SEEDS

Speech Delivered By Jacqueline Wong at Anderson Junior College| Graduating Class of 2009

It gives me great joy and honour to be able to address all of you today.

Making Choices. 20 years ago, when I stepped out of these school gates, I knew that my life will be changed forever — it was a feeling of excitement about the unknown, and a sense that I will be entering into a whole new world, one where I will have to learn to make even more choices for myself.

Leaving JC was to me also a symbol of leaving a very safe haven that I have come to rely on so much — the safety that there will be a “form teacher” that I can turn to for advice, school uniforms that protected me from fashion embarrassments (I am sure we all know what that is like on bad days), and the well-defined subjects where I was confident of doing well as long as I put in my share of hard work. Leaving JC to me was also leaving behind the comfort zone of a school.

Being 18 signifies a newfound sense of freedom — it means being able to choose the course of our studies, our vocation, and potentially our life partners. It was mind-boggling and at the same time, very liberating for the younger me. The world was big and I was small.

What all these meant for me was not entirely clear till I realized, on hindsight, that every step and every choice I made had paved the way for the next.

Our Daily Life is a Classroom. Dan Millman, in his book Living on Purpose wrote that “I believe that our time on earth is a school and our daily life is a classroom. Every experience helps us to expand our awareness about the world, and most importantly about ourselves. Learning about the world help us succeed, learning about ourselves help us to evolve. Our challenges are all part of the curriculum, and daily life teaches us all we need to know for the next step in our journey.”

I really resonate with that, because for the past 20 years, my lessons came in big and small packages, and my teachers came in many forms — sometimes in the least expected places. The lessons were always there, and it was up to me to learn them or not. For example, one time it came in the form of the surgeon who had my life in his hands — he taught me what it meant to surrender and trust God; another time, it was a free spirited child who genuinely believe that I can still be anyone I want to be when I “grew up” — that was my son; and another time, it was witnessing the CEO of a large organization apologising to his team that he was truly sorry he had not listened well to them — an act of vulnerability and humanity that you don’t see everyday in a corporate world. From him, I learnt the value and transformational power of personal humility.

Some of the lessons were deliberate ones, like when I decided to take up a pursue a course of study or another. Other times it was more serendipitous — life had its lessons planned out for me. I believe I have lived a truly blessed life thus far — I have a loving husband, two lovely children, a thriving business, and almost four decades of life that I look forward to celebrating in a couple of years’ time. Yet, I feel I have so much more to learn and experience, so much more room to grow. To me, life is about embracing the unknown — as someone once said “rather than wait for the storm to pass, it is better to learn to dance in the rain.”

The SEEDS of Success. I will attempt to distill some of these nuggets I have discovered in my own life, with the hope that they might be helpful for you in your own journey. I hope some of these ideas stick will with you, and perhaps at the right time, some of these may come back to you as timely reminders.

I call these the SEEDS of success — and as the term implies, it requires daily nurturing to turn into trees that bear fruits. SEEDSTM in the Sustainability Institute is an acronym which stands for: Social and Emotional Intelligence, Energy Management, Development orientation and Social Responsibility.

S & E. Social and Emotional Intelligence — is about having a sense of self-awareness — of our own strengths and weaknesses, our interests and aspirations. It is also about having a strong sense of positive self-regard, so much so that it becomes natural for us to also treat others with the same sense of positive regard. We now have data to show the valedictorians of any graduating cohort are not necessarily going to turn out to be the most successful people — in the sense of living a most happy and fulfilled life — research from Yale and Harvard show that young professionals who have stronger levels of Social and Emotional Intelligence than their counter parts are given more career opportunities, land up with better life partners and are likely to raise better children.

So it seems that a higher level of emotional and social intelligence under-girds the ability to lead fulfilling careers and fulfilling lives. This is also consistent with my own observations over my career, over and over again, whether in the government sector or private sector, when it came to choosing the top leadership positions, companies not only wanted someone who was smart, but also a genuine human being, whom they would like to work for.

Unfortunately, attending a course on “How to Win Friends and Influence People” alone was not going to cut it, research done by people like Malcolm Gladwell showed that people know instantly if we are sincere within the blink of an eye, within the first few seconds of a handshake. It is an instinct that we have developed from many years of observing people. So not only do we need to be interpersonally savvy, it had to come from the heart.

E & D. Energy Management and Development. Secondly, I want to talk about E & D, — Energy Management and Development. As life got busier for me, it became a constant juggling of many demands. In the first few years of my consulting business, I found hardly anytime for myself, it was easy and tempting to fill every slot with potential engagements and opportunities. I was leaving the house before my children were up and coming home when they are about to go to bed. It was folly for me, and my health took a turn for the worse, not only was I spotting a bad gastric problem, I was ridden with guilt, as I had not spent enough time with my family and my kids. I realized something was truly wrong when I would return home, frustrated and drained. That made whatever little time I had with my family equally insufferable. I decided that it was not the way to live.

