____T.H.E. .P.A.S.S.

____Three Days' Rot

Rotten, decayed and manifested by worms of all sorts. That is me. Wrong move to take three days leave in a row. So out-of-sorts and mentally tired. Luckily today is the last day of the three days' rest.

Perhaps the Singaporean mind has evolved too much from the rest of the world. We like to indulge in mindless "doing something". It is very difficult for us to stop and take a rest. Not to mention sit down and think. I look at some of my friends' lives. Too filled with activities, too filled with crests from an action-packed living, such that it has become a plateau of mindless "doing something".

Yet, it is the kind of live that I would pursue provided I get away from this permanent lethargy. At least, it is better than sitting in front of the computer all day long finding things in it to do. Maybe it is a good way to get some rest from exercise as I realised that I have been involved in too much running and football that injuries have taken their toll. Mentally, it may not be the best thing to do, but physically, I probably need it. The feeling I am going through now would likely be the feeling a professional footballer would go through if he was sidelined due to injury.
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Have started on this book by Dr Charles E. Watson titled "What smart people do when dumb things happen at work". I have only gone into the introduction and I realised that maybe my thinking have been wrong all the while. It is a thinking related to the success of a person. While it is a personal thinking, I feel that it represents the typical Singaporean's thinking, because, this kind of thinking is imprinted in me by what I see, hear and learn from living in Singapore.

The book promises tips on coping with problems in work that hinder the route to success. The author has interviewed and conversed with many CEOs of large American firms, including Ford, HP, blah blah... In the introduction, he offered 13 gems of wisdom - 13 gems characterising the behavior of "smart people". Even though the 13 gems are simple and probably the layman like everyone else would know, it is a relieve to have them layed down and elaborated. People of lesser patience would have shut and thrown the book with disgust before reading until the final gem, thinking "I already knew all these, why is the book still telling me what I already know?"

As the author elaborated the 13 gems, "success" is a word commonly brought up, but while many of us related it to the amount of money earned and the rank of authority in a company, the author prefers to relate success to the amount of satisfaction a job gives to an individual. This is where I feel that most of the Singaporeans have their thinking wrong.

To them, success is all about making money. To me, it was the same too. However, I must thank the author for enlightening me. To achieve success, is to believe in what you do in your job and to be proud of it. I read in the papers yesterday that MediaCorp actor Chen Hanwei may leave the company and join MediaWorks. The reason he gave was "If you work in an environment without passion, you'd feel like you're just handing in your homework when you work." I begin to understand his idea of success too - to gain satisfaction from a job.

Though it is difficult to change a thinking overnight, I will try to remind myself in future that I must not be a person who only pursue monetary success. Only through pursuing job satisfaction would others appreciating you. Only then, would a life be as fulfilling as desired.

Currently Feeling Like: Ronaldo (Real Madrid) sidelined with injury.

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