[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 14: The Model

Activity: Write two situations I want to improve using The Model.

I want to be more efficient with doing work.

Environment: My home, my office
Belief: I have time to waste, I can get to things later, I have enough time to do everything.
Emotion: Incongruence, frustration, then feeling rushed later when I play catch up.
Behavior: Procrastination, dilly-dallying, then rushing when I get back to work.

I want to improve my sleep habits.

Environment: My home
Belief: I can function on very little sleep. I can go to sleep late and still wake up early.
Emotion: Greed with time and being able to do things, then tiredness when I wake up.
Behavior: Doing things late at night and getting distracted, then going to bed late when I feel tired.

Reflection:

The Model is very different from my own models for emotions and leadership as I do not combine the four elements that The Model does. However, I do believe that it relates to my own model for leadership as it relates to changing personal behavior.

Reflecting on The Model itself, it seems that it lends itself to allowing me to better troubleshoot where the problem lies, or rather, where I can best use a strategy with the highest efficiency. By breaking things up into four components, it affords me the opportunity to scrutinize each component and evaluate whether each one is desirable – if yes, I can keep it, and if not, I can strategize and experiment with how to change it.

Pleasure, happiness, and emotional reward feel similar and different to me. The three are all desirable, and yet, pleasure and happiness seem more temporary to me, whereas emotional reward feels a little bit longer term and more sustaining. The first two also seem more fleeting and shallow, whereas emotional reward feels more deeply fulfilling.

The applicability of The Model appears to be in all areas of life when crafting an intentional life – i.e. in pursuit of more of what we desire and in pruning more of what does not serve us. I think I would need an iterative process and a sounding board in order to get the most out of this.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 13: Writing my models for leadership

1. What is Leadership?
a. What is leadership? Leadership is getting someone to do something in the interest of growth and improvement. It could be oneself or it could be others. It could be for an individual or for a collective goal. I find that leadership can also be choosing to do something that someone wants to do but has a hard time doing naturally. It’s a skill and a muscle that can be practiced, but sometimes can be counterintuitive to human nature. I.e. it can look like doing something for the betterment of a greater collective, but can be unintuitive as acting in one’s self-interests is a more common/natural behavior.

b. How have my views on leadership changed over the exercises so far? With the exercises so far, my views on leadership have shifted much more to the individual rather than influence over others, simply from the order that we are going in. I used to find leading the self different from leading others, but I find that leading oneself can influence others in a less direct way. Perhaps it can be more effective long term.

c. What leadership experiences have I had so far? So far, I’ve done a lot of volunteering in summer camps across religious and educational organizations; whether that’s leading a group, or supporting the camps in the background. I’ve led a martial arts demonstration team growing up. Career-wise, I’ve managed technicians before and led organizations through making purchasing decisions for the factory. I’ve also influenced the effectiveness and efficiency of operations in the chip design world. In the personal finance world, I’ve led myself and peers to do things outside of our respective comfort zones. Within friendships, I’ve lent beliefs and poured into others, shared space, and held space for people to be themselves and share their thoughts.

d. Who are my leadership role models? My mom is one of my leadership models in terms of servant leadership. She often will serve others to her own detriment. I think I consider her a role model because while I aspire to be like her, I don’t think that I would ever get close to her ability. When I would go grocery shopping with my mom as a child, half of the town would know her. In her absence, people speak fondly of her. I would hope that I can be as approachable as my mom is and that I can inspire people to feel loved and cared for in the same way that others feel about her. Personally, my mom has also been a mad task master – never letting me get away with a sigh or a negative thought, she often holds me accountable to managing my emotions and beliefs better.

e. What do I consider success or failure in leadership? Good or bad? I evaluate leadership on the degree of authenticity of the relationships. Previously, I would evaluate leadership on external things, like size of organization and strength of people being influenced. Then I realized that people can follow a leader or be motivated by things that move them, but may not necessarily resonate. Things can be in a neutral sense, manipulated, to get people to do things, but if it’s forced, it’s not very sustainable. As of late, I’ve been feeling that true leadership raises the level of people (personally, professionally, degree of effectiveness) in a sustainable way that carries regardless of whether or not the leader is present.

