Is Win-Win Always Possible?

Hello!

This habit (I believe it's the fifth) has its roots in an abundance mentality (as opposed to the scarcity mentality), which means believing that there is enough to go round for everybody to get what they want, and it isn't always that if you get what you want, I will lose, or vice versa.

Now I must say having been schooled in the Singapore education system, which tends to focus on getting good grades, the win-lose mentality is pretty ingrained in me.  I.e. there can only be one top scorer in the class, and if I help you do well, you will do better than me and I will no longer be number one.  Hence, for the extremely kiasu among us (guilty as charged for my earlier school years - thankfully I changed quite a bit after I became a Christian), the idea of helping others succeed, get what they want, is pretty alien, as it is usually all about me, me, me.  And the idea that somehow, there are limited "goodies" in this world (e.g. wealth, coveted positions, power, even eligible partners), and we are all in a competition against one another to get those goodies, also seems like an accurate reflection of reality.  I suppose this could thus be pretty much the mindset of many people.

However, to practice this habit well, requires actually understanding many perspectives (that's where the habit of seeking to first understand comes in), cos actually, we may find that what we perceived as a "lose" for us, may actually not be so, or can be avoided through an ingenious new solution, if we really understood what the other person wanted to achieve.  I give an example of a class I took in my university where the Professor split us into 2 teams and gave us a different brief for each team.  The briefs stated that we were from a pharmaceutical company (A or B depending on which team), flying to another country to try to get the last remaining 5 eggs from a precious bird for a product we were making.  The other rival company also wants the same eggs for another product they are making.  On our flight, we sit next to the representative from our rival company, and we are supposed to negotiate with them such that we can get what we want.  On the surface, this looks like a straightforward win-lose proposition.  Some teams ended up with a compromise - you get 3, I get 2 or something like that.  Some argued long and hard and arrived at no conclusion.  However, when it ended, the Professor got us to read our briefs aloud, and he pointed out (I actually missed it) that if we paid attention, both companies were after different parts of the egg!  One wanted the yolk, another wanted the shell.  Hence we could have both gotten what we wanted, had we spent time clarifying what each other wanted and expressing what exactly we wanted.

The exercise left a lasting impression on me.

Recently, I also encountered a similar situation at work.  There have been 4 policy groups set up in my organisation - 3 to assist operational departments in their policy work (I'm in one of them), and 1 central policy group to coordinate among the policy groups.  I know.  Sounds like a mess and a lot of additional layers for the poor operational departments.

Recently, the central policy group got CEO to approve a policy workflow which involved them sending up all policy submissions and items to CEO, on behalf of the departments.  What made it even more fishy was that they did not consult any operational department before presenting to CEO.  After it was approved, it was simply sent to us "for dissemination to departments".  My boss for the policy group had a fit.  He felt that this was clearly them trying to usurp power and take ownership of a lot of policy issues that were rightfully under the departments.  I sympathised with him and thought the head of the central policy group and her boss villains, and felt like fighting them tooth and nail to prevent this from happening.  I even came up with ideas in my sleep on how to jam this process and make life difficult for them :P

However, two things happened which helped me see the win-win in that.  First, I had cell group.  That night, we had a discussion on conflict resolution, and I asked how we could be "as shrewd as snakes, and as innocent as doves", especially in light of politics in the workplace, and I gave mine as an example.  My cell members gave their opinions on the matter and the person facilitating the session that night shared some verses on conflict resolution (e.g. strife results from having wrong motives, going the extra mile, being kind to our enemy), which were very relevant for me.  After meditating on those verses over the weekend, I realised a lot of my emotion stemmed from selfish ambition and the desire to get ahead, or rather the fear of not getting ahead.  I decided to let go of those motives and desires, and ask myself, "in light of all that Christ has done for me, and what lasts for eternity, what should I do?" and the answer was - these little things don't matter, and we should actually just work together for the common good.  That allowed me to go to work without all these negative emotions roiling in me.

Then the second thing happened - the head of the central policy group asked me out to lunch one day, and in a cool-headed frame of mind, we had a good talk where I shared (in a rationale, objective way) all my concerns about what this meant for operational departments, and she shared a lot more about the rationale for this, and how this would actually benefit the departments (by alleviating a lot of writing burden from them, so they can focus on actual operations).  She assured me they would still be involved in the policy crafting process (so it wasn't that they didn't need to think anymore), and the proper credits would be given.  In fact, if they were more familiar with the issue, they could even present to CEO.   After talking it out, I realised this actually wasn't a bad proposition for us.  So I took it back and we convinced my boss it was ok.  We will brief the departments next.

