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!

Parenting and leadership – Different context, similar lessons?

Having to balance parenting and career (and many other aspects of life), I must admit that I am obsessed with efficiency. One of my approach to efficiency is to connect and cross-implement the lessons I learnt between these two seemingly disparate worlds. Of course, these are two completely different context, you may say. But there is a common parameter in these two – humans. When it comes to humans and emotions, the dynamics that accompany these interactions can get rather unpredictable (recall a time when you ask your son to clean his bed, and he still does not do it despite the ‘friendly reminder’? Or to motivate your team to stretch their capability, only to find he/ she is chasing the wrong initiative, very efficiently?)

I thought about some of these key lessons and quickly eliminated the hard, technical aspects of it. This is also because primarily, there are so many classes and experts out there to help us on “strategic leadership” or “parenting” (ala tiger mom). Let’s talk about ‘heart matters’ (some of my friends jokingly call this fluff, but I have to say that this soft/fluffy thing is the hardest to do!)

Lesson 1: Start with a good intention and clear purpose

As a first-time mother, I used to lament on why babies did not come with manuals. I freaked out a lot during the first 3 years of our eldest son (sorry son, you are our guinea pig and you know that!), trying really hard to read every parenting books and talking to other parents.

However, like magic, when our second son came, it changed my perspective on the purpose and our role as parents. I quickly realized, it is more important to be joyful and to be supportive in this parenting journey, rather than be perfect.

How does that tie to good intention and clear purpose?

This realization that I am here to support (as a parent, and as a leader) to the people that matter, helped me to set my intention to help my kids and my team to uncover their potential and to support the things that will make them better.

For example, if one child has inclination on dinosaurs, or animals, we will consciously plan our activities and program to help grow their interest. If he/she is introvert and needs some nudging on working with people, then we will use any teachable moments to build their confidence and chip away anxiety.

The same principle applies to leading the team. Knowing the intention of supporting the team, it is much more joyful experience, rather than strictly chasing the KPIs (of which some are undeniably still very important!).

Lesson 2: Useful feedback and clear expectations

Not all feedback are created equal – there is such a thing as useful feedback.

What is useful feedback? It is a feedback, when given, will actually enhance the person’s performance and/or increase confidence level that made them interested to improve.

I admit that I made many mistakes on providing useful feedback (and still do!).

But let’s dissect the key elements of useful feedback:

⁃ They are specific, and targeted on behavior (and not personal)

⁃ They invite reflections and create sense of ownership and accountability. For our kids, I usually tie back to our ‘agreed family values’. At work, it can be tied to the mission and goals.

⁃ They have some sense of hope and motivate the recipient to actually improve the situation. For example, yes, we acknowledge the situation but therein the opportunity to improve.

When in doubt, I find that the pre-requisite of giving useful feedback is making sure my intention is to help the recipient to grow (see Lesson 1).

Lesson 3: Communicate, communicate, communicate

How many times could we have avoided conflict if we communicate? I can recall many occasion that I could have prevented if I had been more purposeful in communicating.

What I have also learnt about communication is there is no such thing as over-communicate. I am constantly surprised at the feedback I get from my children or my team, when I actually ask their opinion about certain things. (And I know, I don’t do enough…)

Most importantly, I have learnt that communication is not only during good times, but also during bad times. My husband has this fascinating approach with our children that we will take every opportunity of “teachable moments” to communicate our family values and lessons learnt at the most (sometimes I feel) difficult moments. The”teachable moments” are the moments of breakdown or disappointment – those that allow us to process our feelings, and also to use these to build stronger connections. At work, it could be when your team member did not deliver, or did not pre-empt you sufficiently. Or it could well be something out of hunch that somethings is amiss.

In summary, these three lessons are applicable, whether it is for parenting or leading a team. Above all, the overarching foundation for all these three lessons is genuine care.

On a final note, I must admit that it is very much work in progress for me at work – let’s say that it is easier to love your children as a mother!

Chasing Happiness.

Being happy can feel elusive sometimes. There is so much hunger in ‘chasing happiness’ yet the exact act of chasing happiness is the main reason why we cannot ‘achieve’ happiness – what a conundrum.

I joined the bandwagon of ‘chasing happiness’ more than a decade ago.

Feeling dissatisfied, I could not understand why I was not being happy despite career and family successes. It made me ponder if I was being ungrateful, since nobody seems to be openly bothered about not ‘being happy’.

The quest of ‘chasing happiness’ brought me to interesting paths – some require detour, some lead to interesting insights. Through journaling, personal development classes and books, I had a fascinating discovery: that I might have defined happiness too narrowly.

Naturally, as a true-blue engineer, I began to dissect the problem and began to see possible solutions emerging.

I find few of these frameworks and tips worked beautifully for me (hope you find them equally enlightening):

1. Definition of happiness: This turns out to be the biggest AHA for me. When I started reframing the range of ‘positive emotions’ instead of ‘being happy’, suddenly many possibilities emerge. Rather than focusing on being happy, I started listing down all things (or actions) that make me feel joyful, in awe, satisfied, contented and accomplished. The list of things that made me feel positive suddenly grow by multiple folds. Being clear on these positive emotions had raised my awareness so I can incorporate more in my life. (And I learnt, I am not doing too bad in this arena as I previously thought!)
2. Creating space to experience positive emotions: The power of setting daily intention of loving myself and creating ‘micro joy’ has been tremendously helpful. I know that reading, dancing, doing yoga, playing with my kids, connecting with people and walking in the park are the big things that create positive emotions for me, so I will incorporate 3 – 5 minutes of these activities throughout the day. The result? Magnificent. (I love things that require minimum effort with maximum results.)
3. Physiology matters: There are many resources that point out that we can ‘trick’ our body to feeling joyful and happy. Simple things like dancing and smiling send powerful signals to our body and nervous systems that reset our stress response. My routine is either restorative yoga or qigong which have tremendously helped me cultivate the relaxation routine, which in turns, create the positive emotions.

Above all, I stopped expecting to be happy. 🙂