept of distinctions and explained that this is dependent on our content mastery.

Distinctions provide a new way of seeing the normal. They are short and sharp, and when it lands, you feel a sense of release and ‘aha’ moment in the room because it speaks to reality. What is the nuance / lens that people are not aware of?

Four examples to illustrate the concept of Distinctions:

1. What is the distinction between Advice and Feedback?

I could be following the SBI feedback model and still give you an advice!

It depends on your willingness to hear ‘no’. Feedback is something we can choose to accept or reject. With that understanding, are we ok when people reject our feedback? When we’re unwilling to hear ‘no’, it means we are giving advice (i.e. I know better!).

2. What is the distinction between Complaint and Feedback?

 Similarly, I could also use the SBI model to complain!

Complain is about me, Feedback is about you.

When I complain, it’s about my dissatisfaction towards something. When I give feedback, it is in service of you and your growth.

3. What is the distinction between Blame and Complain?

(I used ChatGPT and got a pretty decent response! There is no fixed answer for distinctions, it’s really through reflection and reading, practicing and trying out the ‘grand theory’ on people and seeing if it lands for majority of the group.)

Last One – I picked this up from Jasmine, I found it quite profound, made sense for me too.

4. What is the distinction between nice and kind?

We often hear ‘Being clear is kind’. But I could be clear and nice too?

The difference is how much you care. I can be nice and say things that you want to hear because I don’t care that much for you. Or I could be kind and say the hard truths, and that’s because I care for you.

I am not sure if this article left you with more questions than answers – because that’s how I felt when the training ended! Here are some questions I am sitting with:

How do I come up with a design that allows for participants to engage in deep learning? What is the inquiry process? How might I design questions to lead participants to deeper thinking, and achieve programme intent? What are the distinction(s) that I want participants to walk away with?

The biggest question: How do we even arrive at Distinctions?

I asked the two trainers, Yen Kai and Jasmine, and their answers are similar. You read, reflect on your own experiences, test it out on participants. When there is a push back, it means the distinction is not sharp enough, and that’s the opportunity for us to refine our distinctions.

// PS. Distinctions also remind me of the Abstract Conceputalisation or ‘grand theorizing’ in the Four Roles of a Gestalt Intervener (Mary Ann Rainey).

It feels like both of them go by experience and intuition! And this made me more curious:

Even if it’s by intuition, there would be a thought process that one goes through to arrive at a distinction.

• If there is such process, what would it look like?

• What makes it challenging? I think partly, it’s the emotional process of staying with the uncertainty that there is no right answer, being present to my experience and the experience of others so I can sense what is most true for us. This also looks like an Open Inquiry process because there is no straightforward answers.

• What would make it easier?

I turned to the teacher, youtube, and found this video which offered a unique perspective and way of thinking.

BEFORE YOU WATCH IT:

Pause and ask yourself, as a facilitator, amongst thousands of frameworks and pieces of content, how do you determine what is most relevant for the participants? Do you comb through lots of content first then try to distill what’s most important? I do this a lot and I find it very time consuming and overwhelming at times. :(

Here’s the summary. Before we dive into learning content, Justin Sung suggests: 

1.Think about how you want to apply the information first.

• What types of problems or experiences do I need to answer? That I don’t feel equipped to answer? Am I sure I can’t tackle?

• How can I use what I know to solve this?

2. Be clear about the problem and how you are trying to solve it.

• What are the components to the problem?

• What are the variations of the problem?

3.     Think about your own hypothesis, how do you think the solution might look?

4.     Create the process of discovery and set up basic logic and reasoning to begin with.

5.     Test your your hypothesis (or distinction) which you can either accept or reject it and Iterate.

Here’s how you can immediately apply it in your life. The night before you go to work:

1. Think about the problems you might face the next day

2. How might you solve those problems the next day? This would only take 10-30mins.

3. Check: Were these truly the problems that I faced?

4. Solve the problem they way you hypothesized. Did it work? Did it not work?

5. Consolidate your learning.

Now you’ve had the experience – you can think of even more specific questions to ask yourself and issues. When we are at work, we are constantly ‘bombarded’ by different experiences and we can turn experiences into active learning opportunities. This is a cycle of learning that is based around creation and identification of problems.

Currently, i’m in the process of testing this approach and I may write a subsequent blogpost on my discovery and reflections. :)

I hope you enjoyed this article as much I enjoyed writing it. (I’m quite amazed how much I can create when I’m hit by a spur of inspiration!) I spend a few hours writing this last night after I finished the training, and consolidated by thoughts this morning. I would love to hear your perspectives – feel free to reach out and connect with me here!

[Reflections] Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and opportunity of Midlife

Do you wonder how life would be like when you turn thirty, forty or fifty?

Someone older once told me that twenties seemed like a difficult time, because that’s where she was always striving and unsure about herself. In her thirties and forties, there is growth in the sense of acceptance of ourselves and our limitations, being more at peace. The life experiences she’s been through also helps her know herself better, to do work that she enjoys. With a supportive network of people she created, she is also more adept at overcoming life’s challenges. Having children was also deeply impactful for her.

It makes me wonder how my thirties/forties will be like. And that growing older isn’t something to be fearful about. It makes me anticipate, how I would have grown, who I would become.. :)

Anyway, I happen to chance upon this book at Clementi library and i was like hey, someone wrote a #lifehack for midlife! Why not check it out?

As a child, I think I tend to keep most things to myself. I realised it’s because I tend to feel emotions quite intensely, and i didn’t like that so I have somehow developed a way to distance myself from it, so I feel safe. I also didn’t really like to bother people with my problems, so I tend to bottle things in. I think it was only in my mid twenties that I began to express myself more. What helped was finding friends and people I could trust, and are able to hold this non-judgemental space for me.

Self-expression is something i’m working on, because I think being able to express myself in the way I intend it to others, helps me to connect more deeply with myself, people and the world around me. It is deeply satisfying. To me, it’s also an antidote for loneliness. Writing her is one way, and also, music!

Barbara, the author, writes that emotional engagement with life is key. When we know what lights us up, what drains us, we can choose where to invest our energy intentionally, and it leads to purposeful engagement. She also challenges us to aim for meaning, and purpose, and to keep learning and growing.

Unpacking Purpose - The little things matter.

People often say they that living a purposeful life is important, and I’d like to think that I am. This topic on Purpose is one that fascinates me, and I was curious to know how Barbara sees it. She found that the sense of purpose changes behaviour - where people are more likely to take care of their health, going for check ups, hence lowering the risk of multiple chronic conditions. (p.137) She also cites multiple studies of how exercise helps to build a sharper brain as you grow older (p.205). (Tada, motivation for you to exercise!) Through various stories, she shares how purpose can be found in many little things - just doing things for our own enrichment/satisfaction; it could be a hobby that stretches your brain and gives you something to look forward to to each day or week.

I deeply resonate with these findings. I really look forward to my singing/guitar classes each week, and also my Krav Maga classes - all which are new to me, and stretching me in different ways. These were activities i found intrinsically enjoyable and what helped me overcome some of my post-breakup loneliness and blues, to build myself back up again. I’m proud to say I’m at my fittest yet! Honestly, never been so fit in my life!!

On Resilience - Build good social networks.

Resilience is the ability to regulate one’s response to fear. (p.238) There are a few schools of thought, some who believe that resilience is an innate trait based on how the parts of your brain connect to each other, and there’s another school of thought that argues that the opposite is true: Many people think that resilience is internal, but the reverse is true - The really highly resilient people tend to have very good social networks. They seem to instinctively know that their bodies demand friends…because I know there’s a net to catch me, I will be an active coper. (From Steve Southwick at Yale Medical School, p.240) I tend to agree with the latter, as it resonates more with my personal experiences. I feel that in the company of people i trust, i feel more supported and much more able to handle stress and challenges that come my way.

It leads me to think that to build resilience, I need to focus on strengthening my relationships with others. In a recent reflection I had in a group coaching session, this was an area I wanted to work on too. I want to have deep, honest relationships with people around me - not just the ‘feel good’ kind, but also those whom I can trust to call me out when i’m off, give me real feedback. And I think it starts from me embodying that. To me, authentic relationships/friendships like these are the most precious things.

I’m not sure which school of thought is the truth, but I guess people tend to believe what they want to believe, haha. I’d like to believe i’m not limited by the biological make up of my brain, that i can generate resilience through reaching out and connecting to others.

Uncovering your ‘Essence’ - Make time for reflection, for reinvention.

What is your Sosein? (your essence, in german), and how will that guide you? A fifty year old may lack the energy of a twenty-five year old, but she makes up for it in self-knowledge. (p. 353)

“There’s a difference between twenty years of experience and one year of experience twenty times…people do the same thing and they don’t grow. They don’t face new challenges.” (Stevenson, Harvard Business School, p.324)

“There are two myths that assault people in their mid-career: resigning ourselves to our growing limitations, and boundless change, which requires ground-up radical transformation.” Carlo Strenger, a Swiss Israeli psychologist, says the best course is navigating between the two. (Polarities!!) And how he does, it to ask his clients, “Let’s look at the empirical evidence for what kind of assets and abilities you have built over the last forty, fifty, sixty years, and let’s see how it can be reconfigured in a way that would be more appropriate to your needs today.” (p.326-327) To become the author of our own lives, we need to accept that we have not chosen the base materials of who we are. We can only choose to shape them with a clear view of our strengths and weaknesses. (p.327)

To me, the above sounds a lot like coaching! I believe that processing our experiences by ourselves is useful, but there’s always something magical when we share it with others. It not only helps to form connection, it could become a source of support. And a trusted coach would be able to reflect observations that were not known to us before :)

This seems like a good point to pause, and take stock of significant experiences that have shaped who we are. I think one way is to also ask for feedback from trusted friends and colleagues, which I want to do more of! Sometimes i feel that people know me better than I know myself. I personally think these are good habits to cultivate, for us to gain self-knowledge as we grow :)

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Below are some quotes - Barbara’s suggestions for Midlife, just for future reference :)

On Aging Well

If you feel the midlife blues, remember that everyone else does, and your most joyous years are ahead of you.

Aim for meaning and not happiness, and you will find both.

Ask yourself regularly: How will I use these glorious days for the best purpose?

The middle-aged brain is a thing of wonder. It can learn any new trick - if you challenge it.

On Living Exuberantly

At every stage of life, you should be a rookie at something.

Midlife can be like Kansas, long and flat. Creating a goal will energise your days.

On the Power of thought

It’s harder to hurt when you’re laughing.

Watch your thoughts. Your thinking shapes your experience.

On Doing Good Work

If possible, go for Plan A. And it’s possible more often than not.

Pivoting on your strengths beats starting from scratch.

Redefine success according to your values, not those of the rest of the world.

On Choosing what matters most

Pay attention: The biggest threat to seasoned marriages is mutual neglect.

Do you value that relationship? Then cut him some slack.

As George Vaillant noted, happiness is love. full stop.

Thanks for reading till here! I’d love to hear your thoughts! Do drop me a message or comment below, and I’ll respond to you :)

Reflections on Gestalt Coaching

Hi readers and friends, I went for a 2-day Gestalt Coaching Programme (by John Leary Joyce) in June. Wanted to document my key learnings here and share with you! :)

AoEC Foundation Gestalt Coaching Skills programme on 30 June and 1st July 2023 in Singapore

Tango & Gestalt Coaching on 2 July 2023

Note: I think this blogpost would be most useful for those who have some experience with Gestalt and Coaching as I’m not going into the details. I have signposted the sections applicable for individuals and coaches, hope that makes it easier for new readers. It might help to read the sections that apply to individuals first (‘Here’s how I make sense of it’), then the coach (‘Implications in coaching’), but I’ll leave that up to you! Feel free to drop your questions and thoughts in the comments below.

What is Gestalt?

For starters, Gestalt means ‘whole’ or ‘complete’ in german; where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. When two individuals come together, there is also the relationship that forms between them. Hence we can’t look at it in two parts, but also the connections between the parts.

Fundamental understandings of Gestalt include:

• Building awareness of what feels ‘stuck’, allowing flow to be more in touch with the self.

• Underpinning this is the paradoxical theory of change where it doesn’t require you to change who you are - but be who you are, and accept the present moment, the present you.

• In Gestalt, the self is constantly shifting as with time and context. The self is seen as a function of the relationship, i.e. when share a part of ourselves and how we really feel, something in a relationship shifts.

• Rather than asking, is this our best self? The Gestalt approach asks, is this the most useful way of engagement? Are we hiding? What’s in the way? Hence in Gestalt Coaching, the quality of connection is a key focus. It is a relational approach where we bring our whole self into the relationship, as an instrument of change.

#1.    “Sit with it!” What does it mean to sit?

In the past, I’ve had friends who were coaches/social workers telling me to sit with my emotions. The discomfort. The boredom. Honestly had no idea what that even means. I just feel my frustration growing as I sit, and I’m like, how is this even helping !?!?

At times of confusion or uncertainty, the tendency to rush ahead means we don’t stay long enough in the empty ‘not- knowing’ space. As Gestalt practitioners, we hold the belief that the so- called empty space is actually fertile Ground, rich with unknown possibilities– a fertile void.

p.31. The Fertile Void 

At first, sitting with boredom can feel frustrating. When I was running multiple roadshows in my previous job, I felt so bored because I was going through the same powerpoint deck for over 30 times! Boredom is an uncomfortable state of wanting to engage in satisfying activity, but being unable to do it. (The Atlas of the Heart, p.40) When I sat with boredom, I realised it helps me to head towards activities that really energise me.

The biggest learning I took away was the importance of sitting with our sensations, with the goal of building awareness.

Here’s how I make sense of it:

• Our thoughts come to us faster than our sensations. Hence, we tend to rely more on our thinking, than connecting to what we feel in our emotions and sensations to make sense of what’s going on. So we lose out on 2 other major intelligences areas we can tap on!

• In addition, our thoughts/narratives shape our emotions – so we are usually carried away by that. So it’s important to pause and examine if these thoughts and narratives are true. And also the expectations we have – if they are valid!

• The Gestalt approach is concerned with the whole person, encouraging balance between body, feeling, intellect and imagination. (Caveat: Some of us are more gifted in certain areas of intelligence e.g. intellect, and everyone is built differently. So it doesn’t mean that if you’re not balanced, there’s something wrong with you. I’m saying that the Gestalt approach looks at these areas as a ‘whole’.)

• One way to connect to yourself is to block 10-20 minutes in the morning to sit by yourself, and notice the thoughts, emotions and sensations that pass through you. I have been doing this practice for 2 months, and there are many moments of discomfort. I have found it most helpful when I journal what I’m sensing – it helps me to be more aware of what I am feeling, and has really supported me in making decisions, and attending to what’s most important to me.

Our mind often moves as a faster pace than our emotions and sensations. Hence, when our mind is quiet, we begin to notice more of our emotions and sensations. 

It is linked to the Buddhist notion of emptiness or nothingness from which springs a new awakening and creative energy.

p.ix, The Fertile Void

When we are sitting, it feels like we are doing nothing, but this ‘void’ allows for me to sense into areas in my life where I may feel unhappy about, or what makes me feel joyful, energized – because it’s a void/safe space I’ve created for myself, I can allow whatever energy to pass through me. Versus, 90% of the day where I’m either working or doing something, with back-to-back engagements – this is where I’m reacting to things in the moment and may not have time to fully attend to myself. So the 20 mins in the morning is very precious to me.

Implications in coaching:

We talked about the importance of sitting with our sensations. This practice forms a useful foundation as a coach where you can reflect what you are sensing within yourself and your coachee, with the goal of building awareness.

 Share your observations, but hold them lightly.

• As a coach, the physical sensations, emotions and thoughts we have could be reflected to the coachee. When we describe what we are noticing about ourselves, e.g. “I feel tension in my neck as you speak”, “I feel a sense of guilt as you spoke about..” – it gives an opportunity for the coachee to also clarify. And as they clarify, I find myself better able to connect to their experience.

