I learned about it while studying economics in school, and here’s what it says:

The law of diminishing returns state that as more units of a variable input (like time, effort) are added to a productive process, the additional output (or benefit) from each new unit will eventually decrease.^[1]

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Let’s say you have a cornfield and you want to increase your corn yield with fertilizer.

• Adding one bag of fertilizer significantly boosts your crop yield.
• Adding a 2nd and 3rd bag increases your yield further, by roughly the same amount.
• Adding a 4th bag still increases it but by a smaller margin. Each additional bag after that contributes less and less to the total yield, even though it’s the exact same type of fertilizer! This smaller yield increase is called diminishing returns.
• If you keep adding more fertilizer beyond diminishing returns, the field becomes overfertilized and you will get a decrease in total corn yield! This is called negative returns.

See graph below:

(Image: Personal Excellence)

Diminishing Returns in Our Life

Diminishing returns can actually be observed in different areas of our life. Consider these examples:

• Work. The initial hours of a work day are usually the most productive. In the later hours, productivity starts to decline as our energy decreases. At a certain point, it results in burnout.
• Social media. While using social media can feel fun and enjoyable at first, after some time it becomes less enjoyable. Using it for 2, 3, 4 hours can feel draining and sucks up our productivity.
• Learning. The first book we read on a topic is usually the most helpful as we learn its fundamental concepts. Reading 10 more books on the same topic may continue to be helpful. But to read 20, 30, or 50 books on the exact same thing? It becomes repetitive and offers diminishing gains (unless the book is extremely well-written with unique value-add to the topic).
• Meetings. Having meetings every week can improve clarity and collaboration at work. But having too many meetings adds little value, eats into productive work time, and creates mental drain.

As a writer, I typically have high output during the first 2-3 hours of my writing session. Beyond a certain point, I’m editing and rewriting points but not making much gains. That’s my point of diminishing returns.

For my site content, it’s helpful for my readers when I write articles on a new topic. But to write 10, 20, 30 articles on the exact same topic without any new insight or ideas? It leads to diminishing returns, which is why I do not write repetitive content even though it is common to do so for self-help blogs.

Can you see situations with diminishing returns in your life?

What We Can Learn From This 💡

The law of diminishing returns teaches us some important things:

• Firstly, more isn’t always better. Beyond a certain point, adding more time, effort, or resources leads to a slower growth in output. And beyond that, it leads to negative gains.
• Secondly, it’s important to find the optimal point that gives you the best return. By strategically allocating our time, effort, and resources, we can achieve greater results without increasing input.
• Thirdly, rest and variation can help us sustain high levels of productive output over time.

This is true whether in work, relationships, health, or skill improvement. E.g., with relationships, there are diminishing returns from having too many meetups a week — it takes away from productive work time and me time. With health, there are diminishing returns with each health protocol you follow — it is better to branch out and try other approaches that can jumpstart your progress.

At the heart of it, the law of diminishing returns is a reminder for us to work smarter and to aim for better results with less wasted effort.

With each goal you are working on (whether it’s work, health, exercise, relationships, etc.), you want to focus on the steps where you can get the most returns, and to stop and change your action when you reach diminishing returns.

Stop in the zone of diminishing returns, when payoff is not justified by added input (Image: Personal Excellence)

For example:

• Studying: Studying for 2 hours can help you learn a lot, but studying for 6 hours straight can lead to reduced retention and smaller gains per hour. Take short breaks to move around, rest, and recharge first, and then return with better focus.
• Creating content: When creating a report, you spend 2 hours creating a solid draft and another hour refining it. In the 4th hour though, you are busy nitpicking details that have no actual impact on the output. That means it’s time to wrap up and move on.
• Improving health: Say you are optimizing your health. You tried a bunch of supplements and they either had minor or no noticeable effect. Here, branch out to try new things. Try sauna, castor oil, grounding, switching to a whole food diet, herbs, and exercise. Research supplements that target different areas of health. Join health communities to get fresh ideas to jumpstart your progress.
• Growing blog: Lastly, you’ve been guest posting and it has given you healthy traffic gains. However, it’s now harder to find sites to guest post on and the traffic gain from this strategy has also diminished. At this point, it’s better to pivot to other strategies, such as Tiktok, YouTube, or Pinterest.

Managing the Law of Diminishing Returns: How To Maximize Productivity and Gains 📈

So how can you maximize productive gains and minimize diminishing returns while spending the same time and effort? Very importantly, how do you avoid negative gains? Here are my 7 tips.

1. Recognize when you are getting diminishing returns.
   • Be aware when you are entering the zone of diminishing returns. Clear signs are when you make slower progress, you get less gain per input, the quality of the task doesn’t noticeably improve, or you feel mentally fatigued.
   • For quantifiable goals (e.g., growing subscribers, sales), track and measure to know when diminishing returns kick in.
2. Work in strategic time blocks.
   • Identify the times of the day when you are most productive, and design your work day around these time blocks. Try to spend these productive hours on the most important tasks.
3. Focus on the 80/20.
   • Focus on high-impact strategies. With every goal, adopt strategies that give you the best return. When progress slows down, adjust your approach and adopt the next best strategy.
   • Prioritize high-impact tasks. Every day, focus on the tasks that give you the highest impact in terms of your end goal. Ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time? Is this the most meaningful thing I can do now?”
   • Avoid fine-tuning to oblivion. When working on a task, you may fine-tune things to oblivion. Perfectionism is good, but save it for tasks that really matter. For most tasks, do them to a good-enough quality and move on. Read: How To Overcome Perfectionism (series)
4. Allow yourself to rest. Know that you are the most productive when your energy is high, not just when you’re at your desk. Rest and rejuvenation are vital for restoring productivity.
   • Take steps to recover cognitively before returning to high-level tasks. If possible, get a change in environment. Try to take proper breaks such as going for a walk, practicing self-care, watching videos you enjoy, or spending time with a loved one.
   • Have restorative off days where you do something different from your usual routine (e.g., a weekend trip, an excursion) and recharge your mind and spirit.
5. Switch things up. Switch between different tasks to keep engagement high. For example:
   • Work: Switch between high-level tasks when you are recharged and low-level tasks (emails, admin) when you feel fatigued.
   • Writing a book: Switch between writing different chapters, designing the book cover, and creating the marketing plan.
6. Know when to stop or change action. Upon entering diminishing returns, monitor your progress and decide when to stop or pivot. Ask yourself, “Am I still getting good gains, or am I getting diminishing returns?” If additional effort brings minimal gains, and the payoff is not worth it, it might be time to take a break, move on to the next task, or change your approach.
7. Get feedback where possible. Avoid being locked into tunnel vision by regularly engaging others in what you’re doing. If you work in a company, involve your co-workers and manager to get their feedback. If you’re a solo creator, you can talk to friends and family, or share your ideas with industry peers and on forums. This prevents wasted effort from working on things that are not viable.

Final Word

Finally, regularly consider your goal in the context of other goals and priorities. Even if a goal is giving you productive gains now, it may be causing diminishing gains in other areas of your life, and as such your objective may not be to maximize these good gains.

For example, perhaps you are getting good financial gains and opportunities at work, but it is causing diminishing gains in your fulfillment and personal life (e.g., health, family). Here you may decide to switch focus to your personal life and cut back on your time spent at work, even though you are growing work-wise.

Case in point: Patrick Dempsey was a leading actor and the highest paid cast member on Grey’s Anatomy when he suddenly left the role in April 2015. The show was doing extremely well and in its 11th season then. So why did he leave? Even though Dempsey was experiencing great career growth and earning great money, he was burned out by the 10-month, 15-hour-a-day filming schedule. He said in an interview, “I think after a certain period of time, no matter how much money you make, you want control out of your own schedule.”^[2]

His marriage was also a driving point as his wife had filed for divorce months earlier in January 2015. “Our marriage was not something I was prepared to let go of,” he said. Knowing their marriage could end was a “scary” feeling. Through couples counseling, they reconciled and called off their divorce in 2016.^[3]

Know that there is a larger context which is your end objective and your other priorities in life. Your priorities can always change based on what’s going on in your life. You have to evaluate if you are still getting meaningful gains from what you are doing (e.g., money, happiness, fulfillment), or if it’s more rewarding to switch focus to something else (such as health, relationships, or family).

To You

The next time you engage in a task or activity, ask yourself:

1. Am I getting good gains, or am I getting diminishing returns?
2. Is the payoff justified by the additional input?
3. If the payoff is not worth it, it may be time to put a stop to this task or activity. Take a break, move on to the next task, or change your approach.

Learn to spot diminishing returns in your life and direct your effort accordingly to areas where you can get the most returns. This way you can get more out of life with the same time, effort, and resources. :)

Related posts:

• How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide
• The Bike Shed Effect: How To Spend Time on the Right Things
• The 80/20 Principle: How To Achieve More With Less In Life (series)

Quick Note: I’m excited to share that the 2025 edition of Live a Better Life in 30 Days (30DLBL) is now out! 30DLBL is my 30-day program to live a better life and it’s a great tool to do a life audit, set goals, and move your life to a new trajectory. Here’s a comment from reader Sam:

“After working on 30DLBL for just a few days, I know what I have been lacking; the ability to envision my dreams and come up with a plan to achieve them. While my current goals may change with time, I feel more confident and in control knowing that at least, for now, I know where to focus my efforts.

Thank you so much Celes for creating this truly transformative, easy to follow guide! This is a game changer for anyone feeling stuck in a cycle of similar patterns and behaviours.”

If you’re experiencing diminishing returns from working on your personal growth from self-help resources, 30DLBL is a great way to jumpstart your growth. Read about 30DLBL here, or if you are a past buyer, learn how to get access here! Any questions? Let me know here. :)

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Have you heard of the bike shed effect before? Also known as Parkinson’s Law of Triviality, it’s the idea that people spend excessive time on trivial issues, while spending less time on complex, important ones.

