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A nurse who cared for dying patients in the last weeks of their lives recorded the most common regrets among them. The top ones were wishing they didn’t work so hard, wishing they had the courage to express themselves, and wishing they had let themselves be happier.

When death becomes imminent, we often get striking clarity on what’s important and what’s not. Here are the top 5 regrets of the dying, as identified by former palliative nurse Bronnie Ware, and how we can use these insights to improve our life now.

Regret #1: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me

Bronnie says, “This was the most common regret of all when people realized that their life is almost over […]. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to the choices they had made or not made.”

Have you ever been told what to do in your life, even though it isn’t what you really want? For example:

• Being told to pick a certain course of study because it’s popular.
• Being told to pick a certain career because it’s lucrative.
• Being told to get married by X age.
• Being told to have kids after marriage, which I wrote about in Stop Asking Couples When They’re Having Kids.

I remember when I first told others about my plan to quit my well-paying corporate job and start my personal development business, everyone around me reacted negatively, including my parents and friends. “You’re going to regret it,” a good friend said. “NO! Starting a business is very risky. Your job pays you so well and you get pension,” my parents said. “You shouldn’t quit your job. It’s the recession now and it’ll be hard to find another job,” my then-colleagues said.

While I understood what they were saying, what I was doing (selling skincare and consumer goods) wasn’t my passion — helping others to grow is. Even though my job paid very well, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I quit my job and started Personal Excellence. With no help or support network, I built my blog from zero to over a million pageviews a month, worked with thousands of clients to achieve their goals, and was interviewed regularly on TV, print, and radio for my work. (I detail my journey in my passion series.)

While others’ expectations often come from a good place, ultimately your life is yours to live. Don’t pick a certain career because others tell you to do so. Don’t rush into marriage because your friends are getting married. And definitely don’t have kids simply because your parents and in-laws keep asking you to do so.

You may be on a different path, and that’s okay. All of us have our unique paths in life. Don’t worry about what others are doing, but work on staying true to yourself. What are your goals? Your dreams? Have you been putting them on hold? How can you start working on your goals and needs now, even if in a small way?

Regret #2: I wish I didn’t work so hard

I grew up in Singapore where work is equated with the individual — there is little to no concept of self. Conversations usually start this way, “What do you do? What do you work as?” There is a strong national rhetoric that to live is to work, and one should work until they die. Singapore is the most overworked country in the Asia Pacific^[1], and in a research by Sleepseeker, it is also the most tired nation in the world.^[2]

So when I started working in my 20s, work naturally became the core of my being. I would work non-stop from day and night, sleep, and then continue this the next day. Whether it was my corporate job (pre-Personal Excellence) or my business, I would do well and excel in it.

While it was fulfilling to see the fruits of my labor, it became clear that some parts of my life don’t improve by simply working hard in my job. For example, Family. Romance. Health. Ignoring them for a long time causes them to decline. Sometimes, there are things that can’t be recovered when gone, for example when you miss your child’s growing up years, or when your loved ones pass away.

When you thrive at work, it gives you a sense of accomplishment and even helps you in your financial goals. But as you put more and more time into work, to the point of extremity, there is a point of diminishing returns where the work gains don’t fulfill you as much.

Elon Musk is the perfect example of modern-day workaholism. He works 120-hour weeks and is frequently seen as the emblem of American success.^[3][4] But he admits to needing a sleep drug to sleep, suffers from stress-related vomitting and insomnia, and has a turbulent personal life (he is divorced three times; he never talked to his first wife about the death of their first child; his eldest daughter recently disowned him; and he is currently in a custody battle with an ex-partner over the parental rights of their three children).^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

Are these purely the result of overworking? Some clearly are. Would these issues be there if he had spent some time on these life areas outside of work? Chances are they would be at a lesser intensity. Some issues may not even exist.

There are areas of our lives that cannot be fulfilled by simply working. I have created a life wheel tool (below) that lets you assess how you’re currently doing in your life, beyond just work. It reflects the 10 key areas of your life, such as Career, Finance, Family, Health, Contribution, and Self. I use this with my 1-1 coaching clients and it’s extremely helpful to see if their life is off balance.

(Image: Personal Excellence)

Here’s a quick exercise for you:

1. Rate yourself in each area on a scale of 0-10, where 0 is the lowest and 10 is the highest.
2. Mark the scores on the diagram and connect them with a continuous line.
   • What shape did you get? Is it a constricted web with low scores on many fronts? A lopsided web with high scores in some areas and low scores in others? Or a broad circle with many high scores, or even a full circle?
3. Evaluate the shape of your life wheel. It reflects how you’re currently doing in your life. A constricted web means many restrictions, while a broad circle means you’re doing well. A lopsided web means your life is off balance.
   • How are you happy with your life wheel shape? Why or why not?
   • How are you doing in each area? Which are your lowest areas? Which are your highest?
   • Have you been neglecting your non-work areas like Family, Love, Social, Self, and Health? If so, how can you start working on them?

(For more on the life wheel, check out my life wheel article, which is also Day 1’s task in Live a Better Life in 30 Days Program.)

Regret #3: I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings

Bronnie says, “Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”

The fear of expressing ourselves often comes from a fear of others’ reactions. Such as the fear of being judged. Fear of being rejected. Fear of being criticized. I understand that because in my culture (I’m Chinese), conformance is quintessential. You’re expected to keep quiet to be accepted, otherwise you’ll be frowned upon, criticized, or an outcast. Yet in doing so, you become a yes-person, you suppress your true self, and you never get heard.

Ultimately ask yourself — does it matter what others think of you? Because at the end of the day, you can’t please everyone. When you stay silent out of fear of how others would react, you are just suppressing your real self and your wants and needs, out of fear of offending others. But if someone is so easily offended by you, and the relationship is contingent upon you hiding your views, then is this really a relationship you want to have?

Some people may be unhappy or dislike you when you speak your mind. That’s fine. Don’t aim to please everyone — it’s a terrible goal. Sometimes people’s unhappiness has nothing to do with you — it’s to do with their own pain in their lives.

Choose your battles. Speak up on the things that matter to you. For the other things, if they’re not that important, let them go. Start doing that with your friends, family, and colleagues. If there’s something important to you, speak up. If the person cares about you, they will want to hear what you have to say. If they are not receptive, then perhaps it’s a sign that this relationship is not compatible and it’s time to let it go.

Similarly, saying no is an important skill as you help others understand your boundaries. While we may want to say yes all the time to make others happy, remember that saying no lets others know your limits. Read: How To Say No To Others

Regret #4: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends

This regret is interesting because with the patients Bronnie cared for, they grew up in an era when there were no mobile phones or social media, and it was difficult to stay in touch. These days, we have Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, and it’s so easy to keep in touch. You can simply add someone as a friend on Facebook and see their profile updates, or send a SMS or Whatsapp message and start a conversation that way.

Yet staying in touch remains a challenge as we are now overwhelmed as a society. We are overwhelmed by life’s continuous challenges, be it Covid, work pressures, raising young children, caring for older parents, or pressures in the family. And this leaves us with little to no time for our friendships.

Can you identify the friends who are important to you? Friends who have been there for you in life. Friends you have a genuine connection with. Friends you care about. Friends who have been with you through ups and downs.

When you get a moment and a breather, take some time to keep in touch. Maybe send them a message right now. Send a text message to them to check how they are doing or send some good wishes. For example, “Hi X, I was just thinking about you. How are you doing?” Just send a message and see what comes out of it. Who knows, maybe he/she is thinking about you too. ♥

Regret #5: I wish that I had let myself be happier

Bronnie shared this story in her book (Top Five Regrets of the Dying):

Rosemary was raised in a small town with a family name that meant something. As a young woman, she played her part and married young to a man everyone respected. For the next couple years, she endured physical and mental abuse, and eventually found the strength to escape once and for all. After her divorce, in a desperate hope to protect her family name, she left her hometown and moved to the city.

Rosemary’s need for approval and self-validation drove her success in a male-dominated corporate world. She became an executive in a global corporation, and the first woman to hold such a role in her city. She was a product of her environment — demanding, controlling, and intimidating. While she loved the power and respect, it didn’t help her when she became ill. She was scared, lonely, and unhappy. After her failed marriage, she never let anyone get too close and never felt she deserved to be happy.

Facing death provided clarity. She regretted being mean to everyone and admitted she didn’t know how to be happy. Slowly, and with Bronnie’s encouragement, she began giving herself permission. Sneaking smiles and quiet laughter, as if they were bad words. She became kinder. She began to like herself more. She even joked about how much of a tyrant she was in the past. She realized that we all deserve to be happy and must choose to be. She forgave herself, finally allowed herself to be happy, and passed on.

“I wish I’d let myself be happier. What a miserable person I have been. I just didn’t think I deserved to be. But I do. I know that now.” — Rosemary

For many of us, happiness may be an elusive pursuit. “I can only be happy if I do X and Y,” we tell ourselves.

It’s not our fault really — many times these are stories that society tells us, and we are just doing what we are told. In Rosemary’s case, she initially thought that happiness came from being married to a man that everyone respected. When it didn’t happen, she then worked on her career, which resulted in power and respect, but it still didn’t bring her happiness. It was only when she gave herself permission to be happy that she finally became happy and passed on.

What does it mean to be happy? Looking up the Cambridge dictionary^[10][11], it means feeling pleased or satisfied. Being cheerful. Glad. Delighted. Contented. In many cultures, we’re told that we can only be happy when we do as we’re told. For example, achieving academic success. Getting a well-paying job. Achieving career success. Being materially wealthy. Marrying a respectable person. Marrying someone of the same race (or religion or culture or background). Having kids. Having more kids. Having a healthy child. Raising a successful child.

Many of these are tied with the first regret, which are to live up to expectations that others have of us, and the implicit message being we’re not worthy if we don’t achieve them.

Maybe it’s time to release ourselves from these expectations. Achieving academic success, career success, or material wealth doesn’t guarantee happiness. Marrying someone who is wealthy or of a certain status doesn’t guarantee happiness. Having one, two, or many kids, and raising kids dogmaticly in a certain way doesn’t guarantee happiness. Some people slough away to achieve these all through their lives and they’re still unhappy.

Happiness can start now — if you give yourself the permission to be happy. Release yourself of others’ expectations. Release yourself of your expectations. Find happiness in the little things. Whatever difficulty you may be facing now, there is a way out. Don’t give up. I hope you’ll be able to find a solution soon, and work through whatever you’re facing. And I’ll do my best to support you through my work at PE.

Related posts:

• Regrets of the Dying [BronnieWare.com]
• The Life Wheel (Day 1 of Live a Better Life in 30 Days Program)

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Are you feeling uncertain about life now? Are you facing uncertainty in your work, health, relationships, or other life areas? In my last newsletter, I shared how to make hard decisions. Today’s post is about addressing uncertainty.

Whether it’s moving to a new country, changing jobs, or dealing with health problems, there are times in life when we are caught in uncertainty.

But as humans, we seek clarity and control. So when we face uncertainty, we feel unsettled. We think about the worst-case scenario and play it over and over in our minds. Some of us freeze and panic; some of us become depressed; others give up and do nothing.

While it’s normal to worry, prolonged worrying is unconstructive and does little to solve the problem. There are steps you can take to deal with uncertainty, whether in terms of action or mindset change. Today I share six tips to address uncertainty.

Tip 1: Focus on what you can do

First, focus on what you can do.

It’s normal to feel helpless when we face situations that are out of our control. A pandemic, a retrenchment, a negative health diagnosis, and a divorce are examples of events that can make anyone feel powerless, like our life is not our own.

But in every situation, there is always something you can do. What can you do? Work on them. Don’t focus on the things you can’t control, but focus on the things you can control. If you do nothing, nothing will improve. But if you focus on the things you can do, and work on them, things may get better.

For example, in a retrenchment, you can’t change the fact that you just lost your job. But you can control how much time and effort you spend looking for a new job. You can improve your resume, contact headhunters, join job boards, and network with people in your industry. You can control your attitude toward your layoff, which will in turn affect the opportunities that come your way.

Likewise in a negative health diagnosis, you can’t change the fact that the illness is currently there. But you can research the illness, join online forums, and connect with those with the same condition. You can research therapies that have helped others get better, and there are many people who have healed themselves from what were declared to them as incurable diseases. You can take action to heal yourself, or if not possible, work on managing your symptoms and living a meaningful life despite your health.

Similarly in a divorce, you can’t change the fact that the marriage has come to an end. But you can work on planning your life after divorce, setting new goals as a single, and connecting with loved ones for support. If you have kids, focus on raising them in a positive and loving environment despite the divorce.

Table: How To Deal With Uncertainty (© PersonalExcellence.co)

The goal is to shift from an external locus to an internal locus of control. External locus of control means perceiving external factors to have more control than you over your life. Internal locus of control means perceiving yourself to have more control than external factors over your life.

While life is not perfect and unexpected things can happen — things that are not your fault and not caused by you — having an internal locus of control helps you take charge of your life. When you adopt an internal locus of control, you focus on the things you can do to make a difference, and try to move things to a better path.

Recognize that even in great uncertainty, you still have power over yourself, your attitude, and your actions. Even if there is seemingly nothing you can do, you can change your attitude, manage your stress levels, and address your emotions. There are still things you can do and control, and it is by focusing on them that you return to the driver’s seat of your life.

Tip 2: Have a backup plan

Part of the issue with uncertainty is that there is a lot of variance in what may happen — particularly the downside. We have no idea what’s going to happen next and it can feel like we are walking in the dark.

Rather than let the uncertainty take over you, create a backup plan so that you know what to do if the worst-case scenario happens. First, it limits the downside you may face by making you think and plan ahead. Next, it mentally prepares you for the worst-case scenario. Lastly, it gives you peace of mind so that you can focus on dealing with the problem, rather than keep worrying about what to do if the worst thing happens.

When I quit my job to start my business Personal Excellence years ago, I was initially anxious about the future. I was worried that I wouldn’t earn any money even after pursuing my passion for a year — meaning I had failed and had to return to a job I didn’t love.

After worrying for a while, I decided to sit down and address my concerns. The bulk of my worries was uncertainty over my cash flow and business success. So I asked myself:

1. How can I ensure my business will definitely succeed?
2. What should I do if my business doesn’t bring in money after six months? (I had set the time period at six months so that I would have time to regroup if things didn’t work out.)

My goal was to focus on the things I could control, rather than the things I couldn’t control.

With 1), my answer was to work on my business strategy, develop my coaching skills, create the best content, and build traffic, among many other actions. As for the other things I couldn’t fully control — such as whether I would be featured in the media and whether my articles would rank #1 on Google — I would do my best but not worry about them.

With 2), my answer was to return to corporate, earn some money for one to two years, and then quit to work on my business. And to do this again and again until I succeeded.

When I planned this path, suddenly the worst-case scenario of failure didn’t seem scary to me. I knew I had a plan if I didn’t earn any money, and my worst-case scenario of zero income was covered. By doing this, I could fully devote myself to my business without worry. Personal Excellence soon gained traction and the rest was history.

It’s the same for other situations. If you’re dealing with a job loss, prepare for a scenario where you don’t find a job for the next six months. What would you do? Perhaps you can look for jobs in other sectors, step up on your networking, and take on part-time work until you find a full-time job. Financially, cut down your expenses to the minimum. Get a bank loan if necessary to tide you over.

With health problems, prepare for a scenario if things don’t get well. What would you do? What would you want to do with your loved ones? Think about your will, to avoid the stresses of estate administration down the road. While these are things no one wants to think about, thinking ahead can sometimes set our minds at ease and let us focus on getting well.

With a divorce, perhaps one of your fears is never finding someone compatible. What if you don’t find someone? What would you do? How would you live your life? How can you create your best life ever? Interestingly it is by living our best life as an individual that we then attract the right person, something that I teach in my course Soulmate Journey.

Tip 3: Live your life as best as you can, despite the uncertainty

Thirdly, live your life as best as you can, despite the uncertainty.

Ask yourself: “How can I live my best life despite the situation?” Then, do that. Because when you let your life be ruled over by the uncertainty, you give power to it. But by living life as you would — to the best of your ability — you regain power over your life.

Shannen Doherty is an American actress with Stage 4 breast cancer. She was initially diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and went into remission in 2017, but in 2019, discovered that her cancer had returned as Stage 4.^[1]

Despite her illness, she has focused on working, living, and being an advocate for cancer survivors. Since 2020, she has filmed a series of productions including BH90210, Dying to Belong, and List of a Lifetime. In January 2023, she discovered that the cancer has spread to her brain, yet she is starting a podcast after the fact.^[2][3]

She says, “Stage 4 cancer, it doesn’t mean the end of your life. It doesn’t mean that you’re not viable in the workplace. It’s quite the opposite. I think we probably work harder than anyone because we have so much more to prove.”^[4] “Our life doesn’t end the minute we get that diagnosis. We still have some living to do.”^[5]

For you, living your best life may mean something different. It may be working, meeting friends, or being with loved ones. While you battle with uncertainty, try to create normalcy in your life — if possible. While the uncertainty may have disrupted 50, 75, or even 100 percent of your life, getting back a little control — even if just one percent — can help you feel a sense of stability and centeredness.

Tip 4: Learn to accept uncertainty

Many of us have been through the golden age in the 1990s and 2000s^[6][7] where there was an economic boom with rising employment and rising affluence.

During this time, job security was the norm, there was certainty in life, and people could focus on working, earning money, and growing in material wealth, without worrying about other things. Health was a given and something to only worry about in old age; marriage resulted in the certainty that your partner was yours for life; and there was no such thing as chronic health conditions, divorce, layoffs, global pandemics, banks collapsing, or massive economic downturn.

But the reality is that uncertainty is a constant in life. The economic boom in the 1990s and 2000s was a temporary period of illusionary stability in the long span of human history. When you look at the entire human history, the only constant has been change. Be it the Agricultural Revolution where humans switched from a nomadic lifestyle to farming, the Industrial Revolution where production switched from being by hand to by machines, or the Information Age where everything is now digitized, we as humans have constantly been dealing with change, whether as an individual or a civilization.

The Covid pandemic gave us a jolt and took us out of our comfort zones. But it is a reminder that nothing is permanent or certain. While we may seek certainty in our life again, and it is normal to do so, remember that there is nothing certain in life. Our health, jobs, investments, finances, business results, and even our homes — all these can change in the next moment.