• Another central tenet to Gestalt Coaching is Experiment. Each session is an experiment. So if what we say doesn’t land, it’s fine, as I said - it gives an opportunity for the coachee to clarify! Sometimes I find myself thinking too much about what I want to say and then I’m not present anymore. The quality of coaching relies a lot of the coach being present, so that’s a boo boo!

• As a coach, we can share our observations, but hold them lightly, provide a choice to the coachee to agree, disagree or to counterpropose their view – it should not be imposed on the coachee.

The Gestalt view would be that the block to the coachee’s progress needs to be experienced fully and resolved. (p/12, the Fertile Void)

• In the course of the programme, we were taught to encourage coachee to notice what they are experiencing within, as they work through the dilemmas. What happens often is that people often ‘short circuit’ their own experience and not feel the sensations to its fullest – in Gestalt terms, the cycle of experience is incomplete.

• What Gestalt Coaching does is to encourage the coachee to embody the experience of choosing one option over the other, and through that, they will gain a new awareness in working through the dilemmas.

• Another example is the empty chair technique, which is often used when the coachee has a strained relationship or tension with another that they would like to resolve. In the process, the coach will get the coachee to notice his/her sensations and emotions at each stage of the process, from talking to the other, to embodying the other, and back to themselves.

#2.     Becoming more of who I am

Most coaching programmes would often ask “What would you do differently?”. The focus is on changing the behaviour and putting in effort to achieve a different result. While valid, the Gestalt approach suggests there’s nothing that you would need to do differently: 

With Gestalt, the focus is on becoming more of who you are – exploring, uncovering and understanding what is really going on, from the inside out. By directing our energy into fully experiencing and accepting what is going on in the present, change happens without trying and our behaviour adjusts naturally, without effort. p.7, The Fertile Void

The emphasis is on accepting who you are and growing your capability from that position. p.15, The Fertile Void

Here’s how I make sense of it:

• It is about awareness. When we are more aware of our emotions, e.g. I am feeling frustrated about something, the Gestalt approach encourages us to sit with it and clarify what is beneath the frustration.

• To be honest, I am only recently learning how to express my anger and frustration in a healthy way. Because my experience of anger is destructive, and I dislike the destructiveness, I tend to repress my anger. The good thing is, no one gets hurt, but I didn’t realise it chips away my sense of self – and it tends to create enmeshment with others where boundaries are not really enforced.

• Recently I am ‘experimenting’ with channelling my anger and I have to admit I was pretty clumsy. To my friends on the receiving end who are reading this, perhaps you may get a clearer picture now! What I learnt was to be specific in my requests and to clarify expectations with the other. Sharing how I feel about another’s actions also helps me to restore my boundaries as I speak my truth. It is vulnerable, but I think by putting myself out there, basing on the feedback I get, I could also assess whether the other is trustworthy too and calibrate accordingly. I believe in building a relationship where both parties are open, and seek to understand each other’s needs – and that first requires me to be honest and upfront enough to share them.

• In this way, I get to restore my boundaries and honor my sense of self. And I do feel more empowered, and anger isn’t so scary anymore. I see this as how I become more of who I am.

 Implications in coaching:

Everything you notice and feel about the coachee needs to be acknowledged without judgement, then highlighted and explored. This approach– where you assume that everything about the coachee is there to be seen and experienced, and everything has rightful importance…

P.9, The Fertile Void

• In the most difficult periods of my life, I just want to be held and seen. I’m not just saying this in a coaching context – I believe it is a fundamental human need.  I am lucky to have a few friends and trusted coach who held the space of non-judgement, in moments when I judged myself the most. And now that I am training to become a coach, it’s a way of passing on this gift of space and acceptance, learning how to hold it for others.

• I guess if you’re born in a typically Asian family, you would know that Asian parents (speaking for myself) aren’t the best in expressing love. Love could look like “Why are you back so late?” “What’s taking you so long?” – sometimes, it felt like I was always being questioned, so I would get reactive very easily. I think that’s why people get hurt, and the hurt grows. So I think being a coach, having a mastery of language – in the sense of being able to describe what we see and not judge – creates this sacred space where coachee can feel safe to share. To me it’s also creating an experience of how one could being to wrestle with these difficult emotions and learning to be with it in a way that doesn’t cause more pain.

#3.     Quality of connection is key

I recall my first coaching session many years ago, where I signed up to be a coachee under a coach who was clocking pro-bono hours for practice. He was asking me many questions – it felt that he knew so much about me, but I knew nothing about the coach. It somehow didn’t sit right for me, felt disconnecting and distant. Was this how coaching is supposed to be like? Needless to say, I stopped after the first session.

Here’s how I make sense of it:

• Often, I underrate the importance of the quality of connection with people around me. It’s cliché but I feel that having a friend in a downtime, makes a whole lot of difference. There’s also something about working with a group of people whom you can joke around with, whine to, call them out, have disagreements, and knowing we have each other’s back at the end of the day. I relish these moments with people, it’s what makes work most enjoyable. None of us are perfect, and the difference is that we put in time to connect with each other. To me, that makes a world of difference.

• It’s not rocket science, it requires us to be human, vulnerable and authentic, to be open and share about ourselves. It’s an energy exchange, a connection build between two people. Sometimes it’s not always an equal exchange! But that’s how life is.

Implications in coaching:

There is a greater emphasis on improving the quality of connection, so the relationship with the coach is a key area of interest.

p.19, The Fertile Void

• Connection is built through dialogue, not just questions. Questions tend to get coachee into the head space, which is sometimes not so helpful. It requires the coach to be open to being changed too, to bring ourselves in to jointly research what’s going on with the coachee. The coach is not an expert – you are the expert of your life!

• In demonstrating openness, transparency, vulnerability as a coach, you also give permission to your coachee to do the same.

• In our practice sessions, John encourages us to mirror the actions of our coachee. For example, if they cross their legs, or swing their arms, we follow suit. This is an easy ‘hack’ for us to get a sense of what the coachee is experience, and connecting to their experience, reflecting back, and having a dialogue about it. As we get coaches to share their experience, we also share ours with the intention of building awareness for the coachee. Hence I think the quality of connection here is very crucial in allowing these exchange of information, that allows for trust to be build.

• This helps to set up the space for coaches to hold what John calls, ‘safe emergency experiments’. Each wrong turn is a learning, and the outcome is learning. Our role as coaches is to create enough safety for the coachee to take risks. To creatively experiment as joint researchers, and play with challenging and supporting the coachee. Some ways of engaging creatively can involve the use of art, objects, metaphors, writing or music!

You have come to the end of my blogpost! I’m not quite sure how to tie this up, but it’s a piece i’ve been wanting to put together. At least, while it’s still fresh in my head! I am curious to hear your thoughts on this post, and any insights, or questions you have.

Am open to feedback on how I can structure my writing more clearly - so please feel free to share! :)

5 lessons I learn as a Young Consultant in the Public Service

I made the mistakes so you don’t make them! Distilling 5 key lessons I’ve learnt in the past 1.5 years at work as Leadership Development Consultant. Here’s a quick overview: 

1. Context triumps Content.

2. Effortlessness requires effort.

3. Show up even when you don’t feel like it.

4. Think in terms of systems – yet we can only think as far as we can see – so we need to expand our capacity to ‘see’. And when you see it, own it.

5. The way you do it matters as much as what you do.

1.     Context triumps Content.

I cannot stress how important this is. I once ran a coaching programme with a group of officers. (I am intentionally keeping the details vague so ensure anonymity of the client.) Half the session was spent on addressing participants’ genuine queries on why they were here for the coaching programme – because they can’t see how the coaching skills they were learning can be applied in their job context. The concerns raised were very valid – they were in a time pressed, high stakes situation where any mistake could cost a life. This seemed to clash head on with the coaching philosophy, which frames mistakes as a learning opportunity – only at a very high cost which participants were not willing to risk it. When the bigger ‘why’ and context is not addressed, I notice that participants are not able to progress with the intended learning outcomes and there are many encounters with resistance.

What I learnt was that understanding the job functions and where these coaching skills could be applied was key, and helping participants to see this. They understand that coaching is useful, but just didn’t see a way in which it could be applied effectively in their roles. In the following run, the facilitators adapted and scaffolded the difference between coaching, mentoring and being directive – when is useful for which context. With a better understanding of their roles, the facilitators also customized the coaching questions in the work scenarios of the participants. This customization turned out to be extremely helpful in meeting participants where they were at, and also achieving the learning outcomes of the programme.

I have another example – this was with a group of young officers, who learned the feedback SBI framework (Situation, Behaviour, Impact model) very quickly. The concern here was, given that they are young in service, they often find it challenging to give feedback to senior staffs or their bosses, for various reasons – it could be out of fear of looking incompetent, or feeling hopeless like things won’t change much anyway, or not feeling safe to do so. Of course, most of us struggle with that, let alone young officers in their first role! It seemed like some got bored quickly after picking up the SBI framework, and at the end of the programme we received some responses that this segment on feedback was not practical or useful for them as it neglected the ‘power dynamics in the real world’.

What I learnt was that we needed to address where the concerns lie, and again help participants see how giving feedback could be done. On hindsight, there’s a lot to unpack actually:

• What is your intention of giving feedback? Is it more about you saying what you notice? Or is it about them being able to benefit from what you can contribute?

• What are your expectations? Given that we can’t expect people to change just because of we have given them our feedback.

• What is it that you needed, that was not met?

• What do you feel about giving feedback? And what does that mean for you?

In facilitating leadership development, we often find ourselves in this tension – between meeting participants where they are at, and also meeting the learning outcomes. It’s a dance, like jazz, there is a performance to accomplish, but how we do it – it requires one to be present to the learner’s needs, and also trusting ourselves to know when we can deviate from the plan to address their real concerns, and then dancing together, and ending on the step with ease and flow. (I don’t think any learner would intentionally want to make things ‘difficult’.)

Regardless – Context holds content. The content will not land if it’s not addressed to the participant’s context. This was my key learning, and I feel that the above mistakes were a price I wouldn’t want to pay again.

2.     Effortlessness requires effort

This is a principle in life to go by. I’ve recently started singing classes, and one of the biggest issues is that people exert too much pressure to hit the notes, and it causes vocal strain. My vocal coaches would share that it’s not about pushing, but using less effort. That in itself, takes lots of effort because I’m used singing in a certain way. Singers who sing effortlessly – who look and feel like it’s effortless – have gone through years of training (though some do possess ‘natural’ talent which may have helped).

It's the same principle which applies for mastery. When we are new to something, it naturally feels more uncomfortable, as it is difficult and requires more effort. It’s a new muscle we’re trying to build. And since I’m a young consultant, naturally many things are new to me. But the more we do it, the more practice we get, it gets easier. It’s also important to spend time to reflect and draw our lessons from it. This applies the same for most kinds of work. The effort behind the work is often something people don’t see. And it’s easy to talk ourselves out of doing the hard work, or feel like we’re not good enough. That is not true. Effortlessness requires a lot of effort. 

On the bright side, as young working adults, we’re being paid to learn – isn’t that great?   

3.     Show up even when you don’t feel like it

Writing is a struggle for me – and despite saying I want to write so many times in my journal, I haven’t got around writing consistently. I want to write because it helps me to consolidate my thinking and reflect on it, and I get a lot of satisfaction when I share it with others and if people have found it useful. But somehow when I just didn’t feel like it, I don’t do it.

What I realized is that my need for perfection sometimes gets in the way, and I wanted to be inspired in order to write – which is honestly very rare. I’m aware that if I do write more – the quality may not be as high, but I would become a better writer as I build in this habit. Consistency is really important, as we fall to the level of our systems and habits. The question is, how?

I recently chanced upon the Competence Motivation Theory (which is something we share with managers on how might they delegate work to others) – it centers on the idea that people are driven to engage in activities to develop or demonstrate their skills. As I’m writing this, my ‘why’ gets clearer too and I am increasing my personal motivation in the process. I also feel inspired as I write (as opposed to the other way round). I see writing as a very tangible way in how I can create an impact too – well-crafted emails for example, can be a real joy to read. Writing is also way in which I can improve the way I think, and quality copywriting it’s a skill people would pay for! (Hopefully I can keep these blogposts up! I’m paying $168/year for square space, got to make my money’s worth.) The above are all reasons that keep me motivated. And then gaining competency is a matter of time.

Bottomline is, if you find yourself making excuses and not taking action, perhaps take a pause and ask yourself, what’s holding you back? What drives you to want to do this in the first place? If it keeps coming up for you, there must be something that matters to you. So what is that exactly? 

PS. In my view, it’s important to create the influence I want in my life (than be blindly influenced), to build support structures that keep me accountable towards my goals. I find that the most powerful accountable structures involve another person (e.g. a learning group which meets at a set timing), or involve monetary investment of sorts (e.g. signing up for a Krav Maga package).

4.     Think in terms of systems – yet we can only think as far as we can see – so we need to expand our capacity to ‘see’.

We are individuals living in an ecosystem, and sometimes we don’t think much of the impact of our actions on others.

I realized this when I made a mistake at work which impacted an important group of stakeholders. My decision had only accounted for certain factors, and I had neglected how the stakeholders would receive it. To address this mistake, I had to review and reach out to the impacted stakeholders individually. I can’t share much about it in detail, but I will share what I have learnt from it below. 

I learnt that in such situations of ‘crisis’, communications (again, writing!) has to be highly customized, and to speak to the concern of each person. It’s important to highlight my intentions, and acknowledge the mistake, and ask for feedback for areas I could improve on. We also have to examine why it happened and put into processes to prevent it from happening. This is where guiding principles are useful, so that decisions are objective, and the system has a way of regulating itself.

Another example: I noticed that in some project meetings, there is a pattern where agenda is unclear/not set, and decisions made kept changing on the fly, and I was growing increasingly frustrated, as I notice myself being reactive. Now to be honest, I initially blamed the person who set up the meeting, but then realized there wasn’t much point playing victim. I realized I had to voice my expectations and honor my needs – and the responsibility lies with me, now that I see it. What I did was to plan out what was needed, and shape the agenda prior to the meeting – so that this issue does not happen again.

In summary, there are actually a few principles here and here’s how we can apply it:

• Expand your ability to ‘see’. Think about how your actions or words, spoken or unspoken, affects others. Most of the time the only way to know is to ask for feedback. This is important because it helps you to see the impact of your actions, and whether it aligns with the outcomes you are trying to achieve.

• The more you can see, the more options there are. I think when we don’t see the impact of our actions, we’re usually more fixated on a certain way of doing things as we unconsciously neglect factors we don’t see. Out of sight, out of mind right? So by learning to see how we influence and impact others, we know ourselves better and knowing when to flex which muscles to achieve our intentions, which I think is an invaluable skill.

• If you see it, own it. Anticipate challenges and brainstorm options to address them before it happens. This does comes with experience, but the principle applies – if you see the issue, it’s a matter of choice if you want to take responsibility for it, or not. And either is fine, it’s about making the choice which leads you to your intended outcomes.

5.     The way you do it matters as much as what you do

What I’m referring to here is the state of mind as I am working on the project. One of my key tasks was to improve the design of a leadership programme, and because I felt pressured to churn out something, I felt very stressed across the 4-5 days, and it left me in a less creative, more distracted state because I was just trying to get things done. Looking back, it felt a little like mindless busyness, which really isn’t helpful for the work.

So what I’ve learnt is that it’s important to prepare our state of mind for the work that we’re doing. The way we approach has a significant impact on the quality of output, and outcomes. The most practical way I see would be to create pauses in between projects, so your brain feels more rested and focus to work on the next one, and really question yourself what’s the most important thing you would like to achieve out of it. It’s good to prepare and prime our mind and body to be in a more relaxed state, the more important the job is, the more important to prepare and not just jump into things.

What I have noticed about colleagues who I admire is that it’s all in the small things – the way emails are crafted, the way certain issues are framed and how it’s being communicated with care, sincerity, or humour, depending on what the situation requires.

