2-3-4 Friday

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

Here’s an interesting question.

How do you stay successful?

For those of you new to this newsletter, you might not know that I’m based in Singapore, living on a tiny island which is really, just a red dot on the world map.

The beauty of the Singapore story is that it started off being backs to the wall, scrappy, and close to being written off.

From a backwater that no one knew, it became a thriving metropolis.

It makes for a good story.

You might find parallels in your own life. You started off being written off. No one believed that you could make it.

Yet you did.

But where you are right now, might be a place where you are doubtful and thinking,

this isn’t what I really wanted.

What then do you do?

Let’s go back to the Singapore story.

What allowed Singapore to succeed? But more importantly, what has allowed it to stay successful?

Of course here, success means different things for different people.

But I’m going to take the measures of success being the continuous ability to stay top of the charts in terms of economic indicators such as GDP per capita.

And what does this mean for those of us, who do want to stay successful? 

Whatever that individually means for you?

There’s probably something we can learn from Singapore’s example.

In June 2022, Singapore embarked on a series of conversations called Forward SG. The Deputy Prime Minister remarked,

As my 4G team and I prepare to take on the mantle and to lead Singapore forward –

let us re-affirm our fundamental values,

re-examine our principles,

re-view our priorities and policies – and chart our new way forward together.

Two things perhaps to take away.

When you’re successful, you might find it useful to ask yourself,

where I’m at right now, is this still what I want?

What do I really want?

Because if we are honest, success looks different when you’re not there yet, as compared to when you are there.

What should anchor us are our values.

And during times when we are still finding our way, it might work to embark on your own personal journey where you ask yourself over 3 months,

1. Where am I now?
2. What do I feel about where I am?
3. Where do I want to be?

I don’t think we always have to take long retreats out (though they can be useful).

It might be more helpful to do it consistently.

Two, that even when we are successful, we need to remember that what got us successful, won’t leave us successful.

1 talk

”The things you own end up owning you.”

Henry David Thoreau, writer

1 tip

Like anything else, success too, is something you own.

It’s not something internal. It’s something external too. It can be a weight you carry around, that limits how you approach life.

That’s why people say you can be a ‘victim’ of your own success.

So how do you shed the weight of success?

I think the principle here I use is to ‘hold it lightly’.

You acknowledge that you’re successful, that you’re well respected in what you do, that you’ve accomplished what most people can’t do.

But you also acknowledge that this ‘success’ is not you. That you don’t get defined by it.

Personal example. 

When I first won a scholarship to study overseas, I allowed it to define what I did. Rather than allowing myself to be the funny self that I always was, I ended up gritting and spending most days in the library.

I became a boring dud that had no friends.

I wanted to live up to the S$208,000 that they had paid for my education.

What helped me to later ease up was simply realising that I was John, just John. Not a scholar, not some high-flying careerist.

Just a person who wanted to do some good to the world.

And that might be you too.

The next time someone asks you what you do, maybe it’d help not to say your job title, but how you see your work impacting someone else. Like,

oh part of my work is helping low income families to get into stabler jobs.

You are more the sum of your work. Or your success. You are actually, less defined by how much you succeed, but by how you respond after that success.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love

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