Plan for a life with stable foundations, but be prepared that things can change. Let go of expectations for things to remain the same. Don’t resist change, but learn to deal with it as it happens. Soft skills like adaptability, ability to react quickly, openness, and willingness to step out of your comfort zone will be important.

Tip 5: Manage your stress levels

There are times when the uncertainty is so much and the problem is so stressful that we remain affected despite doing the above. For example, when we are dealing with a life-and-death situation. When the outcome of something critically important rests on someone else (such as surgery to remove a tumor). When there is no way to get clarity despite your best efforts (such as dealing with a health condition that no one knows about).

In these darkest of times, check in with yourself. How are you doing now? Are you feeling stressed out? If yes, how can you alleviate your stress levels? Perhaps it’s to shut down your laptop and take a break from reading online comments of all the negative scenarios. Perhaps it’s to get a timeout and take your mind off this for a day. Perhaps it’s to talk to a loved one about your worries.

Do something to manage your stress, even if it’s just taking a timeout for a few minutes. Your mental health is important. When you get back, continue to tackle the uncertainty using the steps above.

Tip 6: Do the best you can

Last but not least, do the best you can.

The past few years have been the most difficult years of my life.

• I had a baby and stopped working to dedicate myself to motherhood full-time, with no family help.
• My mother-in-law had a painful struggle with a rare illness for 18 months, during which my family became deeply involved in her care, until she passed away.
• COVID happened which made raising a baby and caring for the ill much more difficult than it already is.
• For the past decade, I faced worsening health problems that medical professionals had no answer for, that I later found out — after years of searching for answers on my own — are due to dental work that I had when I was young, including mercury fillings and a root canal, leading to heavy metal poisoning and other issues.
• My husband faced health and personal issues that I supported him through, that we later found out were due to dental work he had as a kid as well, specifically mercury fillings.
• I faced repeated conflicts in my blood family that I later found out were coming from a toxic family-in-law who was sowing discord in the family.
• Finally, after a two-year delay due to COVID, my husband and I moved overseas with our baby, without a job or long-term housing, where we had to move from place to place and live in day-to-day uncertainty about our future as he worked on finding a job (and eventually did).

Through these extremely difficult times, I had to be the rock to hold everything together. That despite the uncertainty of everything — a pandemic, illness and death of a loved one, raising a baby without family help, personal illness, and moving overseas without a job secured in the family — I had to be the constant to hold everything together. I had to do everything and stretch myself to the maximum to absorb all variables and uncertainties; to be the stable foundation so that my baby would have a safe and enriching upbringing; to support my husband through extreme difficulties; and to help my family soar and succeed.

Any of the above is difficult enough by itself, but for them to happen all at the same time, it was inhuman, surreal, and soul-crushing.

The pandemic also made everything significantly more difficult. We had planned to move abroad for years and had gotten our visas, booked our flights, and sold all our belongings in Singapore, but Covid struck and became a global pandemic, with countries entering lockdown literally days before our departure. We had to change our entire life plans and scramble to find local accommodation just as Singapore was entering lockdown, with our baby in tow. It would be two years of waiting in limbo before travel restrictions changed and we could move.

In these deeply uncertain times, what I’ve done (besides what I have shared above) is to live one day at a time. To do my best and make each day count. To do my best and hope that everything will work out in the end.

Because sometimes the best is really all we can do. When everything is out of our control, and it seems that nothing we do matters, then all we can do is focus on the few things within our control now — even if they are just a few small things. Do them and do them well. Do them and keep moving forward.

At some point, hopefully things will look up. When that happens, you can start planning for the future. In the meantime,

• Focus on what you can do. As I shared in #1, focus on what you can do. These are the things you can control in the situation, so work on them. The other things are not in your control, so focusing on them (unless it’s to learn) won’t help.
• Live one day at a time. In times of extreme uncertainty, the best we can do is to live one day at a time. Focus on doing your best and getting through the day. If not possible, then focus on getting through the moment. Moment by moment, that’s how you get through it.
• Don’t blame yourself for things gone wrong. You can’t control everything in a situation. There will be things that happen that are beyond your control, and they are not your fault. Whatever has happened, please know that it’s not your fault.
• Be kind to yourself. You are doing your best. Remember to love and care for yourself during this difficult time.
• Release your expectations. We all have expectations of how we want things to be, but we can’t control the outcome when so many things are out of our control. Release your expectations and do what you can. Know that whatever happens, you have done your best.

Final Words

I know that life is tough. I know that things can be difficult. Whatever you’re going through, I hope you make it through.

Know that uncertainty is very much a part of life. Be it an economic downturn, illness, death, raising a child, caring for a loved one, or something that is absolutely out of our control like a natural disaster or pandemic, uncertainty can hit us in different ways.

I want you to know that you’re not alone in this. There are many others fighting the same battles as well.

Do what you can in handling the situation. Follow the steps in this guide. Perhaps it may take weeks, months, or even years, but with persistent action and the right attitude, I hope that you will find a solution to your issue and regain stability in your life. Some issues may be so pervasive that it’s something you have to live with, perhaps for a long while, perhaps forever. If so, work on finding a new normal using the steps above.

The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire. You are stronger than you know. You are stronger than you realize. I hope you find strength in you to fight the battle ahead. And I hope to be here by your side, through PE, supporting you in the journey ahead.

Oftentimes, uncertainty comes hand in hand with decision-making. Read my article on decision making: How To Make Life’s Hardest Decisions: 3 Decision Making Methods

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“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.” — Martin Luther King, Jr

Sometimes, we see others’ successes and feel discouraged. Like so-and-so just launched a book and it hit bestseller lists. Or so-and-so launched a product and it achieved sold-out status.

So we set a high bar for ourselves and strive to do the same, if not better. We set high expectations on who we should be and what we should do, and push ourselves to achieve that.

Except that it doesn’t always work out. It fails as we become weighed down by the enormity of our goal, and stressed by the need to do great things, we do… nothing.

Days turn into weeks, then months, and nothing happens as we hold onto our grand goal, waiting for the perfect moment to work on it. “We’ll do it when we have the time, we say.

If this is happening to you now, know this: If you cannot do great things right now for whatever reason — maybe you are in a full-time job, or you are being a full-time parent, or you are stuck in a life circumstance — then start by doing small things in a great way.

This means,

• If your goal is to start a food channel, then start by perfecting your recipes in your own kitchen.
• If your goal is to develop the next big app, then start by developing simple tools that solve people’s pain points.
• If your goal is to be a best-selling author, then start by refining your writing skills through short-form writing like blog articles.
• If your goal is to be a YouTuber, then start by creating simple videos that convey your ideas well.

Whatever big goal you’ve been putting off, ask yourself: What is a small thing I can do well now?

It’s so easy to overlook the small things in favor of the big goal. But your results in the long term are built on the little steps you take today.

• An athlete wins the race because he has spent each day following his workout regime.
• A singer achieves her big break because she has performed many small gigs which helped hone her vocals and develop her stage presence. Stefani Germanotta played at gigs and performed at clubs around New York before being discovered in 2006. She later adopted the moniker Lady Gaga, won 13 Grammys, and became one of the world’s best-selling music artists.^[1]
• A writer becomes a best-selling author because he has spent years building his expertise and writing skills. Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five The New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point. Before he wrote his first book, he worked as a reporter for nine years, covering business and science, and later at The New Yorker. There, he wrote two articles “The Tipping Point” and “The Coolhunt,” which gained prominence and formed the basis for his first book — The Tipping Point.^[2][3]
  Gladwell said regarding his writing, “I was a basket case at the beginning, and I felt like an expert at the end. It took 10 years—exactly that long.”^[4]

We are, in essence, not what we will do someday. We are what we do today, and we become who we want to be through the things we do every day.

If you think that doing small things well today may not seem like a great deal, well, consider this: a 1% improvement each day, done for 365 days, leads to a 37-times improvement.^[5]

• (1 + 1%)³⁶⁵ = (1.01)³⁶⁵ = 37.78

This means that your little improvement may not seem like a big deal to you, but when done over time, will bring you to where you want to be.

It starts by first committing to the small things and doing them well.

Remember, it is not that big goal that you’re going to work on at some point that matters. It is what you do now, today. The small things you do determine what you become.

So what is a small thing you can do today? And how can you do this small thing in a great way?

Read: The Power of Little Changes

Have you ever felt this way before? That nobody loves you? If so, you’re not alone. I’ve felt that nobody loves me before, and in fact felt this way during many of my down moments in the past, such as times when I felt neglected or pushed aside. It was only lately that I learned to break out of this thinking pattern, and today I want to share how you can do so too.

In this episode of The Personal Excellence Podcast, I share

• Why there has been a lack of updates lately (and my apologies about it!) [0:22]
• Why I would feel that nobody loves me [2:47]
• How I addressed this negative thinking pattern, and how you can too [4:49]
• Why it’s not true that nobody loves you [5:26]
• Where true self-love should come from [10:48]
• Why celebrities face self-love issues despite having the love of millions of fans [12:13]
• What happens when you pursue a relationship for the sake of feeling loved [13:17]
• Getting to the root of why you think “nobody loves me” [15:21]
• My childhood experiences that led me to this belief [16:08]
• Times when I was bullied in school [20:19]
• How I resolved these negative memories [23:31]
• My gratitude to you guys [28:52]
• An exercise for you to dig into the belief “nobody loves me” [30:35]
• How to start building up your self-love [34:51]
• Why there is no dichotomy between self-love and personal growth [37:14]
• My reminder to you [38:36]

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Castbox, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Personal Excellence Podcast

Nobody Loves Me

Show Podcast Information

Read the transcript for this episode here.

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Nobody Loves Me [Transcript]

Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast. The show that’s all about helping you be your best self and live your best life. Now, your host, Celestine Chua!

Celestine Chua: Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast Episode 17, I’m Celes from PersonalExcellence.co!

First off, I want to apologize for the slow updates in the past months, if not year. For those of you who are not on the PE newsletter, do join — it’s at personalexcellence.co/newsletter. Even though there haven’t been many updates on the blog, I’ve been sending out email updates that are not posted on the blog. So maybe you don’t see as many updates there but there have been emails sent out — sometimes weekly, sometimes fortnightly, sometimes monthly. If you are on the newsletter, you’ll get access to all of that including announcements of live courses that I’m running.

All that said, I totally recognize that there has been a lack of updates on PE. A large part is because I’ve been busy working on things in my personal life. Things that I feel are important, that deserve my full attention, as opposed to repeatedly running in a rat wheel and working on things that are urgent but may not be as important. I felt that I needed to take time out to work on these things.

But I want to let you know that I have not abandoned PE. Not at all. Those of you who are longtime readers will know that PE is my life. It is what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life, and I’ve just been taking this temporary time out to work on personal things, personal issues, which I look forward to sharing more in time to come. I want you to know that I’m here to stay and I’m not going anywhere. :)

Thank you for your positive reviews on Tunes — reading them has really inspired me. In fact, I was thinking what new content to produce — Should write a new article? Create a new podcast? Or create a new video? — and reading all your podcast reviews has inspired me to return to the podcast and talk to you guys again.

Today’s Episode: Nobody Loves Me

On to today’s episode, about “Nobody loves me.” Have you ever thought that way before? Where you feel that nobody loves you? If so, I can understand. There have been times when I felt this way, particularly during my down moments or times when I felt neglected or disregarded.

For me, one of the reasons I would think this way is due to my childhood upbringing. When I was young, my mom was pretty much emotionally unavailable. She cared for me and my brother in terms of how a housekeeper or house carer would — like she did all the functional duties like laundry, cooking, etc., something that a traditional Chinese mom would do. And I’m really grateful to her for that, for raising me and my brother along with my dad. But she was pretty much emotionally unavailable, and I’m not sure if she ever is [emotionally available]. For the record, both my dad and mom are alive today.

So whenever I needed something from her, needed to talk to her, or wanted to talk to her in any way, she would be very angry and scold me for no reason, or just be very critical and angry in general. Any contact with her was explosive if caught at the wrong time, and as a daughter I never really got to talk to her much, if at all.

This weird dynamic, along with the fact that I grew up in an angry household (something that I mentioned in my anger series where my parents argued every single day in a very volatile manner), cultivated this feeling in me (growing up) that nobody loves me. It was only when I took the time out to address this feeling that I was able to break out of this negative thinking pattern.

If you sometimes find yourself thinking “nobody loves me,” I want to let you know that you’re not alone. Here I share the steps that I have taken to work through this belief, and I hope you’ll find them helpful.

1) It’s not true that nobody loves you

The first thing I want to say is that it is not true that nobody loves you. When we are too trapped in our problems, it is often easy for us to forget or miss out on the love and the good that are around us.

For example, when I was thinking things like “nobody loves me,” right beside me would be my husband who loves me with all his might and has always been there for me. It’s interesting to see that when we are so stuck in our own problems, we miss out on these obvious things — the people around us who love us.

Love here doesn’t have to be romantic love. These people can be friends, co-workers, relationship partner (if you are in the relationship), mentors, teachers, an acquaintance (someone you don’t know well, but this person may adore you or admire you or like certain things you do), or even just a stranger — someone who is admiring you from afar.

So there can be all these people loving you, admiring you, and adoring you, and it is totally not true that nobody loves you. If you stop and think and look around you, chances are you’ll find at least one person who loves you. Who supports you, and who is there for you or has been there for you, and it’s just that you haven’t been focusing on this love or this person. You have been too wrapped up in your own pain, which then leads to the thought of “Nobody loves me.”

It’s important to recognize this first and foremost because when we are too stuck in our own pain, that makes us block out the love that’s around us. When we block out the love that’s around us, that makes it difficult for us to receive love into our life.

Exercise: Think of someone who loves you

Here, stop and think. Think about the people around you. Think about your friends, your family members, your co-workers or your schoolmates, your mentors/teachers, your acquaintances, or just anybody in general. Think of at least one person who shares positive feelings about you. This can be feelings of love. Of admiration. Of like. Of support. Of encouragement. It doesn’t have to be romantic love because love isn’t just about romantic love, but here it’s love in terms of human universal love.

Think of at least one person who loves and supports you.

Chances are you’re going to think of one person. This can be someone who has supported you before. Encouraged you before. Been there for you before. It could be an ex-friend, a friend whom you were in contact with before and then somehow lost touch. It could be someone from your past. It could be someone in your present now.

When you start recognizing this, it starts to change this dynamic, this thought of “nobody loves me.” Because then you realize, Hey this may not really be true in the way that I think it is true.

At the end of it all, I want you to know that I love you. That’s important for me to say to you because the very premise of why I started PE is that I truly, truly believe in your potential for success in life. That’s why I create all these resources at PE, be it the free resources or the paid courses. These are resources that I’ve dedicated my whole life, my whole self into creating because I believe in your own personal ability and personal power.

So I just want to put it out there that I love you. But most importantly, there are people in your life who love you. Be aware of these people, beyond what I’m saying here. Be aware of these people and start being open and recognize love around you as and when you see it.

2) True self-love should not come from an external source

The second thing I want to share is that love should not come from an external source.

Now, even if you truly think that nobody loves you, well that doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because love (for ourselves) shouldn’t come from an external source. True self-love should fundamentally come from within us.

This is important to recognize because we shouldn’t be looking upon the outside world for the feeling of love. So it’s not about whether you have love from one person or 10 people. It’s not some competition where you try to get as much love as you can from others. True self-love should come from within.

And when the love isn’t coming from within, or there’s something stuck inside keeping the love coming from within, then it doesn’t matter how many people are loving you right now. You would still not truly feel the love from around you. You would still feel those moments of self-negativity because it hasn’t clicked on the inside yet, in that you haven’t resolved this inner issue or the inner turmoil, and that’s something I talk about in tip #3.

Example: Celebrities dealing with self-love issues

An example would be celebrities. It’s not uncommon to see news about celebrities dealing with addiction, overdoses, or deep inner problems. Oftentimes this is because of personal inner issues that they’re working through. Issues of self-love. Depression. These can be people like Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, and even celebrities in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s important to seek help for this.

But it is important to recognize that these celebrities have millions, hundreds of millions, and billions of fans adoring them. Even then, despite all the adoration they get from the fans and their huge popularity, they still feel moments of such intense negativity that lead them to their personal issues.

This is also why in Soulmate Journey, which is my course on finding love, one of the very basic foundational modules is the importance of self-love. Because if we seek an external relationship on the basis of wanting to feel love, that’s not really going to solve the problem. It’s going to attract fear-based people. Or put you in a codependent relationship where you often seek your partner’s attention to feel loved. And when you don’t [get that], then you feel needy and clingy or you feel unhappy and upset.

This brings me to this quote by Ayn Rand, which is “To say I love you, one must first know how to say the ‘I’.” Here, the point is not to focus on how supposedly “nobody loves me.” Because it is not about whether nobody loves you or somebody loves you, but why would it matter whether somebody loves you right now? Why would this matter, if not for the fact that there is a feeling of emptiness within that’s causing you to feel this way?

Now this doesn’t negate what we are talking about in tip #1 which is to recognize that there is somebody who loves you. But rather, when we stop to think about the people around us who love us, and that there are people around us who love us (be it love, admiration, adoration, support, or encouragement), and yet we still find ourselves thinking “nobody loves me,” then it suggests that there’s some kind of gap, issue, or blockage within that’s stopping us from receiving the love.

3) Understand and address the source of “nobody loves me”

This brings me to my third point, which is to understand and address the source of this feeling. Here is where we really get to the root of it: understanding the source of this belief, “Nobody loves me.”

• How did it start?
• When did it start?
• Why is this thinking there?

This may take a while to unravel, and it may even go deep into your childhood. Because this is where most of our foundational beliefs start forming, and this forms the basis of a lot of the work that I do with my participants in my courses.

My experience: Growing up with an angry mother

For me, when I think about this thought “nobody loves me,” there are probably two key sets of experiences leading of this.

One of which I shared at the beginning of the podcast, which would be my childhood upbringing, where my mom was just not really there. Like not there in terms of the spirit, if it makes sense. I felt like she was there in terms of someone who performed the functional duties of a mother — which I am grateful to her for, for raising me and my brother — but it was somewhat damaging to me, I think, the way that she raised me in terms of the other elements of her behavior. Such as her anger outbursts and how she would often shut me off, even in times when I needed her.