2. What are Motivation, Emotions, and Self-Awareness?
a. What is motivation? Motivation is the reason why people do things. In my personal experience, ‘shoulds’ and feelings of obligation had been big motivators for me as I would fail to feel aligned with what I would do. I was very adept at unwilling and reluctant compliance. Currently, my motivations are more aligned with my core values and what resonates with me more. Health and wellness, connected relationships, and serving others in a practical way are some of my values. Over the last two years, independence, courage, competence, effectiveness, and fun have been core motivating values that I seek to align my actions with more and more.

b. What are emotions? From a physics perspective, emotions are frequencies of energy. The higher the frequency, the more positive the emotion. The lower the frequency, the more negative the emotion. I consider emotions to be magnets of other events and circumstances of the same frequency. Emotions are how we experience the world – they add qualifiers and descriptors to how we experience things.

c. What is self awareness? Self-awareness is being able to understand and perceive oneself from as objective of a point of view as is possible, to be aware of one’s influences and biases. It’s also the ability and willingness to observe changes, differences, and/or stagnancies in oneself, to scrutinize oneself and a willingness to be honest with oneself about who we are.

d. Why do they matter? Motivations, emotions, and self-awareness matter because they comprise so much of our lives. Whether motivations are those that we want or those that we don’t want, can largely influence our emotions. Emotions are how we experience the world and the quality of our lives is largely influenced by the quality of the emotions we experience.

e. How do they manifest in my life? Motivation, emotions, and self-awareness manifest themselves in my life every single day, all the time. I’ve taken a much closer look at emotions after coming back from my first week-long meditation retreat. I see emotions both as a way I experience the world, and how I proactively create the life that I want by using my emotions as a signal to trigger the environment around me. I believe that one can feel their feelings and after letting them pass through or having had time to let them run its course, I’m a believer in one’s ability and agency to change the narrative proactively from how an event or story was originally experienced. I’ve always been self-reflective, something I attribute to the challenges I encountered as a child. As time goes on, I continue to reflect often and pursue self-awareness as a means of trying to overcome myself. In part, I’m influenced by my overthinking. And in part, I’m trying to pursue greater self-knowing so I can continue to better pursue the person I want to be.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 12: Feedforward

– Be realistic with how long things take in the morning
– Mentally or physically schedule things earlier than they actually are to give yourself a buffer
– If you think it’ll take you longer than you budgeted out for something, start 10 min. earlier
– If it can wait, don’t do it before you run out the door
– Write down what you want to do the night before
– Write down what you want/need to do the morning again
– Assume things will take longer than they do or say they will take
– Use pain and pleasure motivators with friends to hold myself accountable
– Set wall and car clocks 5 minutes fast
– Use copious amounts of notifications – i.e. a 30min. prior notification – up to 1 day before, 1 week before, 2 weeks before
– Add 15 minutes to your preparation time
– Budget out time for an activity – No matter what is happening, stop when you hit the timer/allotted time
– Be specific and concrete about what you need to do on a preplanned list
– eliminate all activities that are not on the list of critical items
– Write down what you need to do the night before
– Go to sleep earlier so you can wake up earlier
– Set a timer for an activity and no matter what, stop it when you hit the timer

Reflection:
The main difference between feedforward and feedback for me personally, is that feedforward seems like an emotionally neutral thing to receive, meaning that I don’t feel any emotional charges receiving feedforward. With feedback, it feels relatively easier to fall into a feeling of defensiveness about something I’ve done vs. my intention. And, even when the feedback seems to hit the nail on the head, sometimes feedback can hurt and/or I can feel a reluctance to accept it if there is an emotional charge around it. Feedforward, by comparison, feels much more like proactive brainstorming to me.

Others seemed interested and willing to help out in the feedforward exercise. People seemed to care about giving me unique advice or tailored advice based on my personal experience. I felt cared for and supported during the exercise.

I don’t think I got useless advice, but I did feel like some advice is easier to practice than others. Perhaps some advice was redundant for things I’ve already done, i.e. manually setting clocks faster, but it didn’t feel useless. Rather, I felt like I was on the right track.

