Jun 05 0 comments
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The notion of “can’t”

Co-living the entrepreneurial and corporate consulting worlds is interesting, to say the least.  For the most part, they are of great contrast to each other.  The “path”, type of risk and uncertainty, the organizational structure, the working environment, and the activities and tasks are all quite different.  Sometimes it’s almost like I’d have to adjust two switches in my head in order to operate appropriately.  But as I was reflecting on what I’ve learned over the past year, sure, there were some industry-specific knowledge, some communication and management skills, some technical ability — excel and a little bit of Ruby on Rails… but what I had realized is that most importantly, both experiences have ingrained the value of never saying: I can’t.

Both jobs require hard work and a rather tough lifestyle — that’s just been inevitable.  But with the right incentives / motivational factors in place — the learning journey, amazing teammates, sense of responsibility or compensation —- I have been able to stick it out time after time.  What I can extract from those moments is not just fatigue, but a proof of my capabilities.  And I cross-apply that proof between Probity and consulting work to further push myself forward.

Sometimes, I feel as if I have internalized the Probity team.  When I’m awake at 4am on Mondays or working until 2am in a hotel business lounge, there are days when I just want to complain.  And then I’d have to wake up at 5:30am the next day?  I can’t do this… But then I’d think to myself, “What would Probity say?”  I bet Neal, Mike and Claire have been working late as well.  I might even be receiving emails from them at those hours.  And the daily 7:30am calls?  Or I’d think about the times when we’d have Probity or Code Academy meetings until 3am.  It really isn’t that hard, is it?  I’ve been able to pull it off too.  I can almost hear them saying, “Why not?”

And it’s a similar situation when we decide to have a Probity / Code Academy meeting after a long day of work for me, and my initial reaction is always — “Really?!”  Then I’d think about all the late nights I have during the week, where we go back to work after a late dinner.

I’ve done it before.  I know I can.

Consulting is also a unique industry – where they focus on hiring smart people and not necessarily those who come with pre-loaded skills.  They want individuals who are structured yet adaptive, and trust that all additional “skills” can be acquired along the way.  So when you’re on a project, the expectation of “can” was never there, but there is the assumption that you will learn whatever skills needed over the next couple of days or weeks.  You are allowed to say “I don’t know…yet” or even ask a few stupid questions along the way, but there is no shrugging off of the responsibility.  It just needs to get done, no matter how long it takes.

About that financial model?  I was completely overwhelmed when I was first given the task — I didn’t have a finance background or even the excel skills.  But I researched, incorporated feedback, reiterated and learned.

It also helps me to think about something that I had read up on recently from an HBS article — think not only about what you like or best at, but what your organization needs from you. I want to be able to be there when I’m needed.

And so I come out of it knowing that I can.

I may not have truly mastered the value yet.  As one may have observed, I still have to rely on some virtual external ruler to derive what I can or cannot do.  But this acquired mindset has indubitably empowered me to do so much more than I thought I was capable of over the past year.  And I’m happy to look back and realize that I am a stronger person today.

Mar 16 0 comments
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Progress.

(Hello again, Shanghai.)

My dad would always say, “Things are the way they are for a reason.  You must learn the system to understand how things came to be.”

Wandering through a peripheral, not-so-developed neighborhood of Shanghai offered me a greater appreciation for those mainlanders who engage in extreme self-indulgent and rather flashy lifestyles — the ones I know from growing up in Hong Kong.  I’m talking about those who would regularly line up outside of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana stores to spend months worth of an average person’s income on extraneous, luxury goods.  To “appreciate” is not to say that I endorse their actions, but I was beginning to understand the “why.”

Remember when we once had a definite standard of what is cool or what is right – perhaps back in middle / high school years?  And how we wanted to believe in the black and white rather than the shades of gray?  Now think of the flashy lifestyle as the black and white stage.  As I strolled through the Shanghai neighborhood, I saw waves after waves of people who wear old and bland clothing, with little to no embellishments, walking around with their eyes to the ground.  It was a dull scene.  More than that, it was clear that those people disregard their immediate environment, the larger surroundings, the world — in a way that could even anger you.