Imagine a management committee who are given the plans for a nuclear power plant costing billions of dollars. The topic is complex and outside their expertise, so they approve it with little discussion.

They are then given the plans to build a bike shed. Everyone can visualize a bike shed, so they get into a nitpicking debate about what color to paint it. They end up spending much more time discussing the bike shed, even though the power plant is much more expensive!

In short, people tend to spend more time than needed on trivial issues out of comfort and familiarity, even though they should be completed quickly. The act of lingering and spending excess time on small issues, while neglecting the more difficult and important ones, is called “bikeshedding.”

Examples of Bikeshedding in Our Goals

While the concept of the bike shed effect is used in corporate and business contexts, it applies to personal growth too.

Here are some examples of bikeshedding in our goals:

• Individual: Spends excessive time thinking about whether to buy brown or black pants for work, while neglecting personal health issues
• Employee: Spends hours editing the formatting of a report, instead of improving the report content
• Software developer: Spends an overly long time choosing a perfect shade of blue for a button, rather than fixing a major performance issue
• Blogger: Rewrites their “About” page for the 20th time, instead of working on traffic building strategy after a recent Google update
• Business owner: Spends weeks perfecting logo, slogan, and namecards, and delays working on actual product development

It can also be observed in our relationships, like so:

• A couple spends excessive time discussing what to eat rather than their future goals.
• In a family with aging parents, spending hours talking about mundane topics while ignoring important and difficult topics like long-term care and estate planning.
• A parent spends more time than necessary thinking about what clothes to buy for the child, rather than the child’s mental health and emotional needs at school.

Reflect on your life today and you will easily see the bike shed effect at work.

For example, maybe you worry too much about a simple purchase decision (like choosing colors). You spend a lengthy amount of time along supermarket aisles, pondering whether to buy whole wheat bread or multi-grain bread. You stress out over whether to go to Country A or B for your vacation (or even between choosing Hotel A or B).

All this while, there are bigger and more complex topics in your life being neglected and left by the wayside, such as figuring out your career next steps, improving your health and diet, addressing emotional eating issues, sorting out financial issues, and planning for long-term financial goals. While the topics above (choosing colors, what product variant to buy, etc.) may seem important initially, fast forward a month or year — these discussions lose their significance.

 Can you relate to any of these examples?

Why Bikeshedding Happens

So why does this happen? There are a few reasons:

• Comfort. Simple tasks feel comfortable since they are easy to grasp and understand. Complex topics require us to spend a lot of time and mental energy to understand them, and this can be intimidating so we avoid them.
• Lack of expertise. People may feel that the big topics are beyond them and they lack the expertise to tackle the big decisions. So they just stick to the simple, easy topics.
• Risk of failure. There is a risk of failure involved with complex topics, with bigger consequences since they have higher stakes. So we avoid them to prevent failure and mistakes.
• Desire to contribute. When it comes to discussions, people like to feel involved and contribute their opinions. Simple topics let them do so easily as they are easy to understand and relate to.

Bikeshedding: A focus on the wrong things

Bikeshedding: Focusing on trivial things rather than important things (Image)

At its core, bikeshedding is an issue of time wastage and having a wrong focus. Spending too much time on the little things rather than the big, important topics.

Instead of channeling our resources into big-ticket items that will make the biggest difference to our goals and lives, we linger on little tasks for comfort. In turn, critical tasks and decisions get delayed or overlooked.

It’s also an issue of noise. Instead of properly discussing difficult topics with the biggest stakes, such as a nuclear power plant, we spend hours talking about low-stakes topics like what color to paint a bike shed. There is a false sense of productivity — a lot gets discussed, but there is little to no value added.

The answer is to learn to channel our time and energy to the important matters, and to spend the right time on the right things. So instead of spending time excessively on small to-dos, we want to spend time based on the importance and complexity of a topic, like so:

(Image: Personal Excellence)

How To Avoid Bikeshedding and Spend Time on the Right Things

So how can we avoid bikeshedding in our life and focus on the important nuclear power plant decisions in our life? Here are my 8 tips.

1. Be clear of the high-impact items in your life. Every day, start off with a list of your high-impact and low-impact tasks. High-impact tasks will make the most change and impact in your life when completed. Low-impact tasks are small, routine items that need to be done. (If you have Live a Better Life in 30 Days Program, read Day 8: Evaluate Your To-Do List.)
2. Allocate time to the tasks based on importance and complexity. Your high-impact tasks should get the most time and low-impact tasks should get the least time. Don’t fall into the bikeshedding trap, where small items get disproportionate time compared to big items.
3. Set time limits for small items (e.g., 5 minutes per item) so that they don’t balloon out of control. Remember that when it comes to the small stuff, the goal is good enough, not perfection. Achieve the key criteria, get it done to a good quality, and move on. Read: How To Overcome Perfectionism (series)
4. Pick one and go. If the decision doesn’t matter in the long run, then just pick any option and go. For you to feel conflicted over the choices, that usually means that the choices are likely pretty good and it’s not going to matter much which one you pick. So don’t spend hours debating a small thing endlessly — pick one and make the best out of it. Read: How To Stop Analysis Paralysis
5. Redirect focus to the important. Be aware when you are bikeshedding and redirect focus back to the important. Ask yourself: “Is this important? Will this affect me 1, 3, or 5 years from now? What’s at stake here? Are there more important things on the agenda to work on?” If there is nothing major at stake and it’s not going to affect you in the long-term, then it’s not all that significant and you shouldn’t be spending so much time on it in the first place. Take a quick break to reset focus if needed.
6. Engage the right people for your goals. The best way to avoid noise is to speak to the right people regarding your goals and tasks. Only involve people with a stake in the matter, who have expertise in the subject-matter, and/or who often shares helpful advice. Don’t share your goals with people who tend to be critical and offer pessimistic views.
7. Defer things for follow-up later. If a low-impact topic keeps dragging on and on, then defer it for follow up later. Take it offline or discuss it at a different time. You may see it with a fresh mind and make a faster decision then.
8. Seek expert opinion. We avoid the difficult topics because they are too intimidating, but remember that you don’t have to do this alone. Get help from people with subject-matter expertise. What kind of help do you need and where can you find these people? Search online, join related communities, ask around, engage professionals. These experts can bring clarity to the topic, reduce time wastage, clarify the options, and help you make a faster decision.

Do you see the bike shed effect in your life? How can you apply the 8 tips above and spend the right time on the right things? Let me know in the comments section. :)

The next time you see yourself fussing over a small task, ask yourself, “Am I building a bike shed or power plant?” Redirect your focus to the power plants in your life, and let go of the fixation on bike sheds. 🚲

This series is available for download as an ebook. Click on the button below to download.

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This is part 3 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

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So far in part 1, I shared 10 signs that you are a perfectionist. In part 2, I shared 6 hidden downsides of perfectionism, including diminished productivity, procrastination, lower self-esteem, and impaired relationships with others.

As I shared in part 1, I used to be a neurotic perfectionist. While being a perfectionist helped me achieve results in my goals, it had its negative downsides. I would spend excessive time perfecting things, focus on little details that took time away from other things, and add weight to my relationships because of my high expectations.

Over time, I learned to tackle neurotic perfectionism and channel my high standards and drive in a positive way. How do you maximize the benefits of perfectionism and limit its negatives? How do you prevent perfectionism from negatively affecting you? Here are 8 steps to tackle perfectionism and turn it into a positive force in your life.

1) Remove the all-or-nothing mindset

(Image: Personal Excellence)

A perfectionist tends to have black-and-white thinking (i.e., all-or-nothing mindset), where they see things in extremes. If things did not happen perfectly, they would label it as a disaster. But such thinking is terminalistic as any progress is dismissed just because the outcome didn’t match their definition of success.

For example:

• A perfectionist trainer who made a mistake: “I can’t believe I fumbled in my presentation just now. It was a disaster.”
• A perfectionist student who couldn’t answer a question: “I did so badly on my paper today. I’m a failure.”

Remove your black-and-white lens and stop seeing things in extremes. Recognize that there are many outcomes between 100% success and 100% failure — just because something isn’t a total success doesn’t mean it’s a total failure. It could be a 30%, 50%, or 80% success, and that isn’t a total disaster, far from it.

So with a perfectionistic trainer, it may look like this: “I fumbled over part of my presentation, but the rest went well and the attendees were very engaged. I did a great job! I’ll rehearse next time for a smoother presentation.”

Or with a perfectionist student: “I didn’t know how to do question 10 but I could answer the 19 other questions, which is a worthy accomplishment. I will step up my revision and do more test papers next time.”

See things in perspective and recognize the middle ground. Identify the parts you did well and give yourself credit for them. Work on the parts that didn’t go so well. Even if 0% of things went to plan, that’s still progress because now you know what doesn’t work. Success happens in steps, and just because things didn’t happen 100% to plan doesn’t mean that you aren’t progressing in some way. Identify the lessons you have learned and use them to help you next time.

2) Aim for good enough

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Achieving perfection is a long and elaborate process — as I shared in part 2, it takes an astonishing amount of effort (80% of input) to perfect the last 20% of a task. While you can achieve perfection when managing just 1-2 tasks, sure, it’s arduous when you have many other things on your task list.

By the 80/20 principle, 20% of input leads to 80% of output

To achieve perfection, you need to spend 80% time and effort to perfect the last 20% of a task

Instead of trying to perfect everything, adjust your standards and aim for good enough. This means:

• When working on a task, aim to achieve the key objectives, deliver good-quality work, and call it a day.
• Go for the 80/20 — achieve the essential 80% output with 20% of effort.
• Draw a cutoff when you reach diminishing returns, which is the point when the value of pushing on decreases rapidly.
• Understand that whatever you can do now is the best version given the time limit. If your work contributes to the overall goal, then that’s a worthy accomplishment. 👍

The exception is if you are working on an important goal with very high stakes, in which case perfection is the goal. For all other tasks, aim for good enough.

