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Just over a year ago, I was sitting in a meeting room with 20 others, facilitating a discussion on organisational challenges. As the hour dragged on, I found myself slowly disconnecting from what was happening.
"None of this matters," I kept repeating to myself. "We think it does, and we try to tell ourselves it does, but it really doesn't."
The discussion went decently, but I left it knowing it was time to quit. I wasn't being fair to my team showing up to work like this, and as I would realise later on, this was just one of the many ways in which my life was trying to tell me that I was in the wrong place.
While the work was meaningful and paid well, I had felt stifled for some time. When I started dealing with a number of personal challenges, all the deep restlessness I spent months suppressing finally surfaced in a way that I would not describe as 'gentle'. I lost motivation, stopped caring, and found myself craving a hard reset.
As I served out my notice period, one of the big questions I asked myself was: looking at the life I had, was I proud of what I had accomplished, accumulated, and the person I had become?
Which eventually led me to asking: what do I want my life to look like when I'm 50?
Today, I have a page in Notion titled '2041', where I track everything from my finances and personal priorities to the values that I use to govern my career choices.
To me, this has not simply been an exercise in life or career design. Some of you have heard me say versions of this—that what I'm trying to do is to connect to who I am and what I want in order to feel like I belong in my own life.
It's about moving away from “if I do/get/become x then I will feel x”. Instead, it's about the freedom to be myself and to live on my own terms. This means recognising what I'm good at, going where that value is seen, and cultivating the wisdom to know what's for me and what isn't.
So as we make our way through April, I wanted to do a stocktake of what I’ve done and what's coming up next. While it's mainly a reflection exercise for myself, I thought it might also be useful for anyone who's embarking on their own path, considering it, or just curious what my version of it looks like.
Warning: long post ahead.
"You don't need to worry about progressing slowly. You need to worry about climbing the wrong mountain." — James Clear
purpose & impact
Coming into March this year, a theme began to emerge around how I thought about what I want to do.
Upon graduating from my coaching programme, I reflected on how 'change' was an experience that I never welcomed. I remember feeling at 23 like I had figured out who I was going to be forever, and if it were up to me, I would still be that person.
But life happened, and I saw that I could change, or I could keep repeating time-worn strategies and pretending I wasn't miserable.
Once I very reluctantly embraced this journey, I began to understand this as one of life's essential truths: in this life, shit will happen and we will all encounter suffering, confront the consequences of poor decisions, or wake up to certain realities of how we've been living. In these moments, we can choose to do differently, or we can bury our heads in the sand.
Having made significant changes in my own life, I now want to do work to support others who have chosen the path of transition and transformation.
As I explore opportunities that are aligned with this theme, this is what my day-to-day work currently looks like:
To start, I write this newsletter. I never expected it, but writing Treading Water has become my spiritual and creative practice, my marketing funnel, and the backbone on which I build my days. It continues to be the single most effective way for me to stay disciplined, attract opportunities, and also work on myself.
I'm continuing to build my coaching practice and take on paid clients. This is something I'm doing slowly and intentionally as I'm mindful that my ability to support my clients is contingent on my ability to manage my own attention, bandwidth, and emotional presence. I feel very privileged to work with individuals who are serious about living more consciously and deliberately, so this is work that I do not take lightly.
I've teamed up with a finance publication to write a monthly column on how wider definitions of wealth can help us to live more intentional lives. This will drop sometime this month, and I'm looking forward to sharing it when it's out!
I've started working on a number of book projects that involve developmental editing and narrative coaching work. I get a lot of personal satisfaction from helping others to bring their creative visions to life, so this is something I was very excited to jump into, and would love to do more of. Back at Rice, I was always proudest of the work that I could support my team to create.
I've also started mentoring the guys at
, who started a publication to help Singaporean youth to explore and capitalise on opportunities in Southeast Asia. A lot is changing in Singapore, and I think there is potential here to confront the very real challenges emerging around talent, labour, and the future of work.Lastly, I've previously mentioned wanting to do more work in the men's mental health and well-being space. I've since decided that rather than start something of my own, I would instead get involved in what others are already doing.