In my life, I am always looking for win-win.  There have been times when it has not been possible, so we go for compromise (e.g. choice of movies), or we intentionally give in one time, with the understanding the other person will give in next time (e.g. my husband and I taking turns to have our "alone time" every once in a while, while the other watches the kids).  Perhaps for these, we just haven't thought hard enough, but I guess we should reserve our energies and mental power to find win-win solutions for the big things first, cos as I said, it requires a lot of honest, open communication and some creativity :)

Haze!

Hello!

Sorry I've been missing in action for a while - blame it on the haze.  I was minding my own business at work, when I suddenly got called into a haze meeting and was suddenly involved in haze issues for a whirlwind one and a half weeks, where I attended three or four meetings a day, prepared slides or papers in between, skipped meals, ate at strange times, and otherwise just lived, breathed and ate haze-related information and updates.  That was when I realised that I am not a person really suited to wartimes.  Because I felt I was falling sick after about 4 or 5 days of not having regular, proper meals, working over a weekend flat out (we came back both days and had meetings almost all day!) and being slightly stressed out all the time. Perhaps it's because my blood group is A+ .  Apparently I am the blood type that does not take stress well.  On the contrary, this other girl who is my counterpart from another department, who was roped in one day earlier, worked longer hours and is even busier than me with haze issues, was perfectly fine, health-wise.

I must say when the 3-hour PSI (Pollutant Standard Index) hit a high of 400, I got really worried about Singapore, in particular, Singaporeans.  And I despaired of ever seeing clear skies again for months, as information from the authorities on how long the haze was going to last was not forthcoming (I believe they can only project one day in advance, and the dry season is supposed to last until the monsoon rains come in Nov-Dec!).  Thankfully, the rains came, the wind blew (in our favour), and the haze lifted, after a horrible, choking few days.  And I realised how much worse haze is than the SARS outbreak in Singapore years ago.  For SARS, it affects some people, and you feel like you can take precautions against catching it (practice good personal hygiene, avoid people with coughs or colds), but haze - it affects everyone, and you can't really get away from it when you're at home, unless you are fully air-conditioned.  Even then, some air seeps in.  My office floor had a slightly hazy look on the week when the haze was particularly bad.  And the complete lack of air purifiers in the market just added to everyone's (and in particular my) sense of despair.  I just hope someone comes up with a cheap and good technological solution that can help us clean up our indoor air during haze periods (and perhaps even during non-haze periods) sometime in the near future!

Seek First to Understand....

The 5th habit is called Seek First to Understand, then be Understood.  It's strange how my events in my life seems to develop around the latest habit I'm reading. Either that or I'm darned good at drawing inferences.  Anyway, I'll let you be the judge of that.

This habit talks about how we tend to project our own biographies (our experiences, motivations, preferences, ethics) onto other people, thinking they are like us, when actually many come from very different backgrounds and perspectives, and what they are saying could be something very different.  When we fail to fully understand the other, our response will be somewhat limited or off-the-mark. 

It encourages us to really listen to the other person to understand where they are coming from, their emotional state, instead of thinking of your own reply, or interpreting what they are saying in light of your own biography.  This is really hard, cos, well I guess that's what I've been doing all along.

But it goes on to say that when we succeed in doing that, we give the other person the gift of understanding, which is a great emotional deposit.  And when they are assured that we understand them, they actually become a lot more receptive to what we have to say.  Hmm... not bad for a persuasion technique.  Ok, I'm not supposed to think that, or I would go right back into being a manipulative listener... It kind of requires us to suspend our agendas for a time to really listen and understand.  Wa, I think it will be quite a mental workout since that is just not what we are used to!

Anyway, these past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to visit two friends with young children - one was my hubby's friend, who recently added a third child (a boy) to his two girls, and we decided to visit them just for the fun of it (the boy was already about 5 months old).  The second one was my friend who recently gave birth to her first boy, and we went to the boy's 1-month party.  Both experiences opened my eyes to the wide range of parenting styles there are on this planet (ok, that's an exaggeration, but it's wide enough that I marvel that such parents exist).