Know that there is an opportunity cost with achieving perfection. When you are constantly fussing over little, unimportant details, you have less time for other things on your list. There are also diminishing returns from over-optimizing a task. Be less perfect in the less important things so that you can focus on your most important goals and tasks.

3) Focus on progress, not perfection

No one starts off as an expert — everyone grows in expertise with time/effort

As I shared in part 2, perfectionism can often lead to procrastination. Perfectionists often have extreme expectations of a goal, and it causes stress and overwhelm — to the point that they procrastinate to avoid making mistakes.

Here you want to shift your focus to achieve progress, not perfection. Remember that everyone starts from somewhere — no one starts off as an expert.

This means rather than try to create a masterpiece right off the bat, aim to create a basic first draft. Rather than try to execute something perfectly, take an imperfect first step so that you can learn and improve. Break your goal down into a simple first step that you can work on right away. Improve as you go along.

For example:

• Writing: A perfectionist writer tries to write a perfect manuscript from scratch. Break it down → Write a simple first draft. Then improve on it.
• Organizing: A perfectionist wants to tidy their room but keeps putting it off. Break it down → Tidy a small section of the room first.
• Exercise: A perfectionist fitness goer aims to run 5 miles (8km) but skips their exercise sessions repeatedly as the target is too overwhelming. Break it down → Aim for 0.5 miles (800m) or even 0.1 miles (160m). Build it up from there.
• Video production: A perfectionist content creator wants to get high-end video equipment and the best editing software before working on their video channel. Break it down → Use a phone camera and a free editing app first to get things going, and then improve as they go along.

Focus on progress and take imperfect action, which will give you immediate feedback on what works and what doesn’t work. The goal is to learn, iterate, and improve as you grow from beginner to expert. This will help you achieve your end goal in the fastest way — not by being hung up on a perfect vision and doing nothing in the meantime.

4) Set a cutoff for your tasks

The pursuit of perfection can be endless as a perfectionist keeps meandering in their task, trying to optimize everything. Set healthy boundaries for your tasks.

• Set a time limit. Set a reasonable time limit on when you should complete a task. This is important as tasks can technically take forever for a perfectionist if there is no time limit. By setting a duration, it reminds you when you’ve reached your allotted limit, and to speed up rather than waste more time on it.
• Create a checklist. Have a set of checkpoints and concrete deliverables to guide you on what to accomplish. For example, with creating a report, you may want to create an outline, type up the content, remove spelling errors, and clean up the formatting. Once the list is done, it’s done — don’t stray and get distracted by other things.

5) Challenge your need for perfection

For a perfectionist and their sharp eyes and meticulousness, there is always something to improve, something to tweak. If you find yourself second-guessing your work even though it is good enough, ask yourself, “Is it necessary to tweak this further? What’s the worst thing that could happen if it’s not perfect? Am I being productive here?”

Often the consequence is much less severe than you imagine, and you are just seeking perfection because of your own task maximization habit. Refer to Step 2 on aiming for good enough. Remember that there are diminishing returns and opportunity costs that come from micro-optimization.

It also helps to talk to someone about it, such as a colleague, manager, or friend. Get their perspective — are you being justified in your concerns, or are you being overly harsh on your work? Break out of the perfectionistic mind trap: it is easy to think that you need to do a litany of steps to complete a piece of work. But talking to someone, you may realize that the piece of work you are editing is already good enough and only needs 10 minutes of touch-up and not hours of work.

6) Understand the source of your perfectionism

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While I used to think that my neurotic perfectionism was just what it was, when I dug into it, I realized that my childhood and upbringing played a huge, if not formative, role in it.

In part 1, I shared that when I was a kid, I was in a primary school with strict, dogmatic rules about everything. These rules ranged from our hairstyles to attire to behavior. We could only wear hair ties and watches of a single color (black, blue, grey, or white). We were only permitted to wear our hair in a low ponytail, with no strand of hair touching our face. We were not allowed to speak in school at all, only when permitted to during class. Etc. 

In terms of studies, we were taught to aim for the perfect score (100/100), and made to feel inadequate when we didn’t. We were punished and made to slap ourselves every time we made a careless mistake. If we didn’t bring our books or finish homework for a class, we had to stand in the hallway and miss the entire class. Etc.

Any student who didn’t follow these rules would be shamed, berated, and punished in front of others. Boys would be subjected to caning.

It was the same when I was growing up as a kid in the traditional Chinese culture, where children are treated as lesser beings with no rights of their own. I was raised to be a quiet, obedient, and mindless child, to follow directives. Greet adults at all times. Do not talk back. Keep quiet unless you are spoken to. Etc. My mom in particular denied me from speaking as a child and would micromanage what I should say in the few times I was allowed to talk.

Then at a societal level in Singapore, there was an extreme fixation on achieving extrinsic success. (There still is today, but to a much lesser extent.) There was only one path in life: to achieve straight As, get a top job, earn lots of money, and buy a nice house and car. Failing which you would be seen as a failure and worthless person.

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Growing up in such a strict, oppressive, judgmental, and intolerant environment led me to be extremely meticulous about everything. It became like a fight-or-flight mechanism, to behave as instructed to avoid being heavily punished and having our sense of self-worth marred and destroyed.

The underlying basis of the culture, whether at the school or societal level, was, “A person is worthless unless they are academically and financially successful and can do as they are told.” So that was the belief I took away, that “I’m not good enough unless I’m highly accomplished and can do things perfectly.” It became an inherent habit to do things perfectly as part of my self-worth.

Yet is it true though? No, not at all. Following these rules did not determine my worth — only whether I could follow a long list of rules made by an authority figure. Many of these rules weren’t about helping us be better people too, but to create conformity.

As for extrinsic successes, it is great to achieve them, but a person’s worth isn’t determined by them. We are all worthy by virtue of our existence, by being here on Earth.

By understanding the source of my neurotic perfectionism, it has helped me understand that it’s okay not to be perfect all the time. That my need for perfection was due to my childhood story, where there was unnatural and toxic shaming and punishment for not doing tiny little things perfectly. (These things turned out to be inconsequential, with no bearing on my life.)

It has helped me recognize that my childhood upbringing was not okay or normal, and that children should never have been treated in this way (especially as I look at the situation as a mom today).

Finally, it has helped me see each situation as it is and to disconnect my past from the present. To evaluate each circumstance as it is and not mindlessly aim for perfection all the time, which is a drain on my time, energy, and mindspace.

To You

Maybe you think you’ve always been a perfectionist. But dig into it. When did your perfectionism first start? What happened to make you this way? What beliefs did you form from this experience? Are they true?

Understand, challenge, and correct these beliefs. Some examples of perfectionistic beliefs before and after correcting them:

• “I need to be perfect in everything I do to be considered worthy.” → “I am worthy, independent of my accomplishments. My worth is not linked to my success or accomplishments.”
• “If I make a mistake, it means I’m a failure.” → “Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t mean I am a failure. It’s more important that I learn and improve from them.”
• “If I don’t do things perfectly, it means I’m incompetent.” → “There are time and situational constraints and it is not realistic to do everything perfectly all the time. Focus on progress rather than perfection.”

(For those of you who have Live a Better Life in 30 Days Program, refer to Day 22: Examine Your Beliefs for my 3-step framework to rewrite limiting beliefs.)

7) Love yourself

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As a perfectionist, it’s easy to fixate on your goals and forget about yourself. The goal is all that matters and you just want to achieve the prize at the end.

But there is one person amidst it all — you. You are the most important person in the equation. If you are not working on your goals, then how can they be accomplished? If you are not around, then who is able to get everything done?

Don’t ignore and neglect yourself. Perhaps the biggest fault a perfectionist commits is self-neglect and self-abuse, because they prioritize their goals over everything else and forget their needs in the process. Bring yourself into focus and put yourself first.

• Prioritize your self-care. Set aside time for yourself while pursuing your goals. As you work toward them, pace yourself. Take breaks, rest, do things that you like, and fill up your tank. It will help you sharpen your saw and walk the longer road ahead.
• Watch the self-blame. Is there something you are beating yourself up for? A mistake from the past? Understand that you did your best with what you had then. Everyone makes mistakes and it is not your fault. Forgive yourself. Focus on what you can do now instead.
• Celebrate your progress. A perfectionist tends to focus on things that are lacking, that are not there yet. But this can lead to an over-focus on mistakes and errors, and a neglect of progress and achievements. Take some time to acknowledge what you have done and achieved. Celebrate your progress thus far, and use that to inspire you to grow and evolve. Read Live a Better Life in 30 Days Program, Day 13: Reflect on Your Past
  

  

• Switch to positive self-talk. Do you tend to berate and blame yourself when things go wrong? Can you change your self-talk to be kinder? For example:
  • “I’m not good enough.” Switch it to “I am enough. I am worthy and have my unique strengths.”
  • “Everyone is doing so well. I feel like a failure.” Switch it to “Everyone has their own path in life. I am on my own path and I am making progress.“
  • “I keep making mistakes. I’m not good at anything.” Switch it to “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone starts from somewhere. Focus on learning from my mistakes and get better.”
  • I have created a set of affirmation wallpapers that you can use: 15 Beautiful Wallpapers With Positive Affirmations

8) Don’t subject others to the same standards

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In part 2, I shared that a perfectionist often ends up straining their relationships with others due to their immensely high and unwavering standards.

As you manage your perfectionism with this guide, apply Steps 1-3 and 6-7 to your relationships as well. In addition, don’t subject others to the same standards. Recognize that everyone is unique. Drop your expectations of others, and learn to deal with others at their own pace.

