I grew up Asian of a Chinese Indonesian origin from a middle-class family in Indonesia. My late father was a doctor and he wished that my sister or I continued his profession to be a doctor or at least to be a pharmacist.
By the time I went to senior high school, I changed my plan to be an engineer. I always admired my uncle, my father’s brother who was smart and who was an engineer. So, from a young age, I had a tendency to decide my own path, to follow my interest instead of my parents’ advice.
There has been a tradition in Asia that parents decide on children’s future career and surprisingly, it still prevails in this information age. Academic excellence is seen as a lottery ticket to a bright future. Parents push their children to study harder and harder.
So, after working a few years in a manufacturing company, I quit my job because I moved to Malaysia. During the time of raising my children, I’ve explored all kinds of opportunities and ventures to work from home and searched for my passion.
Many years later after having ups and downs in a new country, I began to discover my passion.
I can now say that I enjoy coaching and learning personal development. And I like Internet too.
I have coach certification and I do work for small business owners who need my help in setting up their business and marketing online.
The benefits of being a coach are enormous. I receive coaching all the year and I give my coaching as well in coaching circles. There are webinars for professional development too. I have clients who pay me for coaching sessions. I guess not many people are open for coaching yet. Coaching is still geared towards people in high positions such as CEOs or senior executives.
And when my daughters, Andrea and Aimee were about to decide their future career path, I advised them to follow their passion for their future careers, and not based on the job trends.
Passion is the bridge between our life and our work. If we are happy with what we do, we give our best and we have a tendency to have a happy life.
Since then, they began to nurture their passion in art and technology.
I wasn’t brought up with motivation. We grew up following rules and advice from parents and grown-ups. Motivation was never heard in the 90s. But for the last 8 years, I hear more and more about motivation and personal development. At school, I saw all kinds of posters with motivational quotes pasted on the windows and in the classrooms.
So recently, I had a conversation with a friend if passion really matters. She started wondering how to choose between a job based on her passion and joining an opportunity which seemed to generate income bigger than her work.
“Passion” is what your heart tells you, what you enjoy and what makes you happy. If you picture yourself to be working with joy then the work will bring you UP as a person.
And then imagine yourself looking at a specific destination with a beautiful vision, and to your surprise, you realize that “I’m not only making myself happy, I’m making people around me happy too”
And that was the aha moment. It isn’t the things you do that are important, it is the impact that you make.
Could you tell what will be your choice: to develop your passion or to take a shortcut to the opportunity which you are yet unsure of?
So, I had experimented in the past. I had used a few opportunities including those in network marketing.
I learnt my lesson that doing something outside my passion was not sustainable. I also realized I was building someone else’s company. And I started seeing myself with a renewed sense of purpose – not as someone who’s easily influenced by the promise of quick rewards, but as someone who is ready to start the journey with passion and a new purpose.
When I was growing up, life ended for most people in their 70s. People are living far longer now, and for the first time in human history, it’s common for people at any age to reinvent their career. I’m 50, and with a bit of luck, I’ve got 30 or 40 more years ahead of me.
Doing something more meaningful and sharing my knowledge with the world is my new goal.
And I hope that generation X and baby boomers are having a perfect chance to enter this next stage of their lives. Turns out to be just what we are looking for: passion makes life more meaningful and opens the door to whatever comes next.