First, we went to visit my hubby's friend at about 7pm on Sat night, they had just arrived back home from being out the whole day and the mom was in the kitchen with the maid while the father was standing in the living room loosening his tie.  When I entered their home, I immediately noticed their son lying prone on a Winnie-the-Pooh mat doing swimming motions to himself.  His two sisters were playing with toys by the side, but as he was not yet mobile, he couldn't quite join in.  So I went to speak to him and play with him.  When he saw me, he got real excited and smiled, his movements becoming more energetic.  He was such an adorable child.  As the night progressed, we made a disturbing observation - neither parent paid any attention to the 3 kids while we were there.  The mom was busy cooking in the kitchen with her maid, she hardly appeared except to ask the two older girls to have dinner, and the father was talking to my hubby the whole time.  When the youngest son flipped over on his back and started yelping cos his legs were stuck under a low table, I was the only one who noticed and turned him upright.  When he started putting a red crayon into his mouth, it was my hubby (who is normally quite inattentive to kids) who shouted "Stop him!" repeatedly until someone took it out of his mouth.  And the funniest thing of the night was, when the maid and mom carried the youngest son into their bedroom for his night feed, we suddenly heard a loud crying that went on for quite a while, and suddenly it went very quiet.  And before we knew it, my maid was entered the living room carrying the little boy!  This was quickly intercepted by the other mom, who quickly whisked him away back into the room, and said her maid was just preparing the milk, she would take care of the baby.  My hubby and I laughed, as it was so ingrained in our maid to always respond promptly to distressed crying (in fact, the adults get more worked up than the baby sometimes), that she instinctively did what she felt was best - to carry and comfort the poor boy.  Later, I snuck into the bedroom with my maid, to sneak a peek at the boy drinking milk, and he was so cute!  He was lying on his back, holding a big bottle with both his hands, sucking insistently while staring at a spot on the ceiling.  And the maid said this was his happiest moment of the day.  And he would sleep soon after.  I couldn't help pitying the boy, as no one was holding him as he drank, and we also learnt during dinner, that both parents had gone through a period of sleep training (cry-it-out method - thanks Gina Ford), where they had trained him to go to sleep on his own without adult carrying or rocking.  Now tis just flies against my own knowledge of what constitutes good parenting (especially in the first year when what they need is predictable responsive parenting to assure them the world is a safe place and they are too old to manipulate with cries yet).  Ok ok I admit I am a product of attachment parenting (I belong to the Dr William Sears club), but the science and research that shows it is good for the child is so abundant!  I wondered if the boy would turn out ok, and if he would always hold a part of him back, cos he was trained as a kid not to expect affection and to "suck it up" and move on.  Perhaps that is the genesis of many emotionally restrained, unexpressive men.  Or perhaps not.  I am just drawing my own conclusions here, and I have not factored in other influencing factors like his genetic make-up, his teachers, his friends, his school and ultimately, God.

My second visit was to my friend, who married late and just had her first.  At the 1-month party, she looked slim and radiant, as a new mother, and though she was busy entertaining many guests, I could not help feeling excited and happy for her, thinking back to the time when I had my first kid (projecting my own experiences!).  But when I asked her (during a moment's respite when she was sitting near me) if she was feeling very maternal now, she shook her head and said no.  I was shocked.  She said her hubby seems to take to fatherhood a lot more than her, often going straight to the kid when he got home, to carry and talk to him for an hour straight (even when he was sleeping)!  Whereas for her, when she gets home she might head over to take a look at the baby, and if he was awake she would say "Kuai dian shui jiao!  Yao bu ran ba ni diu diao!" (sleep quick, or I'll throw you away!). And she shrugged indifferently when I asked her how breastfeeding was - it was ok, but she pumps out all her milk cos her boy likes to suck a little too much, sometimes sucking for 45 min.

All these experiences made me realise there are many kinds of mothers (a non-maternal mother just makes me shudder, a little), and different kinds of fathers, that despite it all, kids still grow up, and they live and walk and work around us.  So, no wonder that we all come from different backgrounds, upbringing, have different "scripts" written in our minds!

Just that little difference in the kind of parents we had (whether they are Gina Ford or William Sears followers) could spell the big difference deep down inside their emotional make-up (which I understand from research, shapes the parts of the brain that develop later, which are reasoning, cognition and creativity).