The path I'm on means that I do a lot alone—from strategising to lead sourcing to execution. As such, I've been thinking a lot about partnerships and community; how I can collaborate more with others to contribute and build towards shared goals and causes.
So I've signed up to participate in a bunch of these and to meet the guys out there who have already started doing this work. I recently joined a men's group started by Stranger Conversations, and will also be joining Common Ground's Beyond "Man Up": Learning and Being in Community. I'm not sure what all of this will lead to yet, but that's okay for now.
personal growth journey
At a recent networking event, someone asked me, "So what are you working on right now?"
Without thinking, I replied, "Oh, honestly I've just been working on myself."
As the words left my mouth, I realised I hadn't said it to sound smart; I had said it because it was true. I went on to share how, in wanting to build a life that feels intimately 'my own', I did not simply make a list of the things I wanted before proceeding to live my best life. This is a journey that has involved experimenting and iteration, but also frustration and disappointment. I've had to build new habits and do a ton of inner work.
Right now, this takes several forms for me:
Last month, I graduated from the 6-month coaching programme I embarked on with Collective Change Institute back in October last year. As part of my further studies and training, I decided to pursue a professional certification in the Enneagram, and have enrolled with the Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy. It's a fairly rigorous programme, and should consume the next 1-2 years of my life.
I might write more about this one day, but discovering the Enneagram and learning that I'm a 4 has been the key to becoming aware of my triggers, making sense of why I am the way I am, and understanding how to grow. This has literally been life-changing.
On one hand, obtaining this certification is about deepening my appreciation of the human condition. On the other, it's also about building my knowledge and capacity to better work with others and on myself.In November last year, I also decided to stop drinking alcohol. This is still a complicated subject that I find quite tricky to talk about, but overall this has been a net positive. I lost weight, my sleep improved, I feel more balanced and clear-headed, and I've also saved a ton of money in the process. I've also gained a lot of confidence knowing that I can be completely sober, and still make fun and interesting conversation with strangers at events.
Lastly, I'm putting a lot more effort into my personal relationships. I only noticed very recently how much of my personal life had been on auto-pilot, and when I was able to be honest with myself, I realised how unhappy I was with the quality of my relationships with friends and family.
As such, I'm trying to lean on the people in my life more, and working on being more intentional about making plans, checking in, and more importantly: opening up so others know what's going on with me. This is still very hard for me, and continues to be a work-in-progress.
what has surprised me the most?
How good it feels to know that every single thing that I do every week—from what I work on to who I spend time with—is something that I have consciously chosen.
That change is scariest only in the imagination. I have shed so many of the things that used to define me, and am regularly shocked and grateful to see that I have survived.
That people will pay me for things. I never thought that anyone would pay me for coaching, or sign up for paid subscriptions to this newsletter.
How much work has gone into this journey so far. While I asked myself questions like: "How do I want to feel? What do I want to spend my time on? Who do I want to be around?" I did not find the answers by thinking of them. Instead, I found the answers by taking risks, trying things, dealing with disappointments, and repeat.
How much more there still is to be done. Still, I have good and bad days. Still, there are things I don’t know and skill gaps I have to plug. Still, I feel the pull towards old habits and thinking patterns, and on days when I'm grappling with a lot of inertia or insecurity, I have to remind myself that the work, in itself, is the reward.
While in many ways I love the life I have, I still question the path that I'm on—whether it will really lead to where I hope it will, and whether it will ever pay enough. This is one of those polarities I'm learning to embrace: that you can see improvement in many things, but still you never really stop worrying; you just get better at dealing with it.
All the good things that have come out of this path have been things I could not have imagined, anticipated, or planned for. I am constantly surprised, and this has taught me a lot about letting go of outcomes, or believing that I can predict the future.
what’s next?
One big priority area is my health. Perhaps I'm dealing with the effects of long Covid (which I caught for the first time last October), but I kept falling sick in February, and recently dealt with a horrible bout of food poisoning when I was in Myanmar. I've also been experiencing a lot of general fatigue, and so while I recently started running regularly, there are weeks when this isn't as consistent as I would like.
So there's definitely more I need to do in terms of eating better and improving my overall immunity.