Am I approaching it as something I just want to get done, or am I approaching it in a way in which I want enjoy the process? Am I approaching it in a way which builds or breaks personal connection? The way I approach a situation would have already primed me to behave in a certain way. And particularly in leadership development work, we can’t just ‘get it done’ and rush through the process. Even seemingly administrative matters, are not purely administrative, because it’s about the way we are with the client, in how we respond to them over emails or texts to build connection. Much of our work is to bring the human-ness of our interactions in a system which feels bureaucratic and impersonal. Connection comes before content, too. (Just note to self as I can be pretty task oriented, especially when I’m feeling stressed!)

If you’ve read till here, thank you so much for reading! Would love to hear your thoughts and comments about the post. Which one(s) stood out for you? Also, I’m looking out for content ideas so do let me know what might be topics that interest you.

You can drop a comment here, or message me at @ameliaaalim on telegram!

Landing in my ‘Dream’ Job - Reflections

During a conversation with a friend, I had a realisation that I was in my ‘dream job’ that I’d wanted to work in, in people development and facilitation. It was about 4 years back when I started facilitating with Pivotal Youth, it helped me to connect with myself, and made contact with parts of me I didn’t dared to. Emotions don’t feel so scary when we learn to hold space and understand them.

It was because of this I believe very much in the power of facilitation and community, where people come together with a common purpose, to connect, serve, and hold space for each other. To this day, this dream scares me as much as it excites me!

Anyway, this piece is written for folks who are looking for their ‘dream job’.

Actually, I never really felt like this was my ‘dream job’ from the start. In fact, I was pretty hesitant about joining the government, because I didn’t really like bureaucratic red tape, it just feels so mechanical and draining. I heard many horror stories about staffing. :o

Managing Expectations

So it took a while for me to adjust and calibrate my expectations, and to see for myself what this new place has to offer. Of course, if you enter a place with high expectations, be prepared to be disappointed. Not gonna lie, there were some moments of disappointment, but there were many more moments of hope, inspiration, and courage. I feel very heartened to see many grounded and authentic leaders in the public service, serving with passion and purpose. And bringing humanity back to the workplace, which I feel is very much needed.

The conventional way of thinking about a ‘dream job’ may be one that meets the hygiene factors, and much more - think working for Google - excellent reputation, innovative, cool office, has many staff benefits, gives you an edge in your CV, etc.

What lights you up?

However, I think that working in my dream job is synonymous with fighting for my passion with purpose. It’s cliche, but I think when we do things that light us up, the world lights up too. When we find people, purpose, and things worth suffering for. I don’t mind the pain, because I see that it’s worth it. Where it meets my needs and also meets the needs of others.

What does the world need?

Another thought: Is the realization that the world doesn’t need me - we are indispensable in some way - but I want to create something that can serve what the world needs. And I think the world needs more humanity in leadership. I know it’s ‘just a job’ to some people, but given that we’re spending a third of our time at work each day (or more), wouldn’t it be great if we have an environment where people connect and thrive together AND meet performance goals?

I think sometimes people, even myself, are too quick to judge. It makes a difference if I’d just pause and think about where the other person may be coming from, and what their world could be like. We tend to imagine the worst of others, which is usually not true, so learning to hold others (and ourselves) lightly, with compassion, is something life-giving to me.

Rethinking Priorities

Another message I’d like to say is that the ‘dream job’ doesn’t have to look a certain way, because the ideal changes as we grow too, depending on our priorities - health, family, children, etc. The question to ask isn’t about “How can I land in my dream job?” but:

What is the crossroad at which I find myself at this point in my life and work?

You may have a longing, a wish, but something is stopping you from pursuing it - it could be circumstances, beliefs, or perhaps the desire is not just strong enough for you to take action. But regardless, it is useful to examine what the crossroads are, because it helps to lay out the options, and where you are at, and you can make a more informed choice. Another useful inquiry would be:

What is my contribution to the problem I am concerned with?

You don’t necessarily have to leave your job for a dream job, sometimes it’s about recognising our responsibility and contribution to your ‘complain’. That can be very freeing. In that moment, perhaps you can start creating your dream job! Because the responsibility now lies with you, and not others! And responsibility here refers to, the ability to respond, in a way that’s intentional.

What commitment am I willing to make?

This is something I often underestimate - small actions, over time, form habits, and making a commitment is an intentional choice to develop what you need to achieve what you want. It is a powerful declaration. A personal stand. That can be very life changing!

What is the price I am willing to pay?

All choices come with hidden costs we often don’t see. I do find that people often (including myself) are not able to fully see the consequences of their actions. This inquiry helps me to explore that. I have two stories I’d like to share on this:

I was once an hour plus late for a facilitation job at Pivotal (i overslept z_z), and upon arriving at Nanyang Polytechnic, I rushed to the training room. Before I could enter, the facilitator came out to have a conversation with me.

He challenged me, asking me, “what is the price I pay for not being on time?” I can’t remember what was my answer, but it was probably along the lines of a feeling that I could not be relied on. Reliability, and reputation. He asked me, what else? And I was like, um, maybe about $10? (I think that was my hourly pay back then..so if I needed to pay that back, yea it would be $10…)

And what is the price others pay? Then I was stunned. “Err, they have to cover for me…” There were about 6 other facilitators…so I added, “and that would be about 6 people’s hourly pay, so about $60” So in total, the ‘price’ i had to pay was $70.

He could have easily let me go. But because he challenged me and held me accountable, I gained much more than what I paid for.

I am still late sometimes (boo boo), but I’m more aware of the impact of my actions, and I’d be more intentional to make amendments to what I have caused.

Another story:

In my early twenties, I was very excited about exploring opportunities for me to grow, I met many passionate individuals-turned-friends while running openjio. At one time, I was working full-time, running openjio, and being part of a startup. I know, crazy right?

I realised I tended to get excited/curious easily, and take on projects which interest me. I also have a tendency to start projects that I can’t complete. In some instances, I worked in a group so my team members (thankfully a couple are completer-finishers - this is a reference to Belbin Team profiling haha) so work gets done.

Anyway, the issue is that I’d feel like I was burning out every 6 months or so. And it took me a while for me to notice this cycle, thankfully I had friends who pointed it out to me too. One friend whom I trusted shared with me, that before he takes on new projects, he’d examine what was on his plate currently because when he commits, he commits 101%. The most important lesson I learned here was accountability and having a friend that kept me accountable made such a big difference in my life. I saw the price of my actions on others, and how it would affect my team members when I jump on new ideas. I saw the price I had to pay, which was burning out, and also felt bad that I couldn’t see through some projects.

Another friend shared with me that when we say yes to something, we’re also saying no to everything else. So, make the yes count! (Especially for my fellow generators in Human Design, haha!)

Sometimes we’re just not willing to pay the price, and that’s ok. Sometimes choosing not to, may be the best choice after all. :)

You may not know what’s your dream, and that’s ok

Most of the time, it’s through doing that we discover what we are strong or weak at, and we learn from our failures. Sometimes we discover that our dreams become nightmares. This sounds bad, but the good news is that it helps us to get grounded in reality and learn from it, and gets us to start thinking about what we really value or need. I pray that we each muster courage and care for ourselves, to actively pursue that which aligns with us.

And I’d like to think that we have multiple dreams, and a dream job is just one of them. I dream of singing covers and duets onstage someday, and I just signed up for a singing class! Never been to one ever since I left choir in secondary school. I just feel like music expresses humanity beyond words, it’s embodied in the tone. I am (literally) the instrument.

Shout-outs! Good things must share. ;)

PS. A shout-out to Pivotal Youth: They are currently looking for youths who are keen to facilitate leadership development programmes in schools. If you are keen to find out more, sign up here. There’s an onboarding session coming up, and if you’re interested, you can pm me for details, or drop a comment below and i’ll reach out to you!

PPS. I am currently working at the Institute of Leadership and Organisation Development, Civil Service College. Just didn’t want to mention it earlier because i think it’s not the point, but just in case you’re curious about the “dream job”. Also to provide additional context to what I’ve shared above.

We are also looking to hire a Consultant, Organisation Development. If you are passionate about building leaders, partnerships, and systems for a more connected, healthy, and equal Singapore - we welcome you to apply!

Credits:

The questions above were inspired by Peter Block’s The Answer to How is Yes.

This post on Crossroads by Khuyen also came to my mind, thought to share.

Enter, 2023

I notice that i’m feeling lighter this year. Last Jan, I didn’t feel energized by the fresh start, as I was letting go of a passion project that I started (OpenJio).

For awhile I couldn’t share this story because it was just too painful. Avoiding the grief was painful. Feeling the grief felt even more painful, it was just this sadness, depressing feeling that loomed around me and I can’t seem to feel excited about things. I felt lonely, guilty and there was lots of self-blame and self-doubt. And reading those ‘i’m-so-grateful’, ‘2022-had-been-a-blast’ kind of posts just made me feel more horrible. (Good for you!) I’m not sure how many of you feel that way, but I know I’m not the only one. Anyway, writing this piece is a form of closure for myself too, as I don’t think I’ve ever shared this publicly.

Covid brought about many challenges for social enterprises and startups. I witness the closing of these chapters that some of my friends had, and had the privilege to hear some of their stories which helped me heal too. Back then I was thinking, should I close Openjio? Because I just felt so burnout, I didn’t have any energy to sustain it. My team made me realise OJ wasn’t just ‘mine’ in a sense, I can’t decide to close it just because I wanted to, because others were invested in it too.

When Amos and Hilda decided to continue with OJ. it was really emotional for me. There was a sense of relief as there is renewal and it is not the end. But also an inexplicable sadness as this marks the transition for my departure. I felt so sad, i didn’t know why. My body just felt like it was losing something personally important and meaningful to me. It really felt like i was saying goodbye to a part of me and i cried alot. I didn’t know that was grief.

It wasn’t because of the loss of a title, but it felt like I was losing a part of me, a safe space for me to be, a sense of belonging, friendships, freedom for me to experiment…OJ has given me many opportunities to grow.

The media often glamourises the startup life, but i don’t much cover the stories of founders who left and closed their startups. It’s not easy for people to open up and share, and I understand that because, for quite some time, I felt that it was shameful. It seemed like the next step for me would be to incorporate into a social enterprise or non-profit, but none interest me, to be honest. Our team wrestled with the idea but didn’t reach a consensus. I also felt like I should bear the responsibility for things that have gone ‘wrong’, but I took it upon myself and blamed myself if things didn’t go well. I kept asking myself, what could I have done better? It was only through friends and a few counselling sessions I went for, that reframed my perspective - I did what I could do then within my best knowledge. When things felt too heavy to hold on, perhaps it’s time to let go and there’s nothing wrong with that. A dear friend described it as a ‘season’ of life, and similarly, organisations also go through seasons - and at different seasons, it calls for different people who can lead it to fulfill its potential. My friends often tell me that it’s still a success, the channel is still running afterall — and I am so grateful to my team who sustains it, but more so the spirit of continuing to act what they believe in.

When i was journalling about my past year, I recalled a conversation with a friend that deeply moved me 2 years back. This was over a call, i still remember i was working from home, and it was during my lunch break. Towards the end of our conversation, she asked me, what do you think makes openjio successful? I said it was because people saw that it had value, they believed in the causes; then she asked me, why do you think people joined openjio? what do you think made xxx initiative successful? To which i answered it was because they believed in the causes, and then i couldn’t think of anything else and just kept quiet…waiting for her to answer.

“It’s because of you, the leader who leads it.” I don’t know why but I just kept crying over the phone, but i wasn’t sure if she knew. She noticed.

It’s so strange, right? I don’t know why I don’t see it. I still tend to downplay my value and hold myself back, till today. (this is something I hope to change in 2023 though :) )

I started OJ because I saw a gap I thought i could easily fill - since i was searching for related events anyway, why not share it - it grew into an initiative, a group, and we ran events, started podcasts and a convo card game - and subconsciously I wanted to grow bigger then.

My definition of success and impact had changed since. I also didn’t notice but I was chasing success in some right, and if I’m honest it was to feed my ego, and perhaps it wasn’t for the causes anymore - so the universe had unleashed it’s whip for me to let go and learn this hard lesson. It’s actually a mirror of society, how we feel we need to chase our grades, promotions, status, prestige, in order to feel like we are successful and we have value.

Subconsciously perhaps, i didn’t see my own value. So i had to keep trying to find it. It takes a while, but I hope through my sharing, you will also notice that you already have it in you. (So Amelia, please stop running around and distracting yourself by chasing these worldly, material definitions of success! I am grateful for the kind souls and dear friends who helped me to catch a glimpse of what my value looked like.)

You would be familiar with this Aesop fable:

Many hundreds of years ago, Aesop wrote a fable, The Hare And The Tortoise. In this story, an arrogant hare challenges a tortoise to a race. An interesting series of distracting events gets in the way of the hare’s goal of beating the tortoise. In fact, the hare becomes so tired from all the distractions, he falls asleep. Meanwhile, the tortoise, with his goal clearly in mind, perseveres and ultimately wins the race.

The message is as true today as it was hundreds of years ago: Clear intent with a minimum of distractions gets us where we want to be, doing what we want to do, being who we’re meant to be.

The hare and the tortoise can actually be seen as two parts of ourselves. Both represent aspects of our inner self; the push-pull experience of having one foot on the gas petal, the other foot on the brakes. There’s a lot of activity, the motor is going full bore, energy is being used up, and we’re going nowhere fast.

The Hare represents deep inner drives that push and pull at us. These drives anifest as distractions, delays, doubts and deficit spending of energy. The tortoise is the part of us that uses clear intention, focus, surrender and trust to get to the finish line. Here, the output of energy is qualitatively different; the tortoise earns interest on its energy investments.

But most of us don’t slow down until we break down. This way of living limits a lot of our choices. When we learn to go slower, we no longer have to waste time doing many of life’s learning cycles over again. There’s a wonderful axiom that says, “If you can’t find time to do it right the first time, when will you ever find the time to do it over again?”

Slowing down and getting clear will go a long way toward getting what you want, being who you want to be, and creating a more ideal relationship.

We are already a success, wherever we are. It’s not something to chase after, it’s just by being who we are. It’s about standing by our ideals and making those choices, small or big, that creates an impact in its own way.

I am also hoping to create more spaces to slow down to write more regularly, as when I write, I find out what I have to say. (Austin Kleon)

Connecting to our Heart (Reflections on Gestalt)

Figure - Ground

Figure and Ground is a Gestalt concept - the figure is the focus of attention, while the ground is the background against which the image is defined. (reference: Making a Difference with Your Presence). The sharing below is based on my experience in a session organized by Besonder Consulting.

If you are familiar with concepts such as the cycle of experience and unit of work, do keep this at the back of your mind as you read on :)

I want, we need (Assessing what is)

One exercise that can help to illustrate figure-ground is “I want” and “we need”. What do I want? What do we need?

• “I want” to see what is emerging in the group and these individual figures gradually form the ground;

• “we need” to choose what to attend to - naming what is figural - helping the group land on a shared figure to work on. Sometimes there may be an individual’s figure that’s powerful enough that the group wants to focus on. Often the work here is, how do we get to a shared figure? Via exercising an activity, or question(s)?

• Notice: What reasonates on the Head, Heart Gut level; Content (what is said), delivery (how its being said), behavior (what is done), impact (result); Past and future; What is missing

Often groups have a leader who decides, short-circuiting the process. Hence in our practice, it is important to slow ourselves down to look at each step. This process is an inclusive way to attend to each individual’s wants and collective perspective of what we need.

Choosing what to attend to

In this process, we are trying to identify a unit of work that the group would like to work on - which is a shared figure, or the contracted work. However, it’s often not easy. As the intervener, one has to be aware of what is wanted, what is avoided, and what unit of work is possible within the available time.

This can applied to a coaching context as well. In a coaching session, the coachee may bring up a figure - but this may not be the actual figure that they need to work on. The coach needs to help the coachee explore the figures beyond the ‘head’ level, but also the heart and gut - which would be the figure that holds the most energy?

After an ‘energetic’ exploration of the figures, the coachee/group will need to choose one to attend to.

Note: Interestingly, it was mentioned that a shared figure tends to start with 2 people (it’s usually harder to establish shared figures in a group). It takes one to get interested in another, and takes two to create a heart connection - and whatever that is created between the two, see if the rest is aligned with it as a shared figure. This resonates with my own experience as most projects started from a conversation with a friend about an idea we’re both passionate about!

