3 Key Life Lessons From My Painting Journey

I found a new hobby recently and started to pick up after more than 20 years of not picking up my art brushes. I used to paint seriously in my school and college years but the passion somehow got buried after I started working, among many other things.

Many times, I tried to resurrect the passion to no avail. However, a recent AHA moment somehow hit me and here I am, painting (again) with a completely new medium, the medium that I was very scared to try previously – watercolor.

What really unblocked this resistance are a series of moments and decisions but I recognized there were 3 key lessons in this journey.

1. Understand the resistance and explore the motivation

I recognized that the main reason why I hesitated to re-start painting is the lack of time. Time is of the essence and clearly, with a lot of juggling these days, it is a precious commodity. After much exploration, I realized that the reason why I didn’t want to start my painting is because in the past, most of my paintings were oil or acrylic on big canvases. That simply took days and months to finish them – and right now, the massive oil painting that I am used to do sounds like a lot of commitment for me.

Instead, I understand the driver is creating something beautiful and quick. With that understanding, I explored if watercolor is something that can fit both. An A5 or A4 size is good enough for a spur of the moment painting – also, having a designated painting station works wonders and I am free to reach out to my painting set anytime I want.

Think about the times when we really want to do something but lack the drive to start it – it can be writing a book, doing morning exercise, doing some chores or managing our finances. The same technique can be applied and I am sure, just like the painting, we will find pleasant surprise after understanding what’s holding us up and addressing them.

2. If it’s challenging and scary, start with the easiest and find models / mentors

Watercolor has been scary for me, given the technique is less forgiving and very fluid. Perhaps the technical understanding of watercolor painting scared me off – or maybe just not knowing how to control the strokes and values seems daunting. Fortunately, the internet has so many free (and paid) classes for beginner’s watercolor and much to my surprise, it is very easy to pick up.

So, lesson #2 is to start small and keep going. Find one thing that will make us start and go from there.

3. Foundation and practice matter a lot for further improvements

This is a given but still amazed me with its power. After 2 months of free-flow painting, I started learning the techniques more seriously. Since I have done painting before, the foundations are not much different from other medium – composition, strokes, values. Additionally, I find that my painting significantly improved once I established certain cadence in my practice.

In short, to be better, there is no way I can take a shortcut – this principle remains true in life as well.

Failed? Try again..

At a glance, this might seem to be a nice doodle, and just that.

But it’s more than that – this doodle represents an important lesson to my daughter (and a great reminder to me) that I would treasure.

Only last year, Arts was a struggle to her. She has always thought that she is not creative and artistic, hence she is unable to make a great piece for her Arts homework. Arts is a chore for her (and for me, it creates stress when she keeps asking on what to do for her Arts projects!). I have seen this mental block in many people before and I want to teach her such important lesson on self-fulfilling prophecy (and to avoid it by taking small steps).

Eventually, we found out that she was not confident of her ability to design something from scratch. So, that became the entry point for us to encourage her to start copying first. Of course, after a few rounds of Arts homework, she slowly developed her confidence in visual aesthetic elements. The struggle now becomes something of the past, though she still relies on a copy.

This whole experience just gives me a perspective that we can extend to other parts of our life. When faced with a difficult situation that raises doubt, find a way to take the first small step. Is it updating that resume? Or making a call ? Or is it just taking a break to step back and ask expert on the small step we can take?

Just as much as my daughter learnt her lesson, I did too..

2020 is a wrap. What’s in store for 2021?

Goodbye 2020. You have been sneaky but wise. You have been ruthless but generous.

My 2020 word was “Focus”.

Never can I imagine that it was such an apt and powerful word that helped me to get through this year. From two deaths in our family to new portfolio while supporting our family and keeping my sanity intact.

I was listening to a podcast yesterday and was struck by this quote by Epictitus, which embodies what the “Focus” theme was all about for 2020.

Keep your attention focused entirely on what is truly your own concern and be clear that what belongs to others is their business, and not yours.

– Epictitus

Throughout the ups and downs of 2020, I have learnt to FOCUS on only several things and dial down the rest of the noise.

1. Focus on what matters: I find solace in validating my values and in identifying what matters to me most (which turns out to be a short list of the impact I care about, the uplifting circles that I choose to be with and the memories I create with my family and friends).

2. Focus on good intention: There are times we broke our own promise, or many times were disappointed by others. Reframing back to the intention keeps my integrity in-check and I have also learned to forgive others and move on.

3. Focus on gratitude: Yes, Covid-19 sucks. It sucks the joy and the normalcy we used to have. However, it also taught me to not take things for granted – a simple walk at the park, eating at my favorite restaurants and simply being able to breathe. There is something humbling about the pandemic, that a really tiny thing can bring the whole world to a halt. This pandemic taught me that we cannot control everything (and more importantly, we need to control our habit of excessive consumption). A “negative visualization” exercise really helped in times of crisis – it could have gone worse (and thankfully hadn’t!) So, I have learned to focus on savoring ordinary moments – and I call it “micro gratitude exercise”.