I feel like feedforward is an exercise that can be used in the areas of tangible self-improvement. Even if it’s not a concrete thought or focus quite yet, I believe I could use it to obtain useful strategies to try to see what clicks and what doesn’t.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 11: Avoid Imposing Values

Reflection:
Namely, for this exercise, we were trying to avoid starting with the words No, But, However, and to avoid using the words good, bad, best, and worst. I found this immensely challenging to combine the exercises. I think I would need to spend time in my think box to actively craft alternative responses to ones typically used.

Most of the times, I would catch myself after I would use words that would impose values and often find myself in a state of confusion, not knowing the boundaries of imposing values. For example – Instead of ‘No worries’ I would say ‘It’s all good.’ Then, upon inclusion of exercise 11, I would want to say ‘That’s alright with me’ or ‘That’s okay with me’ instead of ‘It’s all good.’ Invariably, saying that something is okay or alright is also a projection of my value. Hence, my conundrum and frustration because a moderate judgement about a situation is still a judgement of the situation nonetheless. Instead of good, bad, best and worst, I started to use other quantifier and qualifier words like great, decent, etc. and then realized that they were also imposing values. I did try to pivot to my expression, such as ‘I enjoyed …” when possible. At times, it felt challenging or not possible to do in a reasonable amount of time to keep conversation flowing.

I think I caught a small fraction of my value-imposing words. I didn’t really notice changes in others’ reactions. I imagine that the different responses feel more well received that value-imposing words, but I don’t have a comparison. I don’t think others noticed a difference. I think I would have to draft out the words and commonly used phrases and proactively think of qualifying phrases to use instead of my normal ones in order to actively avoid value-imposing words.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 9: Adopt a Challenging Belief

1. Think of a belief that leads to emotions that you don’t like
2. Think of emotions you would prefer in that context
3. Think of a belief that would create an emotion you prefer
4. Consciously and deliberately think the new belief

I can be late without impacting the impression others have of me and the relationship between us.
I feel conflicted, self-loathing, self-justification, rushed, impatient, judged, and more. – this is because I have conflicting beliefs such as – I have time; being late is okay; being early is a respect to both people; I have to hurry to be on time; being late is disrespectful; being early means I can feel in control and a more steady state of emotions; waking up early gives me more time.
I would prefer to feel abundance, calmness, self-aligned, patient, and in-control.
My new belief is that being late impacts the relationship in a way that I do not enjoy nor that I can afford.

Reflection:
I noticed a trend in myself that I tend to be late to the first thing on my calendar each day. I hate this about myself. I seem to be fairly punctual to everything else in the day except for the very first thing on my calendar. I always plan to wake up early and do things well in advance of time. Because I do wake up early, I believe I have enough time. This leads me to taking more time than I anticipate or plan for and ultimately causing me to rush out at the last minute. Often leading me to travel with more urgency which is less safe, and falling into self-criticism when I am 5-10 minutes late.

I don’t necessarily feel more able than last time because this is something that I struggle harder with than the last belief that I worked on. The thought is taking root. The skill of changing ones’ beliefs has been one I’ve exercised before and often, but not broken down so deliberately. It felt most challenging to identify the belief that I would need to practice to feel the emotions I would want to feel. I still don’t know that I’ve hit the nail on the head. Overall as an exercise – I can use this with my most painful relationships and my most inhibiting limiting beliefs.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 8: Adopt a New Belief

Old belief: not finishing my homework means that I am not holding up my commitment, which means that I am not trustworthy because I broke my word. Or rather, I failed my word.
Old emotion: Self-criticism, frustration, unworthiness
New desired emotion: aligned with myself, authentic, true, empowered, peace
New belief: It’s okay to not follow through on things that are not my highest priority.

Reflection Questions:

Did your initial candidate belief feel fake? My initial candidate belief didn’t feel fake because I’ve experienced this over and over in classroom settings and in life and work settings.

Did that feeling change? That feeling changed when I decided to change it.

Did you feel like you could change not just a belief but beliefs in general? Yes.