Acting on the choice

This is similar to the action phase in the cycle of experience, where action is taken to make contact. If action is being avoided, the intervener or any individual in the group would need to name what is being avoided to heighten the awareness of the group. Even naming that the group seems to be stuck in the ‘head’ space - which we were, and you’d feel a sense of stuckness when it happens, helps the group to be aware and perhaps to start connecting to their heart.

When action is not taken, it is likely that there may be some projection going on. Projection as resistance limits contact with the environment, e.g. i may be feeling confused, and i make it about you - that your presentation was confusing - where in fact it was clear and understood by many, that i may not have been paying attention. Hence i may not take action to get clear, as i’ve blamed it on the presenter and it’s not ‘my unit of work’. (reference: cycles of experience; Making a Difference with Your Presence)

Closing

We close the unit of work by giving it form - by naming, savouring, and acknowledging it by asking, “what has changed? What have we learnt?” And this should give us enough energy to move on to the next unit of work.

Change could be illustrated as such - when boundaries collide and awareness is raised – assimilation occurs when contact is made. When the change is not occuring, the next unit of work needs to attend to the nature and source of the repeated work.

Adding 2 more questions, which were helpful reminders to myself:

How do we become aware?

Pay attention to the cycle of experience. In our daily lives, we tend to fast track this, and we may not become aware of a unit of work that deserves our energy. SLOW DOWN!

How do we create safe(er) spaces?

Model it. Say from your heart.

I just had to put this here because, it’s so simple, yet sometimes it takes a hell lot of courage - yet i am sure it’s something we’ve all done before, and we just need to do it again, and again, and again. :)

Choosing courage is an individual choice but having a friend, or being in a community helps so, so much!

Further reading: Cycle of experience x unit of work

What can we uniquely do together, that we cannot do apart? Takeaways from Peter Hawkins.

This week I met Professor Peter Hawkins, and am very fortunate to participate in various sessions he had with the OD Practitioners, Managers/Directors, Associate Facilitators & Coaches, and Learning Designers in the Singapore Public Service. I am super excited to share with you my learnings as I write and process them for myself!

Peter Hawkins with our Associate Facilitators and Coaches!

Some anchoring questions:

• Future-back: What would the world look like when our grandchildren are in their 70s?

• Purpose: What are the challenges that require you to mobilise people?

• Partnership: What can we uniquely do together, that we cannot do apart?

• What’s necessary: What does the rest of the world need from our relationship?

• Teaming: What’s the new thinking we have created, that was in nobody’s head before we entered the room? (rather than exchanging pre-cooked thoughts)

“Never locate the problem in a person or part. Ask, what’s not yet in partnership?”

It’s easy to blame and individualize problems. It happens all the time in organizations, the media, or with our own families where we say, ‘the problem lies with them!’

‘We are still thinking that leadership resides in leaders.'

What we see in leadership development interventions is that it tends to focus on the individual, and here’s how it looks like: We recruit smart and capable individuals to the organisation, and when a problem happens, we send these individual leaders to a programme, focusing on increasing their capabilities. But when they return, problems still exist!

The challenge here lies in the connections between people, teams, organisations. Instead of sending these individuals to study past case studies and increase their individual capabilities at yesterday’s game - How can we bring the learning to where the problem is?

Here’s a process he ran. He got the people in a room to answer these:

• ‘What are the 7 biggest challenges in the public sector?”

• ‘Who would need to be in the room for these issues to change?’

What unites people is a purpose - what is needed to change, and what they have commonly identified as a challenge. If we don’t own the challenge together, we don’t own the solution.

Leadership resides in relationships between followers and leaders, guided by a common purpose. We tend to notice the parts, but not the connections. Also - It is the purpose which creates the team, not the other way round!

Bringing this closer to home - if you ever encounter a couple in conflict, don’t ask ‘what do you appreciate about each other?’ as you may get answers like, ‘i like it when she shuts up!’ Ask, ‘what does the relationship need?’ Coach the connection, not the parts!

What got you here won’t get you there: from thinking in parts to thinking about connections

A participant from the social sector shared about the issue of high attrition rates, where the outflow of talents is faster than the inflow. She asked, ‘How do we sustain our business, fast-track onboarding, and shorten the learning curve? How can we attract people who fit into our desired culture?’

Let us pause. What would you do if you were tasked to resolve this? Think about what needs to shift in you, in order to shift this connection you work with, to shift this issue.

We cannot solve the problem with the thinking that caused it. As coaches, facilitators - we don’t solve the problem, we open the perspective to how people think.

Peter asked, ‘Do we want to attract people who fit into our desired culture or people who will co-create the desired culture to be future-fit? How can we attract people who will co-create with us, in this world that is constantly changing?

When asked about how much research has the department done on why young people go into social work, the participant had responded that what sells is the mission - the social cause, but rarely do organisations engage and say to young people, we’ve got this great challenge, and we need your help!

That’s what I am energised by too! (Millenial voice agrees)

Another way to think about this is that the responsibility for the social welfare of people does not lie in just the few thousand staff working for the organisation. It actually lies in the 5 million citizens, doesn’t it! Do we not have the collective responsibility as citizens to take care of each other, even if it’s just our families? So Peter also challenged how could we better partner with the 5 million citizens in Singapore.

Leaders don’t have the solutions, nobody has it. They need to frame the collective challenges.

We tend to only enrol people when we roll out solutions. Say it’s a system change, or a mental health campaign - often people are tasked to carry out these functions. And they may not feel like they ‘own’ it.

No single person holds the solutions to the complex, multi-faceted challenges we face. So what happens if you’re the leader, and you don’t have all the answers? The responsibility of the leader is now to frame challenges clearly, given that they have more access to data from different levels of the system.

When challenges are well-framed, it creates a sense of urgency and mobilises people to work out these challenges together. If we don’t own the challenge together, we don’t own the solution.

Success is co-created. We can’t do it by ourselves.

Leaders need to acknowledge that they don’t have the solutions. It is a vulnerable ‘confession’. I reflect back on when I was leading a team, I didn’t know what to do to bring the team forward, and I REALLY didn’t like that helpless feeling of not knowing.

Sometimes the only thing we can do is to say, “I’ve no idea, but let us work it out together.”

When I hear this, I find this declaration empowering. It is powerful because it is a call for help, and an invitation to tap into our collective humanity - this is when partnership truly happens, both of us don’t know what the solution is, but both of us need each other. It strips away the position and titles and enables people to connect at a human level and bring in unique gifts and resources to the table.

From Learning design to Stakeholder-centric design

As programme designers, we often ask participants to fill in the feedback form at the end of the programme. What does this do? This ensures that the following cohort got what this cohort wanted! And it also encourages people to not be direct, to only give feedback at the end. Feedback should be given in the middle - where we work with participants to co-create value.

Peter suggests that one thing we can do is to contract upfront, “Don’t put anything on the feedback form you haven’t told me!”

It’s about dealing with what’s emerging in the room, and not the learning agenda. We can have the agenda planned beforehand, how can we ensure participants get the maximum learning?

Leadership Development is to awaken the learning hunger!

When we send people for programmes, are they hungry to learn? Or are they already stuffed and loaded? We often think that learning starts at the point of the programme, but it actually starts way before that. We need to create a learning hunger in participants.

So how can we do this? One way is to contract with participants prior to bring in the challenge in their organisation/community/own development that they are committed to resolving.

The quality of challenge defines the quality of learning.

Bringing the future-back. It’s all interconnected.

Peter is very adept at thinking on a long term horizon, and it makes me think about how my actions today will affect tomorrow’s generation, with a sense of urgency and care.

He got us to think, and emotionally step into 2040. What’s the stake I have in 2040? Think of someone young you care about, your children/grandchildren. How old are they now? 5? Have a picture of them with you. (this is the 13th Fairy empty chair technique)

What would the world look like when they are 28?

What would the world look like when they are in their 70s?

Though i don’t have any children (yet), I got a little emotional at this part, because what I saw was earthquakes, volcano eruptions and there was little sign of life. Like those dystopian sci-fi movie scenes, when Thanos snapped his fingers. I teared a little, my body felt heavy, and I felt sad, and a little helpless. I know that some of my friends don’t want to have children because they don’t want to bring them into a world that is fragmented and broken.

The intention of this activity is to get participants to connect to their hearts - what matters most to them - to know that they have a stake in this and their actions today will have a real impact on the next generation. Getting them to emotionally connect - What would you regret in two years’ time not having addressed today? What would you like to be able to tell your grandchildren about what you achieved?

We often think that these are just problems that are ‘out there’, but it is our human thinking that is the problem. e.g. climate crisis, as if the environment is the problem. The truth of the matter is that ecology is already in the room. We are part of many systems (family, community, culture, earth) and we are just not noticing it. We haven’t figured out how to live with nature in a win-win partnership.

Peter adds that when we want to reduce costs - an important question to ask would be, ‘Where do you want to move it (costs) to?’ We don’t reduce costs, we are just moving it to somewhere else (e.g. the environment, or the future).

What’s the new thinking we have created, that was in nobody’s head before we entered the room?

“Say that to my boss lah!” “We need to send them for training!” Peter calls this the BMW - Blame, Moan, Whine!

As I mentioned earlier, no single person holds the answer to the complex challenges we face today. But how impactful are these dialogues?

Here’s how Peter framed it: he got the tops and middles together, and their job is to shift each other’s thinking. And measure the number of mindset shifts we can make. Was reimagining this in the context of getting social sector orgs / profit organisations/ policy ministries together! Groups that need each other, and have no idea about how to resolve the challenge - to create the thinking space to work it out together.

He asked, “how impactful are our dialogues?” “How can we make it twice as impactful?” “How are we going to get 10x more value together?” That we have to work together to create a better strategy than what we each could come out with. It is about making them responsible for each other’s learning.

Ending Note

There’s just so much learning i’ve gained and i’ve did my best to summarise the most impactful ones here. I might do a second blog post so do keep a lookout! It may be on processes to facilitate social learning, 3 horizon thinking, tips for 360 debriefs, coaching tools.

Since you made it this far - i am curious, what was one key takeaway or shift that you got from reading this? More importantly, what is one thing you would do differently tomorrow?

I will be very happy to hear from you! If you have any questions or would like to chat more (or form learning circles!), please connect with me via telegram @ameliaaalim :) You can also reach out to me here.

For the like-minded nerds (if you read till here, you probably are one) - find Peter’s book recommendations here:

• Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take (Andrew S. Winston and Paul Polman)

• Leading by Nature – The Process of Becoming a Regenerative Leader (Giles Hutchins)

• Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (Merlin Sheldrake)

• Deep Time Walk (App)

• The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World (Roman Krznaric)

• Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril (Margaret Heffernan)

• Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership (of course we can’t leave out his book!)

• Systemic Coaching: Delivering Value Beyond the Individual (Eve Turner and Peter Hawkins)

PS. Coaching Hacks: Ran out of questions? Try these one-word Interventions.

Peter shared that coaches are used to asking questions as an intervention, so he suggested these one-word interventions:

Case 1: Coachee: “We need better communication!”

Coach: “We need better communication with?”

Case 2: Coachee: “We need more trust!”

Coach: “We need more trust to do…?”

Case 3: “The leader doesn’t listen to me!”

Coach: “The leader doesn’t listen to me about?”

Coach: “The leader doesn’t listen to me… yet!”

‘Yet’ - the one-word reframe: You haven’t found a way to get heard.

Transitions and compassion

Hello world :) really missed this space!

The past year has been a journey of transitions for me. Wasn’t easy letting go of things, i’d have to admit.

I’ve realised there is a difference between change and transition - change is the external event that happens, and transition is the psychological impact (eg. confusion, fear, sadness, inspiration, excitement) we feel amidst the change. This is from the William Bridges Transition Model - how apt that someone named bridges writes about transitions!

It’s a strange feeling, and it was the first time i felt so passionate, energised and a strong sense of belonging to myself and a bigger purpose, and also when i felt deeply lost, confused, uncertain about myself. I think i had been so busy doing many activities, i had forgotten about what I really needed, till i eventually burnt out.

I had been so hard on myself, thinking about what i could’ve/should’ve done (psst. once you catch yourself saying this, you’re in blame and shame, adding on to the pain you already have) - and this is why i added the word compassion to the title of this post. I think many of us are too hard on ourselves, and it’s so hard to detach from that part of myself - the self-doubt and fears I had. Friends often remind me the good in myself, but sometimes i still struggle to see it. My counsellor had asked me questions to get me to see those parts of me that are present as well. And also understanding that the intention of ‘self-doubt’ isn’t bad, it’s just that the outcomes don’t align with the intentions most of the time. ‘Self-doubt’ really wants to protect me from getting hurt, making mistakes, but it led me to a space of fear and questioning instead. Recognising how i am relating to this part of myself made me realise there’s alot to unlearn in terms of beliefs and patterns in how i relate to myself that don’t serve me.

I’ve recently been reading Kristin Neff’s work on compassion, as she says it comprises of 3 components - mindfulness, common humanity and self-kindness.

• mindfulness - being mindful of how we feel and think, acknowledging the sensations we experience.

• common humanity - understanding that we are all a work-in-progress, no one is perfect, and we are all experiencing some kind of pain

• self-kindness - related to self-acceptance, the difference between this and mindfulness is acknowledging that our needs and feelings are valid, providing that unconditional acceptance to ourselves, being our own support (instead of self-whipping)

I think the healing came when i could acknowledge the intentions, efforts i’ve put in. I think sometimes the struggle in leading something - and for someone like me who tends to be conflict avoidant, people pleaser - is that I feel uncomfortable if i don’t receive affirmation and acknowledgement -> makes me feel like my work isn’t worth it, and i can go down a negative spiral. As I write, my thoughts become clearer. I know this isn’t true, but you know how it always feels so real in the moment!

The truth is, i can only do my best and be honest with myself, trust myself that i have made the decisions that would be the best for me and my team, and live with the fact that many of our intentions may not translate to outcomes we want, and that’s okay. I am reminded of this quote - you are only entitled to its action, never to its fruits by Bhagavad Gita.

Let me bring in self-compassion again. This is really important. Self-compassion comes in where self-esteem fails us. When things go well, our self-esteem and self-worth goes up, confidence gets boosted - but when things don’t go well, our self-esteem takes a hit too, and it means that our “self-worth bounces up and down like a Ping-Pong ball depending on our latest success or failure. When we notice that our need for high self-esteem is causing problems for us, it’s time to practice a new way of relating to ourselves—with self-compassion!”

There are significant health benefits that come with relating to ourselves with self-compassion, and it’s really about building the intention for self-compassion. having compassion that sometimes, we may still end up blaming ourselves it’s ok that we may not be able to practice self-compassion too!

Yesterday, i attended a session in church which talked about compassion - it was in applied in an evangelistic context, but i think it really applies to life and spirituality as well. Compassion means to suffer with, to be moved deeply by something. It resides in our heart space, where we feel the pain of others and care deeply for them, and this means understanding their triggers does not reflect their character and who they are, but the pain which this comes from their past experiences and possible trauma. So instead of reducing people to their faults, or stereotypes, we hold space for the pain, the other parts of them, and striving to see them as a whole human being. I think if we are able to hold that very delicate space for ourselves and others, true change can happen.

In our it applies to my work - when leaders are able to hold space for pain, tears, tensions, the uncertainty of not knowing, yet having faith and trust that the team will figure this out together, it is extremely powerful and endearing. I think it’s really tough because i found myself continuously being challenged to think that i need to have the vision, i need to know where we are headed all the time when in fact, i don’t know. And my team might be okay with not knowing too. But it’s just so difficult to hold that space because it’s so uncomfortable and i feel overwhelmed by fear at times. I think this is the challenge of leadership of our time.

Sometimes i forget that it is a privilege to lead as it’s one of the ultimate and greatest forms of service. I am writing here so i don’t forget that and then grumble about it. haha.