One of the most obvious example is when people get in each other’s way in the crowd.  In “regular” encounters, both parties would perhaps nod or smile in tacit agreement or even explicitly recognize this mutual interruption with an “excuse me” or an apology.  However, in China, people just adjust and move on.  There is no eye contact.  You are simply ignored.  Joel and I would joke with a Roomba analogy.  It recognizes your existence, and might even run directly into you, but then is simply robotically programmed to turn the other way.  It doesn’t acknowledge you and treats you like a dead object.  This is just one of many things that show, at least to me, how the majority of China is still underdeveloped, and dare I say morally.

What I had realized is that the strive for flashiness is, in fact, a manifestation of people’s new relationships with such a world.  To have emerged from the ordinary, mundane lifestyle and to be equipped with new knowledge, it would almost be a crime not to take advantage of all the new materials, support and resources.  And to show the world that you are, in fact, different now.  It is the formation of a new worldview — one that establishes our subjective interpretation of “authenticity” overtime, of what we think makes us who we are and how honest we are with our truest emotions and desires.

It signifies progress.

Speaking on (and in some ways criticizing) the mainlander behaviors makes it easy for me to come across as an elitist, and almost naturally so — because Hong Kong has moved on since that phase.  But what that really says is that we have done exactly that just decades ago.  And I think sometimes people forget that.  Even I can recall the times when Hong Kong was a land of money-flashing, superficial souls (and some are still that).  Or, another example, when the cleaning standards were not always “up to par.”  Which I think more or less created the OCD me, who is obsessed with how clean things need to be — because I knew of a time when things weren’t, when that couldn’t just be assumed.  Even I’m learning to move on from that…

Moral development is, as it says, a type of development — which implies that it is a series of progression.  And if one has taken any kind of psychology lessons, one would know that full and complete development requires the subject to go through all stages, regardless of individual differences in duration at each stage or even regressive behaviors.

And this concept can be generalized to city and country development.

This actually reminds me of the final exam of business ethics class, where our professor essentially asked whether economic discrepancies, such as extremely low minimum wage (or lack thereof), are “unethical.”  I remember clearly that I argued that to force those countries to adopt mature economical policies is asking for too much.  That it is actually more unethical for more developed countries to disrupt the development process.

I still believe that it would be ignorant on our end to try to force them to take a leap, to impose our standards upon them.  Just as all other things in life, if you are under-prepared, sooner or later, you would fall down, very hard.

True, I probably still don’t like those mainlanders with their outrageous buying behaviors and high need for attention.  They still get me all worked up, almost ready to fight.  But, in the end, it is a mandatory phase and (at least logically) I have learned to accept this reality.  How can we expedite progression while keeping the process intact?  That could be the most important question.

Jan 10 0 comments
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Healthcare.

You know those cliché romance plots when hate turns to love? All of a sudden all the negative energy is turned positive. Similar turning points are always marked by a moment when one discovers a trait that is inconsistent with what is presumably true about the other. It happens when a discrepancy in the system collapses your entire schema about the subject, and suddenly, almost without fail, you gain a different perspective that allows you to learn to appreciate, or even love, the subject.

I would like to share such a special moment with healthcare. When I really think about it, it is almost a funny statement to claim — how could someone despise “healthcare”? But I have. I’ve hated the inefficiency and the individual selfishness that is innate in fee-for-service incentive structures. I will always remember how Dad stared out the window crying on the day my Grandpa died. My Grandpa was 86 years old then, diagnosed with a form of oral cancer, and had gone through just a couple months of chemotherapy before he finally gave in to the battle. Sure, the doctors and nurses that were involved in his case should not bear the entire burden of the tragedy. But they tried really hard, too hard, in my opinion, to push Grandpa toward the painful path of chemotherapy. Taking in consideration his age and the unhealthy habits throughout his life, Grandpa was clearly not in a suitable physical condition to endure those agonizing treatments. My parents debated with my relatives multiple times on the phone, but given we were away in the states at the time (Grandpa and the rest of family were in Hong Kong), my relatives’ decision — highly convinced by the doctors — trumped over ours.

In those two months, Grandpa’s weight dropped dramatically, amongst other things. Not only was he suffering from the pain, he was also unable to eat. His health conditions only went downhill. It reached the point where even the doctors said the chemo treatment should wait —- but it was all too late. On the day he left, Grandpa only had the energy to whisper a few words to Dad on the phone before he let himself go.

I can only think that the doctors accelerated his death.