I thought I should try to apply this listening technique (of seeking to really understand the person) to someone these few days, but I still haven't found the opportunity.  Perhaps the one person I did try it on was my elder son, Jack, who is now very adept at throwing spectacular tantrums.  After punishing him harshly through the naughty corner (which I think he remembers with pain till today), I thought a better way could be to understand what he wants (to do whatever seems fun to him) and to try to go along with it.  Yes, the word "no" triggers a meltdown like a match to fire, so now I try to avoid saying it.  It's an exercise in creativity!   "Later" is a favourite, or just "ok" (and not do it), or explain why he cannot have it (I realised if I say long sentences, he tends to get lost trying to follow and forget to throw a tantrum).  I still set limits, and he still flouts them (like throwing lego pieces in all directions when he is frustrated) but I am learning that a sharp look and disapproving words plus removing people from harm's way is as good a teaching tip as beating him at this stage.  I think he gets it that he shouldn't do it, he just can't control himself yet.  I just learnt from a website the best way to deal with a tantrum is just to hold him and be with him until it subsides (in a private place where he cannot disturb others), and then when he has calmed down, to explain to him why he could not have it/do it/should not have done it.  Sigh, so much to learn! 

I also remember what a Pastor's wife once told me.  "The most important thing I did right with both my kids was - I always prayed for them". 

The next person I would want to try this tip on, would probably be my husband, who is as different from me as chalk and cheese in certain matters.  But more on that in another post.

The Importance of Emotional Banks

I recently moved to assume a new role in my Division, a policy role.  It was initially one I was very reluctant to take up, as policy roles traditionally have been unpopular in my organisation because of a few reasons:

(a) You do not own any domain area in terms of expertise or knowledge, but are expected to contribute your views to "improve" the policy of a line Department, whose people have been in that field for ages,

(b) People in that domain area tend to see you as a source of either (1) someone who talks nonsense, not knowing the ground or having enough technical expertise/experience in that field or (2) a work generator, someone who will give them extra (often unimportant) work and send them on wild goose chases, because you don't know the field well enough, and/or because you are not the implementor and so have no aligned incentive to minimise work for them.  In fact adding to their work load scores you points!

(3) Competing with them for limelight, because you often report to a different boss, and so both sides are trying to profile themselves. You can't "value add" without the line department (who has been in this field for so long) looking bad.

So, with the odds stacked against me, I somehow found myself assuming this role as of 1 Jul 2013.  But a saving grace (or not, in terms of workload), was that I was still holding on to my previous position in my Department, which I was growing very comfortable with and which I liked very much.  It was good in that I consoled myself - if I hate my new policy role, I can always have my Department work to fall back on, and at least I'm not stuck doing policy full-time.  Some people felt I was getting the raw end of the deal in terms of workload (and I also acted like the poor overworked officer when people asked me about my new role), but I was actually not too unhappy about it.

What was surprising to me, was how enjoyable and challenging my new role was to me, both in terms of defining the job scope of this new policy unit, what me and my new team (albeit a small one) are each supposed to do, how we would work together, establishing relations with new Departments, and just getting up to speed on the myriad of issues in my work.  Some parts are more enjoyable than others, and not every one is as challenging, but I shall talk more on the enjoyable ones (being someone who likes to dwell on the positive, remember the good and forget the bad, haha).

They are the last 2 areas of my work, and the first one on establishing contacts has been a lesson in emotional banks.  I realised that in getting in touch for the first time with Departmental staff, that some treated me with surprise (why are you approaching me to ask me all sorts of questions about my work?), puzzlement (so you want me to send you my draft paper?  Then what are you going to do with it? How does it affect workflow?) and skeptics (ha!  This new policy unit is just a waste of time.  It overlaps with what we and other departments are doing and will just add to the bottleneck, further slowing down an already long and cumbersome clearance process.  You are just going to add to our workload, like all the other initiatives that have gone before.  And how can you possibly value add to our work?).  Many of the Directors, in fact, probably all Directors, fell into the last category to some extent.  I could see their distrust and wariness in their eyes and from their comments about the policy unit.  I was also hearing some of these sentiments from the grapevine.