So there was a time when I had fever and I think I was 13 or 14. I was a young kid and running a somewhat high fever. She was going to take me to the doctor, like I told her about it and the next step would be to take me to the doctor. On the way to the clinic, she started shouting, criticizing, and reprimanding me for walking slowly. And I was already dizzy and walking in the hot sun and trying to keep up with her fast walking speed. So that was one memory.

Another experience I shared in my article on childhood stories. When I was young, and I was six or seven at this time, there was soap that went into my eyes and I thought I was going blind. I was smarting in my eyes and I already knew from past experience that my mom would tell me not to disturb her while she went about her household chores. But in reality, she was never free. My mom was just never available regardless of what was happening.

So I knew from experience that I shouldn’t talk to my mom, or that I should avoid triggering any negativity by simply not talking to her.

So that was a moment when I was really scared. I was scared that I was going blind. So I started to tell her about this, and true to that, she started shouting at me, saying that I was disturbing her. When I pressed on further because I truly was feeling discomfort in my eye(s), she just quickly looked at me and said I was fine, and then brushed me away and continued doing what she was doing which was laundry at that time.

All these moments added together, along with the constant arguing in the household between my mom and my dad on a daily basis, all these moments created a feeling of void and emptiness. And this was not something that I was aware of at that point as a child. I think as children, we are just not aware of the feelings going through [our minds]. But that doesn’t mean that these feelings are not happening. We are not aware of these feelings forming, but they do affect us in our life, if not at that point in time.

So thinking back, when I thought about why I would have this recurring thought “Nobody loves me,” I realized that a part of the reason is that all these moments, this upbringing, created a feeling of void in the family and made me feel like nobody loved me.

Another experience: Bullying in school

So there would be one set of experience, family. A different set of experience would be — and this would be to a lesser extent, like the main set of experience is my childhood and my family upbringing — school.

Because of all these things happening at the family level and parental level, that make me a very awkward child in school. In the sense that my mom, in addition to what was happening at home, inhibited me from talking when I was a kid. Like literally talking in any way, and this would be a separate topic for a separate post or podcast.

But she basically inhibited me from talking, so I never really got to speak or develop my communication skills as a child, except in school. So when it came to school and forming friendships, I was very socially awkward. I couldn’t really express myself or my thoughts in the way I would have if I was given the space to naturally talk as a kid.

So that made me socially awkward and made it difficult for me to form proper friendships. So I was bullied in school. You know girl cliques and all these very childish behaviors that would go on in school. And there were guys and guys being nasty to girls and all that too. So there were a lot of these experiences where I would be negatively teased, bullied, put down, or criticized and I never really knew how to handle these situations. These contributed to me feeling worse about myself.

So these two sets of experiences hand in hand cultivated this feeling of “nobody loves me.”

It was when I was 18 years old when I started having the first moments of liberty because that was when college started and I entered university. I started having the starting reins of independence. Of being given the space to handle my life. I guess it was when I was 18-19 when I also truly started the journey of conscious self-development, which I feel should have and could have happened much earlier. But for me, that was when I really started conscious self-development and learning about myself, my life purpose, figuring out my values, and so on.

Debunking these negative memories

When I think back to these core moments that caused me to think “nobody loves me,” challenging these thoughts became important. Because it is not true what I had concluded at that point.

a) Debunking my negative childhood upbringing and the conclusion “Nobody loves me”

For example, with the way my mom treated me, how she was emotionally unavailable and so on, when I thought about it, it’s not true that her behavior meant that nobody loves me. I would say a large part of it had to do with herself. Her and herself, and her stories, and maybe the way my grandma raised her. I have no idea how my grandmother raised her; my grandmother has passed away, and to be honest, I don’t know much about the past because these are simply not things that my parents talk about in any way. But I do believe, thinking back, that my grandmother probably treated my mom in a very similar fashion when she was growing up.

And there are obviously a lot of baggage and negative stories that come from being part of a low-consciousness upbringing. My parents came from very low-income households and I was raised in a low-income household, and I think that there are a lot of difficulties and problems that come associated when you’re dealing with [deep financial] struggles in life.

So I would say that my mom’s own emotional unavailability, issues, and anger, they had more to do with her and her stories, and the kind of upbringing that my grandparents put her through rather than it being about me.

Now as a child growing up, the only conclusion that I could derive at that point, from my own [limited] subset of life experiences then, would be that nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. That I’m alone in this world. That maybe my mom hates me. That people hate me.

So thinking back, clearly this is not true. My mom did the best she could. Despite the limited circumstances, she did her best and that’s something that I’m grateful to her for. Similarly, if my mom didn’t love me in the way that she could or my dad didn’t love me in the way that he does, then they wouldn’t have worked so hard in the routines that they were in to raise me. My dad was always busy working in a low-income job, raking in the dough, supporting the family financially. My mom was always busy with the household chores, the laundry, the cooking — just toiling her 30s, 40s, the good parts of her life away to care for the household. These are not easy jobs at all. So clearly this belief is simply not true.

b) Debunking my negative school experiences and the conclusion “Nobody loves me”

As for my experience with school, basically these were just kids struggling in their own personal growth, their self-identity, discovering who they were on the inside. Just as I was working through my own problems, the other kids were also working through their own problems. Not really being self-aware. The people, the kids who were being critical or nasty, they were just doing their own thing, figuring themselves out.

And there was really no need to interpret, even if subconsciously, that any of these experiences had any meaningful meaning because they pretty much didn’t. They were really just a bunch of kids growing and figuring themselves out in life.

So thinking back and addressing these stories then helped me break out of this belief of “nobody loves me.” Because it’s simply not true. It was an erroneous belief that was formed from a bunch of random incidences that just happened that way, that really had nothing to do with me.

Objectively seeing these incidences as they were and unraveling them then helped me break out of this thought of “Nobody loves me,” and to recognize the love that’s around me, all around me right now, be it the love from my husband, the love from the people around me, the love from people who love me, and the love from you guys. My readers.

Gratitude to you, my readers

I want to express how grateful I am to you guys for allowing me to do what I do. Thank you for being patient with me in the past one year or more, where I haven’t really been updating the blog much, where I’ve been busy working through things, and I’ve pretty much been silent. I felt that if there’s nothing good to share, then just don’t say anything — and by that I mean in terms of content. I didn’t (and still don’t) believe in writing and churning out stuff for the sake of it. I wanted everything to matter especially if I’m writing out something and many people would be reading that. I wanted to make sure that it counts for something, that I’m treasuring your time spent in reading my material. And I just want to thank you for supporting my work and allowing me to do what I do.

So whatever it is, whatever capacity that you support the blog, be it by just listening to my podcast, reading the emails, buying my products, or joining my courses, I’m grateful for that. I just want to let you guys know and put this out there so thank you so much. :)

Exercise: Probe into the feeling, “Nobody loves me”

Now back to the point which is to understand and address your feelings for thinking this way. If you think that nobody loves you and you have moments when you think nobody loves you, I would like you to start questioning this thought. Start thinking further and probing into this feeling, “nobody loves me.”

Because is it really true?

Think back to when this feeling started. Chances are it’s going to go back to childhood.

• Probably from some childhood upbringing.
• Some experience you had when you were a child.
• Maybe some comment someone said to you.
• Maybe a series of experiences that you had.
• Maybe from how your parents raised you.
• Could also be to do with school experiences.
• It could also be from the lack of experiences that you had with your parents, with your mom, your dad.

Try to pinpoint and understand where this feeling came from, when it started.

As you do that, question this assumption or conclusion of “nobody loves me.” Is it true that because Event A happened that “nobody loves me”?

You saw how I shared my breakdown just now. I shared the experiences, or some of them, when I developed this thought, even if unconsciously. At the point when I was a kid, I wasn’t aware that this thought was formed, but as an adult looking back and thinking back, I realized that some of these moments might have led to the conclusion, “nobody loves me.”

So then, question the thought: Is it true that because this happened, that Event A happened, that nobody loves me? Chances are you’re going to find that it’s not true. You’re going to find that it was an erroneous conclusion made at that point when you didn’t know better. When you could only conclude things in this way. And then looking back as your adult self today, you’re able to break apart that incident and recognize that this feeling of “nobody loves me” might not really be what you think it was. That it was more of an erroneous conclusion formed at the point in time when you didn’t know better.

The above might sound a little bit confusing, and I go into these things much deeper in my courses, but hopefully you understand what I’m trying to say here. There were incidences that happened when we were a child that made us think a certain way, but often time these incidences don’t mean that. And we only concluded that conclusion, that thought, that belief, because we didn’t know better at that point in time. Because there was limited data. And when we truly go back and question that experience, then we find that our belief was formed from a set of poorly formed conclusions, a set of poorly understood experiences.

Really take the time out to understand and address your feelings for thinking this way. This tip is super, super important because this forms the foundational basis of how we see ourselves, really addressing this belief of “nobody loves me.”

4) Work on your self-love

My fourth and last tip is to start working on your self-love.

So we have already addressed and looked into the fundamental basis of how this feeling of “nobody loves me” got formed. The next step is to work on your self-love, because we can never stop working on that.

If we ever feel that nobody loves me, remember here it’s about first loving ourselves. When we love ourselves, and we start loving ourselves, then we’ll be able to truly appreciate and see the love that’s coming from around us.

So ask yourself: Are there things that you are doing that’s keeping you from self-love? Come up with a list of actions that you can take to start loving yourself. Maybe you are often really hard on yourself — and this may be something I want to do a podcast on, about not being hard on yourself — but maybe you’re just often being hard on yourself. Maybe you’re often pushing yourself. You’re often berating yourself. You’re often being critical of yourself. And these are things that you shouldn’t do to yourself. These are things that shouldn’t be happening. And these are things that you can stop doing to herself.

Now instead, start appreciating you.

• Start loving you.
• Start loving your body, if you aren’t already doing that.
• Start loving your beautiful facial features.
• Start loving your hair, if you aren’t already loving that.
• Start loving your face.
• Your whole self.
• Your work, what you create.
• Start loving your behavior.
• Your actions.
• Start loving your goals.
• Your attitude.
• Your beliefs.

There is no dichotomy between self-love and self-improvement. We can love ourselves and also be working on our personal growth at the same time. It is from truly loving ourselves that we see this opportunity for personal growth.

And personal growth not initiated or rooted in a place of fear or competition or feeling that we are not good enough. But rather, personal growth rooted in seeing all the unlimited potential we have and how we can simply be better.

So here, as you work on your self-love, also work on the things that you love to do. The goals that you wish to achieve. The things that you wish to do for yourself. Taking the time out for self-care. Taking the time out to support yourself in your endeavors. Taking the time out for your personal goals.

Think about the things you love to do. And the things that you can do to start loving yourself or to love yourself more. And start working on them today.

Closing Note

We’ve come to the end of the podcast. If you think that nobody loves you, or you have moments when you think that nobody loves you, I just want to remind you that this is not true. There is someone who loves you and most importantly, you love you and you should love you.

If ever there’s something blocking you from loving yourself, then it’s simply about understanding what it is. Why this blockage is. Where this blockage is. And then addressing that as I’ve shared in the tips of this podcast.

I hope you’ve found this podcast helpful. I’ll be including links to related articles and resources in the show notes, so you can check them out.

If you’ll like today’s podcast or you appreciate The Personal Excellence Podcast, I would truly appreciate it if you can take the time out to leave a positive review on iTunes. That would truly mean the world to me and help spread the podcast to more people out there.

I look forward to speaking to you guys soon, this time definitely not one year later! Let me know what episodes you guys are interested to see, what kind of topics you guys are interested to see. Or even, you can record a question for me at personalexcellence.co/podcast — there’s a link where you can send a voice question over to me.

So until next time, remember you’re beautiful, you’re complete, you’re perfect the way you are. Whatever it is, I love you and most importantly, you love you and you should love yourself. Talk to you guys soon. Bye guys!

Endnote: Thanks for listening to The Personal Excellence Podcast! For more tips on how to live your best life, visit www.personalexcellence.co

Related Resources:

• What Childhood Stories Are You Replaying Today?
• How I Found Peace in My Relationship with My Parents (series)
• My History with Anger and How I Let Go of It (series)
• How To Deal With Moments of Negative Self-Worth [Podcast]

(Images: Girl with teddy, Lotus bud, Child alone, Girl in classroom, Woman in forest)

(Image)

“Firstly, I hope you will respect my wish for confidentiality and will therefore refer to me as ‘John.’

I have known that I have been bisexual (leaning towards men) for a while now. I have always wanted to keep it secret (because I don’t agree with bi/homosexuality), but it is becoming harder to do so. My parents don’t mind what or who I am, but I don’t want to let them or me down. Furthermore, a major issue is my social status. Both myself and my friends are seen as ‘cool’ and I worry they may discard me. We have gone to plenty of discos together, and I have been with a fair number of women in my time.

But in my heart and soul, I want to be with them. My straight best friends. Telling them might make them realize I like them and that isn’t a risk I’m willing to take. Another problem is my girlfriend. I don’t want to let her down. She is smart, funny and beautiful (a rare combo, I know).

My life looks perfect on the outside, but inside it’s a permanent battle. Please help me.” — John

Hi John, thank you so much for sharing this deeply personal problem. I see that there are a few layers to this problem, so let’s look at them one by one.

Your Social vs. Real Self

Let’s start with the central theme of your issue, which is,

1. Who is John? Who is the real John?
2. And does the real John correspond to the John that others know, the social side of you that you display to others?

I’m going to jump to the second question first, and the answer seems to be a “no” — no, the real John seems different from the John that others know. While most people have two sides — a real self and a social self where they show filtered aspects of themselves to others, especially to people they don’t know well, in your case this difference is so stark that it has made life a struggle.

That’s because firstly, the difference between your real self and your social self centers around a core part of who you are — your sexuality, which in turn linked to your relationships, what you can say, everything. While for other people, the difference between their real self and social self can be small things like being chatty in a social setting while being introverted on the inside, for you the difference is a fundamental part of who you are. Pretending to be chatty despite preferring to be quiet does not hugely affect one’s life other than that the few interactions with those friends. On the other hand, pretending to be straight when you are bisexual (and leaning towards men) affects you in more than just those few interactions. It’s a facade that you need to keep up with across all meetings and interactions. It affects your romantic relationships, what you can say to others, and who you can be.

Secondly, the reason we have a social self is to fit into social groups, especially when our real personality is very different from what is socially “accepted” or “welcomed.” That’s because individual social groups ultimately have their personality that may not fit with our real self. For example, I love talking about personal growth, how to live a meaningful life, and social issues that go beyond our individual selves. However, some of my friends have no interest in such topics and I don’t talk about such things when with them. I obviously my true, unfiltered self when with my husband and very close friends.

But for you, your social self is someone you show to everyone, including your loved ones. Your parents, your inner circle friends, and even your girlfriend, someone you are supposed to be the closest and most honest with.

While for most people, they are their 100% natural selves when with close friends and family, for you, you are your social self the whole time. Your social self has taken a life of its own and shaped your entire life around it. Instead of you being your real self with most people and showing your social self only in certain interactions, you are your social self the whole time and never your real self. There’s no “off” switch, so to speak. This is why life has become a permanent battle as you have no way to connect with the world as the real you.

Acceptance of Self

This brings me to my next point, which is something you said: “I have always wanted to keep it secret (because I don’t agree with bi/homosexuality).”

My question to you is, why? Why don’t you agree with bi/homosexuality?

While I don’t normally question people’s views on bi/homosexuality because everyone has the right to believe what they want, here I have to probe as your view on bi/homosexuality is intrinsic to your relationship with yourself. If you identify as a bisexual but you don’t agree with bisexuality, that’s a problem — a big, big problem.

Let’s look at various views on bisexuality (and homosexuality). For some people, they think of bisexuality as a choice, where people choose to be bisexual and they are simply deviating from “God’s intended design.” For some, they think of bisexuality as a result of a person’s biology, something they are born with and don’t get to choose. I believe most bisexuals/homosexuals can relate to this. Some may think of bisexuality as a state of mind, a result of people being experimental, and it’s something they should snap out of. And then there are religious and societal views, where some religions outright condemn bi/homosexuality and some conservative cultures deny its existence.

For me, I think humans are incredibly flexible — as much as we are biological beings, we have the ability to shape our lives in vastly different ways due to our highly developed minds. I believe that there are people who are born bisexual and it is part of their biology. I also believe that there are people who adopt a certain sexual orientation due to past childhood trauma and experiences, and it makes the most sense for them in this world. In the same vein, I believe there are people who are born with an open sexuality or bi/homosexual and become heterosexual to fit in (similar to what you are going through), just as there are people who are born heterosexual and hence stay heterosexual (since this is the default configuration of society).

All these don’t matter though, as it’s about your views on bi/homosexuality. I can understand if someone doesn’t agree with bi/homosexuality if he/she isn’t bi/homosexual — without walking a mile in others’ shoes, some people may not understand something that’s not in their day-to-day awareness set.

However, if you are bisexual and you don’t agree with bi/homosexuality, then why is that? Is it because of your religious beliefs? Is it because this is what you were taught growing up? Is it because this is against what society believes in? Is it because you don’t believe that this is biologically the right way for a human to be?

Whatever the reason, as long as you don’t agree with bi/homosexuality, you will forever be stuck in a self-battle. As Carl Jung said, “What you resist persists.” To achieve the state of self-acceptance, you need to uncover your resistance towards bi/homosexuality and work through it. Bisexuality is not something abnormal, just as homosexuality isn’t something abnormal. It is just different, something that most people don’t understand if they don’t have any bisexual/homosexual friends. Unless you accept yourself, all of yourself, it becomes an uphill battle trying to find happiness outside of you.

Who Are You?

This leads me back to the first question, which is, Who are you? Who is John?

Is John the cool guy often seen with his cool guy friends? Is John the guy with a beautiful, smart, and funny girlfriend? Is John the guy with a perfect life and a nice social status?

Or is John someone more than that? Someone who transcends these social definitions, who doesn’t need people’s perceptions to define who he is? 