But, ironically, I have had my few times in life where I should be forever thankful for the doctors and nurses who saved me and/or looked after me. I have, to a certain extent, given them a temporarily level of trust, and they hadn’t failed me in any aspects. Yet, the general thought of hating doctors remained more prominent. Whenever my parents or others tell me to go see a doctor when I’m sick, I’d simply respond with, “I hate doctors. I don’t trust them.”

One of my emerging goals in the past couple of months has been to spend time to discover the one life or social issue that I am most truly passionate about. Frankly, healthcare was one of the first ones that came to mind. My rational self understands that, regardless, it would be more effective to understand the healthcare system better so I can actually take actions to improve it rather than merely exerting that animosity.

Then on last Friday, I found out that I am one of the few lucky consultants / analysts who will get to work on a cross-business division case with our Health & Life Sciences practice. Moreover, it is a forward-looking, strategic project on how to better provide integrated healthcare management solutions in relation to the healthcare reform. It is my perfect reason and motivation to finally dig deeper into this issue.

I look forward to the huge learning curve. Maybe then I can also finally reconcile with the pain and sadness that I deeply feel whenever I think of Grandpa.

Dec 06 2 comments
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Probity Genesis.

For weeks, I had forgotten.

Since I’ve starting my full-time job in consulting, it’s consumed my life.  Every week, I get two days that I don’t (necessarily) owe to my job.  But even then, a short phone call or a couple spontaneous requests from the client can cost me the entire weekend.  It didn’t help that I was also away from Chicago for three weeks, spending two weekends in NYC for the Thanksgiving holiday.  In hindsight, the only real contribution I felt I had made to Probity was by asking one question:  Have we started wireframing our web app?

I cannot be more glad that I did, though.  It was how we eventually arrived at our Probity Genesis Meeting this past Saturday.  While the team thought that we’re still in our early skills development stage, given that the next weeks will be preoccupied by holiday obligations, it felt right to at least pivot in that direction, to make the big transitioning step in the journey.

Let’s get productive.

The meeting started at 8:20am and finished at around 4pm, with one short PB&J sandwich break (sorry Mike, we forgot you hate peanut butter).  Between 8-9:30am, we had our personal weekly updates and reminded ourselves of the purpose the meeting.  What followed was a series of work hours that didn’t even feel like work, in which we discussed the purpose, the concept, the vision, the features, and the next steps for our unborn web application.

It was purely liberating.  There are no substitutes for moments where you see clear and true alignment between your purpose and production.  You feel empowered and automatically obliged to have total ownership of the outcome… success or failure.  But, at the same time, failure is impossible.

I was particularly impressed when I was reminded that all of this is, at the very least, is a learning experience for all of us.  It may not turn out to be the best application that ever existed, but we would have something for ourselves.  We would have obtained valuable life lessons along the way.  Last but not least, we would have shown others the possibilities in life.  That was arguably my most important takeaway.  No, we are not here to become productivity experts for the world.  We just want to share with each other the value of following your heart.

By the end of the day, we were able to identify 10 user-tasks that Neal and Mike will have to attack until June 2011, both from the designer and programmer perspective.  The “Next 200 Days” is what we called it.  This list would provide more context and meaning to our incremental learning.  And it marked the beginning of Probity’s tangible deliveries.

When you’ve been away from something or someone, sometimes you forget.  You employ an “out of sight, out of mind” model.  You forget who and what energize you.  You forget the why.  You start to wonder, “Are we all on the same page anymore?”  Our diverse backgrounds and opinions often result in our different representations of a similar core.  When we do not have the chance to debate it out, however, they become seemingly real differences and divides.  Perception becomes real.  Yet on Saturday, I found comfort in that the core of our team hasn’t changed, that Probity hasn’t changed.

It didn’t matter that all of our ideas fall in different quadrants of the graphs.  Or the fact that we didn’t at first agree on the right level of details for the initial application.  It’s the never-ending flow of creativity and energy that mattered, and how we naturally feed off each other’s passion and ideas.  Our final decisions and products are always 100 times better than the sum of our individual ideas.

It’s why Probity is powerful.

At the beginning of Saturday’s meeting, Neal asked us to go around and talk about “Why.”  Why are we here?  Why are we having this meeting? From a personal point of view, I wanted to reconnect with Probity, to combine all of our vision and to really see the possibilities of this app we are about to build.  No surprise really, the meeting fulfilled everything above, and more.