However, what I have found is that it is very important to gain their trust and establish your credibility by giving good, constructive comments, from the get-go.  Let's see, even my own Director, was quite surprised to see me sitting in a meeting where they were discussing another section's work.  Having argued with the staff quite a bit before this meeting, where most of my comments were shot down by them (sigh, it's actually a matter of timing, many of my comments were on areas have already been approved, which is a big pity in my opinion), I kept quiet in this meeting until the very end, where I raised one concern with their recommendation.  It pertained to how the policy would look to the customers, which would be nothing short of confusing.  To my Director's credit, he took it in his stride, and immediately suggested a way to manage this risk.  It got incorporated into the slides as a sub-bullet on the last slide, and eventually it all got approved.  At the management meeting, they even talked about that sub-bullet, and how that would be an issue on the ground, and my Director spoke up at the meeting to commit the Department (actually my colleagues) to even more mitigation measures, to minimise the confusion.  I must say even though I got none of the credit for that, and my policy boss doesn't know this, I felt a private victory inside myself, at having influenced public policy in Singapore in a small way.

Another similar incident happened at another meeting with another Director.  Once he realised my comments were on-the-ball, he started asking his staff to amend the slides to reflect my comments, and was decidedly warmer in his interactions with me afterwards.  With a third Department, a Deputy Director who was initially quite snarky with his comments on the policy unit, started sharing some problems he had with his work.  It was a philosophical one - where they had to promote something which people all agreed was a good thing to do, but simply was not cost-effective.  Why should government do it then?  He mused.  I overcame all my hesitation and uncertainty about what I was about to say (a lot of it when it comes to Singaporeans!) and asked him what was in his cost-benefit analysis.  Apparently, he did not take some future long-term cost into account, which the government would have to fork out if they did not promote what they were promoting.  So if they took that future cost into account, would the cost-benefit analysis actually become positive?  He looked like a light bulb had gone on in his head, and immediately turned to his staff and started giving instructions on how to tweak their numbers.  After the meeting, the gruff Deputy Director was still telling me about some other issue he was facing and how he may need policy's help in the future.  I felt like I scored another private victory and won another person's trust.

All these are emotional bank accounts, and as they are all new, I am wary of putting too many negative deposits into it at the beginning. According to Stephen Covey's book, when a relationship has been built up over the years, with many positive deposits, you can make a few withdrawals in a row, and the trust level is still very high.  But not so for fledgling relationships.  You have to kind of make sure the deposits outweight the withdrawals, or you run up negative feelings all the time when you encounter the person.  I had also made up my mind, shortly after I assumed this new role, that I wanted to be known for a few things, namely simplicity, clarity, insight and innovation.  As a unit, I wanted us to be known for humility, going back to basics and fundamentals, and an ability to get the policies approved by presenting the facts in a convincing, persuasive, easy-to-understand manner.  I suppose I arrived at these because of my dislike of their opposites.  I dislike unnecessarily complicated, messy writings, which display no insight, no clarity of thought, no creativity.  I am aware that things like insight and creativity in new fields of knowledge take time, but they are goals I aspire towards.

Another thing I am enjoying in my new role is learning the work.  As my new boss promised me, the work in my policy role certainly is interesting.  What he didn't tell me was how technical and scientific it was.  I found that out when I organised a workplan seminar recently for my Division.  From the workplan presentations of the 5 departments, I found out that I was going to have to brush up on my science again, if I was to comment on the work of certain Departments.  For another Department, it was heavily engineering-based.  Disliking fluff and having a preference for going back to fundamentals, I think I better brush up on my engineering too.  Thankfully I liked science in school!

Every day is bringing with it new challenges, new issues to understand and new people to meet.  I am having a fun time.  I thank God, as my hubby once said, the ability to enjoy your work is a blessing from God.

What I’ve Been Up To... And First Things First

Hi all!  I suppose after so long, some of you may be wondering – what happened to her?  I am waiting for the Third Habit!  Alas, this will not be the post.  In fact, I have given up on implementing the Third Habit – First Things First – because doing it simply isn’t easy.  First off, I need to write my mission statement, long-term, medium-term and weekly goals in all roles/areas of my life (that makes about 7 of them, a lot of goal-setting!) onto my calendar, and plan activities for that week that will move me a step closer to my goals.  This way we organise our week around our priorities, and we can say no to other things.  Sounds good in theory.  It's kind of the practicing and actually saying no to other things that gets tricky. 