Even though you are afraid to tell your friends and girlfriend about your sexuality, you have to ask yourself: What it is to you, and why does it matter? Because if your friends are with you because you are seen as straight, and they may discard you when they know your true sexuality, then are these friends you want to stay with? Perhaps not, or perhaps they should be seen as social buddies rather than close friends. Because don’t you want to focus on friends who care about you as you, rather than friends who judge you based your sexuality?

With regards to your girlfriend, I do think that you owe it to her to tell her the truth as she is committing herself to you by being in the relationship. You have to ask yourself which is the more important value: being Truthful, or being Agreeable (not wanting to let her down)? If both of you decide that you are not right for each other, then it’s better to break things off now rather than waste her time and your time. You didn’t mention your ages, but a woman has a biological prime for childbearing, so if she is in a relationship with no long-term future, that’s time taken away from her dating journey. Whether or not having kids is what she wants, it’s important for her to know so she can decide what to do and whether she should further invest in this relationship. For you, I believe you want to be with someone you truly love and want to be with, which may or may not be your girlfriend (since you are with her under a concealed sexuality).

With regards to your parents, the great thing is that they don’t mind what or who you are. This means that the battle you are really fighting here is with yourself, as I shared above. If your parents don’t mind what or who you are, then why are you so bothered about possibly letting them down? What is it that you are “letting them down” in — is it from not being “like other sons”? And in terms of what, your sexuality? Why would having a different sexuality be a let down in any way? If it’s because of social stigma, I believe (given what you said) that your parents’ love for you is stronger than what society or religion says. Whether or not there is negative stigma from others, this is something that your parents and you can work through together, as a family. Just because you are fearful of societal’s views doesn’t mean that you should hide your sexuality from them — especially if you have an open, honest relationship with your parents to begin with. It’s about telling them the truth and then working through this together.

Bringing Your True Self to the World

What does this mean? Does it mean that you should just “come out” to the entire world?

Well, it depends. It depends on where you live and whether the society around you is ready. In certain conservative cultures, people outright condemn bisexuality and homosexuality. For example, same-sex sexual activity is illegal in India and sex between men is criminalized in Singapore (though this law is not actively enforced). In Singapore, The Pink Dot (an LBGT-affirming event) has faced many challenges in recent years as they try to spread awareness of the community to the broader society. Depending on where you live, you may have to be careful in how and who you reveal your bisexuality to.

But no matter what people around you think, you have to (a) achieve self-acceptance and (b) give your true self a way to connect with others, even if starting in a small way. Such as only revealing it to certain close friends and family members first. Such as connecting with like-minds online, albeit under an anonymous handle, like in pro-LGBT forums, Facebook groups (this would require registering a different Facebook account to stay anonymous), and commenting in pro-LGBT YouTube channels (also under a different anonymous Google account). In a way John, you are already letting your real self get heard by sending in this Ask Celes question, so I thank you for that. :)

While society may not be fully ready for you yet — the aspect of you that is bisexual (because it is different from the “default” configuration that is heterosexuality) — that doesn’t mean that you should do the same to yourself. Society generally moves at the pace of lowest denominator, which means there’s often a need to accommodate for conservative views and less progressive behavior patterns. For example, environmental groups have been highlighting for ages the damaging effects of plastic use, yet governments, commercial groups, and the average person continue to condone, use, and discard non-biodegradable plastic bags and cutlery in the name of profit and convenience. Despite the emergence of green cars, most people still don’t use them because the default cars on sale are cheaper and easier to purchase. Even online, we are weighed down by a low quality of conversation because there are always the 0.01% trolls and spammers generating a lot of noise.

What does that mean? Does it mean that you should only wait until everyone is ready and accepting of bisexuality/homosexuality before you accept yourself? No, of course not. What if this happens in only 50 years? Are you going to wait for 50 years before you can accept yourself and embrace your bisexuality? That’s terrible and also incredibly damaging to your mental well-being and growth.

My advice is this: Don’t wait for others’ approval or acceptance for you to be who you are. Start to accept and love yourself, all of you, including your bisexuality. Figure out what’s blocking in your acceptance of your bisexuality, and address that. The problem isn’t with your family and their views (as you said they don’t care who or what you are), your straight guy friends and their possible rejection of your friendship, or your girlfriend, but how you see bi/homosexuality and as a corollary, yourself.

As you work on your self-acceptance, decide who you want to open up to about your bisexuality. Your girlfriend for sure, because you owe it to her to tell the truth. Your parents possibly, because they are your parents and you said that they don’t care about who or what you are. Selected friends whom you can trust. Your straight guy friends — if you are ready and you want them to know. Alternatively, you can choose not to tell them about your true sexuality and continue to hang out as social buddies. But you should most definitely find new buddies who non-judgmental about different sexualities, because good friends are people who care about you as you, not your physical or social attributes.

As you work on your self-acceptance, you will stop being troubled by others’ perception of bisexuality and of you, even though these may continue to be obstacles in how you can connect with the world. For example, you want to share your bisexuality only with trusted people and if it’s safe to do so, depending on the social environment you live in.

Obviously, the best case scenario is to live as your true self and have the society accept you 100% as who you are, but the reality is often not perfect. It isn’t for many people, even for heterosexuals. Many people today live with limitations caused by factors outside of their control, be it where they are born, their race, the opportunities they were given growing up, genetic health problems they had no say over, or in your case, having a sexual identity that’s not as widely understood or accepted as the default sexual identity. In the face of these imperfections, it’s about finding an equilibrium between living life as best as you can and managing the imperfections. Rather than hate the world for what it is, or hate our lives for what is not perfect, let’s try to make the best out of what we have and manage the other things that are not that great yet. Because we can’t control the cards we are dealt with, but we can choose how we deal with these cards.

I hope this post has been helpful in some way and you are able to pick the right way forward for yourself. Keep me posted on how it goes okay? :)

FOMO — or the fear of missing out — has become a pattern in today’s world. We are constantly on our phones, glued to social media feeds and checking what other people are up to. The more updates we see, the more anxious we feel. We see people living this exciting life, achieving this new milestone, doing that exciting activity. We feel like we are missing out, that we are not living a good enough life, and we have a compulsion to keep up.

So we keep up… buying, keeping up, and absorbing as much information and updates as we can. And this addresses our anxiety… or does it?

Can you relate? Well, today’s episode is just for you. :) In this episode of The Personal Excellence Podcast, I cover

• What is FOMO [0:29]
• Signs of FOMO [1:27]
• 4 reasons why FOMO exists [4:39]
• 5 strategies to tackle FOMO [15:06]

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Castbox, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Personal Excellence Podcast

How Social Media Creates a Fear of Missing Out (And What To Do About It)

Show Podcast Information

Read the transcript for this episode here.

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Fear of Missing Out [Transcript]

Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast. The show that’s all about helping you be your best self and live your best life. Now, your host, Celestine Chua!

Celestine Chua: Hey everybody, welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast! This is Celestine Chua from PersonalExcellence.co. Today we’re talking about the fear of missing out, otherwise known as FOMO.

Have you heard the term FOMO before? I’m sure some of you have. But if you haven’t, FOMO refers to the apprehension that one is not in the know, or one is out of touch with some event, experience, or interaction. This compels the person to constantly want to know what’s going on, what’s happening out there, and whether they’re missing out on something.

In today’s world, FOMO exists on some level in many of our social media habits and online behavior — even if you don’t realize it. This is why I want to discuss this topic today because I feel that FOMO has become such a prevalent issue.

Some Signs You Have FOMO

Some signs of having FOMO include

• Continually refreshing your social media newsfeed to see what’s going on, what’s the latest update, and the new things that people are discussing right now.
• Feeling the need to know what so-and-so people are doing. This can include the people in your social network. It can also include the people you don’t know, such as celebrities or famous people.
• The constant feeling that you’re not satisfied with your life, and because of that you keep looking outward at what others are doing.
• Feeling that perhaps you are not doing enough.

So as opposed to enjoying your time right now with the people you are with and the life you have right now, you are constantly checking and seeing what others are up to, because you feel that otherwise, you may be missing out.

Why FOMO is Unique to Our Era

I feel that FOMO is a phenomenon that’s unique to our digital era. FOMO as a term was coined in 2003 and it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. That’s just a few years ago. So why is FOMO unique to our era?

Imagine in the past, way before the internet was invented. Say it’s a Friday night and you just finished work. What do you do?

Perhaps you would read a book. Perhaps you would do some simple activities. Maybe you like to knit so you knit. Maybe you watch a video of your favorite movie. Or you have a quiet conversation with a loved one. So you do that and you sleep. And you could be feeling pretty satisfied with your Friday night, doing something that you like.

Nowadays, everybody is connected. You can see what anybody is doing and everyone’s updates. With the Internet today, typically what happens is this: It’s Friday night. You could be browsing your social media newsfeed and your Instagram newsfeed.

• You see this professional coach or guru going to some event, achieving some new level of success, getting this new interview, living the high life.
• Or you see this celebrity, this person partying at some gala event, living in some mansion, doing some new photoshoot, or having some brand new product launch.

So you could be excited and feeling satisfied with your Friday night, reading a book, knitting, talking to a loved one, whatever it is. But now you are left feeling like you’re boring and lousy because you’re not doing all of these things that these “exciting” people are doing. And that, in essence, is FOMO.

4 Reasons for Fear of Missing Out

I see FOMO as the result of a few factors.

1) Prevalence of Fast-Speed Internet

First, the wide prevalence of fast-speed Internet. It’s incredibly easy to get information today. In the past, when the internet was new, it was slow and we were on dial-up modem. Some of you guys may still be on dial-up.

But in the past, dial-up was the norm. Over the years, as the government, societies build up the infrastructure, high-speed internet became more easily accessible and at a lower cost. Many people around the world have fast internet today.

So you can easily get information at the click of a button. With that, you can easily see what people are doing with the click of a mouse. What Brad Pitt is doing right now, what Angelina Jolie is doing right now, what the Kardashians are up to. All this information, just easily accessible at the click of a button.

Because of that, you can instantly know what others are doing. This starts this whole comparison cycle and behavior because now you can easily compare and put side-by-side what other people are doing and what you are doing. This starts to create a feeling of lack, a feeling of inferiority, that maybe you’re not good enough.

2) People displaying a perfect version of their lives

The second factor would be people using the Internet to exhibit their best selves. Along the way (in the 2000s), the Internet became this platform where people get to share about themselves. But now, instead of people sharing about themselves, people are using the Internet to exhibit a very manicured version of themselves. Sometimes this version may not even be true to reality.

So there’s a very heavy level of self-monitoring and self-altering behavior going on.

We have magazines out there isn’t it? In the media industry, with the magazine editors heavily photoshopping magazine covers, they create this “picture-perfect” version of beauty and very narrow definitions of beauty. That’s the magazines and it’s enough that media industry is doing that.

But now, instead of this being an issue isolated to magazines (and the media), we have people everywhere on Instagram, Facebook, etc. editing the photos that they upload. Instead of it being an authentic moment — which it used to be, where people were genuinely sharing what they were doing as part of connecting with others — now it’s become a situation where people are sharing very edited, manicured, and perfected versions of what’s going on in their lives.

So they could be living their day and essentially doing mundane activities — as with most people living their lives. Some of the things they’re doing will be mundane and usual, nothing to shout about. Then they have this one hour when they are doing something exciting, and then they will take some pictures of that and edit that, make them perfect, add filters, and so on. And just highlight those moments.

When you have people everywhere doing this online, it creates this impression of, Oh this is what’s happening in everybody’s life all the time. So I’m missing out! My life is not good enough! This creates a really skewed and warped sense of reality.

3) Existing social issues magnified by Internet

The third factor contributing to FOMO is there are simply existing (social) issues that the Internet exacerbated. As opposed to the internet creating problems, I would say there were existing problems such as loneliness or low self-esteem. The Internet, with the way it has brought the entire world closer and stripped away many boundaries, exacerbated this issue as we no longer have a strong sense of boundary or space. People who already feel lonely or low in self-esteem may feel more isolated, while people who felt slightly lonely at times may have this feeling magnified in the presence of everyone else’s success and “exciting” life.

4) How today’s websites are designed

The fourth factor contributing to FOMO is how companies have designed their websites.

To understand how this works, it boils down to this underlying principle. Essentially, most companies operate on profit. Well, the essence of a company is to be profitable because if you’re not profitable, you’re out of the game.

When companies focus on profit as their sole objective — without regard for their audience and adding value to their lives — their number one goal becomes to maximize each user’s time spent on their website. This is particularly true for platform companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Netflix, Instagram. The more time you spend on their site, the better it is for them, the more advertisers they can get, the more revenue they can get.

What’s the best way to maximize the time spent? By maximizing interaction, maximizing the number of engagements you (as the user) have on their site, be it by making you click from one place to the next within their site. Whatever keeps you within the site and gets you clicking, interacting, commenting, and spending as much time as possible on the platform itself — whether it’s Facebook, Snapchat, or Netflix — even if it’s to the point of detriment of your well-being, your productivity, or the utility value you’re getting from the website.

This is particularly so when a company starts to focus on profit and what it gets off its user base rather than having the users’ best interests in mind and designing its services around them. This is where profit supersedes value — where companies focus on profit rather than giving value, as opposed to creating value as the priority and earning profit as a result of that.

So platforms are now creating site designs to build addiction. We have Facebook — or any of these large attention companies really — having large teams of growth hackers, where their sole job every day is to get together to discuss, find ways to hack your brain, and figure out how to break down your mental barriers, so that you’re constantly glued to their platform. Getting you to stay on their site, making you feel compelled to come back, and making you feel, Oh I’m missing out if I’m not coming back to the site. I’m missing out if I’m not clicking this notification.

So it could be

• Facebook popping up a message and saying, “You haven’t been here for a while” or “You haven’t posted on your page for a while. Do you want to interact with your followers (if you have a Facebook page)?”
• Snapchat. They introduced a streak feature in the past couple of years where they encourage you to continue this streak of messaging someone consecutively each day or over a period of days, so that you can maintain the streak.

Some of these are questionable. Because, okay, Snapchat has this streak feature to message this number of times or this frequency with someone. But does this help forward your relationship with that person or help you live a better life? These are questions to ask ourselves.

So we have these companies coming up with all kinds of strategies. Many of them implicit — you don’t know they are happening unless you take a step back to think. Or unless you run a website yourself, where you become conscious of these issues. Ultimately, they are there to suck you in. To get you addicted. To make you feel like you’re missing out. Hence, the feeling of “missing out.”

So you constantly refresh your social media feeds to see what you are missing out. You feel, Okay! When I refresh and the thing is loading in my browser, I’m doing something with my life. Something is happening and I’m seeing all these updates! The page is now loaded, you see this barrage of new updates. Okay! Now I feel marginally fulfilled. Then 30 seconds later, you are back doing the same thing, loading the webpage and seeing the next wave of updates.

Social Media Updates — Junk Food for the Brain

All these are very much what I call, junk food for the brain. It’s like you eat junk food, and maybe for a few seconds, you feel satisfied. After a while though, you feel, Hey I need more! Like, This is not satisfying me.

Why is that? It’s because these little pieces of updates are inherently not satisfying or nourishing. Junk food is not nourishing for our body. Media news sites and the attention companies, or any of these websites using these strategies to maximize attention and it can include content mills with very low-quality articles, designed to make you click from one thing to the next — these are junk food for the brain.

When you have all this junk food content and you’re consuming it, the quantity may be huge and there may be many pieces of such content everywhere. But because it’s not nourishing for the brain, you have to keep clicking and refreshing and returning just to keep this “nourishment “going. Because it’s so ungratifying, you’re not being fulfilled, and hence you need to do it so many times.

Compared to if you are reading a piece of high-quality content, you can be just reading a short amount and that’s food for thought. There’s something you have gained, that makes you think for the next few days.

So these four factors contribute to the phenomenon of FOMO. Even in the online business world, FOMO has created the shiny object syndrome. Where you feel this need to constantly buy that next app, that next plugin, that next web service, hoping that you’ll create that next big breakthrough in your business. I’ve shared before in an article on the magic bullet — there’s no secret sauce or magic thing that’s going to transform or create some huge results. Ultimately, it’s back to the same fundamentals and it boils down to the strategy that you use and how you approach your business.

5 Strategies to Tackle FOMO

So how can you tackle FOMO? I have 5 strategies.

1) Stop comparing yourself to others

Stop comparing. I know it is difficult because all this information about people’s lives is everywhere, and social media companies have made it so easy for us to access this information. When you come online, you have all these companies hungering to grab your attention, even if it’s to the detriment of your productivity. You have all these companies fighting and eliciting you to, “Come and click, come and click over to my website.” It becomes really difficult because you are fighting all these forces: the macro forces and also the internal force in you, where perhaps there is a sense of dissatisfaction or feeling that, Okay, maybe there’s something out there that I need to know.

So I know it’s difficult, but it is important to stop this behavior from within. This can include limiting your social media usage and controlling the way you use social media which I’ll talk about in tip #3.

With regards to not comparing, two episodes back I talked about our unique path in life. In that episode, I talked about how everybody is on a unique path. You are on your unique path. I am on my unique path. We are all on our unique paths in life. Don’t feel like you need to compare because perhaps you’re not making the best of your life.

Sure, you can benchmark. Benchmark meaning you reference and look at what others are doing as an indication of what you could be doing.

But don’t compare in that you keep looking towards what other people are doing as the reference point for where you should be. Because we are all different. We all have our unique paths. We have our individual aspirations, our individual paths to realize.

You can be the fastest swimmer on Earth. If you keep looking at the bird in the sky and wondering why you can’t fly, you’re just putting your God-given talents in swimming to waste. This is the same between the bird and the swimmer. The bird can be in the sky flying, with the ability to fly and soar, but instead, it looks at the fish in the sea and wonders why it can’t swim.

So the fish gets to explore the wonders of the marine world. The bird gets to explore the wonders of the sky. Everybody is on their individual path to self-actualize and self-realize, and this path may not be comparable in many instances because it’s just unique.

Unfortunately, we live in a society right now with the tendency to diminish and condense people to a metric, and try to simplify human worth or value to some number or statistic. But there’s something for you to keep in mind: We are not statistics and we should not be condensed to a number. Even if society or government or media tries to do that to us, we are not that. Each of us is unique and we are unique individuals on our unique path to contribute and create massive value to the world.

Always remember that and don’t compare yourself to other people. Don’t try to alter yourself or shape your life so that it looks like other people’s lives, because you have your life and you are your unique individual, and it’s about embracing that.