Did you sense how your mind adopts beliefs and changes them? Yes – through recognizing something undesirable and transforming it to something desirable.

Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life? All throughout – to curate a life by design.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 7: Authentic Voice

I don’t believe my voice changed. Perhaps this is because I feel like I’ve often been one to speak my mind. It didn’t necessarily feel more authentic, but perhaps I felt like I was more free and liberated. I feared saying things I would regret in many cases and avoided saying certain things when I felt the urge to unleash my authentic voice. It was also comforting to have space held for it. I also feared saying things that would cause emotional reactions and undesired consequences, like the end of relationships. I later found out that if certain relationships couldn’t tolerate my authentic voice in a way that I could express myself, even when being mindful of sharing vs. attacking, perhaps the relationship might not be worth keeping.

When practicing with Beth and with Evelyn, it was neat to intentionally have space held for my authentic voice. Others seemed to respond to some of my fears and questions with non-judgment and empathy, which encouraged me to share openly.

I would like to do it more in a way that lets me feel more free and at the same time, avoids hurting others. I often think of what is said of people who call themselves ‘brutally honest’, that they are often more concerned with being brutal rather than being honest. I love honesty, and would love to embrace it more and more without fear of hurting others when what I say and feel can appear brutal.

I think audience matters so much here. So does strength of relationship. I still feel that certain situations warrant filtering – hence, my comments on appropriate audience and strength of relationship.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 10: No, But, However

Reflections:
I think I caught about 20% of my no, but, and however responses. I think ‘but’ and ‘however’ were very easy to avoid, and ‘no’ was the hardest for me. I especially noticed this around texting. I often say ‘no worries’ or ‘no problem’. I didn’t realize that this would count for the exercise, too. I did not notice any changes in others’ reactions, but I imagine the different responses feel affirming, especially if I’m removing negating verbiage. Instead of ‘no worries’ I can begin with ‘all good’ or ‘it’s all good’. And in response to requests, instead of ‘no problem’, I can start with ‘yes, absolutely’. I don’t think others noticed a difference, but perhaps it’s more of a subtle shift that will compound with time.

This makes me think of sales psychology about avoiding questions that will result in answers being ‘no’ and instead of using questions that will result in responses beginning with ‘yes’ to factor in the subconscious connotations that we have with the words ‘no’ and ‘yes’. Affirming and negating statements seem to be two sides of the same coin, and leading with affirming phrases can lead to more agreeable interactions overall.

I’ve done a similar exercise where I try to avoid the usage of the word ‘but’ as a connecter and instead, use the word ‘and’ since it can virtually achieve similar outcomes. This is what that exercise makes me think of – a subtle shift in achieving the same goal of clear and effective communication.

[Olivia Ong]

I love your practice of embracing your beliefs with true compassion and moving on. Very powerful 🙂

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 6:

Beliefs:
Curiosity about my perspectives indicates that someone cares about me.
Being asked questions and follow up questions to observations I make and opinions I have means that others care enough about me to be curious about my perspectives.
Missing my commitments to myself feels bad. Being self-employed gives me more time freedom and requires more discipline.
I feel confident. Preparing for client meetings is a respect to both of our time.
Making a mistake on client paperwork discredits me.
Owning up to a mistake gives me credibility with my client.
Beating myself up does not help me move forward.
Home projects take me a long time.
Asking for help is hard.
Receiving help is also challenging.
I need help with my home projects.
Information is abundant, not always relevant nor useful.
Experience can help filter information.
My mom is afraid of being a burden.
My mom is clinging to her identity of being the helpful one in the family and constantly trying to give to me and others.
Fingerprinting for licensing is easier than I perceived it to be.
Procrastination sucks up bandwidth.
Crossing off long-standing to-dos feels so good.
Conquering procrastination is conquering oneself.
Helping clients to understand their finances who are not in a position to take action is valuable to promoting financial literacy.
Unpaid work is not the most efficient use of my time but is worthwhile.
Connecting with traditional advisors gives me a basis to compare and contrast our offerings to clients but is not the best use of my times since we are in direct competition for clients.
Platonic relationships between men and women are possible.
Developing friendships and connections across life stages and backgrounds is possible and requires respect for boundaries and curiosity.
Clear boundaries between men and women make relationships easy to navigate.