I actually tried it before, years ago after I just completed the 7 Habits course, and it’s exhausting.  There are so many goals to keep track of, and I know I spent a good chunk of my time on Sunday nights planning it, meticulously penciling in things in specific times of the week, and then checking if I kept to it the previous week.  I guess there are many areas in our lives where we don’t like to set goals, and keep trying to work towards them.  Not explicitly.  My mind can only focus on a few areas.  Like for me, health is pretty low priority (thanks to a God-blessed, inherited good constitution), so my goals there will be rather half-hearted.  Top would probably be my role as a cell leader, personal/spiritual goals, and as a mother (sorry hubby!  Sorry work!).  I guess things in those 2 departments are going relatively smoothly, or I almost just coast along, and don’t feel they need much work. 

I also don’t feel like trying it again because apart from the exhaustion of doing all the planning (which is supposed to make life more purposeful and guided but feels kinda anal after a while), I also find it a bit disappointing when I don’t manage to carry out all the planned activities for that week, and worse, if I miss a particular activity week after week (e.g. Quiet Time, journaling time).   It’s like, I guess I need some force greater than me to make me do those things I had planned out at the start of the week.  Yes, though my brain clearly thinks are worth doing and I can see how they are linked to my goals, the shout of the urgent (e.g. work), the visible (e.g. kids) and hedonistic urges (e.g. a bit more sleep, a thrilling fiction book) are still louder than that still, small voice.  I guess not even the most fantastic planner in the world can overcome the slothful nature of man.   I am reminded of a great Christian who said, about waking up early to do QT “Kick yourself!  Prod yourself!  It’s the only way.”  Not so complex, but I am starting to think it might be effective.  Aside from fervently praying that God somehow overtakes my body and bestows me with absolute self-control.

So, I eventually stopped that detailed planning and lived life more loosely and by the flow of the moment.  I think some middle ground is probably best.  I used to want to display my goals prominently in my room, or my wardrobe, basically some place where I would see daily.  So I think reminding ourselves of our goals regularly is a good thing.  I think once I see my goal daily, I will subconsciously plan my day with that in mind.  And I can’t keep track of too many goals.  Perhaps a few really important ones would be good.  And to have a few really important actions or plans to reach my goals would be good too.  But no need to have that week-by-week planning.  As I said, unless one happens to be a planner by nature, it’s exhausting. 

Anyway, this post isn’t about First Things First!  Ah, but too late.  I’m already exhausted.  So I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to another day!

Being Proactive

You know the strangest thing?  I'm having all this free time this weekend to blog, when I actually thought this would be my busiest weekend ever, cos my hubby is out of town.  Yes he is on a guys' holiday, with two other guys from church, and I know he really needed it.  So, I decided to be the selfless spouse (more because I can't stand his constant complaining that he really needs a break from work & kids, and since I don't share his sentiments, better that he go and get it out of his system). 

So, I am supposed to talk about another habit, and it so happened that the next habit I read is the first one, called Being Proactive.  The way I applied it to my life is kinda strange...  After I read the second habit, something not-so-good happened.  A particular person who has angered me tremendously in the past, has recently started to irritate me again.  When this happens, I usually seethe and it would put me in a lousy mood for days on end.  It is like a thorn in my flesh, and in the past, I will usually pray that this person will stop causing me grief, and after I pray, the problem would gradually go away, but then it will return again, and I would realise to my horror that God hasn't "handled" it!  So it has been on-off, on-off over the years.

This time round, the same thing started happening, and it was starting to escalate.  So one day, feeling a general sense of malaise, I went out on my own to grab dinner (both kids were asleep) and brought the Seven Habits book with me (yes I also read when I eat, when I don't have company - this is how I manage to read a lot despite being a working mom!).  I ended up at MacDonald's (a rare event) and as I was tucking into my burger, I did something which I usually do when I run into intractable problems - I prayed and asked God to reveal the answer to my problem in what I am about to read.  And the funny thing is, yet again, I actually got my answer.  Two answers, in fact.

So, it happened like this.  I actually wanted to move on to the third habit "First Things First", which sounds real important, but somehow, that habit didn't appeal to me and I decided to read the first habit again (though as I said, I felt I already knew it through and through), and see what new thing it can teach me.