Completing our family 2020 photobook yesterday (which is an annual routine for me) made me so grateful to look back and find a lot of silver lining in the darkest days in 2020.

So, thank you 2020, for showing me what matters. Thank you for teaching me resilience and gratitude.

Here’s to “Thrive” in 2021!

Happy New Year and blessings to you and your family!

Goodbye 2019, Welcome 2020!

When we did our 2019 family reflection earlier this month, I openly shared my disappointment in meeting some of my “Align” projects for the 2019 (Align was my word for 2019). My 11-year old daughter then said “mommy, is it because your aspirations are too complex?”, pointing to my long to-do list.

Take two

I did the reflections again last week when I did the family annual photobook and relooked at my own definition of “success”. Instead of “complex” definition, I asked myself a simpler question: What did I learn from the 2019 experiences and do they contribute to my “Align” intention? The answer was a clear YES.

Here are the top 3 of my “Align” reflections:

1) Align with “Who I want to become”

Admittedly, I had been struggling to come up with 3-year and 10-year vision. After many iterations, I needed to reframe the question from “what do I want to do” to “what do I want to become”. The slight tweak in the semantics opened up more possibilities and now I feel more congruent in the vision. It is much easier to define my character, and my contribution, than planning something that is hard to predict in foreseeable future.

2) Align with the things that “give me energy”

This remains a continuation of past year’s experiment on what brings me real joy and energy. I became more mindful of the people I surround myself with, the promises I make, the stuffs I own and the way I spend my time. Let’s say, I did major “Marie Kondo” in many parts of my life (and our family life) this year.

Surprisingly (which is not surprising at all), I find that those good old advice still prove very worthy, such as weekly planning and daily prioritization and reflection. This way, I feel more in control of my energy and whether the time spent are aligned with my intention. Overall, I am only at 70%, and looking forward for more energized and focused life in 2020.

3) Align with the concept of “blessed life”

This is probably the most vague but also turns out to be the simplest. Blessed life to me is really living mindfully and being at peace, by grace of God. Sometimes, I feel that we get trapped by “external noise”, be it validation or just artificial measure of success. At the end of the day, I realized blessings can span from help from unexpected sources during my trying times to signs to the questions I had been asking.

In summary, I am grateful for all the lessons and experiences in 2019 that helped me align in critical areas of my life.

So what is my word for 2020? “Focus” – as a response to my daughter’s observation and also the lessons of moving one step forward.

I shall “focus” my energy on things that matter and spend time with people that matter. Here’s more to a more productive 2020!

Thriving in Workplace and Home

My spouse and I recently had the opportunity to share a few lessons and tools on enabling us to thrive in workplace and home as a dual-career family. The most popular question from the participants is that while they want to thrive in both environments, they wanted to know how to prioritize and juggle the conflicting priorities.

Since this seems to be quite a popular question, I thought it’d be good to share some of the key takeaways here for the benefit of the larger group.

The most foundational step when it comes to thriving in workplace and home is to have the belief that we can thrive in both. The semantic of “work-life balance” somehow gives the impression that something has to go. The reality is that our life is dynamic and that “see-saw” balancing act always oscillate from time to time. As a family, we made a conscious decision very early in our partnership that it will be “work-life integration”. By using the word integration, we are conscious of the choices and priorities that we make and we are committed to stand by our principles at all times.

With this foundation laid, as a dual-career family, we see thriving in workplace and home as running a “Life Enterprise”. This means that we approach everything as running an enterprise, we integrate both with the other life aspects, using the tools and processes to run as a unit. This includes setting the family guiding principles based on values, systems, support, and decision-making matrix. In a simpler form, it means we are mindful and intentional over the things we do, be it at work or at home.

We believe in preserving the core while being flexible in executing.

To run the “Life Enterprise”, we have observed that these “pillars” have significantly helped us set it up effectively:

1. Build your support, processes and systems: For our family, we have set-up many systems to automate, delegate and prompt our important tasks. Of course, just like any enterprise, we need to start somewhere and further refine the systems as we go along. Some examples of the systems include the morning breakfast system, laundry management system, house-cleaning support system, homework support (which is minimal except if it was Bahasa), monthly bills payment system, kids’ annual stipend system and our property management system. We even have a travel checklist and toiletries & travel essentials ready to-go whenever we decide to travel (near or far).