Why? If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will be boxed in by your expectations and spend the rest of its life thinking it is stupid (a quote often attributed to Einstein). Think of others as a fish, bird, squirrel, beaver, etc. — each with their own unique skills and talents, each with their own development path. They can be your friends, family members, or colleagues. Everyone excels in their own way and it may not be the same as yours. Be kind to them. Recognize their unique strengths and capabilities, and let them grow into the people they are meant to be.

Know that when you subject others to stiff and impossible standards, it causes constant stress and negativity as they try to live up to these standards but fail. It makes them feel bad about themselves and doesn’t help them be the best they can be.

Example: Perfectionist partner

• Perhaps a perfectionist wife may think of her partner, “He didn’t clean the kitchen sink again. He is always missing things.” This is negative and reproachful.
• Here’s a better way to think about things: “He helps out with housework even though he is busy with work. He is doing his part for the family. I will thank him later and clean the kitchen sink myself.”

Example: Perfectionist parent

• A perfectionist parent may think of their child, “He is making so many mistakes even though we have revised the topic before. He is going to fail at this rate.” This is cynical and dismisses the child’s potential and effort.
• Here’s a better way to think about this: “I can see that he is making the effort. He got half the questions right and this means he understands some concepts. I will engage a tutor to help him with his upcoming exam. Don’t pressurize him. What’s most important is that he tries his best.”

End Note

This marks the end of the perfectionism series and I hope you’ve found it useful. :) How has perfectionism affected you in your life? How can you apply the steps above? Let me know in the comments section. :)

This is part 3 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

This series is available for download as an ebook. Click on the button below to download.

DOWNLOAD FREE EBOOK

×

This is part 2 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

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“If you are a perfectionist, you are your own worst critic.” — Unknown

“Perfectionists vary in their behaviors: some strive to conceal their imperfections; others attempt to project an image of perfection.” – Flett, York University

Perfectionism — is it really all good or does it have its problems?

On the surface, the life of a perfectionist appears aspirational or even perfect. Many accomplished athletes, celebrities, singers, and professionals are self-professed perfectionists. Yet perfectionism has its problems as I share below.

Hidden Problems of Perfectionism

There are two types of perfectionism — healthy perfectionism and neurotic perfectionism.

• A healthy perfectionist is driven by a desire for improvement and achievement while maintaining emotional well-being and flexibility. They are intrinsically motivated, set high standards, focus on growth not mistakes, and have a balanced approach in their life.
• An neurotic perfectionist is an extremist and strives for incredibly high standards at the expense of their well-being and relationships. They are driven by fear of failure, self-criticism, and unrealistic standards, leading to coping mechanisms like procrastination and an obsessive focus on details.

Without putting themselves in check, many perfectionists end up being neurotic perfectionists.

When I was a neurotic perfectionist, I thought I was getting the best out of myself and life. In reality, neurotic perfectionism hindered my productivity, well-being, and relationships. Here are six ways perfectionism could be holding you back in your goals and life.

1) Diminished productivity

Every perfectionist wants to get the best out of their life and be a top achiever. But paradoxically, a perfectionist often reduces their overall productivity with their focus on doing things perfectly. The 80/20 principle tells us that 80% of results in a task can be linked to 20% of our total possible input. Yet a perfectionist strives to achieve 100% perfection in everything — spending significant time and effort to perfect the last 20% of a task.

The 80/20 Principle

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What a Perfectionist Does:

(Image: Personal Excellence)

While it’s important to be meticulous and to perfect tasks of very high importance, obsessing over every detail of every single task diminishes productivity and prevents things from getting done efficiently. The time spent perfecting each task comes at the expense of other things you could be working on. There comes a point when constant tweaking gives you diminishing returns, or even negative returns.

Separately, setting unrealistic standards and being fixated on achieving them turns a perfectionist into a workaholic who sacrifices sleep, rest, and life for work. Instead of resting and filling up your tank so as to get energy and fresh ideas, you regularly push yourself past the point of optimal performance. This leads to reduced productivity as you constantly run on low energy and focus.

2) Procrastination

The second problem of perfectionism is ironically, procrastination on your goals and tasks. Have you ever put off doing something because you were waiting for the right or perfect conditions to do it perfectly?

For example, a video content creator may want a high-end DSLR, a lavalier mic, and the best video editing software before starting their video channel, rather than using what they have first and improving from there. A perfectionist with an exercise goal may target to run 5 miles (8km) per exercise session, and put off their sessions repeatedly because they don’t feel up to it.

You also have sky-high expectations of what needs to be done, making the goal or task seem bigger than it really is. This creates stress and overwhelm and makes you put off something again and again. At times you may even avoid or abandon a task (i.e., escapism) when it seems impossible to achieve your vision. To you, if you can’t achieve your vision, you might as well not do it at all (this is an all-or-nothing mindset).

3) Myopia – Missing the bigger picture

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As you get caught up in the little details, you miss the bigger picture and the bigger scheme of things.

For example, you spend hours refining the formatting of a report rather than focusing on the content. Or you spend weeks researching the best software for a project, unable to make a decision, while the project falls behind schedule. This obsession with perfection and little details causes you to miss the overall goal and objective.

You also experience frequent analysis paralysis, where you can’t make decisions quickly as you are caught up with making the “right” choice. You overanalyze every option and delay action to get everything correct and prevent error.

While such meticulousness is good for extremely large-scale goals with high stakes involved, this fear of making mistakes or a wrong choice, when applied to everything, prevents progress and results in missed opportunities, hence leading to stagnation.

4) Constant stress

Perfectionism also causes constant stress and anxiety. 

As a perfectionist, you are constantly overworking as you are always tweaking or improving something. You also have extremely high standards and a fixation to do everything perfectly. This leaves no room for mistakes or rest and makes day-to-day life very stressful.

What’s more, you refuse to delegate as you don’t trust others to do the work well. You also have difficulty letting go, always thinking about the tasks you should do and mistakes from the past — hence adding mental weight to your mind.

This overworking and constant stress and anxiety eventually leads to health issues and burnout. This is why research has shown that perfectionism is linked to stress, anxiety, insomnia, eating disorders, heart problems, digestive problems, and, in severe cases, suicide ideation.

5) Negative self-esteem

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Many perfectionists are their harshest self-critics. You are always pushing yourself and expect nothing less than the best. You blame yourself for problems and mistakes, wondering if things could have been better if you had done X or Y instead. You also beat yourself up over issues from long ago.

And when things go well, you take it as a given. Things that go well are taken for granted. If things go poorly, you beat yourself up endlessly. There is no room for rest and self-appreciation.

This constant self-blame and lack of self-appreciation mean negative self-esteem and a constant feeling of unhappiness, regardless of your accomplishments.

Lady Gaga, pop singer and winner of 14 Grammy Awards, said before, “I am perpetually unhappy with what I create. Even though I might tell you that ‘Edge Of Glory’ is a pop masterpiece, when it’s all said and finished there will be things I dread, and every time I listen to it I’ll hear them.”^[1]

Similarly, Michael Jackson, pop legend and known perfectionist, once said, “I’m never pleased with anything, I’m a perfectionist, it’s part of who I am.” Jackson’s extreme perfectionism contributed to his personal struggles and internal conflict, as he was never happy with his work. He died in 2009 from overmedication that led to a cardiac arrest.^[2]

Yet the whole point of pursuing our goals is to achieve personal satisfaction and be happy. If one accomplishes all these goals and is still unhappy with their work, then it makes you wonder: what’s the point of any of these?

6) Strained relationships

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Lastly, perfectionism strains and damages relationships.

As a perfectionist, you have very harsh standards and these expectations can spill over into your relationships. You may impose unrealistic expectations on others, causing frustration, tension, or even resentment. This can prevent you from seeing the value in others’ contributions or perspectives, causing you to miss out on collaboration, valuable insights, and positive moments with others.

For example, a perfectionist may criticize a partner’s cooking, focusing on minor flaws instead of appreciating the effort and enjoying the meal together. A perfectionist parent may criticize a child for not doing better on a test, instead of acknowledging the things that were done right.

Being a perfectionist also means putting your work performance at the highest priority, to the point of neglecting your relationships. You spend a large amount of time at work, leaving little to no time for friends and family. Because a perfectionist associates their worth with their performance, you get very stressed and upset when things don’t go well (which is often due to your immensely high standards) and bring work struggles into your relationships. At times you even lash out at your loved ones for no reason.

Such pressure weighs down on your relationships and makes people around you tense and unhappy. In the end, perfectionism hollows you out and pushes people away from you.

How Perfectionism Limited Me

As a neurotic perfectionist in the past, I was very focused on doing everything perfectly in my work and life, as I shared in part 1. It helped me achieve great results in my goals. Yet such perfectionism limited me in other ways which I didn’t realize then.

Productivity and Effectiveness

Perfectionism got in my way of being productive. By trying to do everything perfectly, I ended up spending too much time tweaking little things that didn’t play a role in the bigger scheme of things. This took time away from the things that really matter.

This issue became obvious when I started working. While in school I could get away with perfecting everything right down to the nitty-gritty, at my job the breadth and depth of the projects were so vast that it was no longer humanly possible for me to be deeply involved in everything and still do them perfectly. I would spend many late nights and weekends working, with no end in sight. It was just not sustainable.

The same issue cropped up in my personal development business, when my business grew and the online space became more complicated. My focus on perfecting things slowed me down — as I was trying to tweak some little thing every other minute, the competitors and online space would be racing ahead.

Mental Health

I was also extremely hard on myself for any mistake that I made, or anything that went wrong. In my mind, there was always an ideal scenario for everything. If a presentation, exam, event, etc. went against my expectations, I would mull obsessively over it and beat myself up for a period of time. If things went right, I would be thinking about how it could have been better. I frequently forgot about the accomplishments I had achieved before — I was always looking for ways to be better.

This was bad for my mental health of course. Deep down I was negative and self-loathing. I would cover this up with emotional eating (a separate issue that I cover in a different series).