It started by talking about how we often cannot choose the circumstances and things happening to us, but we can always choose how we respond (yes yes I knew that).  And it went on and on in that vein for quite a while, and I started thinking that yes, I should probably focus on my response to the problem, and what I can do about it, rather than the person.  And the book says when we do that, no matter how bleak the situation is (and the author described a pretty bleak one), focusing on what we can do, no matter how little, makes the mood inevitably more positive as we are dwelling on the opportunities the problem gave us.  I must say the book is right - we are totally not used to thinking this way, as evidenced by how strange I felt to stop thinking about the other person (who is clearly the problem) and focus on me (who is the poor victim). 

And as I tried to think of what I can do on my part, I suddenly recalled this wonderful trick a teacher taught me in this questionable-sounding "Asking Leading Questions" workshop (it was such a good use of my time, I learnt so much it's almost immoral), which is a way to use your right brain when solving problems.  Ok, the trick is this - instead of thinking through the problem in detail, which causes us to fixate on the problem and after a while, all we can see is that problem and how big it is, we should imagine that we have woken up tomorrow morning, and the problem is miraculously solved.  Then we ask ourselves the questions "How did it happen?", "What had to happen for it to happen?" and so on.  And ridiculous though it seems, when our brains try to answer the questions, it somehow stops thinking logically, and starts coming up with creative, crazy solutions to the problem (haha, I know some of you are laughing), but it works!  At least for me, and the problem-solving process sure is much more fun and less serious than if we were to dissect it like engineers and apply our left brain logic to it.  It's sort of a free-flow of ideas, and to generate as many possible answers as possible. 

So, I applied this to my situation and imagined, if I woke up tomorrow and the problem was solved, what would it look like?  And I had a pretty nice picture, and then I thought - so how would it have come about?  And pretty quickly, an answer came to me. 

Now this is a Christian answer, and I heard it preached by someone years past (I can't remember who).  But this person said that an Ethiopian pastor issued a challenge to his congregation - if we prayed continuously and fervently for 40 days for something we want, he guaranteed that we would get it.  Ok, I actually don't remember the rest of that sermon (probably cos my mind was furiously working on that and closed my ears off to the rest), but it totally captured my imagination.  Imagine that!  Could it be real?  I don't know, but I trusted it with child-like faith.  So I went home and prayed for something I really wanted for 40 days straight, and for a good many days I really prayed, not those half-hearted prayers, and I may have lapsed a day or two, but generally I lasted till 40 days, and you know what?  My prayer got answered.  Not immediately, but within a year or two.  I haven't applied this again to anything else, probably because if you try it, you will soon realise that it is pretty hard to do anything you are not in the habit of  doing for 40 days straight, without lapse.  I tried disciplining my son for not keeping his toys, hoping he would not turn out like me, but after a strong start, I lose steam around the 7-day mark.  My mind just cannot hold on to that thought, that intensity of emotion and desire for that long.  But anyway, I remembered that promise of that Ethiopian pastor and thought - well, that could be one way it came about.  I pray for it for 40 days and that person somehow changes.  I think I finished my burger at around that point so I carried on reading, satisfied I had at least one answer.

The last part of the chapter caught my eye - and it was a question posed by someone to Stephen Covey, that he no longer loved his wife, the emotions were gone, but they had kids, so what was he to do about it.  Stephen said "love your wife".  He said "But I don't love her anymore."  He repeated "Love your wife" and went on to elaborate that in our culture and movies today, love is an emotion.  But love is also a verb, and we often don't remember that.  So he said, emphathise with her, listen to her, care for her, surprise her, do all the things he would do if he loved her, and the emotions would soon follow.  I tell you, that sparked another lightbulb in me.  So, I could focus on loving that person, and soon I wouldn't feel that anger any more - in fact I might start feeling love for that person!  I know, it like, never occurred to me (and me being a cell leader at that), and the moment I put the word "love" and the name of that person next to each other, a positive feeling zapped through me, a big difference1from all that toxicity I was feeling a while ago.  Ok, if you haven't guessed by now, this person is someone I care about (isn't it those people who can hurt us the most?) so it's not that strange to think that I should love this person.  This person just turns out to be pretty unloveable some of the times. 

So there you go.  Two answers.  Both pretty radical.  And you know what?  I went home and took action immediately.  I got down on my knees and prayed hard about it.  And the next day too, and so on.  And I don't know how long I can last this time, but I really want to finish this 40-day prayer thing - so I'll update my blog on the results when the 40 days are up!