2) Fill your schedule with meaningful activities

My second tip is to fill your schedule with meaningful Quadrant 2 activities. I talk about this in my article Put First Things First. It refers to the activities, tasks, and goals that are the most important in your life, but not necessarily the most urgent.

Why aren’t they the most urgent? That’s because the most important things in our life rarely become urgent until it’s too late. They include our health, our relationships, our biggest life aspirations. Fill your schedule with meaningful Quadrant 2 goals or tasks, whatever they may be. This requires you to take a step back to really think, reflect, and ask yourself:

• What are my Quadrant 2 goals?
• What are my most important life goals?

For those of you with Live a Better Life in 30 Days, many of the tasks (especially in Week 1) are about goal setting. Assessing your life right now. Identify what is your ideal life, your ideal goals. Creating a life map and your vision board. And so on. All the 30 tasks in the program are meant to get you to think about the different Quadrant 2 aspects of your life. For those of you with the program, review the tasks inside, and start thinking about your Quadrant 2 goals.

When your life is exciting and filled with meaningful Quadrant 2 activities, you will automatically not be interested or very interested to see what other people are doing. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t know what others are doing. To do that would be to isolate yourself from the world and that is just swinging from one end to the other. But you won’t have this constant or unhealthy compulsion to keep seeing what other people are doing and filling your life with this filler information. Because you are living your life. These Quadrant 2 activities could be, say, being with your parents. Having a meal with them. Being with your loved ones. Social activities. Volunteering work.

One of my recent coaching clients went on a six-week volunteer trip in Taiwan. He’s from Australia. He was in this rural village at a homestay, taught at a rural school, and ran some conferences. From this trip, he gained so many insights about his future goals, what he wants to do for the next 10 years and beyond, and what he wants to do as his life direction. That’s because the work was inherently fulfilling and it was something that he was personally interested and passionate about. Pursuing and doing this gave him insights on what he would want to do in the future. That was a huge Quadrant 2 activity. He could have spent these six weeks in a frivolous way or just doing nothing — which is fine too because sometimes relaxing or taking time out for ourselves is important. But he could have just wasted six weeks away. Instead, he used it in a meaningful way, in his own definition. That helped him gain so much insight on what he wants to do for his long-term goals, his 10-year goals, and his future life direction.

Quadrant 2 activities can also include exploring a new place you haven’t been to before. Learning a new skill. Doing something you like, whatever it is.

So fill your schedule with these meaningful activities, as opposed to filling the entire day with refreshers of your social media newsfeed or what Kylie Jenner is doing. Ultimately, this won’t fulfill you. But taking action on your personal goals in life? That’s going to fulfill you.

3) Cut down on social media usage

My third tip is to cut down on social media usage. I mentioned just now that the Facebook newsfeed is like fast food for the brain. Tickles you and keeps you busy. May taste well in the first bite. May even make you think that you’re satisfied. But there’s nothing much there and it will ultimately kill you in the long run.

That’s why people need to keep refreshing and seeing their newsfeed so regularly. Because it’s inherently not fulfilling. That’s why they need to keep seeing it over and over and over again, hoping that it will bring a different result each time — except that it doesn’t. It’s not much different from pulling the slot machine at the casino. In fact, many elements of Facebook and a lot of these leading social media sites today are designed with reference to the addictive elements of a casino or gambling dens.

To avoid being in this negative spiral, limit the time you spend on social media. Think about it: when you are in Facebook — and I’m using Facebook as an example, but it can be any website with the agenda to maximize a user’s attention without taking into consideration their personal goals and life. So you could be in Facebook’s “walled garden,” and this is a common term used to describe the way Facebook has designed their site. It’s like a “walled garden,” to keep you inside their universe and away from the outside world. Once you step into Facebook’s “walled garden,” it becomes an uphill battle to gain control of your conscious self and you have lost the game. Because now you’re up against this seemingly innocuous but very meticulously and strategically designed website, designed to suck you in and get you to stay there as long as possible.

The best way to avoid this is to limit the time you spend on social media. 30 minutes, 10 minutes, I don’t want to set a specific time limit because it depends on why you are using social media, whether there’s something you need to get out of the site at the moment. It could even be not using social media on some days. So it is subjective. But the underlying principle is to limit the time you spend on social media. Because when you step inside, you’re going up against 100 or 1000 different strategies put in place to suck you deeper and deeper into the site. Because all of us have a limited amount of mental energy per day, it becomes a downward spiral. It very quickly drains you, and soon you find yourself in this loop where you are just refreshing and seeing the next new update and so on.

So, limit the time you spend. And remove notifications except for crucial ones or for crucial apps. Most websites and mobile app notifications today, they’re useless. They don’t serve a role in our life except to get you to go back to the app. They don’t tell us about anything important or significantly urgent. You can check these apps once in a while, whenever you remember to. But there’s no real need to have notifications alerting you every single time someone messages you or some update is rolled out. This is a call that you make, but I personally feel that most notifications today don’t have a role and they are not really useful.

4) Stop following people who promote an unhealthy lifestyle

My fourth tip is to stop following people who promote an unhealthy lifestyle. Again this requires you to be conscious of how you are using social media and how you’re approaching your Internet usage. Take a step back and evaluate the people you follow and the kind of lifestyle and messages they promote. This includes people on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, websites and so on.

As you are doing that, ask yourself:

• How do you feel when you see the updates?
• Do you feel inspired or do you feel bad or negative about yourself?
• Does it make you feel like you’re not doing enough when you see these updates? And not in a good way but in a negative way?

Once I was following this guru. At first, it was interesting, seeing his updates. But after a short period of time, it started feeling “off.” I realized that he was constantly talking about his achievements, and not in a once-in-a-while way. It’s fine to talk about what you’re doing and what you’re achieving — it’s fine to share that.

But his updates felt sort of like he was… bragging? It was constantly namedropping and talking about how he’s really awesome for having achieved certain things above and beyond other people. After a while of seeing that, it started to become toxic. Because he created this feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, or maybe I wasn’t doing enough to build my business.

So instead of it being a positive experience, it became a toxic and negative one where seeing his updates made me feel like somehow I wasn’t good enough or that I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, so I asked two other people who knew this person and both of them got the same vibe too. The overall sense was an off-putting one. Looking at this person’s updates made me feel a great sense of FOMO.

After that, I stopped following this person because it was a negative experience all in all. I wasn’t getting any positive messages from it. For me, as someone who has a platform and shares messages with my audience, I have a certain standard in the kind of messages I send out and the intention of my messages, and I felt like this person’s updates wasn’t congruent with what I expect of my own platform.

Or it could be a totally different type of message. For example, you could be following people who promote a materialistic lifestyle or a way of life that is not very healthy or not in line with your values. If so, you want to limit your exposure to these people. Maybe they are constantly getting you to buy things, buy material goods. Or showing off branded stuff or insinuating that somehow having certain branded goods or possessing certain physical possessions validate yourself or a certain part of who you are… which wouldn’t be a message that you want to carry.

When you are exposed to and following these people, this would keep creating the FOMO feeling. This fear that you’re missing out. That you are not buying this thing (but you should). That you’re not being good enough. That you’re not living it up. That would naturally perpetuate the feeling of FOMO in you.

Another example: with the people you follow, maybe they present a very skewed version of reality. Maybe they constantly photoshop images or present a very cherry-picked aspect of life. And this cherry-picked aspect is a little bit twisted and not accurate to reality. So you’re no longer learning or seeing an authentic side of the world and people’s lives, but a very manufactured version of reality. This will naturally skew your perception of the world.

When you are following people and their updates, know that these are things that you are allowing to enter your consciousness. Ask yourself: Are these the kind of people you want in your living room, with you? Are these the people you want right beside you, in your daily life? If no, why do you want to see these updates on such a regular basis?

So be conscious of who you follow, the updates you see. If people’s updates keep making you feel negative, fear-based, that somehow you’re not good enough, that you’re missing out, that you should be doing/buying/getting that thing, take a step back and ask yourself: Are these the kind of people you want to follow?

Maybe’s it’s good to unfollow them. Limit your exposure to these people. Instead, follow people and content that inspire you to improve, as opposed to making you fearful or feel that you have a lack, because that is not true at all.

5) Consume information in a targeted way

My fifth and last tip is to consume information in a targeted way. The Internet today is characterized by an explosion of information. We have all kinds of information around us now. You want to be conscious of how you consume this information.

You want to receive and focus on content that’s tailored to you, that helps you in your life. For example, some of you may be in Facebook groups. When you join a Facebook group, Facebook automatically makes you follow that group, that group’s updates, and automatically adds you to the group’s notifications.

The way I do it is whenever I join a group, I will immediately unfollow the group’s updates and remove the group’s notifications. So I’m still in the group, but I just don’t see its updates by the second. Instead, I go into the group whenever I want to look at what it is up to. Why do I do that? This helps me to be conscious of the kind of updates I see when I enter Facebook’s main page. So firstly, I limit my usage of Facebook. Next, when I enter Facebook, I want to be conscious of the kind of updates I see on the front page. Facebook has its own algorithm and it cherry picks and selects whichever updates fit that algorithm. Typically these are updates focused on increasing and maximizing engagement, and that’s not necessarily what I want. Sometimes I want to see everything that the group has so far, discussions, etc. so that I can zoom in on the ones that are relevant to me. As opposed to having an algorithm that pre-selects and pre-filters, and the pre-filtered material may not be what I’m looking for.

So being conscious in terms of how you consume information. You pick and choose the sites that you want to see, the updates you want to see, the groups that you want to focus on for today or for a week. That’s the same for websites you follow, newsletters, YouTube channels that you subscribe to. You don’t need to be following everything. You don’t need to be subscribed to everything. You want to ask yourself: Which are the [sites/channels/etc.] that give you great value? Where you genuinely feel uplifted by the content? And the content helps you to live a better life, live a conscious life?

These are the channels/websites/newsletters that you want to stay subscribed to. Don’t worry about missing out because there’s just so much information out there. Your role today is to pick what works for you. Tuning into the information, the updates, the activities that are relevant to you. Rather than feeling that you need to be in the loop of everything. I feel the websites today — how conglomerates have designed their websites — are created to elicit that feeling that you’re not seeing enough, that there’s more content you need to see.

Because of that, we need to learn to draw our boundaries. Deciding that, Okay today I just want to consume this ABC piece of content. And that’s because this channel is something that I like, this website is a high-quality one. Hence I consciously choose to read and follow these things. Beyond that, I’m doing other stuff.

Closing Note

So that’s it for today’s episode. I have a few articles that are relevant to today’s episode that I’ll be linking to them in the show notes.

If you have found today’s podcast helpful, I would really appreciate it if you can leave a review on iTunes, and that’s at personalexcellence.co/itunes/. Doing so really makes a difference. It helps to spread the message of conscious living out there to the world. And I feel that is something that we massively need today.

If you are interested in living a better life in just 30 days, check out my 30-day life transformation program, Live a Better Life in 30 Days. I’ve packed my 30 best tasks on life transformation and that includes some of my best exercises that I share with my life coaching clients, to help them discover your life direction, discover their life goals, review how you are doing in your life, evaluate your routine, transform your to-do list, expand your comfort zone, discover their values, and many more. So you can check that out at personalexcellence.co/courses/30dlbl/.

Thank you so much for listening. I truly appreciate you. If you have a question for me, you can post it to me via the podcast page on personalexcellence.co. Until next time, remember: you are beautiful and you are perfect the way you are. Thanks so much guys. And I see you guys in the next episode. Bye guys!

Endnote: Thanks for listening to The Personal Excellence Podcast! For more tips on how to live your best life, visit www.personalexcellence.co

Related Resources:

• How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind
• 6 Tips to Deal with Digital Burnout
• Our Unique Path in Life [Podcast]
• Put First Things First
• Stop Looking For a Magic Bullet For Your Goals

Imagine my surprise when the CEO responded to me directly:

“Celes, you probably don’t remember but you coached me during some of my tough times. You and Tony Robbins helped me tremendously. You helped me do the limitless. :) ” — Deep

Surprised, I quickly scanned my mind for all the clients I’ve worked with before. Deep? From 2009? The details came flooding back. I recalled that Deep had signed up for my coaching 8 years ago in 2009. At that time he was a manager at a top bank, but felt empty with his work and life. During our sessions, we worked on finding his life direction, creating his career vision, and building his business plan, among other things.

After our sessions ended, Deep left his job and freed himself from his baggage. He traveled for a year, worked on his personal growth, and then started to build a software, which led him to found his company today. With over 15 million orders processed, he is helping thousands of business owners today, and the number continues to grow.

Planting Seeds

When I looked back at our coaching logs in 2009, it’s remarkable to see Deep’s vision turn into reality. Here’s what he wrote back then:

• His life vision: “To generate enormous wealth to help the human community.”
• His business vision: “To make awesome tools, information products, and online marketplaces to help small business owners across the world. To be a preferred choice for all our clients, customers and partners.”

This is exactly what he is doing now.

It got me thinking about the concept of planting seeds. How a seemingly small action can blossom and lead to some unimaginable, amazing outcome later.

Corn seeds, ready to be planted into the soil (Image)

For Deep, when he decided to act on his emptiness in life, he didn’t have a big brand plan to start a world-class business. He just wanted clarity on what to do next. He planted his first seed — to act on his unhappiness. His second seed was when he took the leap of faith to sign up for my coaching. After all, he didn’t know me personally, and the only thing he knew about me was through my articles.

During one of our sessions, I told him: “Don’t restrict yourself with your situation in life. Don’t worry about whether something is possible, realistic or logical. Just imagine this as your anything-goes menu where you can order anything you want from the universe.”

This really struck him. Following this direction, he opened his heart, wrote his vision and was extremely inspired by what he wrote. This was the third seed planted.

Subsequently, we discussed other things during our calls, including his goals, values, and plans. These planted seeds would germinate and grow into his company today, with him being the CEO of a team of 12 employees across the United States and India.

It is the same for other goals in life. Every goal, no matter how big, starts off as a seed.

• Dating — You want to meet the love of your life. It starts by clearing your limiting beliefs surrounding love. Then opening your heart to others. Then meeting new people. Then building relationships. Then assessing the right guy/girl, if the connection is for you. These are some of the things I teach in Soulmate Journey, my course on finding love, and some of my participants have been updating me on their new-found relationships and upcoming nuptials.
• Friendship — Having best friends you can rely on doesn’t happen overnight. It starts by being there for others first. Giving without expecting to receive. Being responsive. Making the effort to maintain your friendships. 
• Health — Having good health doesn’t come from exercising and eating healthily for one single day. It’s something that you build over time. Choosing healthy over unhealthy food each day. Choosing to be active. Many seeds planted over a long period, every day.
• Family — Having positive family relationships takes time, especially if your family relationships aren’t perfect to begin with. Caring for them. Doing little acts of kindness. I had a client who made the decision to work on her estranged relationship with her mom. One year after our coaching, their relationship is now in a much more positive place, where they talk with love and understand each other more.
• Career — Getting an amazing job doesn’t happen overnight. You have to first plan your career. Build your skills and talent stack. Then network and build relationships with industry peers, recruiters, and headhunters.
• Business — Same for a successful business. It starts with a vision. Then taking an endless series of steps to build your empire. Making endless iterations, adapting every second. Being open to failure and criticism, because these will always be there no matter what you do.

For each seed, you nurture it by giving water, warmth and sunlight. As you do that, it grows into a seedling. Then a plant. Then a sapling. Then a tree.

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The tree here refers to what you want to achieve — run a successful business, have a great career, have a great relationship, have great friends, have great health, be financially abundant, be a prominent figure in your field, have your TV/talk show, move overseas, travel around the world, or some other goal.

The seeds here refer to your first steps to make your goal happen.

Many people often look at the trees, wondering when they are going to get that. Nice, big, gorgeous trees that they want in their garden.

But that’s missing the point. The critical point is not the manifestation of the trees, but the planting of the seeds. Because if you are not planting seeds, how can the trees grow? How can you expect to get results, when you have not put in the effort to get things moving?

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Planting Seeds in Your Life

This brings me to these questions:

1. What goals have you been meaning to pursue, but are putting off? In Love? Health? Carer? Business? Family? Friendships? Pick two areas.
2. What is the first seed you can plant to get it going?
3. How about the next 3 seeds? What can you do to keep this momentum going?

Say you want to switch to a career in Machine Learning. However, your past experience and skills are not in this area. A possible seed you can plant is to take up a course in Machine Learning. I have a friend who is doing a two-year Masters course in Machine Learning for this very reason — to switch to this field after he graduates. 

If you have an aptitude for programming, you can self-learn with free materials online and tools like TensorFlow. You can develop open-source tools using machine learning, get user feedback and market results (e.g. X number of downloads, featured on XYZ magazine), and highlight these achievements in your resume as validation of your skills in this area. This is exactly what my husband did in the past year, though in a different field, and he’s now able to pivot and switch his career to this new field.

Or say you want to get married at some point. You are 35, single, and constantly tied up with work. Maybe a good first step is to draw some boundaries with work. Stop working all the time and create a cutoff. Set aside a few hours each week to meet new people. Examine if you have inner blocks to love, which is very common for long-standing singles, and engage a coach to help you address these blocks. Staying immersed in work, without opening yourself to others, will not help you get into your dream relationship.

Not all the seeds that we plant will blossom. Sometimes there are seeds that just don’t germinate. For example, when you reach out to a friend to build a connection, but it’s not reciprocated. When you want to build a relationship with someone, but he/she is not interested. When you start a project and put in the due effort, but it doesn’t turn out the way you want. When you try to help someone, but get a negative or lukewarm response. When you open your heart and trust someone, but he/she bites you in the head.

But that doesn’t matter. Not all actions will lead to results. But some will. The goal is to plant as many seeds as possible in pursuing your goal. To plant the right seeds by getting advice from the right people and sources, because these shape your day-to-day thinking and long-term direction. To create so many avenues and possibilities for success, that success is imminent. To never stop taking action.

So… what seeds do you need to start planting? Can you get started right away today? Because the sooner you plant your seeds, the sooner you water them and care for them, the faster they will germinate, grow, and blossom. And how your future will be, 10, 15 years down the road will be shaped by the seeds you plant today.