Sep 12 0 comments
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Officially in.

I am officially in the corporate world.

This past Tuesday, September 7 2010, at 8:51am, I have entered the “real world” —- I have officially become an analyst at an international management consulting firm.  The first week has been preliminary training, with introductory sessions on firm resources and policies, Microsoft Excel, Access, and MySQL, and also accounting and finance.  It’s been fun to meet new faces, to hear about people’s experiences, and to receive both inspirational and precautionary pieces of advice.  The company also flew in new hires from San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston for joint training.  Once again I feel very fortunate to be a part of the most diverse crowd — SF office are consisted of all females while the Texas offices are all males in blue dress shirts.  Nonetheless, it had been a fairly easygoing week.  Boston should get much more serious when Partners are involved, along with the NYC and Boston new hires, where there will be project work simulations.

While this is all very exciting to begin a new phase in life, in the back of my mind I keep reminding myself not to forget my personal objectives.  They say that as new hires you should be flexible and highly engaged (to be wanted).  They keep reminding you of both the monetary and non-monetary incentives to contributing to various company activities and events.  While the company create this image of who they define to be “successful” or as an “exceptional” employee, I felt the need to step back and reflect on who I want to be.

To be honest, money is still not my biggest concern in life.  While it’s true that, as a fresh grad, I still need to build out that financial foundation, I believe even more that with relevant experiences and refined abilities, money will follow.  The intellectual stimulation and abundance learning opportunities will be my ultimate motivation.

Some of the ongoing questions for myself:

  • What is my interpretation of my job right now?  What exactly did I want to get out of it?
  • Which activities align with my goals and objectives?  What’s the right level of “extra-curricular” participation?
  • Which industries do I want to focus on?  Do I know for certain?
  • In the ideal world, what would be my brand within the firm?

Obviously, right now I am in no place to be “picky” and to demand to be involved with certain projects and learning opportunities.  But I feel that I should be cognizant of the long-term implications of my involvement with various programs.  I don’t just want to follow some external criteria or “beat the system” by meeting minimum requirements as if it is a college course.  At the end of career evaluation term, I want to be able to think back and be truly proud of how I have developed as a person.  I will make this about me.

I also don’t want to bury Probity in the back of my mind.  Perhaps I have not progressed much with programming in the past couple of weeks and perhaps I haven’t even spent too much time with my crew.  But hey guys, don’t worry.  When I was the only person in the room to figure out this Excel x Macro exercise during one of the training sessions, I knew that I still have it in me.  When I am less overwhelmed by all the new adjustments, I will have figured out my way to continue to add value.  I am still on the route to pursue for true happiness.  I don’t intend to settle and I don’t believe you would let me either.  Thanks for keeping me sane.

Aug 22 0 comments
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Impact.

Which is worth more: your skills or your impact?  I thought this was a rhetorical question.

However, this became a topic of debate when I recently reconnected with a high school friend.  Let’s call him John.  For the longest time, I thought John studied “geography” and “environmental issues.”  But, I realized that I got it all wrong.  He has simply tried to avoid talking about or explaining his actual concentration — because he’s ashamed of it.

What does he really do?  Geographical information systems (GIS).  Basically, my friend can create the essence of widely used navigation systems, such as Google Maps and GPS, the maps.  He can code data, layer by layer, and figure out the answers to many market questions.

  • What’s the most efficient route?
  • Where’s the highest concentration of people at a certain time of day?

Now that location-based technology is all the more prevalent with Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Places…his pursued profession is absolutely relevant to the growing opportunities from all over the world.

But while I thought it was the coolest thing on earth, John simply responded, “Compared to all these friends of ours who are becoming bankers and lawyers…I feel like a loser.  I don’t like talking about it… For my masters, I’m thinking about switching to the surveyor route.”

What?  Why?!  Are you serious?

—–

It’s not about the tasks.

“ I just map things.”