Fresh air

Waking up to the cool Sunday morning breeze as I type this :)

It’s been ages since I last posted! The past months have been a mixed of stress and overwhelm and also rest, renewal, letting go. It almost feels like i’m shedding my old skin, and becoming anew. In the way i view myself and my relationships.

I’m learning to listen to my body. And hold space for the paradoxes in this world.

There is a renewed consciousness and intentionality that is arising in me. It tells me that I’m on the right track. But this journey won’t be an easy one.

We shall see. Life is a journey afterall.

In other news, I’ve recently started my new job in Leadership and Organisation Development work. It’s a vision I had for myself about 2 years ago, and I didn’t expect myself to realise this! With the help and support of many friends and unexpected blessings. Am excited to be part of this work.

I’ve had more time by myself (thanks to covid) - slowing down and doing less had been uncomfortable. I liked to be busy. I liked to be excited by ideas, and try them out. It’s just like, never try never know right? I felt so much freedom when I graduated from the school system to explore. I’ve tried working in startups, starting a ground up, facilitating workshops…doing what energises me. At that point of my life, it felt like this was what was needed - freedom, autonomy, trying new things, connecting with others - which I got alot of energy from.

So when covid struck, I hated it at the start. I was fidgety, I felt restricted, and disconnected. There was alot of resistance within, I felt trapped. And I had to face these. The current me realises that immersing myself into work and friendships, though i did learn alot, could be a form of distraction to what really matters to me too. Covid shine light to many cracks in our system, it’s inequalities, and also cracks on our families, and ourselves. It’s a pandemic, yet it could be a blessing as there is a spike in awareness of problems and disconnectedness in our society.

That’s extremely powerful if we harness this awareness we have now and make intentional choices. 3 years ago when OpenJio started, there wasn’t as much conversations about social issues and marginalised members of our society. The landscape felt vastly different compared to now, where youths are increasingly vocal, and citizens come together to help one another. The crisis is also an opportunity for us to give.

For me, i’ve realised the important of quiet time and rest (or what Loehr may call, strategic disengagement. We need to fully disengage to fully engage. We are either fully engaged, or disengaged.) If I were honest, sometimes volunteering for external causes helps to distract me from tensions at home. But i’ve slowly learned how to enjoy it, and I do see some silver linings like having more conversations with my dad who cooks everyday for us.

Yesterday, I spent about an hour looking out of my window. There is a meditation practice I have learnt - when we are quiet, our thoughts are loud. Being quiet allows me to watch me thoughts, so that I can be more aware of my internal dialogue. It’s internal listening (this is one level of listening in coaching, listening to your own thoughts and the other person’s words and body). Try it, you might be surprised how loud your thoughts are, and how they never stop!

I never really sat down like this in the past years, only till recently. It helps me to connect to what really matters to me, it could be people, principles or just feeling my presence in this world. With a renewed pair of eyes, things can become a wonder. Instead of looking to projects or people which could energise me, it’s a deeper sense of knowing, confidence that I have this within.

I’m still on this journey of belonging, becoming myself, like a vessel which serves our earth’s purpose. Some of my friends whom are christians share that it’s a blessing for “god to work through them” and I think it feels like that too. With a heart to love and serve, our spiritual energy is renewed.

It is beautiful and nice way to think, isn’t it. The act of surrendering. To let go, do less, have less - and less is more. (how else can we make space?) Do less, is about the small actions that matter.

thanks for reading!

Games that reflect reality

Today I was at Bold at work, and as part of one of their projects in partnership with the MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation to create movements of health, we played this game (seen in pic below). The objective of the game was to get as many points, the winner is the person who first obtains 9 points.

It’s interesting to note that as much as this game seems like a ‘level playing field’ for people, where we get to roll our dice (of life) each turn and build bridges, there’s also hidden power play behind the scenes. One of my friends, who has some experience in game design knew how he could strategically win in the game by locating a good starting point. As much as we think luck plays a role in us succeeding in life, having a good starting point (placing your initial block near 6s and 8s where probability of these numbers being thrown are higher) enables ease of access to resources to win the game. Just like how families with stronger networks naturally would have access to a greater pool of jobs, experiences and support.

Another player who was near the outskirts didn’t manage to obtain much resources as the rounds progressed and he was pretty much ‘stuck’. Only when the facilitator announced that it was the final round, a fellow player felt like he may be feeling left out, and decide to build a bridge towards him - what was interesting was how this mentality parallels to people who are near the end of life: they tend to only donate vast amount of their assets when they are about to die. Because it doesn’t matter how much we have anymore, it’s all going to end anyway. Perhaps it only occurs to us at our deathbed that if we could make a difference with what we have - that’s the choice we’d ultimately make. But we tend to not make such choices when we think we still have time left.

For myself, though I didn’t have a good starting point, I could be considered lucky as I had items to trade, and there were players who were willing to trade resources with me, and that gave me a sense of security. But what I thought was luck, when viewed under the lens of the system - it was possible as I had awareness of what others around me had what I needed, and i had something i could offer to trade with them with. Of course, I also trusted that they would reciprocate.

But for people who are just struggling to survive with their own means, they may not even have time to pay attention to what resources are out there, and they may feel like they don’t have anything to offer to trade. Our facilitator, Yoek, prompted if we felt like we were in this position before. The feeling of loneliness and disconnection was something we could connect with.

Largely the gameplay was towards amassing individual wealth. It did occur to us that we could perhaps win together, but that would be kind of boring. As a collective we think we did pretty well and are satisfied (we all rated satisfaction at 7/10). Though we all thought that if we could reach out to the player whom was separated/’marginalised’ earlier, it would have been more satisfactory.

The game was designed in a way that all players could have an awareness of what’s happening at a system level (how each player is doing, how many points each player has). But I guess what happens usually is that we don’t know what’s happening in the systemic level, and we may not know how to strategically play the cards we are dealt with (access to knowledge/experience) to ‘win’ this game called life.

The hypothesis would be that - if more people knew about social issues and the marginalised, would they care more? If our media had pulled more attention to where it rightfully needs, would our society be better off? Yet, who decides where the attention goes, and who decides the rules of the game in the first place?

It’s inevitable to talk about power. How co-creation tends to be conflated with ‘consulting’ or ‘consensus’ where the government decides? True co-creation implies that stakeholders have similar levels of power, but this is often not the case. How then can we equalise power? The notion of empowerment was brought up again. To give another person power, presupposes that one is still more powerful than another. How is that empowerment when power still resides in the supposed ‘giver’?

What’s the solution? I don’t know. But i think that a crucial piece may be about creating access to a range of resources, building bridges to connect people, so that we can better empathize with each other and realise that winning together is much more satisfying that winning alone.

---

post reflections: I realised in my past 2 years of working, there are moments (or should i say, months) where i found myself drifting away from openjio and social issues, It’s just so easy to get caught up in work if i’m not intentional, and especially so if i’m not plugged in to a community.

I think one main reason I can still do this community/volunteering work is because of the openjio team, and the community i’m plugged into, friends who i can connect with in the social space. But i realised most of my colleagues aren’t in such communities. Not that it’s a bad thing. But yea, my organisation doesn’t have a strong culture or structure that facilitates volunteerism. Like most organisations, everyone is just focused on doing their own work. Nothing wrong with that either.

I think what helped me is that I started openjio before I joined the workplace (about a few months after my graduation). Reminds me that having a ‘good’ starting point is really important, it could really have a pivotal influence in the way we live our lives. Honestly, i am not too sure where i’d be without openjio because it occupies a significant part of my life and identity right now, and has opened up opportunities for me too, such as meeting with people i would have otherwise not met. (including this!)

Perhaps the hypothesis here would be that school volunteering experiences are crucial in affecting our volunteering experiences as we adult. Volunteering rates drop dramatically as one reaches the working adult stage. I wonder what was the starting point that led us to this journey in the first place…

A friend shared with me that sustainable volunteering requires one to see, empathise, and hold space for pain and the feeling of helplessness. Perhaps it’s in accepting this helplessness, sitting in what’s uncomfortable - and knowing that if I were in the same position, I would have made the same choices - that allows us to connect with each other (not individualise blame) and move forward together. That we see this pain and continue to connect with it, and use it as a driving force for good. Pain in that sense, could be the greatest motivating factor?

Work-life balance? Bullshit.

You know how those job-ads say they promote work-life balance? What’s with the dichotomous representation putting life and work against each other. Are you not living when you’re working?

If there’s an advice i would give to my younger self, it would be that - work never ends. Train yourself to not respond to work all the time. Try meditation, yoga, have hobbies outside of work.

Since my new job posting this year, and that I’m still running openjio, and a new startup on the side - my schedule has been so packed, and I could sense early signs of my body being unable to take the stress.

Today’s like the first day where I’ve half a day to myself. I just spent about 2 hours watching some kdrama. My skin’s been flaring (I’ve been suffering from topical steroid withdrawal - TSW) perhaps due to stress, my skin feels inflamed right now. It has been peeling. I shiver as my red skin burns on my arms and legs :(

Read more about my TSW experience here: eczemachampion.wordpress.com

The thing is. Even if I’m not running my 2 side gigs, does that mean my health will be better? I doubt so.

My mind may still be consumed with whatever existing work I have, if i am not careful. Having 2 side gigs forces me to prioritise and set boundaries I would otherwise not have. I have said ‘no’ to many people this month (which i struggled alot with, and still do)…and learnt that it’s not so much about rejecting others. It’s about protecting myself and my energy that’s needed for the work I want to do.

It’s really not about work-life balance. Rest isn’t something to do when you finally get to go on leave after months of hard work.

Rest (and release) is something we need everyday to replenish our energy.

Yea, like duh, but knowing it and doing it are two different things.

The most basic rest I aim for is getting sufficient sleep. I can sense that my performance drops by about 30% if I don’t get sufficient sleep (7hrs); and even more if I accumulate my sleep debt. It means sleeping on time too (11pm).

I had set a goal to sleep early and sleep more in one of the leadership programmes i’ve been to. Sounds easy but I remember missing the mark because, I was just too preoccupied with my work.

I pay the price. I crash on saturdays, spend $5 daily on coffee, and sometimes I feel like a zombie at work.

Any leadership books you read will tell you to first get the foundational stuff right - sleep, exercise, diet. Lacking in any of these, one may experience somatic (body) debt which creates a scarcity mindset - meaning that we can’t function at our best. You know what I mean. That day where you get triggered easily, or forget your keys, or struggle to stay awake, or …gastric, kidney stones, shoulder pain?

So, here’s 2021 and back to basics.

Work-life balance? Bullshit.

Energy management is key. Managing our energy is something within our control. To do great work, we first need to take care of ourselves.

Reflections on 2020

2021 is here. What I’ve realised is that, things stay the same if I don’t do anything about it. What’s different about this Amelia and the Amelia before, at the start of 2020?

She has grown stronger. Braver. Bigger challenges await her. She’s proud of her achievements this year, and these haven’t come easy. Even something as small as acknowledging people around her, it’s something she has made it a point to do. For what she could achieve will not be possible without them.

At a certain point, helming OpenJio and having tight work schedules, along with family commitments, conflicts in a friendship felt like it crushed her. She held on to anger, and its toxicity was poison. It was painful.

She remembers that one of her darkest periods which made her feel like quitting, where life doesn’t seem like it has any meaning. When she felt like she wasn’t good enough to continue on. She couldn’t see her own value.

It’s a very horrible feeling but she also came to see that she wasn’t the only one. She realised that other people thought that way of themselves too. She could see so much in them, but why couldn’t they see it in themselves?

Funny how we see potential in others, but was it a choice to not see it in ourselves?

To be honest, it can be really hard to see sometimes. Perhaps the willingness to see is more important than seeing itself.

Myths of growing up

She always thought that when she grew up - what growing up would look like - was that these darkest thoughts wouldn’t get to her so much anymore. She thought that graduation and growing up would mean that she’d be more powerful, more stable, less emotional. She realized how shallow that understanding was.

The truth is, the darkness will come. As a matter of fact, as we grow older, we experience more losses and dark moments. She is starting to understand that in spite of the struggles and pain, how she chooses to respond matters the most.

She is a little afraid of what’s to come in 2021. Because she’s just taken on a new commitment to start a social business with a group of friends, and she also has a new posting at work. She wonders how she can juggle all these, her passion project, her family, and to take care of herself. Which is the most important. She knows she can’t give when her vessel is empty. That’s also why she strives to give as much as when her vessel is filled. She feels afraid, but is excited at the possibilities - she can’t even imagine! She is excited at the opportunities to connect deeply with more people, have more heart to heart conversations with friends, students, colleagues. She believes it’s something the world needs more of.

A deeper realisation she had this year, was that even though the most persuasive voice in her tells her, she can’t do this, she made bad decisions, she’s not good enough - these are not true. She wants to tell people that too. It’s only human to experience such thoughts, but our thoughts are not us and we can shape them.

She knows she’s not the only one experiencing such thoughts, for she’s met mothers, people in their forties or fifties, who she has had the privilege to be in their vulnerable presence, sharing with her their struggles as a human. “I’m not a good enough as a mother”. We all have something we are struggling to let go of.

Yet the struggle is what makes us human, for who doesn’t have any?

Staying with what’s uncomfortable. Something her brain can’t comprehend or rationalise. She has learned that relying on her instincts and gut sometimes serves her better, and she doesn’t need to justify her decisions to anyone. Sometimes the best decisions are simply the best because it feels right.

Running away ; Living

What does living mean? She is slowly starting to get a glimpse of this. Some quotes say we’re given the pain that we could carry.

She used to be and is still someone who runs away when things get heavy and scary. But she is inching towards it more. To giving that pain a voice. And she understands that sharing her truest emotions, though she may not like it, is important to people she cares for and for people who care for her. She is starting to listen to her emotions more because she now knows that her emotions are not her, but are signals to something that needs attention. A part of her is hurting. A part of her needs space. A part of her thinks some things aren’t right. A part of her wishes certain moments could be timeless.

She believes that it’s more important to connect with pain than to avoid it. The avoidance of pain would be more painful. Ironically, she knows that she will still avoid certain pains in her life because maybe she’s not ready to face them. And that’s okay.

Looking backwards to move forward

She is still learning to celebrate herself and her accomplishments. She is very happy and proud to share with you that she:

Personal development

• Facilitated and conducted a series of 4 workshops with Louis, Amos, Wee Leong, Afzal on Body, Emotions, Language, to help youths/our team of volunteers develop a deeper understanding of themselves

• Also facilitated a 12-week Enneagram course with Qing Ping/Wee Leong/Susan

• Held several Zoom Huddles/Circle 8 sessions (unstructured small-group conversations on life topics, eg. purpose, ambiguity) in the presence of friends/acquaintances which made Circuit breaker period more fun & bearable

• Designed this feedback form as a gift to myself and asked a few of my colleagues to fill in…

• Notes: somehow am able to find and generate lots of energy doing these things though it stresses me

Health & Fitness

• Exercised regularly for the past 3 months, thanks to accountability buddy Amos!

• On the same note, held weekly yoga sessions with my colleagues, thanks to Royston/Naomi for their support & enthusiasm ^^

• My skin is much better! Read about my struggles with Eczema/Topical Steroid Withdrawal here.

• Notes: my colleague asked if I have an hourglass figure HAHA achievement unlocked!

Finance

• Started investing, thanks to my friend/financial advisor Sherman who was really patient!

• Started a financial audit kinda thing with my fam, which I dread but it’s important!

Family

• Brought parents to the SEA aquarium! :) My dad loves fishes.

• More conversations with dad on life

• Baking with sister, Nature walk with sis!

Random

• Asking a Question live at this event in presence of Senior Management HAHA which I would never have done if Royston didn’t poke/dare me

• Consistently tidying up my study table. It literally reflects my state of mind.

• Initiated a Christmas Celebration in my department with some colleagues/friends :)

It’s pretty fun to write this. Try it~

She knows she couldn’t have done it alone. Friends make the journey a little less heavy, a little more fun, and much more fulfilling.

When she scrolls her Instagram or Linkedin feed, she sometimes finds herself still comparing to her peers…which just sucks energy. So why not spend that energy write a list for herself instead!