Begin with the End in Mind

Ok, I must say I broke with my usual routine and started with the second Habit first.  Why?  Well, I thought I already knew what being proactive means and that I have been a particularly good practitioner of it (and I'll write about how I was wrong later)!  I also had this vague feeling that I was not very purposeful about my activities every day, and that I was not working towards achieving the big goals I wanted at the end of the year (like how during my Dept retreat early this year, when I had to present work done last year, how mine seemed so haphazard and piecemeal compared to my peer's illustrious list of solid achievements)...

The book actually asks the reader to do a very cheesy exercise - one which if someone I was speaking to told me to do it, I would say "Oh please!" or roll my eyes internally.  It was to visualise that I was at my own funeral wake, and that a family member, a friend, a co-worker and a member from church were going up and make an eulogy about me.  What would I want them to say?  But since I had picked the book myself and this was one of the first exercises the author was asking me to make, I obligingly did.  So, standing on a crowded train in the morning (yay for long commutes!), with my morning caffeine circulating around my system, I scribbled down my answers into my handphone (I love the Notes function!).  What my answers were astounded me, in their similarity for almost all the groups.  They are all slightly different, but the underlying thread was that I wanted to have modelled Christ-likeness to them, and pointed them to know Christ.  Err... how much time does this thought cross my mind each day?  Almost zilch (except perhaps on Sundays and during cell group time).  How conscious was I of this goal of mine?  Yes, at a superficial level, I might say it if asked, without any real conviction or feeling, but doing the visualisation exercise, I knew it in my heart to be true (gulp).

And then the author talks a lot about how we each have a centre in our life, and it could be family, spouse, work, money, pleasure, self (I think I actually belonged to the last one), and how everything we evaluate, all our reactions to events, our thoughts, our decisions, stem from that centre (e.g. does it make me more money?  Does it make my spouse happy?  Is it good for me?). Then the author went on the show how making any of these our centres was destructive and setting ourselves up for vulnerabilities and instability in life.  As I was reading through all the possible centres and laughing my way through them (when described most of them do sound silly), my sense of anticipation for the right answer was heightening, and finally, he proposed that what we should be, is principle-centred, cos principles don't change.  He states there are timeless principles in this world, like fairness, and excellence, and the dignity of human life, and they don't change, and living by them is sort of like living by truths.

I did a double take when I read that.  The answer didn't sit well with my stomach (you know, deep in your gut).  For me, that wasn't a satisfactory centre - making principles our centre is kind of half-baked in my view.  It's neither here nor there.  The bigger question is, where did those principles come from in the first place?  How come all humans have a sense of fairness (even little kids will attest to that), want to excel (for more on this, read my post on A Virtuous Cycle of Work) or get outraged when a human is debased and abused? 

I believe it is because these are characteristics of God, which man inherited because we were created in His image (except the omnipotence and omniscient bit, and yeah, we aren't wholly good either).  So it makes more sense for me to be God-centred, since He will be the one I face in the end, and not principle-centred.  So the lens from which I see everything, the overriding concern in my life should be - does this please God?

Ok, so except for that bit, I totally agree with what he wrote in this second habit.  And in fact, from that day on, I started to meditate a bit more on my end goal (which is so simple!), and to remind myself of it, and I started to realise, because my centre is now not another person, or my work, or my money, or my possessions, or even my children, I am less affected by them, and by things that affect them (and there are many).  In the past, I used to be extremely concerned whenever my children acted up, when I didn't think I was doing well at work, about money issues, whether I would have enough - but now, yes I am still concerned, and I still want to apply my mind to solve them, but they no longer strike at the heart of me, and that makes all the difference.  It takes a lot of emotion out of the equation, and I can think more clearly and logically about it, and be a lot calmer about it.  And if we know about how our minds work - emotions actually rule us more than we think, and when we are emotional, our mental capacity shuts down (ever tried to spot an error in an excel worksheet under time pressure?).  This is like achieving this end state I read about in a devotion and was so impressed I wrote it down - being completely involved in life, but having an inner detachment to things and an attachment to God. 

So, discovering what my desired "end" was, has been really enlightening for me!  I hope you embark on this exercise too, and be similarly enlightened!