John has trouble explaining his major to others sometimes, so he just claims to be a geography major.  His argument is that that is his major.  For an hour, we argued about his ill-presentation of himself.  If you really think about it, the tasks for whatever professions are never so exciting.  In consulting, it’s research, brainstorm, create decks, and present.  Investment bankers create excel spreadsheets, run the models, create decks and present.  Awesome??  In the end, it’s the results that establish the glamorous reputations.  John may just be creating the maps, but companies use them to manage their costs and to market to their targets more effectively.  His work is enabling!  We’re not out to discover the job with the most exciting tasks, are we?

—–

It’s not about the title or others’ perception.

“People would immediately recognize it if I tell them I’m a surveyor!  I’d stand out.”

Sure, I understand that the perception of a surveyor is, put shortly, math genius.  You are automatically categorized as smart, but…so?  When he explained what surveyors do (see, he had to explain anyway), I pointed out that it’s a reactive profession.  Surveyors measure geographical elements.  Is this land suitable for building a skyscraper? You measure and report.  I have no doubt that it requires a lot intellectual power, but you really have no control or influence over any of the results.  Should your career be determined by the implied skills of your profession and how much others would appreciate them?

“I do want to do something extraordinary someday.  I want to learn how to fly a plane…  It’ll be my side hobby.”

My immediate question to John was, “That’s it?  You’re going to settle just on that?”  It confused me that the one extraordinary event of his dreams would be a hobby that’s, no offense, so selfish.  Should a person be content simply because they acquired some peculiar skills?

—–

It’s about your impact.

I told John, “You can literally change the world (by mapping it differently!  I kid.)!”

What’s worth more: your skills or your impact?  I still believe it’s a rhetorical question.  Skills are unfortunately ranked by society, but one person’s impact should never be valued more than another’s. It is an individual’s ultimate breakthrough from social constructs.

Obviously, one can argue that without some skills, a person can hardly create the impact.  But, the sad realization is, skills can exist without impact.  There are more people than ideal who are willing to choose skills over impact — just to ensure that they could gain others’ approval, just to feel good about themselves.  It’s unfortunate.

Perhaps people should decide on their impact first, then on the needed skills.  That’s what we did.  It becomes too obvious then.

Aug 15 2 comments
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Maggie’s got contacts!

I finally made the decision to do something I should’ve done a long time ago — I got contacts!

For quite some time now, the quality of my vision has been… subpar.  On paper, it’s not that bad.  My prescriptions have maintained around +1.00 for both eyes over the past eight years.  But, there are many things that I can’t see or read clearly.  Whether it’s subtitles on TV screens, signs from afar or especially people’s faces at a distance, I have to blink a few times or squint before I can potentially see them.  Many of my friends are aware of this problem, and they’d ask, “Don’t you have glasses?  Where are your contacts?”

I never liked the way I looked in glasses.  I got my first pair of glasses around junior year in high school.  They had silver rims.  I might pull them out to read whiteboards in class every now and then, but for the most part, they just sat in my bag untouched.  I got my second pair of glasses two years later.  This time, they had no rims.  I liked them better in the beginning.  Eventually, though, they received very similar treatment as my first pair.  In my junior year of college, I bought my third pair of glasses.  They were of thick black frames — arguably more fashionable than the previous ones.  I remember when I first pulled them out, a couple of my friends even said, “Oh, I like your new glasses!”  But, still.  I could barely keep them on for longer than a couple classes or meetings.  Asian in glasses?  N-e-r-d-y.

Then you’d ask, “What about contacts?”  And I’d tell you over and over again that I don’t like the idea of putting something in my eyes.  But, here’s my confession to you, friends.  The real, honest truth was that I did not want to become dependent.  Because I know that I would accept the way contacts look on me (if I didn’t, there’s not much I can do about it), I was afraid.  I was afraid to officially become someone who needs glasses of some form all the time.  I wasn’t very fond of the image.  It makes me think about people who frantically search for their glasses when they wake up each morning.

A few weeks ago, however, my boyfriend asked me if I was going to get contacts while I’m in Hong Kong.  I gave my usual spiel, but then he said, “You’ll need them unless you plan on wearing your glasses much more during work…”  What brought it home for me was a timely commercial from Bausch, where two girls were brought into a board meeting by their boss, and only one girl was able to answer the question asked because she could actually see what was projected on the screen.  The other girl, on the other hand, had to squint and was thus slower.  As Mike would say, it hit me like a brick.  There are much more important functional needs than the silly emotional barrier I had.  After all, lenses were invented for the very reason…to allow us to see.