Anyway, to everyone reading this - best wishes to you and happy new year! I haven’t been posting very often but would like it make it a point to do it more regularly this year haha. I paid for this domain afteralll lol. Stay tuned!

To the students: Finding your ‘why’ and making sense of your education

Last evening, a few friends and I were invited to a career panel to share about our work experiences with our sociology juniors. It triggered some deeper reflections in me so i thought i’d pen it down here to share it with you too!

Thankful for this opportunity to share!

Finding your ‘why’

Finding could suggest a relatively passive way of searching. It assumes your ‘why’ is out there and you just need to find it. You may find it through trying and testing different things, but…

…Sometimes your ‘why’ can’t be found.

Why find when you can create it? This is what i want highlight - your ‘why’ can be created by you.

It’d be amazing if we wake up every single morning excited and energised to go to work, but that’s not the reality. There will be days you sleep and wake up feeling like you’re in a slump. And you will start questioning why you’re doing this, or start doubting yourself, and if what you’re doing is really worth it.

In my most stressful moments, I’ve broken down and ever thought of dropping openjio, my passion project which i’ve been running for 2 years. Fortunately i didn’t. But indeed there were moments where I l felt like I was incapable and not worthy of leading the team - and this thought felt so real and true. There are 3 important learnings which I would like to share.

Firstly, emotions are information. Your thoughts and emotions do not define you. Emotions often influence our decisions and thoughts more often than we think. So it’s worthwhile to sit on these emotions, experience them and ask yourself - What is causing frustration? What is not being addressed? What do I need right now? What do I really want? Emotions are signals, that are sending messages to you about what’s important to you right now. We prioritise ‘head’ intelligence here in our education system - but it’s worthwhile diving into ‘heart’ intelligence too. I recommend ‘Permission to Feel’ by Marc Brackett and ‘The Language of Emotions’ by Karla McLaren if you want to read more about emotions!

Secondly, know that if you’re stressed about something, it is also likely that you deeply care about it, if not it wouldn’t affect you so much. You may feel pressured to do more, or like you are not good enough. But I think it’s important to recognise and acknowledge our care amidst the pain we may be feeling. For what we know, it is where we find the strength that keeps us going.

I am very thankful for the friends that I could lean on during this period, feeling vulnerable and also accepted by them. In times like this, it feels like a stormy ocean where the shores are out of sight. Sometimes it’s about leaning to what you already have, yourself, your friends - and swim through the uncertainty and doubt together.

Thirdly, if you are deeply struggling about finding your why - it is worthwhile examining your own expectations of how that ‘why’ looks like. Sometimes it is about letting go of these expectations and flowing with what you already have. And we do possess much inner intelligence! You know yourself best. In letting go, you may find your ‘why’.

Finding your ‘why’ is a process. It’s not an end goal, it’s a practice. It also means doing and hard work. It’s not a magic pill where you pop in and go whooooyaaa, i got my ‘why’. For me, I like to reflect upon my experiences daily and journal, and that’s how I connect the dots and make meaning for myself too.

Which brings me to my next sharing -

Making sense of your education

In Singapore where we have linear, convergent type of education systems, it can feel stifling where other forms and modalities of learning are not appreciated - such as the arts, or body work and stories from the community and marginalised. You may not be able to study a subject that truly inspires you. Realise that you chose the wrong major too late. Even when you get your degree, you realised it doesn’t guarantee you a job. What’s next?

Here’s how I made sense of my education. I studied Sociology in NUS, and spent a bulk of my time in university doing readings, being involved in various school activities and also went on an exchange. When exams were nearer and things got tough, one of the things that kept me going was that this hard work could eventually pay off if I land in a good job.

When I graduated, there was a creeping anxiety. How was I going to stay relevant when the (education) system that used to support me was gone? I’m out alone in the wilderness. The workplace.

Strangely, I realised that I liked being out in the wilderness. And working. More so than studying.

It felt like I could own this playing field - there were no fixed structures that peg me to criteria that defined me by a number. No fixed classes i had to attend anymore. The world became my classroom.

Strangely, it’s when I felt like I was truly learning. Feeling inspired and connected to the people around me, making new friends with people I met during events. Getting our hands dirty and doing things we have never done before from scratch.

‘Education is something done to you, but learning is something you do for yourself.’

Putting learning over education means building active, connected systems that teach people how to learn, rather than focusing on specific bodies of knowledge.

This made me question the education system we had. Don’t get me wrong - i think my sociology education has equipped me with critical thinking skills as well as soft skills to listen to different perspectives and stories, and there isn’t necessary an objective reality.

But what energised me most were these 2 things: Having a space to apply this knowledge I gained and feeling like ‘hey, I did make a difference.’ Secondly, having a group of people who I could share my deep dark thoughts and emotions, who could hold space and not judge me for it - and eventually helped me to realise that my dark thoughts are not me. It’s about leaning in and learning about the limiting beliefs i held myself with. And choosing to do something differently.

So as I looked for a job, I was also thinking about how can I create such systems for myself, so that I could learn and grow continuously with a group of people. Knowledge is meant to be shared. Ideas are meant to be shared, so things can happen. I can’t be on this journey alone.

This is also one of the initial inspirations which led to OpenJio - it’s not just a telegram channel for social issues. It’s a nurturing space, for people to be themselves and grow their passions; a sandbox for people to test and prototype ideas; it’s a learning community who care about social issues in Singapore. And we don’t stop caring just because it gets hard to care. Most importantly, we have each other!

When we choose to put ourselves out there despite our fears, we grow, learn and challenge ourselves. Courage doesn’t have to look like a lion’s roar - it can look like speaking up for yourself, or saying ‘no’, giving yourself some rest (ironically uncomfortable because we often feel like we need to be doing something).

In short, I feel that our education system is lopsidedly focused on equipping ourselves with the ‘head’ knowledge, where ‘heart’ and ‘gut’ intelligence is deeply lacking. See below on the three intelligence centres with reference to Enneagram. You can read more and also reflect upon what might be your own dominant intelligence centre - that which comes most naturally to you.

Credits to The Thought Collective

Credits to The Thought Collective

Being a ‘gut’ type - i realised i enjoy such as yoga and meditation which helps me to connect with my body. I also go to events such as the embodiment conference to learn how to tune in to the sensations I am feeling within myself. Sensations are early signals the body sends to us.

When we first experience an emotion, we often experience it first as a sensation before our brain registers it and labels it as a certain emotion.

Hence if we can practice to notice and pick up such signals, there’s alot we can learn about ourselves too, in the way we react and show up.

In times like covid - the only way out might be looking in. The answer lies within you, and I hope this article helps to shed some light on possible tools that could help you to look inwards, and start your whole inner learning journey!

Would love to hear your thoughts and how this piece landed for you :) You can reach out to me here!

42 questions for the answer to life, the universe and everything

Edit: I actually did this on 15 June 2020- and today’s my birthday, i’ve just been reading it and realised that some of what i’ve written have actually manifested in my life. This is one of my most personal blogposts which is why i hesitated to share, but i think it could be a great gift to you who is reading it too :)

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” 

– Eugene Ionesco

My friend introduced me to this reflective exercise: https://www.notion.so/42-questions-for-the-answer-to-life-the-universe-and-everything-b9e4216f2a8347e6b4c53e0eb65df80d and I thought it’d be helpful in focusing on what’s most important in this 8-day leave from work.

Here I go! (cue mandopop on my spotify playlist)

PS. This will probably be my longest blogpost yet, i think i spent close to 10 hours on this.

Quick Pulse Check

1. What areas in your life are currently working well for you — what do you find fulfilling, meaningful, enjoyable, and valuable?

• OpenJio is the first thing that comes to mind. A simple idea of a telegram channel for events related to different social causes has blossomed into a wonderful community of loving people, which really warms my heart!

• Starting this blog is another - it’s a space for me to hear my own voice, for I know I kind of soft on ears. (I think I’m an enneagram type 9, haha)

• Having friends who regular check in on me, and knowing that I can be candidly honest and myself with you guys :)

2. What current areas in your life aren’t working out too well for you — what stresses you out, makes you anxious or drains your energy?

I have answered this in my blogpost previously. You can read more here.

Family - I get triggered quite easily here. Am also wanting to support my sister in her journey of recovery, but it’s really draining on me sometimes.

Work - I am still trying to align my interests, strengths and values in this area where I can bring the most value. To play the cards i’m dealt with to the best I can.

I notice certain struggles surface perhaps due to the conflict in my identity as a community builder and an administrator. Two very different models…you can say one is anti-institution (communities often have decentralised sources of power) and the other supports institutions (where there is often a central authority). With different power bases comes different ways of working.

3. After you die, how would you like to be remembered by others?

Amelia is a giving, joyful, kind and strong woman.

4. If you were to die today, would other people remember you in the way you want to be remembered?

No... perhaps giving/kind, yes?

I interpret strong as being “strong-willed, persevering, resilient and true to self.” These are all very active terms, and I find myself often struggling to be true to myself, and other people’s needs and wishes.

5. What skills, talents or abilities do you have that you are naturally good at, and are passionate about using?

I think I am good at connecting with people and connecting people. You know how magic sparks when you connect (with) likeminded people? Never know what amazing things they can create for this world.

I usually listen the perspectives of the team before making a decision, and strive to co-create solutions. I thrive in an environment where I can get to meet new people and have meaningful conversations with them, to develop them to reach a higher potential.

I think I’m also good at bringing people together, and starting new projects together with people, related to personal growth and having purposeful conversations.

6. What skills, talents or abilities do you have that you are NOT excited about using? You can be good at something you absolutely hate.

I’m really good at taking meeting minutes. But i don’t quite enjoy it if I had to do it consistently.

Same with design. I think I am pretty decent haha, but I don’t like to do designing all the time.

7. What good causes, subjects, projects or charities do you firmly believe in (or connect with)?

• Causes: Income Inequality and Youth development

• Subjects: People Development, Organisational Development, Spirituality, Use of Self

• Projects/Organisations/Charities: OpenJio, Beyond Social Services, Pivotal Youth, The Thought Collective, The Grameen Bank, The Presencing Institute

8. What tasks, jobs or specific activities have you done in the past that you dislike and never want to do again?

• Usually the most horrible experience was not about the task, but the feeling of loneliness when working on tasks alone; or feeling of meaninglessness of the task itself

• One of my toughest projects was to rebuild a wordpress site with Elementor (largely alone) a few years back. I was new and clueless, and it didn’t help when the organisation direction wasn’t clear…it did made me learn how to reach out to ask for help, where I got to meet a few people in web development. But i didn’t finish the project, priorities shifted haha.

9. In an average week, how many hours do you spend doing tasks, jobs or activities that you dislike, or that waste your time? A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest?

Activities that waste my time: sleeping late because i am mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, not saying ‘no’ to certain requests

Activities I dislike: taking minutes, keeping track of progress over a long term… but it’s part of my work and i am accepting it. (Edit: I’ve slowly learnt the importance of celebrating progress! It is crucial to keep things going, to support commitment. We can’t play the long game if we’re all burnt out in the process.)

10. How does living a less-than-passionate life affect you mentally, emotionally & relationally? The people who succeed are irrationally passionate about something.

It would be mentally dull, boring, emotionally draining, and relationally disconnecting.

Which is why I am so thankful for my friends and OpenJio where we have full autonomy over the direction and execution of our projects! And how we embrace each other’s ideas, support, share resources and challenge one another so we all grow and thrive together.

Values

11. What are your most important values? What values give your life the greatest meaning? E.g. honesty, progress, faith, generosity, authenticity, connection, peace, security, friendship, peace of mind, servitude, personal growth, dedication to a social cause.

Learning about myself and the world is important for me to feel connected to a cause bigger than myself. I do this through building or joining communities who support me, and who I can support me in my growth journey. For communities to thrive, operating from abundance is key. What’s life without fun and new experiences that broaden our horizons?

12. How does the way you live your life reflect your most important values? How do you reflect these values throughout your work life, career, educational pursuits and personal life?

Learning is especially important to me - I chose to do an internship in a social startup after graduation because that’s where I can get my hands dirty and meet many passionate, inspiring people who chose to take the risk of starting their own company - people who took action for what they stood for.

Support is key in helping people thrive. How often do we ask, “what support do you need?” before giving help or advice? This simple question empowers people to think for themselves, and communicate their needs so that people know how to best support them. One of the questions I like to ask to close off reflective sessions that I host.

I am part of different communities in the social and people/organisation development space because it really energises me. In openjio, that’s how we give back by sharing these events and resources, organising community huddles, coordinating requests and offers so we can best tap on to assets of the community.

Being fun is about being in the moment. Sometimes i just laugh off the mistakes I made, and remember to be kind to myself.

13. What areas in your life might your decisions contradict your most prominent core values?

Humans are walking contradictions. Life is full of paradoxes.

Such contradictions happen more in my family and work spaces, usually because of missing/unsaid requests (i have yet to make..)

14. Which of your most prominent core values are you not giving enough time or attention to?

Hmm. Fun. Hahahaha.

I think fun has got to do with being non-judgmental, or letting go of the fear of looking stupid - so you can immerse yourself fully in the moment to experience life.

Next is learning - i think i can be more structured in the way i learn. I tend to be scattered and distracted by things that pique my interest at the moment. This blog is one way for me to keep me on track on my more important goals and thoughts, so that i can focus and deepen my interests and expertise in people and organisational development.

15. What lies do you tell other people about what’s important to you and what you are passionate about? (in what ways do your actions not align up with your words?) Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.

Wa, this is a tough one.

People talk about fear of failure. But i think it’s the fear of success perhaps, I still have fears in my head of jumping into a training, facilitation, people and organisation development as a career. I define success as living in high congruence with your values and offering your greatest gifts and talents to the world. I say I want to jump in to that, but do i really? What’s stopping me?

I want to improve my relationship with my family, and yet I don’t actively do it as I struggle with the resistance (and i’m great at distracting myself with external projects). I tell myself it’s okay to take things slow. But sometimes, tooooo slow.

Beliefs & Disbeliefs

16. What is preventing you from fully committing to pursuing your main passions in life?

Wow, this is what I just asked myself in the previous question. What’s stopping me: 1) material needs: i need income to support myself, since my family cannot support me; 2) growth: I think that I can still find or create areas of growth in my current job which will benefit my future goals in OD; 3) beliefs: i am not experienced enough to do OD; i am not good enough

17. What beliefs do you have about your ability/inability to succeed in pursuing your main passions in life?

I do believe if i put in the hard work and focus, i will be able to succeed. Though there may be some occasional “i am not good enoughs”, but i have confidence that I will be able to find my place :)

18. What beliefs or fears have held you back from pursuing your main passions until now?

Sometimes i am unsure if that’s the destination i want to end up in, and the consequence is that i am less focused and easily distracted. Because i don’t want to fully commit in it for fear if things don’t work out.

Funnily enough, i think that’s the exact thing holding me back.

19. What evidence do you have that those fears or beliefs are accurate? Can you find evidence to prove the opposite is equally true?

“I am not good enough” is just a voice, a thought in my head. It is not true. It can just sound really loud sometimes so it makes people believe in it.

We are not our thoughts, and this is a timely question - are my thoughts controlling me or am i controlling my thoughts? “Do you have your mind, or does your mind have you?”

If I look (hard enough), I would be able to find evidence that I matter in this world. And I am good enough, I had this conversation with a pretty advanced facilitator, she noticed that I tend to attribute (openjio’s) success thus far to external circumstances, because of my team, because of people who are already interested in these issues, because of everything else other than myself.

It’s true that we can succeed because we did it together guys, (just that sometimes i forget i made it happen too hahaha lol.)

She asked me, why do you think some social movements/initiatives are more successful than others? Look at the many initiatives out there involving migrant workers — why do some stand out/gain more traction than others? She stated a few examples, like Cai Yinzhou….i stun for a moment. I was thinking of 1001 things, the mechanics.

Then she said, it’s because of the people who drive them.

Because of who they are, their being.

