A Growing Me

• Why is Martin Luther King the one that freed all slaves, while there were so many others suffering the same?

• Why was Sam Altman able to make ChatGPT extremely successful, and even industry leaders like Google etc. that owned so many resources couldn’t achieve this level of Artificial Intelligence?

Having a strong sense of purpose and dream, makes these people successful and impactful. It helps us to be persistent and break through challenges.

I remember when I first started my career, I didn’t know what I really wanted to do and what I was good at, I didn’t have any dreams. And when I got my first job as a data analyst, my main objective was to make money and be able to survive. Survival may look like a strong incentive and I was indeed able to do well in the first 2 years. However soon I found, compared to my peers who knew exactly why they worked as a data analyst and had a strong purpose:

• their eyes started to shine when there’s an algorithm that is 2 times faster than the original one, while to me I didn’t care
• they created data science networking sessions to have people from all industries to talk about how they applied data science methods in different domains
• they spent time to summarize their learnings and actively shared in forums
• they formed teams to participate in world class competitions like Kaggle and got really good scores there, they communicated with experts with the latest algorithms.

And to me, while I was jealous for their outstanding work, I didn’t realize what made me fundamentally different. All these small differences contributed to a day that I realized I was not able to catch up with any new things and I felt obsolete.

Lucky these frustrations were the main drivers that moved me on. I started a series of exploration to find out what I was interested in and what I was good at. Through 2-3 years of exploration, I found that I’m extremely passionate in our mind, in mental health, in managing our emotions, and working with people and different culture. In the past 7-8 years, I continued learning about all these topics, through online and offline channels, started to work as a volunteer counsellor every weekend in a center and enjoyed every minute I went there; my eyes started to shine when I heard about new approaches to help people with certain conditions, and people found me in all workshop/trainings to improve myself. These were the moments where I found the most connected to my heart.

Recently I joined a training from Co-active Training Institute about coaching. This gets me a step closer to be a certified professional coach. Within the training I came up with my own life purpose statement:

I want to be the osmanthus that inspire and empower people to be impactful and stay fit.

This statement resonates with me so much that I feel energetic whenever I think about it. I think I have found my passion and purpose, and I know how to be impactful next, and that’s why I’m starting to:

• post more about my thoughts and writings.
• organize peer learning groups to help people discover their own passion and power.
• offer coaching sessions for anybody that is struggling.

Knowing WHY you work is a lot more important than simply knowing WHAT you work on. The Why hits the most core part of our heart and makes you a lot further even during challenges.

For those that are still discovering your passion and purpose, ask yourself these questions:

• What kinds of things really excite you?
• What contents naturally attract you in your spare time?
• Which group of people would you like to help the most?
• What would you feel the most fulfilling when you’re able to achieve?

Spend time to think about these, stay close to your heart and be authentic. If possible, come up with your own life statement, print it out and put it somewhere you see it often. Miracles will happen soon.

If you’d like to have a guided conversation to discover yourself and come up with your own life purpose statement, send me an email at renee@agrowingme.com or leave me a reply under this post.

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