2. Plan and prioritize: We cannot stress enough the importance of planning and prioritization. Given that our time is finite, we have to be mindful of what gets done and what gets dropped. As a life enterprise, rather than prioritizing in silos and in isolation, we would rather look at the bigger picture and that means balancing our family, our life and our career. I can expand this topic on its own – so I will deliberate more in a different entry on time management. 🙂 Hint: Things get done when scheduled in your calendar

3. Habits and rituals: We admit that we are creatures of habits and our willpower can bring us only so far. Hence, we believe in creating daily habits and family rituals to increase the chance of success in integrating both worlds. We believe in being role model to our children, hence setting up core values and use those as our compass has helped us tremendously. We also believe in consciously creating our family identity: the family rituals will help us through this journey and bind us in a more meaningful way.

4. Create open and honest communication: This is the most interesting journey so far for us, as we build this life enterprise. We joked at the learning session that we observed that the number of “silent treatments” and “unnecessary fights” have exponentially decreased over years, as we learn how to fight well. We learnt how to be transparent and communicate our needs openly. We need to understand where the other person comes from, what is his/her motivation when expressing their stand and how we can work together in co-creating the solutions. As we learn to fight better, we created deeper bond and mutual respect for each other, as partner in this life enterprise.

In summary, a slight shift in perspective will yield completely different strategies. And above all, this fits nicely with our persona – my spouse and I find meaning in the partnership and we get the joy in growing together.

Finding Purpose – a futile search?

This quest of finding purpose feels futile to me for quite a long time. Unfortunately, the more desperate I was, the more confusing it got.

Like any other person on a quest, I searched everywhere. I journaled, I read books, I talked to people, I listened to inspiring speeches. I even Googled! But – nothing. It got more confusing.

What I forgot to do is to search in one place that I usually avoid – within me.

By grace of God, instead of avoiding, I mustered the courage last year and set the intention to start the journey of discovery. I am happy to say that there are glimpses of ‘purpose’ that I found in this journey and my intention here is to share some of the key lessons with you.

What are my three key lessons in ‘finding purpose’:

1. Semantics is important. I have now learnt that the way I frame and define ‘purpose’ is critical. I found that purpose is not about ‘doing’ but it is about ‘being’. I have since then re-framed purpose as “what do I intend to be and how will I show up on a daily basis, using my unique gifts”. Instead of pressuring myself to be the hero and saving the world, now I define my purpose as someone who gives a voice in conscious living and positive parenting / leadership. The compass helps when making small decisions on a day-to-day life. (These decisions add up!)
2. I did not find purpose overnight. It is indeed a continuous journey. But once I reframe it as ‘being’, it took away the expectations to find THE purpose. What is more important is to be open and curious in the journey, allowing it to unfold naturally. I have never expected that allowing myself to be curious and to play is the best way to connect the dots. It still amazes me how things unfold when I decide to be curious and take the next step (which most of the time seems ridiculous at times. This blog is one of so many examples of curious ideas that popped up.
3. Purpose requires commitment. We all have a unique gift to express but without fierce commitment and discipline, a vision will remain a vision.

In summary, what I found in this journey is that purpose is created consciously, one at a time. It blends our strengths, our joy and our contribution. It requires commitment. It requires me ‘to be’. Sometimes, I need to let things unfold and see the magic. Yes, a departure from my expectation when I started 🙂

So, what’s yours?

Leadership Nuggets – From Peter Senge

What an honor to learn some of these leadership nuggets from Peter Senge today, at Jakarta, thank you to Cherie for the invitation and warm hospitality.

Thought of sharing my raw notes, hope we all can take some of the wisdom and practice it immediately. 🙂

On letting chaos into order

• Life is just not orderly, life emerges. Out of that emerges, order can come but it’s different than the order that we control.
• How hierarchy can work better, not in the absence of hierarchy.

On Innovations:

• The deep principle of innovation is collaboration: At MIT and its successful innovations, the heart of it is collaboration. Innovations emerge through working in teams.
• All innovations come from someone who praised someone for stepping ahead, by taking risks.
• Technology is meant to connect but now unfortunately has fragmented the society. Online communities tend to stick to the similar group because of zero-cost of exit. Real communities can only happen when you are stuck with each other and embrace diversity.
• Diversity creates innovation. Solidarity is not uniformity but commitment to shared vision.
• Harmony only exists because of diversity. The beauty of orchestra is diversity. This is deep old problem.
• Technology is neutral and only an enabler. Technology does not define Industry 4.0.
• The unintended consequence (such as terrorism) accelerated by technologies – it is not technology but really the human dimension (ie. motivation/intention) underlying behind it.

On Revolution:

• The journey for IR4.0 is understanding our past and then create the future. The very first question: Will we still be a country with Industry 4.0. It is a question about identity and root.
• Movement requires deeper sense of security. To take courage and step ahead, it is paradoxical that there has to have a sense of deeper sense of security.
• Similar to biology, the process of evolution is transformation through conservation – it is rather paradoxical.
• So, the important part for revolution is two-part: (i) what do we want to create and (ii) what identity do we want to conserve. But who are “we”? Whose identity?