Relationships

In terms of relationships, I was unwittingly alienating people around me, whether they were friends or family. Because I had such rigid and high expectations, I developed a hard edge which was intimidating to people. I was living within a wall and emotionally inaccessible to those around me.

With loved ones, I would focus on the things they were not doing well, rather than acknowledging what they did do or did well — due to my natural focus on fixing things and getting things “right.” This was unfortunate as deep down, I have always regarded people relationships as more important than external achievements.

I then worked on tackling my perfectionism and turning things around, which I share how in part 3.

How About You?

Can you relate to any of the above? What negative effects do you experience as a perfectionist? Let me know in the comments section.

Despite these issues, we can learn to manage perfectionism such that it doesn’t compromise our work, health, or relationships. In the last part, I share how to overcome the cons of perfectionism and live a productive, positive life. Read part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

This is part 2 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

This series is available for download as an ebook. Click on the button below to download.

DOWNLOAD FREE EBOOK

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Note from Celes: Hey everyone, how are you doing? 🤗 I’m currently revisiting and updating the classics at PE, starting with the perfectionism series. In today’s post, I share why being a perfectionist may not be so perfect and my experience as a perfectionist.

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

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Are you a perfectionist? Do you often seek to achieve perfection in everything you do? Do you feel a need to improve every single thing you do to the state of perfection, even at the expense of your well-being?

A perfectionist is someone who strives for perfection and sets extremely high standards for themselves. They have a strong desire to meet or exceed these standards in every aspect of their life, whether it’s work, relationships, or personal achievements.

In psychology, perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by “a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high-performance standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.”^[1]

To a perfectionist, anything less than perfect is unacceptable.

10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist

Perfectionism can manifest in various ways, and those who have it often exhibit certain behaviors. Here are 10 signs you are a perfectionist:

1. You have extremely high standards. You have very high targets and standards for whatever you set out to do. Sometimes, they stress you out. You may spend many late nights and sacrifice sleep just to achieve them.
2. You are very critical of mistakes. You dislike mistakes or errors as they suggest imperfection — whenever you see a mistake, you are the first to correct it. Just knowing that there is a mistake that hasn’t been fixed yet irks you.
3. You have an all-or-nothing mindset. This is also known as black-and-white thinking. Either you do something to the highest level or you don’t do it at all. You also tend to see things in extremes — if something is not done perfectly, that means it’s a disaster. There is no in-between.
4. You are extremely meticulous and have a very high attention to detail. You focus on the smallest details of a task just to ensure that everything is in place. You spot mistakes when others don’t see any.
5. You are highly self-critical, even over little things. Whenever something goes wrong, you become really hard on yourself, wondering why you couldn’t have done it better and why you made that mistake.
6. You mull over outcomes that don’t turn out as planned, wondering if things could have been different if you just did X or Y. You also spend quite a bit of time analyzing and second-guessing decisions and actions after they were made, wondering if you had made the best choice.
7. You procrastinate just to do things at the “right” moment, or because you want to do things to the highest level. You sometimes put off tasks because the conditions aren’t perfect or you don’t feel like you can do them perfectly.
8. You have difficulty delegating to others. You find it hard to delegate tasks to others as you feel that they can’t do them as well as you.
9. You become defensive toward criticism and have a fear of failure, as they suggest that you didn’t do things well or that something is wrong with you.
10. You spend an immense amount of time perfecting things, even beyond healthy limits. Perfection is the end goal. You often sacrifice sleep, rest, and personal time just to bring your work to the highest level. To you, it is all part of achieving the goal.

Do you see these traits in yourself? How about the people around you?

My Experience With Perfectionism

I used to be quite a neurotic perfectionist when I was younger. In fact, all the 10 traits would fit me to a tee! I’m still quite a perfectionist today, though I’ve learned to dial down the negative aspects of my perfectionism (more in part 2).

A big part of my perfectionism is my inner drive and desire to be the best I can be. I always feel that when we do something, we should do our best without giving excuses. And while we are alive and on Earth, we should make the most out of our time here and put our best foot forward in whatever we do.

The second reason is my upbringing. I grew up in Singapore in the 1980s-2000s, and the culture and society then had an extreme fixation on conformance and adhering to an extreme definition of perfection.

This was particularly so in my primary school, where we were told to be the best and to aim for the best — anything less was not acceptable. I was in the best class and when it came to tests and exams, we were taught to aim for 100/100 (a worthy goal), but made to feel inadequate when we got less than that. We would be punished, reprimanded, and shamed when we made the smallest mistakes.

In terms of conduct, we were made to follow many strict, dogmatic rules, like only being permitted to wear hair ties and watches of a single color (only black, white, grey, or blue was allowed), or that we could only have specific hairstyles and not have any hair touching or covering our faces. It was questionable as to how these rules helped us become better humans. Not conforming meant being singled out, shamed, and punished in front of other students.

The fact that I have a high sensitivity to stimuli — something which I thought was common to everyone, but realized wasn’t when I grew up — further heightened my perfectionistic tendencies. I would experience external and internal stimuli (such as sounds, sights, and emotions) on a very deep level, and frequently observe details that many don’t.

These factors made me aim for the highest standard and be very meticulous in everything I do — i.e., a perfectionist. I would take this behavior to the highest level and become a neurotic perfectionist. This behavior extended to my studies, work, and relationships.

Examples of Perfectionism in My Life

Making Websites

For example, when I started creating websites as a teenager (as a hobby), I would spend late nights, sleeping just 1-2 hours some days, tweaking my sites to perfection. This included the content, graphics, and right down to the HTML syntax.

My sites had to look great at every resolution and on every browser; the content I produced had to meet the highest conceivable standard. I was constantly making little edits like tiny one-pixel changes and was very particular about how everything looked. It was an unbending, personal standard that I had set for myself.

Such efforts paid off, as my websites received over half a million pageviews a month. My visitors could recognize the quality of my work compared to others.

Gaming

Then as an avid gamer, I was always perfecting my playthroughs in each game. As a kid, my brother would criticize me if I made mistakes that resulted in the character’s death. 😑 This taught me to be very precise in how I executed each move and in achieving 100% perfection.

I fondly remember how I broke all the top scores in Crazy Taxi (a racing game) and completed every bonus challenge (some of which were insanely difficult). I played King of Fighters ’95 for months, perfected my attacking strategies based on the opponent, and won it many times at the hardest difficulty. In total, I completed over 100 games, from RPG to action to racing games, during my childhood!

School & Work

In university, I often took over project work due to teammates slipping on their tasks or just to improve the overall standard. I spent a lot of time perfecting the output, right down to the nitty-gritty. If it was a presentation, everything had to have a consistent look and theme, including matching font types, font sizes, and colors. If it was a report, all the content and formatting had to be seamless.

Even though it was at the expense of my time and rest, even though I ended up doing much more work than other teammates, the end result was worth it as we would get the best grade.

Then with my work at PE, I’m very meticulous about the content I create. For example, with each course, I spend many months creating and refining my course materials before launching it. After I conduct a live course, I would spend another few months improving it based on the participants’ feedback for that run.

I’m always thoroughly editing every article, podcast, and video before it gets published. Even then, I continue to tweak and improve my content after that. Perhaps this is why many readers appreciate my material and share it; teachers and professors alike use my material as part of their course curriculum.

The Result

Being a neurotic perfectionist helped me achieve immense results and become an overachiever in every area of my life. It helped me do well in school, perform well in my corporate job, and excel in many goals and projects.

However, as I grew older, I realized that neurotic perfectionism has its damaging effects as I share in the next part of the series. Read part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism

To You

Are you a perfectionist? Can you identify with any of the signs? What do you think is the cause of your perfectionist behavior? Let me know in the comments section.

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

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Note from Celes: Hi everyone! I just finished the latest edition of 30DLBL and I’m finally back to posting at the blog. Thank you to everyone who sent me a message since my last update — it means so much to me. I look forward to sharing more! :) ❤️

“Hi Celes, I often feel depressed and regretful about my lack of progress in life. Honestly I am angry and bitter about it. This creates a lot of anxiety for me and I think it’s a big source of my procrastination. What can I do about this?” — M

Have you ever felt depressed about your lack of progress in life? Do you wish that you could be doing more and achieving more?

If so, I totally understand. In my last update, I shared that I stepped away from my blog for the past few years to raise my baby and support my family through a series of challenges. During this time, my career came to a stop, and for a while I felt like I was making no progress in life.

But progress comes in many ways. Just because you feel like you haven’t made progress doesn’t mean that it’s true. If you have been feeling discouraged by a lack of progress lately, here are 5 things I want to share with you.

1) Redefine the meaning of progress

Firstly, define “progress.” What is progress to you? Is it to achieve huge success in your career? Earn lots of money? Buy a nice house? Travel around the world? Pursue your passion? Or something else?

Looking up the word “progress,” it means forward movement toward a destination.^[1] Perhaps you have a vision of where you want to be by age 30 or 40 or 50, such as to be at the peak of your career, earn lots of money, buy a nice house, and start a family.

Conventional society tells us to set big goals and pursue them relentlessly. While such big goal setting is important — I do it myself and teach it in my courses — there are times when it needs to take a back seat as other life areas (e.g., family and health) require our attention.

While it may look like you’re not progressing during these times, you are progressing, just in a different way. For example:

• Taking a work hiatus to raise your kids — that’s progress, in your family.
• Taking a break to address health issues — that’s progress, in your health.
• Taking time out to tackle personal problems — that’s progress, in your mental health and happiness.
• Taking time to overcome obstacles and setbacks — that’s progress in your goal and life as you learn about what works and doesn’t work.

My lack of progress in career (From life challenges)

In my 2024 update, I shared that I had to step back from my work for the past five years to support my family through a series of deep challenges. These included my mother-in-law’s illness and later passing, my husband’s health issues, raising my baby without help, and uprooting my life and moving my family overseas from Singapore to the UK, in the midst of a pandemic.