Do you tend to compare yourself to others? Do you constantly feel pressured to conform to certain standards, to fit yourself in a perfect mold as told by society? Today’s episode is about our unique path in life. Click below to listen!

Starting from this episode, I’ll be adding transcripts that you can find below each episode. Today’s transcript can be found below.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Castbox, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Personal Excellence Podcast

Our Unique Path in Life

Show Podcast Information

Read the transcript for this episode here.

If you find The Personal Excellence Podcast helpful, please take a minute to leave a nice rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast. Your rating makes a difference and will help spread the message of conscious living to more people out there. Thank you! :)

Our Unique Path in Life [Transcript]

Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast. The show that’s all about helping you be your best self and live your best life. Now, your host, Celestine Chua!

Celestine Chua: Hey everyone! Welcome to the Personal Excellence Podcast Episode 12! I’m Celestine Chua from PersonalExcellence.co.

First off, I’d like to apologize for the intermittent uploads for the podcast, and even the YouTube channel. A big reason is that I’ve just been struggling to find a stable and a quiet place to record my audio podcasts and YouTube videos. That’s why you can see that I haven’t been doing any video for the past two years. And the podcast… yeah. I’ve also been really slow in the updates. In the meantime, I’m just trying to find opportunities where I can record new podcasts and speak to you guys. I really hope that in time to come, I’ll be able to record more episodes on a regular basis.

So currently I’m experimenting with a new podcast format. If you’re an existing listener, you probably know that The PE Podcast episodes tend to be between 30 to 45 minutes long, with a series of tips on the topic itself. Now, the new podcast format that I am experimenting with consists more of short-form topics, and in each episode I’ll be focusing on sharing one big idea. Let me know what you guys think at personalexcellence.co/contact/! I always love to hear your feedback!

Today’s topic is on our unique path in life. For all of us growing up in today’s world, I’m sure you see comparisons abound all the time. There are comparisons with grades when you’re in school… coming from teachers, parents, and even your friends, your schoolmates. Many people are often comparing grades, like who’s got better grades, more achievements, etc.

Then in life… you see people comparing things like the age people marry. This is very common in Asia. After you are married, there are comparisons in terms of the house, apartment you live in. After that, comparisons in terms of kids, who just had a kid, how many kids people have. Career-wise, too — like who got what job, how much someone is earning. So there are just these comparisons all the time. And it’s really subtle too. Sometimes, it’s not even obvious when the comparisons are being done.

This is a phenomenon known as Keeping up with the Joneses, where there’s this constant comparison with the person next to you. It could be our neighbors. It could be a comparison with your schoolmates, classmates, colleagues, friends, the people who grew up with you, or even people online. Online, everyone feels like they’re just next to us. We have Facebook, Instagram, and all that, and we can see what people are doing in just one click.

So it’s increasingly easy to see what people are doing. With just a simple click, a simple message, a simple look, you can glance through people’s timeline and immediately see what they have been up to. And obviously, most people would just put their highlights in life. These days, there are countless apps, software to edit and present this perfect image online.

So more and more, we’re faced with this perfect imagery of people’s lives. This increases this pressure to compare and wonder, Okay, why am I not at this level? Or if you are running an online business, it’s so easy to be comparing with someone else’s metrics. Followers, figures — all these are open for everybody to see. Or even number of comments, the feedback people are getting, and so on.

Now, what I want to share here is to remember: when you are comparing with other people, when you are feeling bad and thinking, Oh this person has this! This person is walking down this perfect track in life! Oh this person has accomplished all of these things! Just remember at this point that all of us have our unique path in life. You have your unique path in life. I have my unique path in life. So does the random person walking on the street. We have our unique paths in life. All of us have our own individual backgrounds. Our own set of parents. Our own set of upbringing. The places we grew up in. The experiences that we have. These are unique to us and because of that, we are all on a unique track.

Now I understand that we have schools and systems that tend to commoditize people. Why do I say that? Because right from enrollment and matriculation in school, you are at a particular age and so are your peers and classmates. Everyone around you is at the same age and you move through the same class, the same curriculum. And because everyone is at the same age, there’s just this readiness for teachers, systems to distill and treat people more like metrics and statistics.

That’s where everyone sort of becomes a commodity, because it then boils down to the grades you’re having, the achievements that you have, in order to stand out above and beyond other people. Then after you graduate, this comparison switches to jobs. What pay are you getting? What job did you get into? What company did you get into? And then you become defined by your job, your company, your company’s brand name, and the number on your paycheck.

Even though society and systems do such comparisons, and these in a way makes us lose our humanity and sort of forget that we’re individual beings… at the end of the day, remember that schools, systems — they are really there for us to learn skills and to equip ourselves with knowledge, so that we can use these skills and knowledge to improve our life and to get into careers that we like. Or to move forward in the path that we want.

So putting this into perspective, remember that no matter what others do or how others try to treat you or how society tries to treat you, know that you are a unique individual with your unique life path. So that means there’s really no need to compare. There’s no need to compare in terms of, “Oh that person got married at age 28! So I should try to get married at age 28.” And when you are not married at age 28, 29, 30, 31, or 32, there’s no need to feel bad about that because we are all on our unique path.

Same for when someone reaches a certain level of career or business success at the age of say, 25 or 30 or 35. There’s no need to look at that and feel, “Oh geez this person achieved this level of success! But I’m like five years older! I’m not even there yet.” There’s no need to do that.

Or even say, someone chooses to have a kid at age 30, and then has two kids at age 32, and three kids at age 35. There’s no need to look at that and feel, “Oh geez, I’m 32 now. I don’t have a kid. Should I start to have a kid?”

What’s most important is what you want for yourself and what you want for your life. Not comparing with other people and what they have done in their lives. I mean, you can look on at other people’s lives as a way to get inspiration, as a way to get some reflection points for yourself, as a way to ponder, Okay, am I on the right track towards what I want for myself?

But don’t look towards other people’s paths as this model you should replicate, that you should follow suit. And then feel pressured when you’re not at that same place. That’s because other people are on their own tracks, and you have your own track. For what it’s worth, as you’re looking at the people and what they have “achieved,” you probably have achieved things that people don’t have. That are just unique to you.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is to Create your path. Find your path. Know your worth. Not comparing yourself with other people as a way to pressurize yourself, to de-humanize, or to commoditize yourself. But remembering that you are this unique soul here on Earth. On your unique life path and your journey. And it’s about discovering what YOU want. Creating a life that you can be proud of. One that you can look back on and know that it is a life well lived. :)

I have a few articles for you: One is on how to stop comparing, and another article on finding your inner self. Both are related to today’s topic, that I have linked in the show notes.

If you have found this podcast helpful, I’d super appreciate it if you can leave a review on iTunes, and you can do that at personalexcellence.co/itunes/. I’ll see you guys in the next episode. In the meantime, remember: You’re beautiful, you’re perfect, you’re complete. Bye guys!

Endnote: Thanks for listening to The Personal Excellence Podcast! For more tips on how to live your best life, visit www.personalexcellence.co

Related Resources:

• Why You Should Stop Comparing Yourself With Others (And 3 Steps To Do So)
• Finding Your Inner Self
• I’m Depressed about My Lack of Progress. What Should I Do?

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Last week a course participant shared with me that she just had a hard fall in life.

She recently lost her baby, left her job, and has been working on her startup in the past year which has not taken off in the way she wanted.

She asked me if I have any thoughts on reshuffling, reprioritizing, or finding new purpose in life, as she is not really sure if what she thought she wanted before is worth it anymore.

When I heard what happened my heart immediately went out to her. I have already responded to her privately but I thought to write this post in case any of you are going through a tough phase in life.

1) Give yourself space to grief, to heal

Firstly I’m not going to tell you that what doesn’t break you will make you stronger.

Instead I’m going to tell you to grieve and take some time out for yourself first.

Our society today is very much about doing. Do, do, do. Move on. Get over things. Get over yourself.

Yet we are humans, not robots. When we fall we need time to heal and climb back up. When we have an emotional fall the wounds may not be visible, but they cut so much deeper than physical wounds. Trying to “move on” when we are still hurting and feeling lost not only hurts us, but may cut us deeper and leave us more broken.

Take some time out for yourself. To heal. To recover. To find yourself. Give yourself the space to grieve, cry, and mourn over your loss.

I recommend to journal your darkest feelings. Pour your heart out on paper. Talk to your loved ones and share your pain. Spend some time alone, by yourself. If you are working, take a few days of leave to rest and get a timeout. Work can continue for a while without you. But you, you need time to rest, recuperate, and heal, before stepping forward.

2) Think about the things that matter

Maybe you feel lost because you have been working so hard on something that amounted to nothing. Maybe you just lost your job. Maybe your marriage ended in shambles. Maybe your business is not doing well. Maybe you just lost a loved one. Or maybe you just lost your baby, a pain that no one should ever have to go through in their lifetime.

In these darkest of times, think about the things and people that matter. Your parents perhaps. Your sibling f you have one. Your partner. Your passion. Your beliefs. The people you care about, whom you’ve touched. Your children, if you have any.

And then there’s someone you may have forgotten. Your higher self. He (She) has always been there with you, quietly watching you, comforting you. He (She) has been with you through everything and wrapped his (her) hands around you and tightly hugged you in times of pain, even when you thought you were alone.

When all hope seems lost, remember that you are not alone. If you find it very hard to think about someone or something you care about, close your eyes and ask yourself, “What matters to me? What matters to me in this world?” Write down all your answers in your notebook, and write until you cry and until you can cry no more. As you lie in a state of darkness and grief, think about the things that give you light.

3) Reflect on your future

When you’re ready, and only when you’re ready, think about your life ahead.

As you stand and see your life before you, what do you wish to do moving forward?

For example, 5 years from now, what do you wish to see in your life?

• Do you want to start a family, if you don’t have one yet?
• Do you want to work on a new career?
• Do you want to run your business or start a new one if your previous business failed?
• If you’re single, do you want to be married or be in a relationship?
• Where do you see yourself living? Do you want to be living in the same country or elsewhere?
• What do you want to be doing?

It doesn’t have to be one answer but a few answers.

Doing this envisioning exercise is about getting clarity of what you want. Defining a direction that you care about. This direction can be the exact same one you were working on before. It can be a similar direction to what you were doing before but altered based on your new priorities in life. It can be a totally different one. Take this as a good timeout to think about what you want vs. just going through the motions.

For example, my course participant C told me that she felt lost because she had been working so hard on her career/business all this while and made sacrifices, yet the people there for her during her darkest hour were her family and husband. While she is working on her business today, all she can think about is her baby and family. All these things that I was chasing, that I thought that I wanted, what for? she couldn’t help but wonder.

I told her to think about what she wants to see down the road. “What do you want to see in your future, 5 years from now?” This future can involve being a full-time mom. It can involve running a successful business. It can involve having a family and running a business of meaning to you. Alternatively, it can involve returning to employment while starting a family. There are no right or wrong answers, only what inspires you and what you want to do.

The most important thing is to know that there is no right or wrong answer, only what matters to you. There is pride and joy in being a full-time mom and caring for the household. There is great fulfillment in being a single business owner. You can also be a multi-tasking parent and entrepreneur, managing family and business. Or you can be married with no kids by your choice, dedicating yourself to your goals, career, partner, and family members.

Your vision can also change along the way, and it is okay. C said to me, “I don’t want to set [a vision] that I realize I don’t really want, or that if I set a mediocre one I would feel restless after a while.” Know that our visions are meant to be dynamic reflections of what we want at this current moment. We will change, and our goals will change, and it is okay. What’s more important is that we have a vision that inspires us enough to take us forward, and we continuously update that to reflect what inspires us now. Read: When Goals Stop Working

Likewise if you are a guy, you can be a full-time dad if this is what works for you. You can be a full-fledged entrepreneur building your business. You can be a family man having a stable job and raising your family. You can be a nomad traveling across countries and speaking at different places where you go. This is no one fixed path, but the path that holds the most meaning to you. None of the path is better or more superior than the other, just different.

If you haven’t, do my life purpose exercise where you write your life purpose for 30 full minutes until you cry. It will give clarity of your overall life direction and where/how you should steer your life as you step ahead.

4) Start to pick up the pieces

When you return to life after a hard fall, it may feel disjointing. You may do X but think about Y. You may feel like you are at a loss. You may feel distanced, like you are far away from the things you are doing even though you are trying to move full steam ahead.

Start with the things you enjoy and that give you meaning. What did you enjoy doing before? Start with these.

• Maybe you enjoyed writing. Start writing a few articles. Pen down your deepest feelings. Write not for others, but for yourself.
• Maybe you liked going for walks with your partner. Add this to your routine.
• Maybe you liked watching movies. Pick a few new releases and watch them.
• Maybe you liked to travel. Plan your next vacation. Or go for a quick weekend getaway. If your finances allow and you have no immediate obligations, go on a trip for a few weeks. Clear your mind and realign your priorities.
• Maybe you enjoyed volunteering, which you find purposeful as you help out individuals in need. Go for some volunteer work that you care about.
• Maybe you liked to work as working keeps your mind moving and your work allows you to do very meaningful stuff. Take on projects that inspires you the most, that get to create the most impact.

The goal is to reintroduce the things you liked about your life back into your routine, at your own pace. Also, focus on doing things that interest you vs. doing things out of obligation. Let yourself be guided by what you want, what you love, not what you feel you have to do. The former is to be driven by love while the latter is driven by fear.

5) Start rebuilding your life

Once you are ready, it’s time to rebuild your life.

Ready meaning you are ready to reintegrate with the world. To give life your all again. To be your true authentic self.

Remember the vision you have painted in step #3? How can you get started with that?

Perhaps you lost your child and you are grieving over his passing. You still hope to have a child one day, to start a family.

When you are ready, try for another child with your partner. I know someone who lost her baby but subsequently conceived again and gave birth. Their newborn fills them with joy each day. Yet he could never have entered the world if they (the parents) didn’t decide to try again, for another baby. He doesn’t replace his lost sibling in any way, but he brings joy and love to his family all the same.

Maybe you just ended a marriage. You are still hurting but you have decided that it’s time to move on.

There’s no need to jump right back into the dating scene if you’re not ready. In fact, use this time to focus on yourself. To work on the goals you couldn’t when you were married. To date yourself and fall in love with life again as a single.

Maybe you just went through a crushing business failure or your business is tanking. You feel ashamed and you’re not sure what to do next about your business.

Remember that businesses fail all the time though. Colonel Sanders was rejected 1,009 times when he tried to sell his now famous KFC recipe. Richard Branson, business magnate and billionaire, has failed in many businesses, from Virgin Cola to Virgin Brides to Virgin Cars. Steve Jobs got fired from the very company he founded, and very publicly so (he would be famously rehired later on).

That your business has failed or yet to take off is hardly the exception but the norm, especially in today’s ultra-competitive marketplace. In fact every entrepreneur almost certainly fails a few times at least before succeeding. As Richard Branson says, “Every person, and especially every entrepreneur, should embrace failure with open arms. It is only through failure that we learn.” The focus here isn’t “How can I not fail?” but “How can I fail quickly, learn from my failures ASAP, and use these lessons to achieve my next success?” Read: Can Everyone Be Successful in Starting Their Business?

If income is a concern, get a job or do some part-time work first. Budget and save up while you work on your business on the side. Quit when you gain enough traction to make a living from your business. Read: Pursuing Your Passion With No Money

Maybe you just got retrenched. Your previous company is the only thing you’ve ever known your entire working life.

Take this as a fresh new start. Your previous company is not you. What are some goals you’ve always wanted to pursue? Hobbies? Take this chance to explore them. Is there a different industry you’d like to dip your toes in? Create a plan that safeguards your financial risks while paving your new path. Reach out to your friends, industry contacts, and headhunter agencies to understand the industry status and job openings. Attend recruitment events. Use sites like Glassdoor, Vault, and Linkedin to research and understand the inside scene of the industry better. Read: How To Start When You Have Nothing

***

To you reading this, I’m terribly sorry that you had to go through this. I wish that things could be better. I wish that I could make the pain go away.

While I can’t say that things will get easy because they may not, here’s one thing I do know: We are alive right now. You and me, we are alive. Because of that, it means the possibility to create what we want. To be with our loved ones. To touch them, cherish them. To pursue what we love. To impact others. To make a difference in the things we care about. To show appreciation to the people we love, while we still can. To create life, for some of us.

I hope you’ll be able to find the strength to carry on soon. I hope you’ll be able to break through this darkness to find light. When you do, you’ll find that the whole world has been waiting for you to re-join it all along. That everyone around you, including the people you care about and love, has been waiting for you to join them. That no matter what you think, you are never alone. That even in times of darkness, you can see a light. A light that is inside you, that is burning brightly within you.

Hey everyone! Last week, I asked you to send in your questions. Over the weekend, I compiled and answered YOUR awesome questions, including questions on confidence, decision making, enlightenment, and how to be a coach.

In this episode of The Personal Excellence Podcast, I talk about

• How to know you’re making progress when you’re not seeing results [00:47]
• Using success easter eggs to track your progress [01:51]
• What to do if you’re not getting any results at all [02:57]
• How to make a decision and avoid disappointing someone [04:30]
• How to know if you have reached enlightenment [06:57]
• My feeling of disillusionment in the past year [08:36]
• Your roadmap for your consciousness growth [09:56]
• How to be a coach — My tips for you [11:45]
• Why coaching courses are merely 0.01% of the equation to be a successful coach [13:08]
• How to be confident [16:06]
• The ONE thing that’s most important in life – Career? Health? [19:45]
• How to be organized and the calendar system I use [22:02]

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Castbox, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Personal Excellence Podcast

How To Know When You’re Making Progress, Journey of Enlightenment, And More

Show Podcast Information

Read the transcript for this episode here.

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How To Know When You’re Making Progress, Journey of Enlightenment, And More [Transcript]

Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast. The show that’s all about helping you be your best self and live your best life. Now, your host, Celestine Chua!

Celestine Chua: Hey everyone! Welcome to the Personal Excellence Podcast Episode 11. This is Celestine Chua from PersonalExcellence.co.

A few days ago, I sent out an e-mail via the newsletter asking you guys to send me your questions so I can answer them on the podcast. For those of you who are not on the newsletter, do join — it’s at personalexcellence.co/newsletter/. I send updates and messages that I don’t post on the blog.