Then I couldn’t stop tearing ><

Obstacles, Fears & Stakes

20. How much risk and uncertainty are you willing to accept around seeking and finding your passion? When you tell yourself you "can't do something," be sure you are not confusing it with you "won't do something". There is no shame in realising and admitting you don't want something bad enough for you to go get it. At least now you can acknowledge, accept the truth and move on to something you really want.

The risks I am willing to take should fall within these boundaries:

• That I would still be able to generate sustainable income stream(s) to support myself, and ideally my sister’s medical expenses. Having no/low income right now is not an option - i experienced interning at a startup after graduation, financial stresses are real, and my family was really worried about it too.

• I am very open to working overseas and experiencing different cultures - only if my sister is doing well, and my parents are fine.

• I am willing to work very hard, to burn my spare time i have after work and during weekends on what I stand for. I’m already doing it much so with my time at openjio.

21. What comes first before finding your main passion in life? E.g. your income, job, lifestyle, home, fear of what others will think

I think sometimes it need not be a “either or” situation, as life is full of greys. But if it were black and white…

• Financial stability - i am willing to sacrifice my lifestyle, like eat/dabao from home, working around it with my friends to dine at less expensive places - this is easier with circuit breaker measures

• Health of my family should be stable too, that everyone can take care of themselves, and i would just need to occasionally check-in

22. What is the primary concern you have about fully committing to pursuing your main passion in life?

Sometimes i think i may paint idealistic expectations about what I can get out of pursuing this passion in life…anyway, primary concern is still financials. Money can’t solve all your problems, but it can at least solve 90% of it so you can focus on the 10%.

23. Would the potential benefits outweigh the importance of this primary concern you have?

Well, the goal would be to be able to do what I would do anyway and earn a sustainable source of income from it. Such as coaching, people development, facilitating.

24. What actions could you take to reduce or manage this concern?

Start small, notice how i show up, say ‘yes’ opportunities that align to my goals. Be creative about my income streams.

25. Other than yourself, who else is holding you back from pursuing your passion in life and how are they holding you back? If you don’t love yourself who will? How can you address this person/these people to either gain their support or get them out of your way?

Yea, will need to assure my family that I can take care of myself, since I see them everyday. Unless i work overseas baha. They were not very supportive of my first internship stint, and kept asking me to leave the internship job because they see no future in it. Sigh. It felt like one of the lowest moments in my life because I also struggled to support myself financially and i didn’t know where this could all be heading, except that I knew that wanted to experience working in a social startup and solving real pressing issues, where my presence would make a bigger difference.

So I can foresee all that happening again. The question i ask myself here is, ‘How can i show up differently’, ‘Who do i need to be?’ So that my parents can be assured.

26. What would you do with your life if you no longer cared about what other people think about you? The more you care about what others think, the more they own you. It's not other people's job to like you. That's YOUR job.

In my wildest dreams, I dream of helping people in low-income communities in Singapore and beyond. To grow financially, tap on their inner resources, and connect them to people/resources who can support them to thrive in their journey on earth. I would like to stay in the mountains for awhile, perhaps move amongst such communities and share the collective wisdom i have received. I will be doing yoga every morning in nature, and go around the forest and farms to collect my food. Play in the river. Hike. And use the internet to channel the right resources to the right places. Will be fun to have a few friends join every now and then. :)

(Financial literacy is so underrated! I neglect it as well. Would be good to really look deeper into this. )

In another - still pretty wild dream if i decide to stay in the city - i dream that I would be a coach/consultant that can help organisations heal, and achieve breakthroughs. (Or i will start an organisation which does that!) By working with their leaders and staffs to genuinely connect with one another, workplaces can become healing spaces for everyone! Spaces where people are free to express themselves. Where your talents and side-hustles are embraced, celebrated, and your job is tailored to your strengths and interests, people co-create structures which serve them best - in contrast to fitting people into their job descriptions and being bounded by numerous rules.

27. What would the potential worst outcome be if you decided to commit fully to pursuing your passion? Would this be OK? Go to your worst case scenario now, feel it, and soak in it as if it's really happening, play it out, and ask yourself, if that is ok?

If my family members get really sick, I won’t be able to have the peace of mind to do this :( Would need to find ways to improve the situation. If my sister is independent i’ll feel more at ease too haha.

Other than that, i may get robbed while travelling, and may get some leeches on me? living with many insects, struggle with language barriers. May feel a bit disconnecting like i don’t have a home, like I’m like a nomad. May get occasional thoughts questioning myself. Sounds quite scary ><

I guess if the dream is important enough to me, these things wouldn’t matter.

28. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being 100% certain) what is the likelihood of this worst outcome happening if you fully commit to your passion and invest all of the energy and focus that you have into it?

Well. The worst has yet to happen. And i hope it never will!

I believe if i fully commit to it and invest all the energy and focus i have, dreams can become a reality.

29. How rewarding would your life be if you were doing something that you loved every day and were making money with it? Happiness is a state where nothing is missing.

That would be amazing!! Yes, it does feel like my life will be complete.

But here i also want to remind myself that it’s not just about doing, but being too - being kind, loving to self, choosing joy.

The problem happens when we have multiple desires. When we have fuzzy desires. When we want to do ten different things and we are not clear about which is the one we care about.

Possibilities

30. What hobbies/ interests do you have that intrigue you and that you might consider pursuing as a life passion? What unique talents or skills do you have that you haven’t fully developed or expressed? What childhood interests or dreams did you have that you never got around to doing anything about?

• Singing, dancing - it’s something i do less after starting openjio; it brings me reinvigorating energy in a very different way; i was in choir in secondary school and it really allows me to express myself in a manner that feels freeing (don’ think i would ever stop singing, but it’s something i realised i have put aside for the time being)

• Drawing - i drew comic books when i was younger, like caption underpants!

• Photography - i feel happy when i’m able to capture precious moments and shots that capture people’s attention haha

I just noticed that these all fall under the more artistic/creative domain of things…looks like i have been suppressing this side of me :/ Is this what adulting is? That’s so sad. I want to do more of these artsy stuff, it’s like it’s what makes us human, you know.

31. Are you willing to spend time mastering these interests so you can become an expert, or to teach others?

Yes! I think it’s a huge joy and blessing to be able to share your passions with others! As the saying goes, joy multiplies when shared.

32. What changes do you need to make (or what risks do you need to take) to develop and express your unique talents and skills?

I guess it’s time to take up dance classes again! and give myself this artistic space to express myself. I think movement is also an important way in which we feel and notice ourselves. Being glued to your laptop at work - how is that different from a robot right?

Somatics/body movement is definitely something i want to venture deeper into. Like inner dance, and if i were to stretch myself - even theatre? *notices inner resistance*

(Edit: A change i’ve made recently - exercising almost daily! I do minimally 5 mins morning stretches. On days that i work from home, I aim to do 30mins of workouts or stretching. Have been doing Lilly Sabri’s 30 day challenge with a friend!)

33. Is there a group of people somewhere in the world that you know could benefit from your help? Who are they and where are they? Hint: These are the very people you can serve.

The first group would be people I am already interacting with - my friends and family. It would be great if i can incorporate art to create immersive, engaging experiences to bring likeminded people together; to able to connect with the pain and emotions that others face - so perhaps we can reduce the collective suffering we all have.

34. What valuable lessons have you learned throughout life so far that other people might benefit from also learning? Also, could you start teaching other people those lessons today?

• You can start wherever you are. It’s never too late. It will be too late however, if you keep pushing it back.

• Understanding self, mindfulness, spirituality has been a transformational journey for me

• Haven’t really thought about teaching these topics - but i guess this blog is one way for me to share and consolidate my knowledge and experiences, which I may use as teaching material one day, if i do teach. It all adds up right haha

Money & Resources

35. If you were financially secure and money is not an issue, how would you invest your time? If you have all the money you ever need (your brain may resist this fantasy scenario right now, but ignore that brain fart, and let your imagination go to the space where you have financial abundance), what would you be happy to do for the rest of your life?

• Travel to experience different cultures, the world and beyond! Every 2-3 months or so. And i will blog/create vlog to share my experiences!

• Probably work for a social impact consultancy on fostering Public-People-Private partnerships; or a leadership/OD consultancy

• Pay for a skilled and experienced financial consultant to help me generate more income, and to become more financial literate so i can help others with this knowledge too

• Go for at least 2-3 few courses a year to upgrade my skills in coaching/facilitation (newfield!)

• I’d probably spend more time volunteering haha, working on how to develop openjio and translate my learnings from work, travel and people i’ve met to work on reducing suffering in the world. Travelling also allows me to connect with the pain and joy of others,

36. Do you have enough savings to allow you to live for six months during a job transition or while you commit to pursuing your passion? It varies from person to person, but generally, it takes no less than 1-2 years to build a business from scratch, stabilise it, and start making decent money.

Not yet. I have yet to actually calculate the amount of money i need, there is some fear to really do it as much as i say i want to do it LOL

I am not sure how my passion is going to generate money at the moment, i think i would need more time (2 years) to build depth and expertise in the interests i have mentioned…

37. How could you save enough money to allow you to live for six months during a job transition or while you commit to your passion? Rather than working harder for more money, is there a way you can get money working harder for you?

Invest or buy some savings policy?? (Need support for this)

(Edit: This is happening. I made my first investment! My financial advisor has successfully convinced me of the benefits of starting early.)

38. Are there cutbacks you can make while you commit to pursuing your passion and purpose? Separate non-negotiable expenses from discretionary "good-to-have" expenses. People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.

• Cutting back on spending on food, which is my biggest spending

• Cutting back on entertainment expenses, think creatively how might we connect and build friendships without spending much money?

• Cutting back on time spent on social media - be more conscious of this

• Learning how to say “no’’!!

Imagine

39. How much more would other people benefit from your life if you committed the rest of your life towards just being who you are (and not trying to be someone that you are not)?

I think as I have grown to be more of myself, i notice that i show up as a more confident person, thinking less of what others think of me. It feels freeing, it also attracts likeminded people, where we thrive on each other’s energy. I think it enables me to build deeper relationships with people, creating impactful experiences that otherwise wouldn’t happen.

40. If you had the chance to start your life all over again from scratch, what would you do differently next time around?

• Don’t care too much about what other people say, if i’m too young or too inexperienced, or if it doesn’t suit me. Just do what my heart feels right.

• Lean in to fear/resistance, sit with it, and understand what it’s trying to tell me instead of avoiding it.

• Pick up dancing earlier, it enables this freedom of expression which is really uplifting.

• Be kinder to myself. I spent so much energy beating myself up.

• Travel more.

• Be more direct with people about issues we are facing.

• Study less, do more.

41. Imagine you could take out an advertisement on a HUGE billboard display at the centre of New York Times Square to display one message of your choice. What would your message to the world be? E.g: Dan's would be "EVERYBODY CAN BE WHOEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT TO BE."

DON’T FORGET YOUR DREAMS. YOU MATTER.

42. If you only had one year left to live, what would you spend this year doing and what difference would you want to make? What's stopping you from doing these things now?

• Travel with friends/family,

• more HTHTs - having real deep conversations

• tell people around me how much I really appreciate them

• sing,

• dance,

• write,

Maybe we should strive to think this way huh, else we end up living a life we don’t want to live.

What’s stopping me:

• my ego

• my fears

Thank you for reading till the bottom of this blogpost - would love to hear your thoughts too! You can reach out to me here :)

Building Cultures of Resilience Workshop by Tong Yee (part 1)

This morning, I attended a workshop by Tong Yee on Building Cultures of Resilience. You may find my set of notes here - credits to Tong Yee and The Thought Collective (offering a list of online trainings right now, do check it out!). It’s about 12 pages long, but I am putting this out there so you can also gain a greater appreciation in context of what i’m about to share in my learnings and reflections below.

I thought the workshop gave me a deeper understanding of how to unpack resilience, and the reflection breaks were really helpful to process the learning!

Resilience is not about ‘overcoming’ pain, but enduring and staying with the pain.

It is impossible to avoid pain eternally.

There are 3 main components of Resilience:

1.     PAIN & ADVERSITY – it could be a certain tragedy, unexpected bad stuff that happen to you, such as divorce, retrenchment.

2.     RESOURCE – where pain is unexpected, we may not have time to build the resources (eg. Counselling, therapy)           

3.     GOAL – in situation where goal is unexpected - to address the certain tragedy that has happened (eg. finding a new job when one has lost their job, prioritising health when diagnosed with minor/major health issues) - people may resist and not want to own this goal because they do not acknowledge their own pain.

The role of pain is get your attention - take care of yourself!'

The moment we learn to take care of ourselves, gather resources and own the goal, pain disappears.

Pain is a gift: Without pain, we will die.

With pain, we (feel like we) want to die.

There are low grinding pains, like the body aches we feel when we sit too long - I am really sensitive to this, I can feel the difference in my body when I stop doing yoga for 2-3 days, it really feels much more tense and stiff. The goal is then to take care of myself, practicing my yoga (resource) to address the ache (pain).

However, it is very easy to ignore low grinding pains too. Such as my parents’ nagging - it is easy to deflect it by working on something else, that distracts myself from this pain.

Deflection is a common way to not tackle the fundamental pain. Creating other goals to distract ourselves from the main goal. (Gestalt)

This part really resonates with my personal experience in running OpenJio. When starting a new project, a new goal - there is a lot of energy in getting resources.

OpenJio has alot more resources than when we first started 2 years ago. We have grown in network and knowledge - to 3.9k subscribers, but I honestly have no idea how to really get in touch with their needs at a broader level.

Though we do see increased engagements (instagram, telegram, in the events/huddles we organise) across most of our platforms, which is encouraging - this tells us people do see value - but what that value is exactly, i would only know if i ask them.

How can I effectively diagnose community needs?

How can we offer a stronger diagnosis of what is happening so that we can share it and raise awareness, draw attention to where resources can be directed to?

Until we start getting a sense of diversity – can we appreciate the pains people face.

Another example: How PAP is losing touch with the ground’s emerging needs, especially in SengKang being won over by The Worker’s Party. My breakout room groupmate shared that the primary reason why her friends who stayed in SengKang voted for the Workers’ party, was that they felt that TWP could voice their needs and stand for them.

How then could we practice empathy and connect with each other’s pain?

Perception makes it far more complex than it is.

Case study

A pain adverse society: we don’t like to deal with pain

Government: “We have a lot of reserves, you'll be fine!”

People: “What are we saving so much for?? Why is government storing so much?”

Parents: “ study hard ah…if not you won’t be able to get a good job.”

Singapore leans more towards resource than the goal – we don’t get the purpose of the reserves; we’re told that studying hard is for the purpose of getting a good job - but as the job market grows increasingly competitive, these narratives are being shakened.

Diagram refers to the missing part of helping people with Resource (missing triangle piece) that can only be fully completed with understanding their pain (triangle).

We often provide solutions that are important to ourselves, in order to build their resilience – but we spend little time in understanding that their pain is.

There is fear in leaning into (someone else’s) pain – what if I can’t help them? What if they suck me in? Hence I cannot support them in becoming resilient.

This results in a sense of purposelessness where we cannot meet our needs/pain.

-       Our sense of vision and purpose is waning: A vision that encompasses what Singapore wants – we are looking for a much stronger vision to move on at this particular point.

-       Our emotional resources are not as strong

-       How leaders help to alleviate adversity

Personal Leadership could help us as a country - people stepping up – does a lot to alleviate adversity we are going through

Listening and paying attention to your pain is a very important part of your growth process.

When is it not healthy anymore? When we are not functioning?

The whole purpose of learning is growth – the Joy of learning! :)

But when your body cannot take it, when there is too much trauma in a relationship when we are constantly in survival mode – that’s when to call it quits.

Resilience is about building a sustainable and healthy relationship between all three. They are symbiotic, each is essential and none can be avoided.

Consider any learning experience.

Does this experience feel painful for you? Do you feel like you are getting restless?