Reflection:
How did this exercise compare with writing your beliefs? – I found them to be very similar. There were a mix of beliefs – tied to how I experienced an unwanted emotion as well as tied to how I desire to navigate the world. Consistent with my beliefs.

Were you able to separate your beliefs from the emotions they evoked? Sometimes.

How did you feel while thinking about the beliefs and emotions? Very conflicted. For every belief I could see myself having the counter-belief. Thinking about the unwanted emotions, I found myself very keen on finding ways to find beliefs that could help me to not experience the undesired emotions.

How did that feeling change over the course of the exercise, if it did? – I feel neutral towards my feelings now that my beliefs are on paper and have some structure to my reflections.

Did awareness of the belief make the emotions stronger? Weaker? Different? – I think awareness of the belief helped to address and weaken my undesired emotions. A sort of reckoning, and a transition to observation from judgement.

Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life? – I think self-awareness and curiosity are both components that are applicable in every other area of life. It’s meditative to document beliefs and revisit them. It gives more clarity on the internal narrative and allows one to evaluate if it’s consistent with who they want to be. Feels like someone gains more agency and empowerment through this process.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 5:

Other Peoples’ Beliefs:

Sales is an exchange between two parties each getting something they want.
Sales is getting someone to do something they don’t want to do.
Objects to be donated must be whole or fully usable as is in order to be donated.
Projects should be worked on one at a time to focus energy and intention.
High level insults do not carry profanities.
Reinvesting a portion of benefits received through referrals back into the relationships is the human or courteous thing to do.
Walking 35 minutes to dinner will help work up an appetite.
Walking after eating helps regulate blood sugar absorption.
Eating until we are stuffed is living the good life.
If you don’t help someone achieve their greatest success, you are evil.
Challenging someone in public to agree with me makes them feel pressure to agree, especially if I have more experience, wealth, status, etc.
It’s okay to get triggered and act my emotions out towards someone.
Being liked, popular, or good-looking is useless unless you produce some results and/or value.
People who fly are fake traveling.
Traveling with a luggage is simply going to a place that was made for little wheels, not real traveling.
Flying to a place holds no value and is a detriment to
Mentioning a memory 15 years ago and over glorifying it will help to make us close.

Societal Beliefs:
Sales transactions are generally pushy and undesired.
Showing your anger is giving your power away.
Flying is normal and is okay.
Overeating is normal and is a symbol of general well-being.
Wasting food is okay.
People like stuff.

Did you notice any trends? No

How did identifying beliefs feel?

It was freeing. Identifying others’ beliefs meant that I didn’t have to adopt them.

Did you feel like you developed a skill? Not one that I didn’t already have.

How accurate do you think you were? About 90%

Did you feel differently about people when you thought of their beliefs?

Depends. I noticed how strongly people felt convicted of their beliefs. People who seemed emotionally less mature seemed to feel compelled to have others adopt their beliefs or felt strongly about the validity of their beliefs. This made me feel like they were less credible due to the use of high emotions.

Does reading peoples’ beliefs make you think differently about leadership?

Not really. I’ve always felt that people felt strongly of their own beliefs and wanted others to approve of them. That hasn’t really changed from this exercise.

Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life?

Probably all the time – identifying other peoples’ beliefs means that I can cross reference my beliefs and decide whether or not I want to engage in a discussion to level set our beliefs, or see if there even is a need or a point to doing so.

[Olivia Ong]

Olivia’s Belief’s Exercise:

Did you notice any trends or patterns?
I did notice that at times, I would have conflicting beliefs. Most of my beliefs can be categorized into beliefs about responsibility, myself, others, perceptions of others, how I’m perceived by others, abilities, lack of abilities, and how I navigate the world.

Did you notice any unexpected beliefs?
I am pleasantly surprised by how many of my beliefs are positive! And in some cases, I noticed that I have conflicting beliefs – perhaps what ends up causing my deliberation between certain actions or the inability to make a decision.