On Leadership:

• Do not confuse rank / formal authority with leadership. Just because you have a title, does not mean you are a leader. Most organizational leaders do not have titles.
• The job of the CEO is to patiently listen to what’s being said and then forcefully communicate and execute.
• In combat, it is easy to find a good leader, finding those that people whose team are willing to fight and die because of trust.
• Masculine and feminine leadership – balance of leadership. The challenge we are facing in the leadership in this decade is re-balancing because the past has been fully-dominated by masculine power. That’s why yin and yang together are so important. With one-eye we don’t see the depth, only with two-eyes can we see the depth and the truth.
• The deeper problem is how do I find myself something to appreciate when we see someone of different political view.
• If we don’t like what we see, hold a brighter mirror. Of course, it is about changing society, but it starts with holding a mirror in front of us.
• The real work of a leader is always external and external impact but the process is very reflective. “How do I keep discovering the flaw of my own ego, where my own fear takes over, when I don’t listen..”
• To become a leader, you must be a human being. – Confucious
• We can have respectful authority and challenging authority in the army. It is about balance. That’s what Innovation 4.0 is leading to. Hence, the chaos…. but we need to get comfortable with chaos..
• It is not enough to have ideas and vision, but we have to practice. If we want to change, we need to create new practices. The leadership practice is about deep reflective practices AND execute simple daily actions.

Roots of words

• “To lead”- indo-european is lithe which means, to step across the threshold. Leadership is stepping ahead. Leadership is from the edge.
• Leadership is uncertain, you may fail. You will need courage to step ahead.
• Willingness to be vulnerable (yet the images in the society that leaders are perfect, always right), hence why innovations are stalled.
• It doesn’t matter because we are all human, we are imperfect yet we step ahead.
• Leadership is the ability to clarify your goal and mobilize people.
• Most effective leaders are deep listeners.
• Courage means “opening of the heart”

9-Months Journey: A Reflection

As we closed our 9-month Mastery program yesterday with the closing call with my circle sisters, my heart just overflowed with such gratitude and wonder on how it has transformed me in this journey of fully embracing myself.

If I were to say what is that single shift – it is really the ability to create a deeper and more compassionate connection with myself, which in turn creates more compassion on others. With that shift, I had been able to hold multiple perspectives and get to the generative mode especially in times of conflict. The key that unlocks this is really to observe our old patterns and to name the limiting belief – and at the same time, extending compassion and radical self-responsibility to go there, to reframe and to question the belief.

I know the shift is subtle but at the same time significant. In one of the meditation practices, I was so surprised by my own observation that I did not know how to react to that wounded, small-Self, which is primarily the cause of my fear of getting to the bottom of it. This understanding alone has allowed me to give the space to re-learn and re-connect.

Of course, this is not without much commitment and relentless efforts. In all the three power centers we learnt, I felt I still had a long way to go in developing the second power center – which is really to trust my intuition and co-create with the Universe. However, I have learnt to surrender and to actually ask for help from the Universe (or God, whichever you believe in). What I have also learned is to embrace the imperfection, and at that exact moment, set my intention and clear my energy before I ask for guidance – it feels much more doable then expecting it to be perfect. I have also learned to remind myself to continue “giving” despite all my worries and the world will give back in unexpected little ways I could not imagine (and they do a lot of times!). Some of these blessings manifested not in the external success definitions, but really those definitions that really matter – it is indeed a blessing.

Never under-estimate the power of support

I would not do justice without mentioning the superb support from Claire, the coaches and other Mastery participants. But more importantly, the weekly circle calls with my Pod sisters.

Why is this so?

The structure enables us to cement the lessons by sharing and reflecting our own insights before going back to really practicing it in our daily lives. The greatest gift is to absorb and learn through each other’s stories and lessons. I feel that by reflecting their brilliance, I also learn how to appreciate my own brilliance. For that, I am eternally grateful (and honored) for such genuine care and compassion we displayed to each other. I also enjoyed the space we have created as a pod to speak from our heart, to stand in our center and just the loving way how each other supported our journey in their own way. (By the way, this probably deserves its own page so I should probably save it for another day :))

So, what’s next?

My commitment is to continue nurturing myself through daily practice of morning exercise, journalling, daily energy clearing and meditation. What I wish to celebrate is the depth of my being and that I am learning to recognize the ways I can contribute in a more conscious, soulful way – which is more grounded rather than external-focused.

What I want to create next is in the area of conscious leadership especially for those in the technical line and business. One more interesting area I am exploring is in the area of conscious parenting and balancing my role as a working mother. I enjoyed the conversations around thriving in workplace and home. More to come!