So, some of you guys have sent in your questions and I’m super excited to answer them. Well, let’s get started!

How to know if you are making progress

“Greetings to you Celes. I want to ask: Sometimes I think I’m doing everything, more than I’m supposed to do to be successful. But it seems like things are not working well for me. My question is: For the goals that you are working towards, how do you know there’s progress? How do you see progress in everything that you do? Thanks.” — Anonymous

This is an excellent question. So how do you know when you are making progress on something you are working on?

I wrote a post before on the 21-day incubation period and I’m going to be sharing links to all these articles I’m talking about in the show notes, so you guys can click to read more. So I wrote this post before on the 21-day incubation period and essentially, for many of our goals, especially for large goals that take a long period to achieve, sometimes it can feel like we are putting in all this effort but we don’t see any progress or results. We wonder: Are we on the right track or are we not? Is something happening?

My recommendation is to know how to spot what I call “success easter eggs.” That would be indicators telling you, “Hey, you’re on the right track and you are doing things right. As long as you do more of this, you will reach the right place.”

What are the kinds of success easter eggs to look out for? It depends on your goal. You should set milestones and little check markers to let you know that you are moving to the right place.

Say you want to start a business. Success easter eggs could be:

• You getting that first customer
• You getting positive feedback from the customers, the few customers you have served, telling you how great your service or your product was and how they would definitely recommend it to other people

So when you start getting this kind of feedback, you know that you’re moving on the right track. And you want to identify the things helping you achieve these results, and to continue these actions and amplify them.

If you’re not getting any kind of results at all, like after you set certain success easter eggs and milestones and you are not achieving them after a certain period of work, it’s good to stop and troubleshoot. Understand what is going on, why there are no results at all — basically do an audit to understand what’s working, what’s not working.

So take a step back and think about:

• What’s the situation right now? What is the goal I want to achieve?
• Where am I right now versus this goal?
• What have I been doing? What’s working what’s not working?
• Maybe identify certain people who have achieved the results you want. What can you learn from them?

By reviewing and learning from your mistakes or the things that you’re not doing well or that’s not working at all, and experimenting with new things, there will be a point when you see those first signs of success. It has to be. Because let’s say that first batch of actions that you took, they are not working, they’re not bringing you to where you want to be.

Then, by elimination and by learning from your role models and success figures in the industry, it will be a matter of time before you get closer to what you want to be and achieve that.

How to avoid disappointing someone

“Hi Celes. This is Sandra from Israel. I would like to ask a question: How to deal with a situation where you want to make a choice, but you avoid choosing what you want because you don’t want to disappoint somebody else. It’s very important and I’m sure you’ll have a good answer. Thank you.” — Sandra, Israel

Hey Sandra, this is an excellent question.

So it seems there are two conflicting factors involved here. First, you want to do what you want. Obviously, all of us should always do what we want. Secondly, you wish to avoid disappointment.

It seems like you’re talking about a decision here that if you do what you want, you may disappoint someone. On the other hand, if you don’t do what you want, you will avoid the disappointment of that person, but someone’s got to be disappointed, isn’t it? And that person is going to be you.

This is where you know my stance — I’m always talking on the blog to follow your heart. Obviously we don’t want to live our lives irresponsibly and not take into consideration people’s feelings.

I don’t know the specifics of your situation but I would recommend to talk to this person involved. If you don’t want to disappoint this person, I’m pretty sure this person must be quite important to you, right?

So talk to him/her. Let him/her know what’s on your mind, this dilemma that you’re in. Because either path is not ideal. I am not going to be recommending either path. When we are in a conflicting situation where there are opposing forces, my recommendation is always to look for that better path. That path where all key needs can be met. This requires us to break out of the confines we are in, to involve other parties, and to have a discussion so that we can find that better option.

So I wish you the best Sandra and let me know how things go, okay? Talk to this person and let him/her know what’s on your mind, this dilemma that you’re in. And just share with him/her, and see what you guys can work out.

How to know if you have reached enlightenment

“Hi Celes, I’m Luis from Portugal. I wanted to ask you about something that we’ve talked about a long time ago in The Personal Excellence Forums. We were talking about meditation and you told me you had the goal to reach enlightenment in a certain timeframe. At that time I challenged you on your ability to measure that. But over the years, I found that some traditions do present ways to measure enlightenment.

So my question is this: Did you ever reach that goal? If yes, how did you know when you were there? And if not, do you have a better idea of what it will look or feel like? Thank you for your time and for the great material over the years. Bye bye.” — Luis, Portugal

Hey Luis. That’s an excellent question. To answer you right off the bat, no I’m not at a stage of enlightenment yet. I still face many struggles, many problems, issues, and things that I’m just working through. I see all of that as part of this journey of life, working through these problems.

If I could just clarify what I think I was trying to say at that point, I see enlightenment as the end goal for myself and for any human really. That our journey in life is to grow in consciousness and as with any journey, there will be milestone checkers or end destination that we have in mind. Because of that, naturally, that would lead us to a certain end point and this endpoint of consciousness would be enlightenment.

So I think that was what I was trying to say. Just to set things straight, I wasn’t trying to be crazy or funny by saying that my goal in life is to reach enlightenment and I’m all wise and monkish and all.

It’s interesting that you’re asking this question especially when one of my recent posts is on disillusionment. I was talking about how disillusioned I’ve been feeling in the past couple of years, seeing all these different things around the world, the issues. It also really made me think about how our journey in life doesn’t really end until we elevate everybody around us. Not just in our immediate vicinity but all around us in the world.

This is why I don’t think anyone can truly say that they’re enlightened until everybody on earth is enlightened, if it makes sense? Because all of us are interrelated. Just as we are inside this universe, I also think that the universe is inside us and everything in reality is a part of us.

So I feel that it is our responsibility to grow and as we grow, to lift everyone around us up.

This then brings us to your question which is: How do we know how we are progressing towards the end goal of enlightenment? And that’s an excellent question. I have an article on the map of consciousness [Update: The article is now offline; you can read more about the map in the book Power vs. Force]. It is a scale developed by David Hawkins to measure consciousness.

• It starts from lower levels of Shame, Guilt, Apathy, Grief, and then moving up to Fear, Desire, Anger.
• It goes to the midpoint which is Courage.
• The other half of the scale consists of love-based levels like Willingness, Acceptance, Love, Joy, Peace, and the highest level is Enlightenment.

So this entire scale is split into two big categories. The first one consists of fear-based levels, and what David Hawkins referred to as the segment of “Force.” The other one is “Power,” which consists of love-based levels.

“Force” because in those levels, people tend to use force to solve problems. For example: Punishment, war, violence, anger, repression, forcing people to do certain things. Whereas the second segment is on “Power” and “Power” meaning rather than using implicit or physical force to get people to act a certain way, you’re using “Power,” say bringing out the best in people.

I definitely recommend reading the article. I write in more detail on the difference between each level. A lot of readers have found this scale very helpful and I recommend using this as a personal growth / consciousness roadmap to track where you are right now in your consciousness development, and to give you an idea of what’s ahead and the milestones, the end goal to move towards.

How to be a coach

“I would like to be a coach like you. Can you be my mentor?” — Adelynn, Singapore

Hey Adelynn! That’s fantastic that you want to be a coach. If I may, let me rephrase your question to “How can I be a coach?” And this is a question that I get very often.

The first thing that I’d recommend is to go for some coaching courses. This is the assumption that you are starting from scratch, from ground level and you’re looking to be a coach. Make skill development and developing your expertise that first priority.

There are certain people who think about coaching as this nice profession and they just jump in and call themselves a coach — which is fine because there’s nothing wrong with calling someone a coach. As long as we are helping people, that itself is coaching. But some people see it as, Okay, I call myself a coach and I start charging people several hundred dollars an hour for coaching.

To me that is a wrong way to approach it. Firstly, it is very important that we focus on building our skills. This may or may not be through courses. It can simply helping people, doing pro-bono coaching, seeking out people around us to work with them on their goals. And coaching courses would be one aspect of skill development.

At the same time, and this is something that I tell all my clients, don’t get lost in this whole phase of taking coaching courses. Because to be honest, the skill building aspect of being a coach is like 0.1% or 1% of the entire equation of having a successful coaching career.

There’s a huge 99% or 99.9% which is on other things altogether. This includes knowing how to position yourself, knowing how to differentiate yourself from the zillions of coaches out there, knowing how to set up a business, manage a business and actually market your business and make it known, and knowing how to develop your skill in that area where you want to help others.

For example some people want to be a relationship coach. Some people want to be a health coach. Some people want to be a life coach. Even within life coaching, there are many different segments. Some people focus on spiritual coaching, some focus on productivity coaching, some would be on life purpose and finding your direction and passion. So it is important to get clear on that.

In short, set your eyes on the final goal which is helping people and supporting them in their life journey. Identify the steps to do that.

So first, skill development. Check out certain courses. Here I want to give a caveat. Do not fall into the trap — there are certain courses out there that present themselves as this, “Join my course and you’ll become a hugely successful coach and learn 5 figures per month.” Don’t fall for those. No matter how good a course is, taking that course is only 0.1% of the entire equation.

Next, learning about business basics, marketing basics. This can be from reading books, reading blogs. So much free information online today. Unless someone has actually dug into all this free information online and thoroughly researched and read every single blog, I don’t think people should be pumping in four-figure sums on courses that claim to give you magic bullet results.

Next would be setting a plan. What are the first steps of success? Identifying the first group of people you can approach and just coach for free as part of building your credentials, building your testimonials. And then moving forward from there.

I’m going to be linking to several articles in the show notes that may help. It includes Are Coaching Courses Necessary To Be a Coach?, my Successful Businesses Interview Series, and my How To Pursue Your Passion series. That is a huge series of articles I’ve written over the years on the various steps that I went through in pursuing my passion and that will be inside the show notes as well. Do check them out. There are many tips to get you started.

How to be more confident in yourself

“Hi, I’m really glad that I found this website. I found it by coincidence today. I’m 16 years old. I’m from Egypt.

My problem is that I’m not really confident. I show that I’m really confident but deep inside I’m not. I feel that I’m not pretty. Everyone tells me that I’m pretty but I don’t feel that at all. Consequently, I don’t feel confident when dealing with the other gender because I don’t feel attractive enough and I can’t open a good conversation.

Also, I feel bad that I have not reached anywhere in my life. I know that I’m still 16 years old, I’m still young. But my colleagues have achieved really fantastic things so I feel I’m not sufficient. I’m not really confident. And I feel… I’m fed up because of this personality.” — Anonymous, Egypt

Hey thank you so much for sharing your question. It sounds to me that you are very hard on yourself and I can totally understand that.

When I was younger, there were definitely moments of insecurity and just this phase of figuring yourself. And with school bullying, societal pressures, all these images on magazine covers, and guys comparing girls by their looks, it’s very hard a teenager to come fully into his/her own when there are all these erroneous, negative, and low-consciousness forces in play.

Today with the Internet, it doesn’t help at all because now there’s what, there’s Instagram — which is fine as a tool but it seems to be more commonly used to present ostentatious material goods or to flaunt certain lifestyles today.

What I recommend is to recognize yourself as this unique human being on Earth while acknowledging there are seven billion people out there who are all individuals. All of us are individuals in our own path, living and working to be our best self, without comparison to anyone else.

And it is very very important to recognize that. Because let’s say you live in a society that’s very much about conforming and being part of a larger group, especially so in Asian countries, it is very easy to lose your identity. And I think most people do not even recognize themselves as this unique person independent of a group.

Now it is important to recognize our role in society, our role in communities, all of these are important. But do not lose sight of the fact that you are one human being with your unique individual identity. That is my one biggest advice on confidence. Because oftentimes when we lose confidence is when we start comparing ourselves with other people and wonder, Why am I not like that? Why am I not like this?

Here I would recommend to read two posts: One post is on how to be confident and another post is on how to stop comparing. Definitely read both of them. I share more tips inside on how to do that.

The one thing that’s the most important in life

“What is the only thing which matters most in our life? Is it relationship? Is it job? What is the one thing which is very important in life? The most important thing.” — Hitesh, India

This is an interesting question from Hitesh, which is, “What is the one thing that matters the most in life?” My answer is, it really depends on yourself Hitesh. For certain people, relationships matter more. For certain people, career matters more.

I would say there is no one thing that is the most important. In my Live a Better Life in 30 Days, I have the life wheel. The life wheel is this self-development tool that gives you an overview of the key areas of your life. Some of these areas include Career, Love, Family, Health, Finance. There is no one thing that is the most important because let’s say we do not have our Health, nothing else matters. Even if we have the best Career in the world and all the Money in the world, it doesn’t matter if we don’t have our Health.

Relationships itself is also very important. But if one just focuses on Relationships all the time and then neglects their own passions, their Career which should ideally be an extension of that passion, eventually they will also feel a backlash in other areas.

So to me, all these areas are very important, and it’s important to recognize them. Using the life wheel is excellent to measure your progress in each of these areas and to move forward in the areas that you feel you are not doing so well in, while pushing yourself in the areas that you’re doing well, so that you do even better.

Check out my life wheel article that I will be sharing in the show notes. For those of you who don’t have 30DLBL, check it out. It is a 30-day program with 30 different tasks all designed to help you move your life to a better place.

How to be organized

Last but not least, we have our last question from Melissa.

“Hello. I have a tremendous amount of trouble keeping organized. I have a home business and I see a lot of people on a daily basis. It’s quite embarrassing. I can’t find things, I’m just unorganized. My name is Melissa. I’m from Winchester California. Thank you so much.” — Melissa, California

Aww I’m really sorry to hear about your situation Melissa. I can understand because we live in an age where there’s just so much information that it can be hard to keep things organized.

Simplicity is the key. Come up with a simple, easy-to-follow system to sort your files, to keep track of your to-dos, and to know what you need to do next. Even though I’m a very organized person, last year, I realized I needed to take serious time out to organize my computer. There were just so many things, like different versions of a project, different versions of a file, raw files of podcast, raw files of courses.

So I spent quite a few weeks deleting files that I had not looked at in forever. And coming out with an intuitive folder structure that I could easily click and find what I need. It’s very important to have a structured system that you can easily follow and you know where the things are. It’s the same for you. Set aside the time to properly reorganize and sort out your folders, your files.

For appointments, I use Google Calendar. It can be synced with your smartphone. You can specify whether you want it to remind you before each appointment. Every day, just making that your go-to page. Create a calendar for different purposes, such as social appointments and another one for work meetings.

For example, I have different mini-calendars. One is for Appointments, where I have to go out and meet people. Another one for Courses/Coaching and I have it in a different color. Then another sub-calendar for Family in a different calendar. You can toggle them on and off so when you click each calendar, it disappears from the immediate view.

This way you would never miss a deadline because it’s all there. If there’s something that’s important, then put it in the calendar as an appointment. If there’s something that is urgent but you can’t get to right away, put it in your calendar as well. Have your calendar open as a browser tab so that you can refer to it regularly. To know what’s next, what you need to do and so on.

Closing Note

So that’s it! Thank you so much for sending in the questions. It’s really been a blast for me to hear your voices and answer your questions. I hope you have found my answers useful in some way.

If you find The Personal Excellence Podcast helpful, I would truly appreciate if you could just take a few minutes of your time to write a review on iTunes and you can do that at personalexcellence.co/itunes/

Thank you so much guys for listening. Really look forward to connecting with you in the next article and the podcast. Bye guys!

Endnote: Thanks for listening to The Personal Excellence Podcast! For more tips on how to live your best life, visit www.personalexcellence.co

Related Resources:

• The 21-Day Incubation Period
• Are Coaching Courses Necessary To Be a Coach?
• Skills Development
• Successful Businesses Interview Series
• How To Pursue Your Passion (series)
• How To Be The Most Confident Person In The World
• Why You Should Stop Comparing Yourself With Others (And 3 Steps To Do So)
• The Life Wheel
• Live a Better Life in 30 Days, my course to live a better life in 30 days

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“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people” is a quote often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, an American activist. What does it mean?

Let’s start by defining “ideas,” “events,” and “people” first.

• Discussing people means talking about a person, typically in a negative, gossipy way.
• Discussing events means talking about current events, such as local news or events happening around the world.
• Discussing ideas means talking about higher-level messages and concepts. Understanding the messages behind an event, dissecting human thought and behavior, looking beyond what’s there, and finding solutions to help the world.

Small Minds Discuss People

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When the quote says “Small minds discuss people,” it means that people who discuss others as an end in itself are small-minded and shallow.

Unfortunately, a large segment of the media and our population today dedicate themselves to discussing people. We have tabloid magazines, celebrity gossip sites, and people who follow celebrity gossip like it’s the central goal in their lives. Office politics happen in many places, with co-workers who backstab and badmouth others. Even politicians from wealthy, developed nations make personal attacks and conduct smear campaigns in their political campaigns today. Online, we see people shaming or attacking other people from time to time, with others supporting such behavior and joining the attack rather than taking the high ground.

Average Minds Discuss Events

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The next part of the quote is “Average minds discuss events.”

When you switch from discussing people to events, there is an improvement because you stop talking about people but instead focus on events. There is an element of objectivity as you’re now looking at hard facts and figures. You also become more informed about what’s happening in the world.

Yet it is a fallacy to think that simply discussing events makes us smarter.

Firstly, many news stories (depending on where you live) are heavily censored according to the news media’s ideology and alliances. There are many countries where the government controls the media. Powerful corporations often have the same people sitting on their boards as the boards of media outlets. So when you read the “news,” you’re really reading news that has been curated to fit what the news outlet wants you to know, along with cherry-picked information and statistics. Something to consider when you think that you’re being educated by a particular news outlet — it’s likely that they are shaping your thinking to fit what they want you to think.

Secondly, news media tend to sensationalize and report on the most shocking stuff. In internet terms, it’s called “clickbait.” As the saying goes, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” Hence, even though there are one billion possible things to report on each day, including countless positive stories and consciousness-raising events, the stories that a news outlet reports on are rarely the most important, most positive, or most enriching, but rather some of the most negative, outrageous, and fear-based stories you can ever find.

