I’ve always thought that 25 was a special age.
It represents the first quarter of life — the year that I would have a defined direction in life. While not everything is 100% certain, I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had this year because they’ve helped clarify what I want out of life, provided me with the means to achieve those goals and most importantly, the hunger and desire to pursue them.
The years between 21–24 years old were difficult. It’s not that I had a hard life, I didn’t. But I wasn’t sure what I wanted and that led to years of ambiguity and uncertainty. I had a good life living in Hong Kong, but I wasn’t satisfied with what I had and at the same time was scared to give it up.
In a way, that sums up the past 12 months. Learning to define what a great life meant to me and developing the maturity necessary to let go of “good” to seek “great”.
For this year’s post, instead of going chronologically, I want to share what’s happened in my life according to the six values that I live by. There’s still a long way to go, but I feel as though these past 12 months represents something of a breakout year for me, and so am excited for what’s to come.
Growth
If there’s one thing I desire above all else, it’s growth. I love the idea of progress and thrive on seeing things improve week after week, or fail that, nonstop trying to figure out what’s stopping the progress.
But growth requires two things: a vision for what the end looks like as well as the discipline to get there. Discipline as always been a lesser issue for me, but in December of last year, I wasn’t sure of what I wanted life to look like. So, I went through the “Funeral Exercise” described in one of my favorite books, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and going through the exercise again for the first time in years helped to clarify what I wanted my life to be like.
The premise of the exercise is simple — imagine you’re attending your own funeral and listening to loved ones speak about you. What do you want to hear? For me it came down to six areas of values:
· Growth — to value the opportunity to expand in all areas of my life and reach my full potential by living a value aligned life.
· Wellbeing — to prioritize wellness and create a foundation so that I can be my best self every day.
· Autonomy — to be financially and professionally independent through engaging and meaningful work.
· Connection — To value the people in my life and the opportunity to create win-win relationships.
· Breadth — to experience life broadly and appreciate our world deeply.
· Legacy — To share my stories in the hope of inspiring others to do their best.
Having defined these six areas, I set long term goals with quarterly objectives that correspond to each value and write weekly reviews to ensure that I’m living a life aligned to my values and (ideally) making progress.
Figuring all this out and doing weekly reviews took a lot of time and effort (here’s a more detailed explanation of how this is done) — but it was the best investment that I’ve made all year. Knowing what I want to achieve every quarter and week means my work is aligned and allows me to say no to opportunities that are only interesting rather than important.
There are countless distractions out there and the reality is that we all have limitations, so we must acknowledge we just can’t do or have it all. Perhaps Greg McKeown said it best with this quote in his book Essentialism, “If you don’t prioritize your own life, someone else will.” By taking responsibility for what I want my future to look like and intentionally working towards it, my hope is in the long run I’ll have minimal regret and resentment.
Wellbeing
One of the more painful aspects of planning your life in the future is that you might realize your current life isn’t taking you where you want to go…and that’s what happened to me as I set my goals for 2018 and beyond.
As I wrote more and more things down, it became clear that what I was working on at the time wasn’t in long with my long-term goals. More urgently, it didn’t make sense to be in Hong Kong. I wanted to learn more languages, be more financially responsible and surround myself with people working on similar projects. Staying in Hong Kong helped me with none of those aims.
With that said, I did nothing about it in the first half of the year. I told myself that all those things could wait for another year or two. I talked myself into believing that I could still work towards those goals in Hong Kong. In effect, I lied to myself because I feared what might happened if I went after my goals. I was scared of the tough conversations that I had to have with loved ones. I was worried about what would happen if things didn’t work out. I dreaded the idea that I might be labeled a failure for trying something new and not succeeding.
Yet at the end of it all, I decided to face a few of these fears do all the above things. Reading The Subtle Art and going through Russ Perry’s EXPAND02 program showed me the importance of living my truth every day. Faced with a choice of short term distress of confrontation or the long term regret and resentment of not living a value aligned life — there really was no choice at all.
I loved this quote from The Subtle Art,
“The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance”
While I hope I generated that trust and respect in others, I think in terms of emotional wellbeing, my biggest area of growth was the increased trust and respect I had in myself. Self-respect (and as a natural extension, self-esteem) has never been my strongest suit, but I think it’s moments and decisions like these that can help me grow in my emotional intelligence and capacity.