On Tuesday, I got my eyes checked.  The first time I put contacts on, I looked at my mom who was sitting all the way on the other side of the store and said, “Wow.  Mom, I can see you.”  I could even read the menu of the coffee shop next door.  The eye specialist also taught me how to put on and take off my contacts.  I learned so quickly the guy told me I was pretty talented!

I’d been in denial.  “My eyes aren’t that bad.  They’re much better when I get enough sleep!”  And hey, it was true.  But, what does it matter if I never get enough sleep for the majority of the days?  And now that I have my contacts, I know that getting them was never even that big of a deal in the first place.  More importantly, I am excited to take a second look at the world.  I bet there were sooo many things that I missed out on seeing even while looking.  I wonder who I’d missed seeing in the 1000 times I’d walked up and down Sheridan Road.  Maybe I would’ve beat Neal in beating Heavy Rain if I could see some of the details on the screen…

Maybe my eyes will now be less tired at the end of each day too.

Aug 08 1 comments
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Key to success?

You are the reason you will be successful.

A friend and I attended a web startups event in Hong Kong on Saturday.  It had a series of panels on various topics, including the entrepreneurial journey, funding, and the future trends, and also three startups showcases for both fundraising and publicity purposes.  There was a humorous moment when one of the VCs made the comparison:

“Entrepreneurs who’d say, ‘We have this grand, amazing idea… we just won’t tell you yet’ is the same as us telling them, ‘We have a lot of money… but we just won’t give it to you.’”

What I found insightful about the analogy was that ideas are compared to money.  Both are merely seen as media of exchange.  Neither is the key to success.

What I especially liked, was when Mr. Kin Ko, both an entrepreneur and an investor, spoke on bootstrapping.  He discussed how bootstrapping is a good discipline because it forces you to understand your own business.  As long as you understand your customers and can generate your own revenue…

“…the bootstrapping phase can be so good for you…you may never have to leave it.”

It really isn’t about how much money you can raise or even how analysts value your company.  It’s about passion, flexibility, tenacity, problem-solving instincts within chaos, execution… it’s about you.

“It’s not about the idea; it’s the people.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this said, but, more importantly, the many times it’s exemplified.  It happened, again, when we watched some of the startup showcases.  The first thing I noticed was that many of the startups were essentially clones of widespread U.S. web businesses such as Groupon or Foursquare.  In fact, Foursquare had two clones in one showcase!  It seemed so easy.  Just transfer the idea and technology and, BOOM, you’re an entrepreneur in Asia.  But, the important thing to recognize is that very few, if any at all, of those startups have truly succeeded.  It was surprising to find companies in their 3rd or 4th round of funding yet still barely heard by public.  The essence of social media, the users, are hugely missing.  Whose problem was it?  Ideas are just not perfect.  They aren’t transferrable without vision for the market and its potential.  They aren’t transferrable without the right understanding, passion and talents.  It doesn’t matter how much money you’re able to raise.

It’s not the idea.  Or the money.   It’s execution.  It’s the people.

In the corporate world?

Those of you in the corporate world…don’t think this is all N/A to you, myself included.  Will we ever stop letting money determine our next career move?  We also have a different type of medium to evaluate ourselves — it’s called brand.  Earlier this week, I heard this ridiculous story of how a girl, three weeks in at another renowned consulting firm,  is still dreaming of being hired by McKinsey.  Why?  Because she thinks that in the far future, McKinsey will get her in the C-Suite, whereas the current company will merely give her a Director or VP title.  It’s mind boggling that people think that excelling in one interview or making one correct decision in life will get them through the rest of it.  Sure, a strong (alumni) network is a real perk. However, it can only carry you so far.  It’d get you to the door, but will it get you to the other side?

Why do people rather have such blind faith in something so outside of themselves?  If you’d rather let the idea, the money, or the brand do the work, then you’ve made the decision to give up control.  If it turns out to be a success, it’s not yours.  If it is a failure, don’t complain because you didn’t do anything.  We should never rely on the likeable characteristics of external factors to win our battles.  We are all we can rely on.  We are our key to successes.