Thirdly, even though we may be shocked by a grisly murder that just happened, we have to bear in mind that murders, crimes, and even war happen every single day. But when you read the news, your attention gets directed to that one crime or that one murder. Or when a news channel repeatedly highlights the crimes and disasters that happen in a country, perhaps for political purposes, it creates the notion that the place is highly unsafe, when 99.999% of its people get by perfectly safely each day.

In the process of being caught in fear, anger, or shock, we miss the bigger picture. The irony is that by thinking that we are educating ourselves by reading the news, we are isolating our minds and forming an extremely skewed image of the world based on what the news outlet is telling us. We are associating life with fear and terror, yet missing the whole point which is, “How can we solve the issues that we see?”

Great Minds Discuss Ideas

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This brings us to the last point, “Great minds discuss ideas.”

As someone becomes more curious about the world and looks beyond what’s immediately visible, they start to talk about not just people or events, but ideas. For example:

• Why people do the things they do. What drives them.
• Why events like murder, mass shootings, war, and crimes happen. What we can do to prevent such violence.
• How we can uplift others.
• How we can improve as people.
• World issues, because we’re not just citizens of a country but the world.
• Whether the direction we’re moving in, as a society and as a world, is good for us.
• How to improve the world.

Discussing ideas means not just taking what is presented to you at face value, but digging deeper. Understanding root causes of events. Understanding how something came to be. Questioning assumptions. Identifying solutions.

The quote “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people” is of course meant as a generalization. People and events are often proxies to discuss ideas. We look upon people like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Buddha, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and Oprah Winfrey as inspirational figures for change. We discuss people as a way to understand each other. Discussing events helps us grow in awareness; current affairs are a way to learn about the world. If something just happened in my life and I share this with a friend, that’s part of conversation, of relating to each other.

The problem comes when we talk about people or events as an end to themselves. This quote reminds us that when we bad-mouth others, gossip, or follow the news reactively, it doesn’t bring us anywhere. Complaining or chit-chatting about people/events endlessly will not change our lives or make us smarter.

But by focusing on understanding ideas and creating solutions for change, it will. Assuming that we act on them of course.

How To Have a Great Mind: 8 Tips

This means:

1. Understand the root cause. Dig deep to understand what lies beneath the surface.
2. Expand your mind. Don’t just follow the news blindly. There is a world of information out there. Expand your mind to soak in information from all sources, from Wikipedia (which can be biased but it’s a good start) to different news sites to YouTube commentary channels to books on Amazon and Kindle. Expose yourself to different points of views. Once you do that, you’ll realize how certain news media can be biased and narrow in scope.
3. Stay away from gossip. Even though people may gossip about you, it doesn’t mean that you need to gossip about them. Take the high ground and focus on helping those who care about you instead.
4. Focus on the issue, not the person. If you don’t like what your boss, co-worker, or friend did, focus on the issue, not the person. Give constructive criticism without attacking someone. Read: How To Give Constructive Criticism: 6 Helpful Tips
5. Seek out those with intelligent opinions. Follow them. Read their updates to learn from their way of thinking. Bookmark articles that get you thinking. Reading an intelligent article 10 times is better than reading 20 low-level news stories any day.
6. Recognize and understand world issues. We’re not just a citizen of our country but the world. Climate change is real. So is the absurd amount of waste we produce daily and the immense pollution we generate as a result. Same for cruelty in the meat industry. While these issues may not affect us directly yet, we need to draw the link between our daily actions and such global issues, because there is a link. As conscious beings, there comes a point when we need to think about life beyond us, because at the end of the day, the world is ours to care for and protect.
7. Don’t talk about events as an end to itself. Understand them. Why is this event happening? When did it first start? What’s causing it? What can we do about it? For example, if there’s a mass shooting, beyond getting horrified, think about what you can do to change things. If you see news on a suicide, don’t just react and talk about it as conversation fodder, but learn more about the causes, overall statistics surrounding this, and why people in the modern world today are turning to suicide despite having the facilities and resources that people in undeveloped countries don’t. Dig in to understand patterns, rationales, and root causes.
8. Focus on solutions. Finally, identify solutions. Find ways to change the world in a positive way. What can you do about the problems you see today? What can you do to help others, make an impact, and save the world? Read: One Man’s Impact On The World

Reflect on what you talk about daily:

1. Do you tend to discuss people, events, or ideas?
2. How can you spend more time discussing ideas on how you can improve your life, help others, and change the world?

Check out:

• You Are The Average Of The 5 People You Spend The Most Time With
• Empty Vessels Make the Most Noise

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“How do I deal with disillusionment as I grow older? Disillusionment in the sense that I now perceive the world to be a rather cold and harsh place, filled with people who only mind their own interests.

This is in stark contrast with what I used to see the world as: a place with immense potential for good, lots of opportunities, negligible discrimination, etc. People used to be warm but now human interactions are diminishing. The hope and happiness that I used to have just by thinking about the world have turned to cynicism and depression.”

Recently, I saw this question on Quora and decided to answer it here.

I can understand feeling disillusioned as you grow older. For the past few years, I’ve been disillusioned with the blogging industry. I started creating websites in 1998 and started PE in 2008, and back then people created websites out of the love of creating and giving value to others.

But today, blogging is all about profiteering, creating email funnels, and maximizing sales. While we should definitely earn money for our work, people’s focus today seems to be to profit as the primary goal, rather than to give value.

I’ve been disillusioned with online negativity. Sometimes I don’t post anything as I find it easier to hide rather than to deal with people’s snarkiness and unhappiness. Rather than shame and create fear, we can do with more love and positivity. Anger and sarcasm seem to be everywhere these days and it’s depressing to see people attacking one after another online.

I’ve also been really disillusioned with society.

• The modern world creates so much waste today. Did you know that we create 3.5 million tons of solid waste daily and billions of pounds of plastic end up in the ocean per year, ruining marine ecosystems?^[1][2][3] Instead of fixing these issues, capitalistic economies continue to create waste on a massive level.
• Human rights are lacking even in supposedly “developed” places. Human trafficking, child trafficking, and child prostitution remain serious issues. 1.2 million children are trafficked each year while 21 million victims are trapped in modern-day slavery.^[4][5]
• There are still so many people trapped in poverty. Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population live on less than $2.50 a day even though our world is richer than it has ever been.^[6]
• In almost every country I’ve been to, there are always very poor people struggling to make ends meet. To me, this means that somewhere along the way, something has failed in the country’s governance for people to end up this way.
• When you dig into society’s structures, many of them exist to serve the super-rich, not humanity.

An old woman beggar in Afghanistan (Image)

An elderly cardboard collector in Singapore. They earn only S$2 (US$1.40) for a day of menial labor^[7], which is not enough to get one meal in Singapore. When you consider that Singapore is one of the richest cities in the world^[8], we need to ask ourselves what has gone wrong when old people cannot retire after spending 30, 40 years for a nation’s prosperity. (Image)

Yet despite these feelings, I believe that everyone does the best they can, within the limits of their consciousness.

Many people are stuck navigating the matrices of society, hence becoming victims of the forces around them. When a country’s leaders are nonchalant about their people’s suffering, maybe it’s because it’s simply not in their consciousness to care for others. For us as citizens, it is then up to us to educate, vote for better leaders, or better still, become the leader we want to see. For people who seem uncaring about what’s going on, maybe it’s because they are struggling with issues that they can’t break out of right now.

After spending the past two years of my life feeling extremely disillusioned, I realized that disillusionment doesn’t change anything. It will only kill you as you look at the world in pain. So how do we deal with disillusionment in a positive way?

1) Recognize that disillusionment is better than ignorance

Firstly, know that disillusionment (while unpleasant) is far better than ignorance.

So you’re disillusioned because you discovered many problems in the world. This is a good thing. Because as opposed to living in an illusion, you have broken out of it. While it may feel jarring at first, this is normal as you come to terms with reality.

For me, I would much rather know the ugly truth rather than hide in a web of falsehoods. With the former, at least I know what is happening, after which I can do something about it. With the latter, I may be “happier” but I don’t know what’s going on. This was exactly what was happening before I became disillusioned. Even though I was “happier,” the issues were around me. I was happier because I didn’t know that the issues were there, not because there were no problems with the world.

By knowing the ugly truth now, it is better as I have insight into how the world and people work. Knowledge is power and knowledge will help you plan ahead. Even though change may not happen right away, awareness is the first crucial step.

2) Turn your disillusionment into action

When you first learn about the problems of this world, it’s normal to feel sad, frustrated, or even angry.

Know that anger will not change the world. Neither will sadness or apathy. You can feel angry all day long or spend your entire life feeling upset with the world, but it will not change your life in any way. It will only bring you down and make life miserable.

What you need to do is to take action. To turn your anger and disappointment into action. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What exactly are you disillusioned with? Why?
2. What can you do about this?
3. What role can you play in the bigger picture?

For me, I believe the first step to many problems today is to raise the consciousness of people — starting with education. When someone doesn’t know what is going on, they cannot be part of the solution. Worse still, they become part of the problem as society’s default structures today lead people into low consciousness behaviors (such as materialistic behaviors like endless shopping, eating junk food, and buying things we don’t need).

Educate people through conversation and sharing your thoughts on social media. Involve your friends and colleagues in a non-intrusive discussion while respecting their views and personal space. This is infinitely more powerful than empty gossip or banter.

Let’s say you have talked to the people around you and you are ready to take things to the next level. Think about what you can do next. What can you do to drive more awareness and create change? For example, can you start a business? A blog to share what you know? A YouTube channel? A foundation to initiate change? A meetup group to engage others? An initiative where you involve others to make a difference? Or something else?

Example: Bill Gates, solving world’s poverty

All of us know Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world. After trying to bring computers to impoverished areas of Africa in the late 1990s, he realized how ridiculous that idea was when he saw their living conditions. He said, “Hmm, which is more important, connectivity or malaria vaccine? If you think connectivity is the key thing, that’s great. I don’t.“^[9]

Around that time, he visited a South African hospital for treating people with tuberculosis, after which he called his wife Melinda. She said in an interview,

“We often call each other when we are the road. Almost every day. But it was a different call. Bill was really quite choked up on the phone … Because he’d seen firsthand in a TB clinic hospital how awful it is to have that disease … He literally said to me, ‘It’s a death sentence. To go into that hospital is a death sentence.’ ” (Read: Why Bill Gates Became a Philanthropist)

Subsequently, they decided to start a foundation to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been going strong since 1997, had an endowment of US$44.3 billion as of 2014, and has committed billions of dollars of funding to many areas in the developing world such as infectious disease control, malaria control, HIV/AIDS control, tuberculosis control, reproductive health care, basic nutrition, among others, thereby protecting millions of children from death by preventable diseases.^[10][11] As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity. They plan to eventually donate 95% of their wealth to charity.^[12]

Example: Personal Excellence, helping others grow

Some of you may be thinking, I’m no Bill Gates, I don’t have the kind of money he has. I can’t make any change. Like what I shared in One Man’s Impact On The World, you can’t underestimate the power of your actions. I started Personal Excellence in 2008 with no startup capital, no contacts, no industry knowledge, and no external aid. Today PE has over one million pageviews a month, reaching out to people from over 200 countries and territories around the world.

Most importantly, it has allowed me to reach out to you. To think that our actions have no impact on others is a fallacy. We’re all interconnected in this world, more so today than ever. With the internet and globalization, our actions and purchases have a direct impact on which business thrives and fails, and whether someone can get a much-needed message that may well change their life forever.

We all live in the same world and we are already connected in more ways than one. What can you do to positively change the world into a better place? (Image)

Example: Lauren Singer, zero-waste living

Here’s another example. Lauren Singer was 21 and studying Environmental Studies at New York University when she saw the discrepancy between what she was studying and what she was doing in real life. Around her, she saw fellow students creating lots of plastic waste with single-use plastic disposables (straws, plastic bags, takeout containers, plastic fork/knife), while she herself was creating lots of plastic waste too — something that all of us are essentially doing today.

She said, “I felt like such a hypocrite. We’re supposed to be saving the planet, and here you are making all this trash.”^[13]

This was when she decided to change her lifestyle and live a zero-waste life. At the age of 22 (in 2013), she started her blog Trash is for Tossers where she teaches people to live a zero-waste lifestyle. She started her YouTube channel in 2014 which has over 74,000 subscribers today, and since been profiled by CNN, BBC, MSNBC, ABC News, and AOL. The combined trash she has created over the past 4 years fits into a small mason jar, while the total trash generated by an average person in a day is easily 20 times of that! Lauren started her business The Simple Co in 2014 which makes organic, vegan cleaning products safe for your body and the environment. And she’s just 26 (as of 2017).

You can’t assume that you’re not in a position to create change. Neither can you assume that what you want to do won’t have value. No matter your age, young or old, you have the power to influence and impact others. There are people out there waiting to be influenced and it starts with you. The clock is ticking. If there’s something you can do to impact others, what would you do? What would you say to them?

3) Be empathetic to others

Along with action, comes empathy. Respecting each other as humans. Recognizing that all of us have our individual needs, fears, hopes, and dreams, and we are not soulless objects to be used. Loving each other as people.

Growing up in Singapore where its annual GDP grew by more than 14 times and its population more than doubled in the past 30 years to the point where common spaces are intensely congested^[14][15], I noticed something. As a society becomes intensely urbanized, where more greenery is stripped from the land and people are filed into pigeon-hole environments to pursue never-ending material goals, I find that we begin to (a) associate less value with a human’s life and their emotions, and (b) assign more weight to objects, material wealth, and a person’s status. A nation’s relentless focus on economic growth shapes its people’s identity in more ways than you know.

Crowded streets everywhere in over-populated cities. Depending on where you live, it’s no longer possible to have some peace and quiet to yourself, sometimes even in your own home. (Image)

As a nation pushes on with endless GDP goals, I feel that people start to lose their humanity, in the same way that I feel that the people in Japan and South Korea are losing theirs.

• At the moment, Japan and Korea have one of the highest suicide rates in the world.^[16] On top of that, one of the lowest birth rates in the world (Singapore now has the lowest fertility replacement rate in the entire world as of 2017).^[17] In Japan, an average of 70 Japanese people commit suicide daily. It is common for people to kill themselves by jumping in front of a train, with public train delays due to suicide (by train) a common affair.^[18][19]
• Large segments of their populations have lost interest in being in a relationship, citing lack of time, economic reasons, and no interest in the opposite sex as reasons.^{[20][21][22][23]}
• Instead, Japanese singles are turning to (a) virtual dating apps with video game characters; (b) services like cuddle cafes, host clubs, and purchasable dates; and (c) porn/erotica to fulfill individual elements of their relationship needs.^{[24][25][26][27][28][30]} When you dissect parts of people’s life and push them to pursue material objectives independent of their personal needs, people also start to dissect their individual relationship needs and fulfill them in transactional ways.  
• In Japan, there are deep social issues like child exploitation and Hikikomori where people withdraw from social life and seek extreme confinement instead, where they don’t leave their home for over 6 months.^[30][31]

Individually there is nothing wrong with some of these behaviors as some people may simply prefer to live that way. But when entire segments of a population start to recluse, opt out of social and romantic relationships, or even opt to die, that’s when it’s clearly a macro-problem rather than a situation of individual choice. That’s when the leaders, especially past leaders, need to seriously reflect on what they have done with their national direction.

Aside from the above, there’s also the internet which has dehumanized interactions as we can now easily reach out to masses behind a computer screen. For some people, rudeness has become an automatic behavior as people stop appearing as real people but simply online handles with a profile pic.

The best we can do is to be empathetic first — being sensitive to others’ feelings and predicaments. Seeing people as people, not objects or tools. Showing care and concern for everyone, even if they may appear difficult. Giving a smile. Practicing emotional generosity. As we care for others, they will begin to open their hearts too.

Read:

• How To Be Empathetic
• The Secret To Meaningful Social Relationships
• Be a Better Me in 30 Days, my premium program to be a better you in just 30 days

4) Do the best you can

Last but not least, do the best you can.

For a while, I was really angry at the problems I was seeing in the world. I was angry at the fraudulent folks in my industry, misrepresenting products and causing people to run in circles with their false claims. I was angry at the social injustices in my country. I was angry at how people can be so apathetic, disinterested, or even ignorant about the issues happening before them. As someone who knows the power of media, I felt really disappointed when I saw the media being repeatedly used to spread propaganda rather than raise people’s consciousness.

But ultimately, I was really angry at myself. I felt angry for being so powerless over these issues. I felt paralyzed by the size of these problems. Around me, everyone is apathetic and disengaged, interested only in things like material purchase and self-interests, but not social issues, human rights, or world problems, which are far more important in the long run.

But after a long while of feeling angry, I realized that it’s pointless to feel this way. Even though many of the problems will likely not change in the next 10 years (and some will probably become worse become they get better), at least I can work on the things I can control first. I can work on improving my life and well-being. I can continue to pursue my mission to help others grow. I can touch those I see in my daily life. I can continue to reach out to all of you through my blog. And I can devote my efforts to those of you who can benefit from my aid.

The same goes for you. While the world isn’t perfect right now, there are many things you can do at your level. Educating yourself. Educating others. Starting a blog that rallies people into action. Starting a socially-conscious venture. Spreading empathy. These are changes that you can make at your level, among others. Do not assume that you can’t make a difference, because you can. And it all starts with you and me.

You’re not the only person feeling disillusioned with what you see in the world. There are many people who are disillusioned and working to improve things too. Many are fighting to make a change — environmental / human rights / animal rights activists, coaches, counselors, healers, doctors, scientists, socially conscious entrepreneurs, philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates, billionaires like Warren Buffett who has pledged to give away 99% of his wealth to philanthropic causes^[32][33] along with others in The Giving Pledge.

You are not alone fighting this battle, so don’t feel that you are alone.

Freshen up. Start with what you can do first. Improve things for yourself and others around you.

When you are ready, start to really think about what you can do, at your level. No man is too small to make a change; no impact is insignificant. Think about the first change you can create. Then, the next one. Keep taking these actions, one at a time.

Individually, we may not be able to solve all the world’s issues. But together, we can make a big difference. Hopefully, by taking the maximum action at an individual level, we can positively impact others to do the same. Hopefully, by working together, you and me, we can make a difference in some people’s lives. When enough people join forces to reverse local and global issues, that’s when we’ll see the world’s problems being reversed, one at a time.

Read:

• Feeling Disconnected
• The Power of Little Changes
• One Man’s Impact On The World