While my career came to a stop, I made progress in other ways.

• I see my child growing every day, and that’s progress to me.
• I see my husband growing in his career and improving in his health issues, and that’s progress to me too.
• I have also made progress in my health by uncovering the root cause of my health issues (which turned out to be toxic dental work such as mercury fillings and root canals), and learning about natural healing which I now use to heal myself.

Very importantly, I saw all these as a temporary hiatus to work on pressing life issues for the time being, with the end goal of returning to my passion — to grow and help you achieve your highest potential.

For you, what have you been working on? Family? Health? Relationships? Mental Health? There are many types of progress in life beyond career and financial growth. While society tends to focus on these two things, there are other things (e.g., family, health, relationships) that are just as important to live a meaningful life. The progress that you make in other areas is progress too, so remember that.

There are many areas that are important in our life, beyond career and money. Read: The Life Wheel (Image: Personal Excellence)

2) Recognize that life isn’t a straight line

(From: Your Plans vs. Universe’s Plans For You)

Many people expect to progress in life without major setbacks. Set a goal and get from Point A to Point B without issue. Celebrate. Rinse and repeat.

But life isn’t always a straight line. In life, there are ups and downs, setbacks and difficulties. The downs can be difficulties with a goal, or unexpected life obstacles such as illness, a painful breakup, or death and loss.

In case you think that everyone is having a great life, remember that what you see in the media and social media is often heavily filtered. Many people face difficulties, just that they don’t show it. In my 2024 update I shared that I have been working through family challenges and health issues caused by toxic dental work. Some of these issues are ongoing and it can be a struggle managing motherhood without help, working through my husband’s issues, and now returning to work in a highly challenging online environment (see Point #4).

Many celebrities face life challenges too, though most may not be sympathetic to their situations due to their immense success and wealth.

• Ashton Kutcher struggled with a rare disease that left him unable to see, hear, and walk for a year in 2020. He healed after treatment and physical training.^[2][3]
• Wendy Williams was a successful talk show host and lived a glamorous life in the 2010s. But she was dealing with her husband’s infidelity and alcohol addiction behind the scenes^[4][5], and is recently diagnosed with early-onset dementia.^[6][7]
• Kate Middleton is a public icon and looks picture perfect all the time, smiling and radiant. But in 2024 she shared that she had cancer at the age of 42 and was going through treatment^[8] (she is now in remission^[9]).

The media and social media tend to present an idealized image of people’s lives, which gives the impression that everyone’s life is perfect. The truth is that many people are going through obstacles, whether in health, relationships, family, money, or career. Know that you are not alone and we are all going through this together. ❤️

3) Goals take time (Set milestones)

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Many people think that goals can happen right away and become disappointed when they don’t. The reality is that goals take time. Depending on the goal, it can take weeks, months, or even years.

Evan Spiegel launched Snapchat in 2011 as a niche app for disappearing messages. It initially struggled to gain traction, due to intense competition from other established platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Spiegel and his team kept innovating, introducing new features like Stories and augmented reality lenses, before reaching mainstream success. Today, Snapchat is one of the top 10 social platforms with millions of users.^[10][11][12]

Snapchat’s daily active users over time (2014-2024) (Image)

Jack Ma faced many rejections over and over before founding Alibaba, an e-commerce company.

• When he applied for a job at KFC in 1995, he was the only person out of 24 applicants who didn’t get the job.
• He applied to Harvard 10 times but got rejected each time.
• He also applied to the police force and was the only one out of five applicants who didn’t get accepted.
• He had various failed business ventures, including a translation business, a directory service, and a restaurant.

In 1999, Ma started Alibaba and faced significant struggle as people were skeptical about online shopping then and the internet infrastructure in China was not developed. It took persistence to overcome these struggles, and today, Alibaba is a global corporation with over US$130 billion in annual revenue.^{[13][14][15][16][17]}

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A seed takes time to grow into a tree. A goal takes time as you work through its obstacles. Think of it as a journey. Break your goal down into small milestones, and then tackle them one by one.

E.g., if your goal is to create a successful podcast, rather than feel discouraged that your listener count isn’t skyrocketing, set milestones to get there. Such as getting your first 100 listeners, then 200 listeners, then 500 listeners, and so on.

Example: Milestones for a podcast goal (Image: Personal Excellence)

Know that there’s an incubation period for our goals — a period of time between taking action and seeing results. While it may seem like nothing is happening, something is happening. You just need to be patient while you work toward your goal.

If you can’t reach a milestone after some time, understand why. Do a review to see what’s working, what’s not working, and what to do differently. Then, try again. Keep improving your plan and it’s a matter of time before you see results.

Read: Days 5-7 of Live a Better Life in 30 Days (Create an Action Plan, Take Action, and Review)

4) Understand what’s causing the lack of progress

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If you have been facing too many setbacks, you feel burnt out, or you keep repeating the same mistakes, then you are likely hitting a wall.

Hitting a wall is a situation where you can’t progress no matter how hard you try. It can happen for various reasons, such as lacking the knowledge or skills to advance, having an ineffective strategy, not having a clear goal, or perfectionism. Stop to figure out what the issue is and address it.

My lack of progress in writing (Feeling disconnected from blogging)

After my daughter started school at 4.5 years old, I slowly resumed work while juggling my mom duties. While I was eager to reconnect with you guys and had so much to share, I faced a rut despite spending hours writing each week.

After digging into it, I realized that I was feeling disconnected from blogging as a platform. I started making websites in 1998 and PE in 2008, and the online space has changed so much — and not necessarily in a good way.

• In terms of web development, new things would roll out constantly, causing current things to break. I would constantly be fixing issues and code at my website. Managing a website has become overly complicated today, unlike in the early 2010s.
• Online exchanges have become highly negative and critical, when they used to be positive and encouraging. People just became very irritable and angry online, and this is reflected in the comments and emails I would get via PE.
• While the internet used to be a place where people formed meaningful connections and discovered new things, now it’s filled with bots, spam, and profit-driven businesses. The online world has become a huge, commercialized marketplace, and we have become a product constantly targeted at by ads, algorithms, and businesses.
• There is now a proliferation of AI content in recent years, with AI bots being built on the stolen work of artists and blogs like PE, without giving credit.
• Google and social media algorithms have shifted to prioritize big brands and sponsored content.^[18] Big Tech have taken over the online space, and not in a good way.

I’ve written about these issues over the years:

• Challenges I’m Facing Today (2018)
• Closing Blog Comments at PE (2015)
• Closure of PE Forums (2016)
• Feeling Disconnected (2016)
• How To Deal With Disillusionment As You Grow Older (2017)
• Why I Deleted My Facebook Page With 20,800 Likes (2016)
• Why I Deleted My Twitter Account With 7,000 Followers (2018)

Having been online since the 1990s, I feel that the internet has become sterile, negative, and over-commercialized, compared to the past when it was a space for authentic conversations and positive learning.

Feeling disconnected from the online world (Image)

There is also a huge backlog of work from my time away. Tons of content to update. Things to change in my business due to changes in the online space. New tax laws and regulations to learn as I have moved to a different country. And juggling of endless mom duties without family help, and a conflict between these duties and what I need to do to build a successful blog/business.

There is no easy fix and it’s about understanding the issues and working on them step by step.

One big step I have taken is to go back to the basics. To focusing on connecting with you. Just you. Just like when I first started.

In the past months, I did major restructuring of my business, cut out redundant costs, and simplified my website backend to return to my core focus of writing. I have been updating many past articles at PE, and just finished a big update of 30DLBL. I’ve also reopened blog comments (as a trial) and will see how it works out — I miss connecting with you guys. 🌺

Whether it’s AI, bots, or spam, my end goal is to support you in your growth. All these are just noises and I need to find ways to push them away. And I feel excited to return to writing and connecting with you all. :)

To You

If you have been facing a lack of progress for a while, stop to examine what’s going on. Ask yourself, “What’s blocking me? What’s preventing me from move forward?” Identify the issue(s) and work on addressing it.

Some ideas to break the wall:

1. Reexamine your goal. Sometimes circumstances change and goals become outdated. Maybe your goal no longer interests you or it’s unrealistic with your current situation. Check to see if it needs changing. Read: When Goals Stop Working
2. Change your approach. If you have been doing the same thing with no results, maybe something is wrong with your methods. Review and see what’s working and not working. Study the people who are doing well. Talk to others to get new perspective. Improve your plan, and then try again.
3. Learn new knowledge and skills. Lacking knowledge and skills when tackling a complex goal will naturally lead to a roadblock. Adopt a growth mindset. For example the online landscape has changed so much and I am now learning AI tools and new editing software to get up to speed. What skills do you need in this goal? Attend courses, research, learn from experts, and learn from practice. Read: Skills Development and Level Up
4. Take a step back. Being too close to something can cause tunnel vision, mental fatigue, and burnout. Take a step back and take a break to get fresh perspective and ideas. Getting a change of environment can also help.
5. Find a support network. Connect with people pursuing the same goal — they provide support, insights into problems, and ideas and solutions. Join groups related to your goal online (Facebook, Reddit) and offline (Meetup.com) if possible. I’m part of various blogging communities and they are helpful for troubleshooting and getting insights to issues I’m facing. Read: Day 25: Create Your Success Network of Live a Better Life in 30 Days
6. Let go of perfection. Don’t let the need for perfection hinder your progress. Aim for a good enough level and improve it over time. Read: How To Overcome Perfectionism (series)

Some of these issues may be deep-seated or complex, and take time to fix. That’s okay. It is progress to start somewhere. Know that slow progress in addressing deeper issues will still lead to bigger changes than trying to tackle your goal at a low level and making no progress.

5) Take baby steps. As long as you’re taking steps forward, it’s progress.