Breadth
Having made the decision to leave Hong Kong, the first consequence was I needed to figure out where to go. I knew I’d likely be living a nomadic life for the rest of my twenties. For years now, I’ve wanted to spend at least one year in France and another in Japan, but neither option seemed the right fit at the time. I wanted to move to a city where I have a good standard of living while still saving money and could easily meet other digital nomads to make friends. Chiang Mai quickly stood out as the best option.
Four months into moving down here, I’m glad I did. While it’s not perfect, the city has proved to be a great place to meet a lot of people who share similar values relatively quickly and allowed me to do things that were previously too expensive or time consuming like taking salsa classes and learning Japanese. Perhaps my favorite thing about Chiang Mai is the flexibility it offers. Since so much is happening every day but most people are also working on their own projects, it was easy to find a balance between work, social and fun activities.
With that said, the flexibility that this lifestyle provides has its drawbacks. A big lesson that I’ve learned this year is that I can’t run away from myself. Whether I’m in Hong Kong or Chiang Mai, there will always be a lot of things that don’t change. I still like going to cafes in the morning, working at home in the afternoon and being at home by 11. Having a lot of flexibility is great, but it also means I can avoid all the things that I don’t particularly enjoy (or am too lazy to do) yet are beneficial like going to larger social events or taking advantage of the beautiful nature around Chiang Mai.
All in all, in terms of experiencing and appreciating the world more broadly and deeply, I think especially the past four months have seen a good amount of growth. Growing up in a traditional Chinese household meant there was a lot of focus on ensuring security in the future work wise and less emphasis on the parts of life that give it flavor. While I’m grateful that my parents have engrained a deep sense of work and financial responsibility in me, I’m also glad to have the opportunity to step out of my comfort zones by living in different places and trying new things.
I loved this one section from Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life,
“New genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain…you have to say something, go somewhere and do things to turn these on…if not you remain incomplete and life is too hard for anyone to incomplete.”
My hope is by continuously putting myself in new environments and trying new things that I believe are beneficial to me, that as Peterson mentions above, I’ll keep getting closer to “completing”.
Connection
The second consequence of leaving Hong Kong and moving to Chiang Mai was the impact it had on my relationships. It’s not easy telling close friends and family that it’s time to leave, especially as I don’t know when or if we’ll ever live in the same place again. With that said, the hardest part of that was going through a breakup. It’s never easy to acknowledge when each party wants different things, but at that point it’s for the best that each person goes his and her separate way and hopefully get what each wants. Given that, I wish her all the best.
One reason that moving down to Chiang Mai went so smoothly though was joining the DC, a location independent entrepreneur community. While I prefer working remotely and alone, there’s something to be said about talking with others who have similar values and mindset about how we want our lives to be. In the past I didn’t really have people to talk about work things like “how to hire employees” or even personal things like “where’s the best place for first time digital nomads?” so just being able to ask these questions has made my life so much better. In his book Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi writes, “real networking was about finding ways to make other people more successful.” Because of the DC, I believe this now and hope that I can contribute as much to others there as they’ve contributed to me.
Moving down to Chiang Mai has also been an eye-opening experience in terms of the people who I’ve met. I’ll be the first to admit a lot of this is my own fault but living in Guam and Hong Kong before meant most people I met came from similar backgrounds. Living in Chiang Mai means that I get to meet people from all over and it’s crazy to think how diverse the world is. By far the three people who I’ll remember most about during my time in Chiang Mai are Mel, Cal and Ashley. Whether it was playing board games or traveling together, I easily had the most fun when the four of us were together and am grateful that we had the chance to be chill together. Perhaps what was most pleasantly surprising is how well things are going with Ash. Before moving down to Chiang Mai, I thought there wouldn’t be much hope dating wise since everybody’s on the move, but the last couple of months have undoubtedly been some of the happiest of my life and a big part of that is because of her. Like any relationship, there’ll be a lot of challenges ahead, but I look forward to facing them together.
At the same time there are a lot of challenges in terms of connecting with others as a nomad. As of right now I’ve only got another ~6 weeks before I’ll be leaving Chiang Mai and so it’s difficult to find the motivation to meet new people. Moreover, it sucks that people come in and out, meaning there’s less time to solidify a friendship. While I’m glad for the opportunity to move around and meet others, living like this has also made me appreciate the DC and my friends back at home more given I’m significantly more likely to hang out with them again over the years.
Given it’s not natural to me, I’m proud of the effort I’ve made by putting myself out there more and making new friends. But there are still so many ways in this area, and so looking forward to making it happen over the next 12 months!