Did you notice the difference between strategies and beliefs?
I noticed that I often started with strategies and it took me a while to get to the core belief.

How do beliefs work?
Beliefs inform the way we view and interact with the world, people around us, and our environments.

How do beliefs affect your life?
Beliefs help me to navigate what to do, when to do It, how to do it, with what urgency, how well something is done, etc.

Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life?
The next time I’m in conflict (neutral or heated), I can ask myself and others about our beliefs so that we can start with the core differences. So often people believe that their beliefs are correct, when in fact, they are rather subjective. Knowing how each person believes can inform a more productive discussion.

[Olivia Ong]

Inner Monologue Reflection:

Did you notice any trends?

Yes, there appeared to be a lot of negotiation and commentary. It seemed that the most of the calories were spent waffling between decisions and parsing through a flood of thoughts to process high emotion events.

Did you notice common thoughts?

Yes, common thoughts were fears and worries compared to self-soothing thoughts. Negotiating with myself took a lot of time and effort. A common trend was reluctance to honor things that I had set out for myself, or a restraining of my actions, thoughts, and choices from my natural instincts.

How do you think your thoughts compared to others?

I think my thoughts are very similar to others. I think people tend to worry more often than not, and then most of what people worry about ends up not happening. I believe that we naturally judge ourselves and are over self-critical, and we also tend to judge others and what is happening to or around us. I think it’s normal and human nature to make observations or pass judgements because it’s simply how we interpret and interact with our environments.

Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life?

I feel like this exercise is really useful in processing high-emotion events. It serves to allow me to decompress and to process things mentally, verbally, and emotionally. It allows me to document my thoughts and then to observe through a second pass how I’m feeling emotionally. Gaining clarity on what I think about a situation, a person, and then being able to identify and verbalize how I’m feeling gives me a degree of closure about a conversation a situation. It allows me to proverbially ‘dump’ my brain of thoughts that I might have previously or typically ruminated on for days. I guess in some ways this exercise serves as a means to get to personal emotional regulation.

[Olivia Ong]

3 Raisins Exercise Reflection:

I used small chopped up pieces of apple for my ‘raisins’. For the first piece, I visually inspected the fruit and then smelled it. It was a tart smell, but when I popped the fruit in my mouth, I didn’t taste much – it was kind of bland. I noticed that there were more fragments and textures I had to sweep up before moving onto the next piece of fruit. I noticed myself reaching for the second piece of fruit before noting that I had cleared all the fragments of the first piece. This time, I visually inspected size, shape, smell of tartness, and dropped it on my cutting board. I also placed it in the palm of my hand and ran my fingers around the fruit before eating it. This time around, I tasted the tartness and noticed how texture outlived the flavor. I took a longer time with the last piece of fruit, dropping it on the cutting board a few times, tossing it this way and that. I inspected the color difference between the fruit on the inside and the peel of the apple, the pattern of the color on the apple’s skin, and how where the fruit touched the peel, the color varied yet a little bit more. It smelled similar as the other pieces of fruit, tangy with a sweet note. This time, the fruit tasted the best, and the flavor seemed to be more vibrant. Still, the texture and interaction with the fragments seemed to outlast the flavor of the fruit.

Directed reflection questions:
What did you observe about your senses and attention?

As I was going through the exercise and reviewing the senses I could use to observe the fruit, I noticed that systematically going through my senses helped me to more methodically observe the fruit and find more things to notice. Where I placed my attention is where my energy went and focus went – especially going from not tasting the fruit to being able to enjoy the full flavor from a small piece of it.

What did you observe about your ability to focus?

With attention and practice, my ability to focus increased and expanded. I was able to focus wholly on the exercise and not sense the passing of time, even though I had plenty of time. My focus and attention seemed to amplify my senses and heighten my experience of the exercise.

Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life?