I know it can feel depressing when you have a big goal and don’t see progress day after day. Ideally, we want to set big goals and take big actions to achieve big results.

But there are times when taking big action simply isn’t possible, due to life circumstances. Perhaps you’re a parent to young kids, you’re dealing with health issues, you’re a caregiver to another, or your day job takes up significant time and energy. In these situations, it’s better to focus on one small thing a day.

Meaning, if you want to lose weight, make one good food choice a day. If you want to work on your blog, work on one thing in your plan, whether it’s editing your website or writing a new post. If you want to create a video channel, consider short-form videos on Tiktok or YouTube Shorts.

Do the small things and do them well. If you think it’s a waste of time, it’s not — the little changes you make add up to create huge changes in the long run. It all starts with what you do today. Some days you may be overwhelmed and not want to do anything, and that’s okay.

The more important thing is what you do on most days than not.

(From: The Emotional Journey of Creating Anything Great [Infographic])

Know that what you’re going through now is the trough of goal achievement. It can be difficult, painful, and boring.

But you can do it. I know you can. Things are tough now and many people are experiencing difficulties — rising cost of living, financial stresses, job security issues, burnout, juggling work and family, etc. — so you are not alone.

The important part is to (1) recognize that a lull in life can happen to anyone, and (2) equip yourself with the tools to work through them. Know that you are not a failure nor are you inadequate. A lull or lack of progress is what it is, and as you take the steps to work through it, it is matter of time before you see the results you seek.

Read:

• The Power of Little Changes
• If you cannot do great things now, start by doing small things in a great way

End Note

Are you facing a lack of progress? How can you apply the tips above?

Note from Celes: If you have been facing a lack of progress in life, check out Live a Better Life in 30 Days (30DLBL), my 30-day program to live a better life. It’s a great tool to do a life audit, set goals, and plan ahead. I did 30DLBL recently and it was great in helping me get clarity and create a roadmap for 2025 and beyond.

The 2025 edition of Live a Better Life in 30 Days is now out! I have updated the full course and rewrote many tasks, plus added a new task (Day 22) on limiting beliefs. Read about 30DLBL here, or if you are a past buyer, learn how to get access here! Questions? Let me know here.

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Hi everyone! This is a quick update to let you know what I’ve been up to.

First off, whether you’re a new or longtime reader at Personal Excellence, thank you for being here. Without you, PE wouldn’t exist — so thank you. You’re the reason why I do what I do.

I know it’s been a while. I’m sorry for the lack of updates for the past 5 years. Some of you emailed me to check if I’m alive and why there haven’t been any updates for a while.

The truth is, it’s been a very difficult past 5 years for me. There have been a series of things that happened, things that crushed me and that I was unable to write about then as I was still working through them (and still am, for some of them).

A quick summary of what has happened on my end (not in chronological order):

• I gave birth to my daughter (she’s now 5!) and stopped working to dedicate myself to full-time motherhood, without family help.
• We moved from Singapore to the UK, and had to overcome many challenges, from COVID lockdowns completely disrupting our plans for two years, to getting a job in a foreign land (my husband), to finding accommodation without a job, with a baby in tow.
• My mother-in-law became very ill and we became deeply involved in her care. She passed away after an 18-month battle.
• I became very ill with worsening health issues for the past 10 years, which led me on a long journey to search for answers after mainstream health professionals were unable to give me any. I eventually found out that they are due to toxic dental work, including mercury fillings and a root canal, leading to heavy metal poisoning and other issues.
• My husband had worsening health issues too, including neurological issues and severe chronic fatigue, that I closely supported him through. We later found out that his issues are due to toxic dental work as well, including mercury fillings.
• I faced persistent conflicts in my blood family that I later realized were due to a toxic family-in-law badmouthing everyone and sowing discord in the family.
• And then there was COVID, which made everything — be it raising a baby, caring for the ill, or moving to a new country — much more difficult than it already was.

Admist these extreme challenges, I had to step back from everything in my life and turn completely inward to be there for my family, to deal with the challenges with my entire being.

From raising a baby to caring for the ill to grieving the loss of a loved one, from tackling my own health issues to supporting my husband through his, and from living in constant uncertainty (whether due to the pandemic, dealing with unknown health issues, or moving to a new country without a job or contacts), it was an incredibly dark and difficult period in my life — as I’m sure it must have been for many of you in the past few years, especially due to the pandemic.

As my child now starts school and I juggle the duties of motherhood and work, as I work on my own health healing journey, and as my family settles down in the UK (a shoutout to the UK readers!), I’m excited to return to my life path and mission — supporting you in your growth. 🌱

I appreciate your patience all these years. Please know that for almost every day in the last few years, I’ve constantly thought about you guys, how all of you are doing, and the day I’d finally be back to reconnect with you and let you in on what’s been going on.

I really miss you guys and I hope you are doing well. I know that the world has changed a lot in these past 5 years The online space has changed a lot, with new blogs, new influencers, AI chatbots, etc. Some of you may have moved on to other websites during this time. I hope that now that I’m back, I can continue to support you in your growth — as I have in the past.

I miss all of you. But I’m back now. And I can’t wait to update you more on what’s been happening.

Some quick updates:

• I recently did a subscriber cleanout as it’s been many years and many emails are either inactive or defunct. Some of your email addresses may have been deleted by mistake. To ensure that you’re still on my email list, please subscribe here.
• I miss connecting with you guys. I briefly considered enabling blog comments, but thought it’s going to result in the same issues of spam and noise as before. Keeping reader communication via email is the best way to go for now (until I find a better approach), so join my email list so that we can stay connected. (Update March 2025: I just reenabled blog comments as a trial, so let’s see how it goes! Commenting will now be open for 90 days from the date of each post.)

I’m currently updating old content, as well as updating my foundational courses 30DLBL (Live a Better Life in 30 Days) and 30BBM (Be a Better Me in 30 Days), which I’ll share more in time to come. Once again, join my email list for all updates.

If there’s anything you’d like to see, let me know or join my email list and reply to the email there. I’m back and I can’t wait to talk to you guys soon. :)

Update Jul 2024: Thank you for your email replies, I’m very touched by your kind words and messages! While I’m not able to reply to every message, please know that I read it with love. If there’s anything you’d like to see, let me know here. Updates will be slow for the time being as I’m working on the upgrade for 30DLBL/30BBM — stay tuned!

Update Jan 2025: I just released the 2025 edition of 30DLBL, my 30-day program to live a better life. Read more about 30DLBL here, or if you are a past buyer of 30DLBL, learn how to get access here! More updates to follow!

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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

“So, when are you having kids?” my aunt asked me. At that point, I was 30 and had just been married for a few months. I didn’t even know if I wanted kids, much less when I was having them.

So I simply said, “I haven’t decided if I want kids.” I would spend the next hour listening to horror stories about women who (1) regretted not having children because they had put it off until it was too late, and (2) had difficulty conceiving because they had waited too long, basically suggesting that I was going to regret it if I didn’t work on producing children right away.

This would be my life for the next few years, where I would receive constant questions revolving around “When are you having kids?” from friends and relatives, followed by a bizarre, almost ritualistic attempt to persuade me to have kids.

If you think that this stops after having a kid, nope. The people who previously told you to have “just one kid” will now tell you to have one more. It just seems like it will never end.

The problem with “When are you having kids?”

I can understand why people like to ask this question. Find a partner, get married and have kids. This is the path we’ve been taught to follow since young. This is the path we’ve been told is the way of life.

This is especially so in the Chinese culture where having kids is seen as the ultimate goal in life. Sayings like 生儿育女, which means to birth sons and raise daughters, and 子孙满堂, which means to be in a room filled with children and grandchildren (often used to symbolize the peak of happiness), all support this belief.

A multi-generation family, often used to symbolize the peak of happiness in the Chinese culture

So after you get married, people automatically assume that this should be your life path. Without thinking, they jump in and ask “When are you having kids?”, as if really expecting you to give them a straight answer.

The problem is that it’s rude, invasive, and presumptuous.

1) Having kids is a personal matter

Firstly, having kids is a deeply personal matter. Whether someone wants kids or not is something for them to discuss with their partner, and not anyone else’s business. Whether you’re someone’s best friend or relative, you shouldn’t be asking a question like, “When are you having kids?”, because (a) you’re assuming that the person wants kids when they may not, and (b) you’re assuming that they even want to discuss this with you, when they may well not want to.

Even if you’re asking this with the intent of having a heart-to-heart, something like “Do you have any plans for kids?” or “Are you guys thinking of having kids?” would be more appropriate. The question should be open-ended and not presumptive, because, believe it not — not everyone wants kids.

2) Having kids is not the only path to happiness

Secondly, everyone has their path in life. The path is not the same for everyone and that’s okay. Some people want kids while some don’t. Some think that having kids is the greatest joy in life, while some see kids as a burden.

Having children is a decision with lifelong impact and will take away significant time, energy and resources from the parent(s) for the first 20 years or so of the child’s life. Anyone who has kids — and has raised them themselves — can attest to this. There are many ups and downs of having kids, and for some, the downs are too much and it’s simply not practical or realistic to give up so much of their lives to have kids. For some, it is better to remain child-free rather than have kids for the sake of it.

To assume that everyone should have kids, just because some other people think that having kids is the great and awesome, is rude and disregards an individual’s own wishes for their life.

Take for example, Oprah Winfrey — philanthropist and talk show host. Oprah chose not to have kids and dedicated herself to her purpose of serving the world. She produced and hosted The Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest-rated daytime talk show in America, for 25 years; founded a leadership academy for girls; and started her television network OWN. Through the years, she has inspired millions and become a champion for people worldwide. As she says,

“When people were pressuring me to get married and have children, I knew I was not going to be a person that ever regretted not having them, because I feel like I am a mother to the world’s children. Love knows no boundaries. It doesn’t matter if a child came from your womb or if you found that person at age two, 10, or 20. If the love is real, the caring is pure and it comes from a good space, it works.” — Oprah^[1]

Is her life not purposeful because she doesn’t have kids? No, not at all. In fact, I dare say that her life is much more purposeful than many in the world, including some people who have kids.