Autonomy
The largest consequence of leaving Hong Kong in terms of work and autonomy meant I needed to reconsider my work. When I lived in Hong Kong, I was running Facebook ads for a few local businesses in Hong Kong and while it was reasonably good money for few hours, I didn’t like it since it didn’t feel like I was building an asset or making a meaningful contribution. Moreover, one of my goals before settling down long term was to build a seven-figure remote company both for the experience of leading that organization and doing things like living in Japan and France. Given both factors, I’m grateful that Video Husky happened.
The company started when I needed to get a video Facebook ad made for a client, but fast forward 9 months, we’ve got a team of 14 and have worked with 50+ customers. While growth hasn’t been as fast as I’ve liked (when is it?), I’m proud of how far we’ve come along. Between managing a remote team with Video Husky and hiring my first full time employee with Altanx, in terms of work and autonomy, the area I’ve grown the most is as being a leader. I’ve always been more of a solo worker, so managing expectations, motivating employees and setting directions for others has been a new experience for me…but one I love. As mentioned earlier, I seek growth above all and having a team that accounts for my weaknesses while magnifying my strengths allows us to move so much faster. Without Marilou at Altanx plus Ken, Paul and the team at Video Husky, I wouldn’t have had all these experiences, so I thank them.
A second consequence of leaving Hong Kong was I was forced to organize my finances. Personal finances are a bit tricky for business owners because it can be hard to separate what belongs to the business vs what belongs to you. But by reading books like Millionaire Next Door, Profit First and The Automatic Millionaire, I pieced together a rough system that allows me to spend without too much thinking while also saving a bit of money every month. Ultimately the point of “autonomy” is to have the freedom to do things which require organizing both my time and money. Since I didn’t take responsibility for my finances while living in Hong Kong, I burned through a part of my savings and so by putting together this system, I hope I don’t make the mistake again.
But the biggest area of growth in terms of autonomy was a change in perspective. I used to be somebody who identified so much with my work and whenever something threatened my work, I felt threatened and reacted poorly. Working with coaches like Alex McClafferty and Russ Perry, as well as getting to know higher level entrepreneurs in the DC, meant that I’ve slowly begun letting that belief the belief that “work comes first” go. All the people and entrepreneurs who I admire have so much more going for them than just work. They write, they volunteer, they learn, and they contribute in ways that go so far beyond the difference they make at work. They leverage their hard-earned skills and resources from the companies they built and making an impact the world, rather than sacrificing their world to earn more…
And that’s the kind of entrepreneur I want to be.
Legacy
As a kid, I loved hearing stories where some underestimated kid like Harry Potter overcame his own shortcomings and grew into the hero that his story needed him to be. Growing up, the stories changed but the premise stayed the same. Whether it was reading rag-to-riches stories about online entrepreneurs or stereotype breaking nomads, these stories made me believe that I could achieve some of my dreams and inspired me to work towards them.
I’d love to impact others in a similar manner one day, but that means I need to have experiences worth sharing and the ability to share them. I can’t rush the experiences, but I could improve my ability to share these stories by becoming a better writer and speaker. The ability to communicate, whether written or spoken, is criminally underrated. Capturing others’ attention, tugging on their emotions and making them see things in a new light, these are all things that good storytellers can do, and I know that I’m far from that.
I decided the best way to improve my communication skills at this point was just through sheer quantity. That meant writing 200+ answers on Quora and speaking eight times in the past year. There were a lot of cool benefits to these two projects. People approached me to talk instead of the other way around, I’ve gotten over 500k views on my written work and writing with an audience in mind improved my thinking because it me consider the opposite party, something I rarely used to do.
Most importantly though, I proved to myself that writing especially is something that I valued. Content creators like Nicolas Cole and Nat Eliason who consistently write quality articles every week amaze me, and I aspire to have the level of writing and impact that they have. Writing this many Quora answers has made me believe more in myself and hopefully within the next year or two I’ll start by own blog and take that first step in creating a long term legacy.
Conclusion
Growth matters.
The world is changing and so we all have a choice: either we be proactive about those changes by growing or we stay reactive and be forced to change.
It’s been a crazy year with a ton of ups and downs, but I’m proud of the growth that has happened because for the most part it has enabled me to be proactive about my life.
The reality is everybody must face tough choices. Whether it’s personally, professionally or relationships, every day we make decisions that either take us closer or further from our own full potential.
By growing intentionally every year, my hope is that I’ll continue to be strong enough to make the decisions that pushes me towards the best version of myself rather than away from it…
And if not, then I hope as somebody who has cared enough to read this, call me out on it — I’ll always appreciate that.