What are we doing right now that is making it easy? (strong leaders, facilitators, teachers pay attention to these)

---

Reflections:

I thought that I gained a useful framework in understanding resilience - the relationship between goal, pain and resources; the importance of sitting and enduring pain to reach our goals. We can’t ever heal if we keep avoiding the pain instead of feeling and addressing it. Pain is a key piece which I hope we can dive deeper into - such as emotional pain. It is easy to distract ourselves, and deflect pain. (The cycle of learning and resistance in Gestalt is another very useful framework to understand this.)

Sometimes I use OpenJio as a deflection of the pain that I experience with my family. Like I immerse myself in projects instead of tackling issues in my life. Parental expectations and family worries tends to make me feel heavy, and I felt like i did not know how to cope with it. So i like to head out, meet my friends and work on ‘meaningful’ goals - that’s how it looks like to people i guess. Resources on learning how to manage relationships with my family were low. Now that I’ve begin to gain more emotional resources and self-awareness, as well as giving a ton of kindness to self, it feels less hard. :) Also thanks to CB, which makes it harder for me the escape the pain haha.

At the core, i think it is about how can we begin to love ourselves better? Do we love ourselves enough to feel the pain? So that we can begin to take care of ourselves and heal. To feel pain is an intrinsic part of our own human experience. We cannot experience joy without pain. Because joy comes when we grow from our pain.

I guess, avoiding pain is also part of our human experience too. haha. Avoiding pain is a pain in itself…aka our response to pain, can be a pain in the ass. lol. Like getting triggered and angry when my parents nag, but then regret later, and then too egoistic to apologise. haha. (my shit)

For me, having reflections and walks by myself help me to understand the emotions I’m feeling. Having frameworks to understand emotions helps, see The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You by Karla McLaren (which you can download here); and am really thankful for my friends, coaches, and people that I have met who held space for me.

What does it mean to love ourselves? Do we dare to dream? Do we dare to feel? Do we dare to be?

Life afterall, is about learning, growing and taking risks. And learning to love the ride.

After today’s workshop, I feel more inspired to write a guide on How to love Amelia haha. My friend Khuyen had previously wrote one and i thought it was pretty cool!

Why write? Why share? Why now?

It’s about 1.5 months since I started this blog! YAY, CELEBRATE! :)

Celebrate the practice of writing, celebrate growth in this space, celebrate commitment in writing regularly!

Recently I noticed that I have been feeling emotions of overwhelm, self-doubt, and “not inspired” to write even though I committed myself to writing at least once a week. I have not been doing yoga as much this week as well.

Revisiting: Why write?

It’s about building a practice to organise my thoughts, and gain clarity about myself, who I am. Writing as a practice helps me to reflect and allow my inner voices to surface in the stillness as I put my thoughts down on paper.

In short, it is a practice of building awareness of my own thoughts so that I am more conscious of them. With awareness, comes choice to create different results.

It is time I block for myself, as a gift to myself. It creates a space of possibilities where I feel free - and this can manifest in other areas of my life if i can practice it right here.

Why share?

There is a part of me that seeks to connect with people and the bigger world out there. I believe by sharing more of myself openly on a blog, it can create the authentic human connection I am seeking for. Because connection is built upon what you know about me, whether you can relate to what I write here.

If I don’t open myself up first, i know the chances are dead zero. I think it’s worth putting myself out there for this!

So this blog is way of manifesting my intention into reality. Of course, there are other ways. But it has to start somewhere. For me, it starts here.

Since i’m already writing it for myself, might as well share it to maximise it’s utility! haha

Also, like I mentioned in my homepage - i was really inspired by Khuyen’s writings, and also his level of commitment and consistency. There is an adage that says that actions are more powerful than words. But like all quotes, they need to be understood in specific contexts, not to be dropped anywhere you like. Words are powerful as they are beginnings of the manifestation of our thoughts, which will in turn affect our actions.

Just as how reading Khuyen’s articles inspired me to start this blog, I hope that this blog will also inspire people in living life with greater intention, vulnerability and love.

Why now?

First of all, I have earned enough money to buy a website for myself. Muahaha

And I gained enough ‘skin’ to name my blog with my own name.

Jokes aside, I really want to build enriching practices in my life and live a life I want to live. I am afraid that work, or sometimes my external projects may consume me if i don’t create spaces for reflection and detachment, spaces to ponder in such a fast-paced city I live in.

There is an analogy Tong Yee shared about how Singaporeans tend to think in terms of train tracks - mirroring how our education system is structured - when something doesn’t work, we want to change to another ‘track’, a path that is already built, tried and tested, and seems ‘secure’ enough for us.

Right now in times of covid and multiple changes and transitions, many feel uncomfortable with uncertainty. In order to build train tracks, we need to first forage the forest to explore ways of working. Foraging is uncertain, we never know what we will discover. We need to learn to how to hope, hold on to our faith - or the commitment on we want to create. We must persevere on in order to create the change (or ‘track’) we want to see.

This blog is a space where I seek to create within myself to hold space for the uncomfortable emotions and thoughts I have with myself in my life journey. I feel that this is what growth looks like to me, and I think it’s especially important now. It’s like building a foundation for myself, to stay grounded and open.

So…why did I not write?

When I started this blog, I remembered myself feeling so energised and excited for people to see this!

But there are also moments where I create excuses as I judge myself - “if i’m not feeling inspired, i doubt anyone will feel inspired when they read my blogpost” - these thoughts seem so true. But who really knows if i don’t even write them out?

“The moment you say ‘not possible’, you are also saying ‘i don’t want it’.

“What is possible or not possible is not your business, that is nature’s business - you are using your previous experience in your life to decide - you have decided that what has not happen till now in your life, will not happen in future.”

- Sadhguru

At this moment i realised i also cared more about what people thought, than why I initially set out to do this - primarily a space for self-reflection. Hence this post also serves as a reminder to myself! We all need reminders.

And sometimes, we need multiple reminders - for me it could be my coaching circles, videos i watch over youtube, re-reading my blogposts, reviewing my intentions.

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Ending with a short meditation i created out of more wisdom from Sadhguru:

May you live joyfully, peacefully,

Have loving and affectionate relationships,

Pleasantness within and around you.

• Health and Pleasure for your body

• Peace and Joy for your mind

• That you be a source of Love and Compassion (emotion)

• That you may create energies of Blissfulness and Ecstasy

And commit yourself to creating it.

Start with a simple thought - ‘I will create a peaceful, loving world.’

Once your thought and emotion are organised, energy will follow, and the body will soon follow. Once thought, emotion, energy and body are aligned - your ability to create and manifest what you want is phenomenal. You are a creator in many ways.

What is the hardest thing about finding your purpose?

How to live a meaningful life? How can I experience greater fulfilment in my life? What can I do to thrive, more so than just survive? What does living a life of purpose look like? Note: This article is written by a millennial in Singapore, who is learning how to dance in the rain and find joy in the storms. I am not attempting to answer these big questions, but to offer a perspective in contribution, as I think I am not the only person who struggles with such questions.

There are moments in life where we experience an existential crisis. Here’s mine and my attempt to make sense of it, despite feeling uncomfortable. Somehow there is comfort in writing it down and sharing it with others.

In a cosy and somewhat intellectual discussion of ‘purpose’ with my friends, we all seem to be searching and seeking a more purposeful life. A friend asked, “from a scale of 1 to 10, where would you rate where you are right now, 0 being off track; and 10 being where you want to be in striving to live our your purpose.”

In our group of 7, many rated themselves between 3 to 6. Somehow this discussion about purpose triggered something in me to look deeper.

Uncovering hidden expectations of ‘purpose’

In my post-reflections, I think the question held an implicit assumption that 10/10 is the ideal state we should be striving for. I used to think that a 10/10 would look like waking up energised, excited, feeling in flow most of the time, doing things that bring you the most enjoyment.

We talk about pursuing passion, and the root word of passion is suffering, which begets the question - what are you willing to suffer for?

If 10/10 fulfillment is what you may feel when things go your way, when your plans go smoothly - what about my way? All things are interconnected, where we push for our individual agendas, there are inevitable clashes. Hence if 10/10 looks like that, it is likely one will stay perennially unhappy.

The costs of ‘getting it right’

I realised i was focused in such a narrow way of thinking about what purpose was, trying to fit it into a box, or perhaps checkboxes, and trying to get it ‘right’. And I notice myself feeling more perplexed and unhappy.

A perspective on existential crises by Khuyen:

First, you must recognize that existential crises are "features, not bugs" of living, self-conscious creatures who are yet to be finished.

Crisis is opportunity to redefine self-continuity. (said the entrepreneurs who like to quote that the Chinese character for crisis, "weiji", has two parts that mean “danger” and “opportunity)

The trick is to recognize that your life narrative shouldn't make sense 100% of the time. Heck, even 90%.

If you know exactly what you are doing 90% of the time, you are bound to hit crises sooner or later.

In fact, a trait of a healthy person is to acknowledge that nobody has ever completely figured out anything.

Even the phrase "figuring things out" implies there is an answer. There is none, or there are too many.

It’s then I realised…trying to ‘get it right’ isn’t nearly as important as being happy! You don’t have to have it all figured out. Where’s the fun if we already knew?

The purpose of life, is to live.

Alan Watts explains it more eloquently here on why life is not a journey - using the analogy that the whole point of the dancing is the dance. The purpose of our lives, is to live. To live fully, and be present. There is nothing more joyful than being in the full presence of another, and being fully present for another.

“The existence, the physical universe is basically playful.

There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought to arrive at.

But that it is best understood by the analogy with music. Because music, as an art form is essentially playful. We say, “You play the piano” You don’t “work the piano”.

Why? Music differs from say, travel. When you travel you are trying to get somewhere. In music, though, one doesn’t make the end of a composition.

The point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. And there would be composers who only wrote finales. People would go to a concert just to hear one crackling chord… Because that’s the end!

Same way with dancing. You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room because that’s where you will arrive. The whole point of the dancing is the dance.

- Alan Watts

Here is another perspective on purpose by Sadhguru, and i think they both share a similar perspective. But worth reading again.

This is the greatest aspect of life - that it has no meaning to it and there is no need for it to have a meaning.

The purpose of life is to live and to live totally. To live totally means - before you fall dead, every aspect of life has been explored, nothing has been left unexplored.

Purpose as a way of being and doing

Many youths want to find a job with purpose and meaning. This meaning is so personal, we aren’t really taught how to embark on this journey each within ourselves. I am on my own journey as well.

Read: https://www.mindful.org/difference-between-being-and-doing/

Sometimes it is difficult. Purpose as personified by Alan Watts and Sadhguru may seem a little philosophical, related to the way of being - to live, it also means to be present. To be present through our senses, what we notice and say to others and to ourselves, and what emotions we feel. Owning our experience.

As to what is the hardest thing about ‘doing’ your purpose - here are are some challenges my friends and I encounter. Yet, perhaps the harder thing would be learning to love what you do, for we won’t always get to do what we love. Approaching things with the intention of openness and love is an ongoing practice that I try to do...and this does not involve the absence of pain.

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love. (Mother Teresa)

What we pay attention to, amplifies.

The power lies in what we choose to focus on, and how we choose to respond.

Thought this question posit by a friend will be apt to end this post: Is what I am paying attention to today energizing, liberating, fulfilling?

Celebrate: What’s the best that we can take forward?

Moments only come once in a lifetime. The moment it’s gone, it’s gone. Just thought it’d be timely to pause and take stock of what has happened in 2020, what is worth celebrating, and what’s the best we can take forward?

I was looking at my diary which i started this year, and found some questions to structure my reflections:

1. How can you double joy? Or even increase it by just 1%?

2. How can you double what’s working for you?

3. How can I better support people around me?

4. How do I rest?

5. What’s truly the next level for me? What would the ideal infrastructure look like?

This break has been incredibly healing on a personal and spiritual level. I haven’t really felt so connected with myself in a long time. When I look back at my diary, I notice feelings of stress, overwhelm and exhaustion happened quite regularly, and i couldn’t find the space to celebrate given my packed schedule. So I am real thankful for this breathing space to pause, notice and reflect!

In general, I felt pretty light the past week, and felt a sense of peace that everything is going to work out fine.

I also learnt that celebration is a practice! Sometimes we only celebrate the significant moments, like birthdays - but it’s actually the celebration that makes the moment significant. And i want to create more of such significant moments in my life. We can start by asking, what is worth celebrating today? in this moment, right now?

Caveat: What works for me may not work for you, simply because we are different people. What you could do is to notice what surfaces as you answer these questions, what thoughts/feelings do you notice as you read my responses perhaps? It could trigger experiences you are longing for, back memory lane.

1. How can you double joy? Or even increase it by just 1%?

I noticed that when I sing and play my guitar, time still flies. Sometimes i think music has these very deep pull for me, like it’s hard to pull me out when i’m in the ‘zone’. It’s one of the those things that makes my time fly - I remember the times i used to spend hours in the dance studio in my final year of university, alone, and it was a space free from worries and anxieties.

I noticed that when i manage to create deeper connection with people, it energises me as well. And sometimes that is just telling them what I truly feel.

Actionable steps to choose from:

• Create an infrastructure/system that allows me space to have fun with music: could look like going for dance classes, doing covers on a regular basis. It could be guitar jam time on a weekday evening of my choice.

• Am running two learning circles related to Enneagram and Personal development, to do my utmost to bring my full presence, to bring value and fertilise these relationships!

2. How can you double what’s working for you?

You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits.

- Bhagavad Gita

I noticed that i get most things done in the mornings, my energy and concentration is the highest here so it would be great to maximise this momentum. I am most creative and focused in the mornings, after a yoga session!

I discovered through my coaching session with Ervin that working together in teams or just with someone helps me in getting things done, especially tasks i feel resistant too. This has worked really well for openjio, and some work related tasks.

I notice that setting aside time for myself in the morning instead of diving straight into work makes me feel more alive. It’s about recognising and prioritising myself too, that I am important. Sometimes I leave till the end of the day to ‘treat’ myself, but by then i’m already too tired to enjoy this time with myself. Setting aside time for myself could look like doing yoga, writing, setting the intention of who i want to be and what do i want to do.

Actionable steps to choose from:

• To start my day with energy, have a short 15 min yoga before breakfast everyday. Really clears my mind.

• When I am stuck at something for 20mins or more, get support from people around me!

3. How can I better support people around me?

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

- Proverbs 4:23

I am always inspired by how we can grow together, in fuller presence, in wholeness. Supporting me could look like a listening ear, working together with me. Sometimes we often do not know how to support people though we want to…but it could be asking a simple question to understand and clarify.

Actionable steps to choose from:

• Notice my own intentions. Ask ‘How are you’ or ‘How can I support’ only when I am truly willing to hold space on focus on the person. Why is it important to me?

• Ask, “How can I support you?”

• I feel like the questions I learn from circling would be very useful here. Refer to my Circling reflections here.

4. How do I rest?

Self-care is not selfish. Self-care means giving the world the best of you instead of what is left of you.

- Anthea Ong

I think one blessing covid has brought is that since everything outside is closed, it opens up the space for people to look inwards. I think it was one of the factors that led to the birth of this blog! For me, rest is about connecting with myself, my true needs and wants; being able to connect with my feelings even though it may be uncomfortable. Listening to my own voice.

It’s basically doing things that give me energy, and knowing what I do is not about achievement, and about enjoying the process. Knowing when is ‘enough’. Taking time to connect and celebrate with people.

Actionable steps to choose from:

• Building connection: Regular conversations with close friends to check-in, how we can support each other

• Meditation, taking time to notice what my body is telling me. Often when i feel heaviness in my head and body, it means i already over-exerted myself.

5. What’s truly the next level for me? What would the ideal infrastructure look like?

Maintaining this blog - writing weekly reflections. It’s about creating space for myself, and allowing my intentions to be known.

Maintaining the learning circles, show up in full presence and serve the group.

I think the next level is to attempt to coach people too...but i am having doubts about myself on this, like i need to do more self-work; yet it makes me excited!

Infrastructure: Starting small, asking for support from people around me, declaring my intentions so that i can hold myself accountable. Just like how i am using this blog for that!!

Thank you for reading :) Would be curious to know how these questions and reflections landed for you! What are some things you learnt about yourself that surprised you?