Many famous celebrities have chosen not to have kids as well:

• Chelsea Handler is a talk show host who chose not to have kids. She has said honestly in interviews that she doesn’t have the time to raise a child, and she doesn’t want her kids to be raised by a nanny.^[2][3]
• Betty White was a famous comedian who chose not to have kids because she was passionate about her career and she preferred to focus on it.^[4]
• Ashley Judd is an actress and political activist who chose not to have kids because she feels that there are already so many orphaned kids in the world. To her, her resources can be better used to help those who are already here.^[5]

And then there are others like Chow Yun Fat, Marisa Tomei, Renée Zellweger, Rachael Ray, and Jennifer Aniston. These people choose to be child-free for different reasons, such as because they’re already pursuing paths deeply meaningful to them, because they do not wish to be tied down with a child, or because they just don’t feel a deep desire to have children.

Not having kids has not prevented them from being happy, and people need to stop painting the narrative that one must have kids to be happy. Doing so has caused many parents to suffer dissonance when they have kids and realize that reality is far off from what they were told. There are people with kids who are deepy unhappy, and there are many who live deeply fulfilling and happy lives without kids. There is no one path to happiness, and it is up to the individual to define what makes them happy.

3) You may cause hurt and pain

Thirdly, you never know what others are going through.

Some people may want kids but are facing fertility struggles. For example,

• Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan went through three miscarriages before having their firstborn.^[6]
• The Obamas had a miscarriage before they had their daughters via IVF.^[7]
• Friends star Courteney Cox had a total of seven miscarriages before having her daughter, as she has a MTHFR gene mutation which raises the risk of miscarriage-causing blood clots.^[8] In fact, she went through a miscarriage while filming the episode about Rachel giving birth. As she said, “It was terrible having to be funny.”

About 10% of women have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant^[9] while 13.5% of known pregnancies end in miscarriages, with the figure rising as the maternal age rises.^[10]

For some, the journey to conceive is fraught with deep pain as they experience miscarriages, go through round after round of invasive fertility treatments, and wait in vain for a successful pregnancy.

And then there are people who cannot have their biological children due to genetic issues, illnesses, or problems with their reproductive system, which could have been there since birth. For example, Charmed star Shannen Doherty was unable to have children due to her cancer treatment.^[11]

Barack and Michelle Obama had a miscarriage before having their daughters via IVF

While you may be think that you’re being helpful or funny by asking people when they’re having kids, your question may well trigger hurt and pain. As Zuckerberg said,

“You feel so hopeful when you learn you’re going to have a child. You start imagining who they’ll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they’re gone. It’s a lonely experience.”^[12]

4) Not everyone is in a place to have kids

For some, having kids is simply not something they can consider due to their circumstances in life.

• Some people may lack the financial resources to have kids, a reality in places like Singapore.
• Some people may be facing serious issues with their marriage, in which case their priority should be to work on their marriage, not to have kids.
• Some people may be so burdened with caring for their dependents that they are unable to consider kids, at least not at the moment.
• And then there are people who may be facing health issues, issues that you don’t know and can’t see, that would make pregnancy difficult due to the toll it would take on their body.

For these people, they may look like they’re in a perfect place to have kids due to their age, job status, etc. But the reality is they can’t due to very serious, legitimate reasons, and you don’t know because you aren’t them.

5) Some people could still be thinking

Lastly, there are people who are neutral to the idea of having kids. This was me when I just got married. These people need time to think it through, because having kids is a permanent, lifelong decision with serious consequences. There’s no reason to assume that having kids should be an automatic decision because you’re bringing a whole new life into this world. This is a decision that would change your life forever, as well as the life of the child you bring into the world.

I personally think one of the worst things someone could do is to simply have children for the sake of it, and then afterward give their child sub-standard care, something which I feel many people do.

For those who have yet to have kids, they need the space to figure out what they want — not have people breathe down their neck day in and out about having kids.

My experience

For the first few years after I got married, I wasn’t thinking about having kids. Firstly, having a child is a lifelong decision, and I wanted to enjoy married life before diving into a decision as serious as that. Secondly, my husband and I were happy spending our lives with just each other — we didn’t feel the need to have kids, certainly not in the way our culture obsesses over it. Thirdly, my husband was dealing with some personal problems and I was fully focused on supporting him through them. These were issues that we needed to sort through before considering kids, if we were to want kids.

Yet I kept getting nudges to have kids, even though I never said anything about wanting them.

“So, when are you having kids?”

“This person’s baby is so cute, isn’t it? Why don’t you hurry up and birth a baby?”

“When is it your turn?” (In response to news that someone else just had a kid)

It was as if I was some vehicle, some machine to produce kids, where my own views in the matter didn’t matter. It felt dehumanizing, even degrading.

The most frustrating thing was that I kept getting this question, while my husband — as a man — would never get it, even when we were in the same room together, even from his own family members.

It was as if my sole reason for existence as a woman was to have kids, and until I had them, I was regarded as unworthy or incomplete.

The decision to have kids

Yet the decision to have children is a personal and complex one. It is also a decision that will permanently change the lives of the couple, especially the mother.

It is not a decision that one should be pressurized into making because their mom wants grandchildren or because their grandma wants to play with kids. It’s a decision that a couple should make because they genuinely want to bring a life into this world and nurture it to its highest level, and are ready to overcome all odds and challenges in the process of doing so.

Because when a child is born, the people bugging others to have kids aren’t the ones who will be caring for the baby 24/7. They are also not the ones whose lives will be set back by years (even decades) as they care for the new life. Neither will they be the ones responsible for every decision concerning the child for the next 21 years.

It will be the couple.

And the people who aren’t ready, who were pressured into having kids because they were told that it was the best thing to do, may have to deal with regret as they are stuck with a decision they cannot undo. Because there are people who regret having kids, and we need to be honest about that. These people regret, not because of the child’s fault, but because they were simply not ready to have kids, be it financially, emotionally, or mentally. Unfortunately, the children are the ones who eventually suffer, from living in dysfunctional households to dealing with issues of violence, abuse, and anger.

We need to recognize these realities and not make parenthood seem like it’s a panacea that solves a lack of purpose or life’s problems. Things don’t magically get better because people have kids; existing problems usually worsen as having a child puts a huge strain on a couple’s lives. Digging into people’s plans to have kids, and pressurizing them into one of the biggest life decisions they can ever make, will only stress them out and perhaps push some into depression. As this redditor shared,

“I have a friend who went through six years of miscarriages and fertility treatments before the doctors figured out the problem and she had her son. The nosy ladies at her work and her in-laws questioned her constantly. The depression from that made it harder for her to conceive.”

Stop asking couples when they’re having kids

So, if you like to ask others when they’re having kids, it’s time to stop that. It’s rude, invasive, and disregards other people’s need for privacy. It’s also none of your business.

The reality is that if people want kids, they will work on having kids. They don’t need you to prod them.

If they don’t have kids, it’s either because

1. they don’t want kids,
2. they haven’t thought about having kids but don’t need you to prod them,
3. they are not in a position to consider kids right now, or
4. they want kids but they are facing some struggles.

For people in group (d), they aren’t going to share such deeply personal experience over some afternoon tea, and certainly not by you asking, “When are you having kids?”

The best thing you can do is to give people space. Understand that having kids is a personal decision, and people don’t have to share or explain anything. Respect that others have their right to privacy. Respect that people are individuals on their own path, and this path may not involve having kids. And this doesn’t make them incomplete or lesser in any way.

Instead of asking people “When are you having kids?”, talk to them like you would to a normal person. There’s no reason why conversations should suddenly revolve around childbearing after marriage; it’s not like a person’s identity changes to revolve around having kids. A person still has their own passion, goals, and dreams. Talk to them about what they’ve been doing. Understand their interests. Know them as a real person, not some random being here to fulfill society’s checklist.

If you’re really interested in someone’s plan to have children, like I mentioned in the beginning, you can simply ask, “Do you have any plans for kids?” If they wish to share more, they will do so. If they give a half-hearted or evasive answer, then take the hint and move on.

Ultimately, having kids or not doesn’t change one’s self-worth. A woman is complete with or without kids. A man is complete with or without kids.  A marriage doesn’t need kids to be deemed complete. Having kids should be a conscious choice, not a result of external pressure. Don’t judge people by whether they have kids or not. Some people will have kids and some won’t. Some will have kids early, while some will have them later in life. All of these are different paths and there’s nothing wrong with them.

For me, I (we) eventually decided to have a baby and we now have a baby girl. Yet other people’s comments and nudges on when I’m having kids didn’t make me want to have children; it only irritated me and made me want to avoid these people, because having a child is a personal decision and has nothing to do with them. It was after my husband and I enjoyed married life without kids, and had the space to actively pursue our goals and interests, that we finally felt ready to have a kid.

In the meantime, I hope all of you are doing well. There are things that I’m working on that I look forward to sharing in time to come! Sending lots of love to you, and remember that whatever life challenge you’re facing, you have it in you to overcome it.

Today, I want to announce the birth of my baby girl. :)

She is almost 4 months old now. :) She was born with the entire water bag intact, also known as an en-caul birth — which apparently is very rare and occurs in occurring in less than 1 in 80,000 births!^[1] Between exclusively breastfeeding her and taking on the new duties of motherhood, I haven’t had time to take a breather, but I hope to get back to updating PE and letting you guys in on what’s been going on in my life soon.

I look forward to sharing more in time to come, but in the meantime, just wanted to do this quick post to let you guys in on what’s been going on in my life. :) If you have any questions, or anything you want me to answer on PE, let me know!

(Images: Personal Excellence)