Aug 01 1 comments
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Mind & emotions

As an extension of last week’s conversation (hence blog post), mom and I spent another afternoon tea talking about challenges in life.  She asked me if I was worried or scared about anything as the start date for my first full-time job is approaching.  I told her a couple things, ranging from people to tasks, from short to long-term opportunities.  And that’s when she said, “Always remember what I tell you today.  Your most valuable asset is here.”  Mom pointed to her head.

It’s not fear.  It’s anxiety.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” she said.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” FDR once said.  I believe he was…close to correct.  There is the assumption that underlying fear is an evolutionary program that yearns for inaction, avoidance, or impulsive reactions.  But, fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat.  It merely alerts us and raises the urgent question: Hey, fight or flight?  Reading The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene this week reminded me of fear in its purest form.  Remember the first time you saw fire as a child?  An evolutionary product, fire naturally instills fear.  Of course you remember that you were scared.  But, do you also remember what slowly emerged was this provocative feeling that simultaneously urged you to move closer to it?

That’s right — fear itself asks you to choose.  Some time between then and now, we’d forgotten that adventurous, weird joy that is innate in fears we feel.  We let the darker side take over.  We start to consider it a sign for all flight and no fight.

What’s the darker side?  It’s anxiety.  Anxiety forms and acts internally.  It’s all in our head.

There are no real regrets from action, only inaction.

Mom also made me realize that there are no real regrets from action.  Only inaction could lead to real regrets where nothing is gained, and everything is lost.

The prospect of regrets make people feel anxious.  We are afraid to make the wrong decisions, afraid to sacrifice the wrong people and things, and afraid that we can never turn back time when we fail.  But, we shouldn’t have to.  Learning is an absolute value from our life journey: Success + Failure.  Even when we made a bad decision, took the wrong turn, we still learned.  You’re always in the positives.  The harder you fall, the more you learn.  So, what’s to regret?  What’s to go back and change?  Time is really a way of evidence for our learning.

But inaction is a different case.  Regret is justified because you’re mourning for what you hadn’t learned and perhaps still hasn’t learned.  The lost is real.

Your mind is your foundation, and it is your everything.

In the end, what Mom was trying to tell me is that I should just focus on learning and building my foundation in the first couple of years out of school.  Who knows where life is going to take me?  But, the experience that I gain — regardless of successes and failures — are what I get to keep for life.  It will build the foundation for my decision-makings in the future.  It will give me the power to achieve my goals and dreams.  It’s something that absolutely no one has the ability to take away from me.

Our minds are our most powerful weapon.  We can store the world, move boundaries, and envision future with it.  When you cultivate and nurture yours correctly, dreams are to be achieved.  The rest are just emotional fluctuations.

Jul 25 0 comments
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Decision-making is a lifetime activity.

On Thursday, during afternoon tea with Mom and my brother, Mom shared stories between her and Dad and some of the decisions they made at different points of their lives.

Then Mom asked me, “Did you ever think that Dad and I might not have had the money to send you to college?”  Umm, no. I really never did.  I took comfort in what our family has.  After all, they said that I could go to college, right?  But, Mom reminded me that there are still many ways for things to take a different turn at this point in life.  What if Dad’s business failed halfway through my NU career?

It was one of those conversations that humanize parents.  You learn more about their strengths and weaknesses, challenges they’ve faced, and even whether they can look back and be proud of how it all came together.  Some stories were simply more detailed versions of what I had known, and some came somewhat as a shocker.  Things might be completely different now if they’d chosen an alternative option 25 years ago.  I might not even exist.

Nonetheless, Mom had a central theme to their stories and all their decisions.  They had one simple goal — to protect and to take care of the family.

I had three realizations from the conversation.

  1. Don’t take for granted what you have today.  Life continues and you’ll have many more decisions to make that can make small and dramatic changes to your present state.  Even my parents are still making decisions everyday.  It never ends.
  2. Don’t take others’ successes for granted. No one is that lucky.  No one made it in life in one smooth sail.  The refined versions of my parents’ stories made me realize even more that success is not created by a string of successes.  There are integral pockets of difficulties and moments of failures.  The Feel Bad Effect is naïve.  Don’t envy others.  You never know what they have gone through or have going on in the background.
  3. Life is not about finding that one opportunity that will give you a smooth sail for the rest of the way.  It’s about making the best decisions you can along the way.  Focus on yourself, and focus on your goals.  That’s the best decision you can make for yourself today, and everyday.