I think enjoyment is often clouded by a sense of being rushed in time. Giving pause and taking time to experience and be present seems to add so much more color and detail. First thing that comes to mind is in experiencing food. I do love food, and I also tend to eat quickly. I notice that my quantity and speed of eating are related to feelings of safety and security. It used to be frequent that I would consume so much and so quickly that I would have physical pain and discomfort. An unhappy experience, and yet, a habit I couldn’t conquer. When I remind myself of truths, such as, I’ll always have access to food, or I can stop eating when I am thoroughly enjoying something and craving more rather than needing to feel stuffed to stop, I tend to enjoy my time more. I tend to then eat less, and my feelings of tension fall away. Other things that come to mind are relationships – loved ones, children, etc. So often I listen to respond rather than listen to comprehend. I can definitely do more to understand someone better and be more present.

[Olivia Ong]

Hi Beth,

Thank you for acknowledging the ways we allow ourselves to fall flat on things. Sometimes it simply takes letting go of things we no longer want to pursue. Thank you for engaging 🙂

[Olivia Ong]

Hi Hayden,

Thank you for sharing! You can also call action into your life by channeling the feeling ahead as well. It takes intention and imagination though.

Yes! Keep on shining! 🙂

[Olivia Ong]

Personal Essay

Leading is something that I often associate with the practice of success – going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm (according to Winston Churchill) It’s way too easy and way too much of a conditioning or programming to fall into the victim mentality and channel the story of why I couldn’t accomplish or pursue something that I wanted to do. I give myself many excuses and many outs and sometimes even sabotage my own efforts. This is done so that I can fall back on the narrative that I truly could have, if only I gave my full effort. I don’t do this consciously, and then I fall victim to being impacted by the same experiences I keep attracting and recreating in my life.

In order to create the life we want, we’ll need to signal the gene ahead of the environment, or rather, the feeling ahead of the experience. I have found this week that I have found an avenue to do so – meditation. It’s something I’ve dabbled in off and on and never really had much of a conviction about until I saw data supporting the impacts of meditation. It starts with being aware of the old thoughts I don’t want to have anymore. Then I need to create the visual life and feelings I will want to have when I am my ideal self. Lastly, I need to stay conscious of the new mindset constantly.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

I love Williamson’s empowerment of the self to shine and lean into our power. I’ve feared coming across as arrogant or simply never was taught to toot my own horn. In fact, I’ve been conditioned to believe that it is boastful. Looking at social situations, it’s so common to commiserate with others. I am curious to see who will celebrate my successes and my positive pursuits with me. Who fans the flame of my light, and who is afraid of it. This is one way that I have started to navigate leading myself through relationships in my circle. My hope is that through learning to lead myself, I can inspire others to do the same. To be intentional, to create a life they love.

[Olivia Ong]

Sidcha

I’m doing a sidcha in meditation. I will do one+ meditation >= 5 min per day. This is the pinky lift level. However, coming from a transformational workshop this week, I’ve found the personal benefits of meditating to be mind-blowing-ly amazing. I’ve incorporated meditations on and off for a while now, and now I finally have a super robust why – the science – and much more of the how.

[Olivia Ong]

Update:

This week I didn’t talk to anyone. Life has been wild.

Reflection:
We’ve been talking a lot about how initiative helps people to figure out what matters the most to them. This week, I was juggling a series of urgent and important client meetings and also tried to finish a few things with my job. I ended up reaching out to nobody and talking to nobody about my project. What that tells me is that in the larger scope of things, it’s not the priority in my life, even if it is meaningful to me personally. It means that perhaps it is meaningful, when I have extra time and bandwidth. Soon, as I shift my career focus away from tech and into personal finance, I am curious how it will compare then. I thought about several people I could reach out to and still didn’t as I woke up every day at 5:30am and went to bed exhausted between 11pm and 1am. I’m still not quite out of the woods just yet, but we shall see. More on this later as I follow up on this.

[Olivia Ong]

Hi Hayden!

I resonate a lot with your desire for independence. Alongside it is a desire for authenticity and resonance. I also relate to your peak/plateau journey as I myself was super high energy the first 4-5 exercises and struggled greatly with the rest, often completing and posting well beyond the deadline of 24hrs before class, very different from how I approached the first few. All that to say it’s so neat to hear how much you’ve learned about yourself and also how much agency you’ve gained in life. Here’s to seeing where your adventures take you and the camaraderie of going through this process together!

Cheers,
Olivia

[Author]

Posts