I celebrated my 24th birthday recently…it’s strange to think I’m now in my mid-twenties and so wanted to reflect on the past few years.
Becoming independent
This past year has been a pretty unique one as it’s the first time I’ve not been a full-time student. My biggest goal during college was to be independent on my own terms after graduation — something I’ve felt strongly about for a long time. Looking back, I think this came about for two reasons.
The first reason is how important I feel it is to be independent. A key concept in The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People (one of my favorite books) is “The Maturity Continuum”. The idea here is simple — everybody starts off dependent on others, but as we grow, we become more independent by maturing in a few key areas (physically, mentally, emotionally and financially).
During the end of my high school and college years, the focus was to become financially independent. There’s a Chinese saying: “family wealth never passes the third generation”; the idea is the first generation earns the wealth, the second generation maintains the wealth and the third generation loses the wealth.
I grew up as a privileged third-generation member in my family and the idea that I would become somebody who couldn’t provide for himself and actively relied solely on my family horrified me. To think, after everything I’ve received (good education, a safe environment and caring mentorship) that I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself? I don’t think I could live with the shame.
It was because I felt this way that even back in high school I chose to stay in Hong Kong to grow Altanx instead of having a traditional tertiary education. Every good businessman knows that primary motivation for any business should be “how can I provide value for my potential customer?”, but for me, the motivation was personal and selfish. I just wanted to make a good amount of money so I could be financially independent…perhaps that makes me a bad businessman, but that’s the truth.
Living on my own terms
Yet even as I wanted to mature from being dependent to becoming independent — I couldn’t shake the feeling that independence wasn’t enough.
Talking to a lot of older friends and cousins, I could see they had the same desire. They also wanted to prove themselves worthy of the privilege they were given, and did so by studying hard at excellent colleges, working long hours at prestigious and financially rewarding jobs or even attaining MBAs and PHds.
I admire each of them for their determination and willingness to prove themselves in the areas that they chose, but I couldn’t imagine living a similar life. Doing work that I didn’t enjoy was a daunting prospect than even attaining financial independence didn’t seem to justify. Moreover, trading my hours for my employer’s money didn’t seem like independence; it seemed more like transferring financial dependence from my parents to my employer.
Beyond just being financially independent though, I wanted to live a good life. I wanted the time and resources to pursue projects like learning French and living abroad. I wanted the space to be present when I’m with people who I care about. Essentially, I wanted to ability to say no to anything I didn’t want to do or believe in so that I could live a truly proactive life.
Knowing all this, I realized that while I wanted financial independence, it also had to be done in a way that creates freedom for myself so I that I would always have the resources pursue higher leverage activities and projects. In that sense I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work on Altanx and I’d Hike That. Both businesses provided a semi-passive income and proved to me that it was possible to separate my working hours from my income.
The key lesson that I learned here is how important it is to only work on things that can continue to provide. Whether the projects were professional like Altanx and I’d Hike That or personal like learning French or building muscle, each of these endeavors provided me with benefits that lasted years and I’ve found is a key ingredient to developing independence.
Moving beyond independence
Living on Guam helped me a lot with developing independence. Like young people who move away from home during college, going into a new environment with no friends and family allowed me to mature. In terms of developing mental and emotional independence, I learned to make my own decisions and accept the consequences for them, whether personal or professional. In terms of physical independence, I developed routines to exercise more and eat better. In terms of financial independence, I accounted for my own income and spending. All in all, I appreciate the time I spent in Guam enormously and look back on it quite fondly.
However, there were costs to being on Guam. For me, living there was like living in a vacuum — I could make my own decisions and become mature but it also meant I was disconnected from others; be it family, friends or the larger world. When I moved to Guam, I knew I was isolating myself and towards the end of my time in Guam, people who cared about me pressed hard about this issue.
Truth is, I knew what I was doing to myself. I desired the space necessary to develop an identity and Guam provided a great opportunity to do so. At the same time though…I knew it couldn’t last forever. Going back to The Seven Habits, the book isn’t about going from dependence to independence, but instead about understanding how “all of nature is interdependent” and the role we as individuals play in the grander scheme of things. I know that to be a successful person, two things are required: to be somebody who can contribute and to have others to contribute to. Developing independence helped me become somebody who could contribute, but to truly become successful, I would need to contribute more to others — something that I could only do in a limited sense on Guam.
The journey to interdependency
Coming back to Hong Kong, I was determined to develop an interdependent mindset — to think less about what “I” can do, and think more about what “we” can do together. Truth is though, I’ve struggled at this. I’m inherently private, selfish and the most introverted person that I know. While it’s not an excuse, it does mean that social activities, networking and keeping in touch with others aren’t things that come naturally to me and, so I tend to avoid them.
This isn’t to say that things went terribly this year, on the contrary there are many things that I’m grateful for — joining a great football team, meeting new friends who share similar values and perhaps most of all, building a relationship with a girl who I admire and respect.
What I want to say though, is I know deep down my efforts at developing a truly interdependent mindset in the past year have only been half-hearted. I’ve tried to be more outgoing and open-minded, but I routinely catch myself thinking only of myself rather than of how I can help others succeed.
I know this change can’t happen overnight. It took years to go from dependency to independency and even on that count I’m sure that I’m still dependent in many areas that I don’t want to admit to myself.
With that said, this is something that I’m determined to be better at, whether it takes me a year or ten. I will become a more generous and considerate person. I will share more meaningfully and deeply with others. I will think more about how we can achieve something together, rather than just what I can do by myself.
If you’ve read this far, please know that I appreciate the time you took to read this. Whatever role I’ve played in your life or you in mine, thank you for being the awesome person that you are. If there’s anything I can do to thank you, whether it’s a coffee or a favor, let me know and I’ll do my best to help.
I promise.