At that time, I was doing a lot of work and research on coaching, and I came across a body of work by James Loehr and Tony Schwartz. They wrote the HBR article the Corporate Athlete and later Schwartz wrote “Managing your Energy not your Time”. He wrote that time is a finite resource, while energy is quite a different story. Those of you who study physics know that energy is defined as the capacity to get work done — and it is sustained by the four wellsprings or resources of the body, emotions, mind and spirit. Each of these wellsprings can be expanded and regularly renewed through scheduled practices, or rituals.

For example, I found that the simple act of sleeping earlier and waking up earlier every day gave me exponentially more energy for getting things done in the day. Eating breakfast and smaller meals throughout the day was better than having just two heavy meals. It was not about resilience, but more about rituals.

Other than physical energy, it is also about caring for yourself emotionally, or having a positive outlook to life. Now I make it a point to care for myself — for example, I would make a date with myself at least once a month in my calendar so that I can just curl up on my favourite couch with a novel and a nice cup of tea, or to take a walk in the gardens, paint a picture when I get my day off — do things to slow down and allow me to truly savour my “me” time.

One of the rituals that I have learnt is to start the day by thinking about the people I am going to meet — the intentions I have for them and for our time together, just like this morning with all of you here, and the other is to end the day by giving thanks for the things and people I am grateful for before I go to bed. Each of these gave me a chance to connect with my higher self, and reminded me that I am truly blessed, and to be able to say “I did my best today” was just as important as telling those whom I love that I was grateful for them in my life.

Taking care of the mind is about understanding what leads to peak mental performance and a perhaps a bit of knowledge on how our brains work. I finally realized, late in my honours year in undergrad school that that scoring As comes from taking timed, ritualized breaks from my study routine! I wished I knew that earlier because I would have mugged less and lived more! When studying for a paper, I would take walks from the library to the canteen every 90 to 120 minutes, and would almost never go beyond 2 hours of concentrated studying at a time.

The same goes for my workshops now, I schedule a break for my participants every 90 to 120 minutes, because I know that physiologically, the mind needs a renewal break regularly in order to be at its peak. No sense going against nature! When studying top athletes, James Loehr found that the top tennis players were able to drop their heart rates by as much as 15% in between points during a game, so that they could recover and constantly be at their peak when they are in the game. That was remarkable. Top sportsman also knew how to manage their top mental form, by focusing on the inner game, rather than the outer game, and they used positive visualization as a way to help them entrain their minds to focus on the optimal state, rather than to worry about what their opponents are going to do or who they are matched against that day.

All of us have also experienced the sudden Eureka moment or breakthrough when we are taking a shower, taking a walk or just resting — simply because our right hemisphere of our brain is given a chance to work. So remember — during your A-level papers, when you find yourself stuck on a really tricky exam question, start to take three deep breaths, visualize a beautiful meadow of flowers and attempt the question again — new insights may emerge!

Finally, the spiritual resource or spiritual wellspring is about learning to live a meaningful life. Martin Seligman talked about three kinds of happiness in his positive psychology research. The first kind of happiness comes from living a pleasurable life. It is about seeking wealth, material or physical indulgence, things that give pleasure so to speak, but alas, these tend to be the most short-lived. The second kind of happiness comes from living an engaged life — where we feel that we are able to apply our gifts and talents to the fullest potential, where we are in our best game so to speak. People who live engaged lives may or may not look like they are happy on the outside, but they would report a generally high level of life satisfaction because they are in what we call a state of “Flow”. This would last so long as they have their favourite job or something they love to do. The third kind of happiness, one that is most lasting and sustainable is to live the meaningful life — a life that is dedicated to a higher purpose for themselves and the people around them, a life lived with strong social conscience.

S. Social Responsibility. In AJC, we simply refer to it as Non-Mihi Solum — Not for Myself Alone.

This motto was chosen by the founders of our school, the college believes that Singapore will develop into a nation of excellence if each person regards it as his duty to reach his full potential, not only for himself, but for others as well. It is in dedicating our lives to caring for the well-being of others, for the community and the planet, that we find true meaning in life.

It was interesting as I recalled sharing with Mrs Tay Cheng Fun a few years ago, that it took me many years before I realized how deep that motto was etched in my mind, and my heart. As steady as the “yellow flame of light” burned, I found myself dedicating everyday to helping people and organizations find their meaning and purpose now — I feel truly lucky to have found a vocation that is not just a means of living for me, but also meaningful way to live.

I believe the path of true joy involves valuing yourself and monitoring where you put your time, doing what will bring you and the people receiving your work, the highest good. If every single person spent time only where he accomplished the greatest good for himself and the person he was with, I believe the world would change in a day. If something is not of the highest good for yourself, it is probably also not be for the highest good of the planet or others also.

Finally, I want to share a quote by Rabbi Hillei that resonates deeply with the motto of Non-Mihi Solum — it says:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?”

I wish you all the best life!

The author is the founding director of Sequoia Group.

Contact: jacqueline.wong@sequoia.com.sg