When I first started this whole life/career redesign thing, I spent a good few months doing a lot of 1-1 networking. While this was a lot of fun, I've decided to slow down to focus on existing projects and to deepen the connections I've already made. Generally, I also feel myself transitioning into a space where I now want to just do and create more.
One of the great joys of the journey I'm on is that I'm working on quite a few different things. While this is extremely fulfilling, it also means that I'm constantly context switching, shifting between deep work, interactions with others, and quick decision making. I'm starting to see the need to create more systems and routines for myself to manage all of this better. This is also where I know I'll come up against my own shortcomings: while I love creating new systems, I really dislike maintaining them. So we'll see how this goes.
I've also been thinking a lot about life beyond Singapore. This was triggered by Tiago Forte's blog post about moving to Mexico, in which I resonated with a lot of his reflections on the importance of not seeing everything through the lens of the country you grew up in.
As I've watched friends like
and explore and build lives outside of Singapore, I've been reflecting on how so much of what I define as possible has been limited by the culture of this country. What might become possible if I move elsewhere? What might I learn about other ways to live, to make a living, to find contentment and create purpose?A few of the hobbies that I picked up last year like drawing and rollerblading have also unfortunately fallen to the wayside as I figured out the 'work' side of things, so I'm trying to carve out a bit more time for them.
And finally, I will soon be launching something new that will hopefully help to evolve this newsletter. I'm currently focusing on the pre-production work, and will share more once it's ready. If we're friends irl, you will definitely be hearing about this from me.
closing thoughts
As we come to the end of this not-really-a-Q1-review, I had a few additional thoughts that I wasn't quite sure where to fit into. I still think they're worth articulating, and hope you'll find them useful too.
Learning how to change is also a process of learning how to grieve. We must after all let go of the old in order to let in the new. This means taking the time to process, to heal, to honour the past. I only understood this when, through working with one of my coaches, I realised why I was unconsciously holding myself back from stepping into certain opportunities.
Don't feel like you need to embark on a life/career redesign unless you have a good reason to (good = whatever is good enough for you). So many people have asked me if they should do something similar, to which I always ask, "What are you trying to change?" Often, the response comes back as, "Actually I'm not sure, I'm actually quite happy." There is a lesson here too, which is to want what you have. If your life is good, then just be present and enjoy it!
If anything I've shared has inspired you to do something different in your life, I'm grateful that I got to play this minor role. At the same time, be careful not to treat my story or anyone else’s as a playbook. Everyone's journey is different, and there is a lot about my life that I do not share in this newsletter. Ultimately, you need to figure out what works best for you.
While you don't need to reinvent your life, you also have more agency than you think. Speak up at work, start that side project, go for that improv class. What are the small ways in which you can already start to expand your experience of life?
I'm under no illusion that this is it, and that my life will not continue to change. I might decide one day to return to being a salaried employee, or to start another company. Who knows?
That said, I find myself in a season of my life where I am no longer seeking what is 'big and loud'. I'm not interested in trends, virality, job promotions, or epiphanies. Instead, I'm looking for what is timeless, what remains under-appreciated, and what is quietly profound. I'm seeking opportunities to nurture what's important to me, improve the lives of others, and to pursue the everyday joy of slow and steady progress towards what I hope will eventually be a life well lived.
As always, if any of this has been interesting to you at all and you would like to chat or find ways to work with me, feel free to drop me an email or connect with me.
Did this lead to more questions? Are there things you are curious about and would like me to write more on? Let me know as well.
Take care in the meantime, and I’ll see you at the next one 👋🏻
i have really enjoyed reading your snippets. this was an exceptionally timely reminder that it's time for me to take stock of the first quarter that has just passed. ♡ i think it might be cool to live outside of singapore even if it's only for a short while (3-6 months). i did that in melbourne and it was life changing (despite it being a tad expensive, i still think it's one of the most worthwhile experiences ever). looking forward to the next!
It's not easy to trust the process, and I can relate to the challenges of leaning into uncertainties and instabilities. Rooting for you as you continue to explore opportunities that are meaningful to you! 💪🏽