Writing From The Heart

Writing From The Heart

It had been almost a year that I had made that conscious choice to stop writing for a while.  All these years, every word written for my blog was done out of my hope to share a point of view that I felt strongly about.

Increasingly, I found this difficult to do as I tried very hard to juggle writing about what was truly authentic to me, with managing the sensitivities of others.  “Was that post about me?”, seemed to be the  frequent text message I woke up to in the morning.

I even had my husband once told me to “take down that blog post because while you don’t have to deal with them, I do.”  That became the cause of our regular rows where he maintained that I needed to have more tact while I insisted that the world needed to be aware of the difference between what was true and the pre-engineered fizzy koolaid that they had been sold.  My father had always taught me to be true to myself under any circumstance, and he brought me up in an environment where he encouraged me to fully express myself.  I found it hard to come to terms with having my voice stifled because I had to be mindful of what others thought.

When I had to start thinking about being sensitive to the feelings of others, taking into account the ramifications my writing might potentially cause with every word I wrote in my blog, and every post I published across my social media platforms, I decided that I could no longer pen another word in my blog.  I also decided to veer towards neutral topics across my social media platforms, sticking to the regular fitness and food posts.  But I became more disillusioned as months and days passed by, simply because I lost my sense of self.  I was no longer writing or speaking from my heart.

When I cut out the writing out of my life for a while, and made myself devoid of that only channel for self-expression that I was most familiar with, I was forced to deal with my emotions on my own by internalizing them.  I  withdrew into myself and walked through an introspective journey for a year.

The past year had been a year of deep learning for me about myself.  I learnt to accept my vulnerability – it was okay to feel that deep sense of hurt and disappointment, nurse it, then move on.  I learnt the importance of drawing the line between interpersonal relationships – friends, colleagues, staff, clients, family, and acquaintances, each of them had a role to play in my life and I should not be setting almost equal expectations on them.  I learnt that no matter how much I could do to pull family members, a team, a situation, a crisis, together and lead from the front, the honest truth, was that I had to stop being the school principal all the time, trying to get everyone to play on equal footing at the playground.  I learnt that when someone has a problem, it was not my problem.  I could not keep taking on that responsibility to try to solve it for him or her.   I learnt to make peace with my inner child – a traumatic past in my childhood need no longer bind me in fear, anger and hatred.  I learnt the value of forgiveness – more than anything else, letting go of hurt and anger was not about acknowledging that a dishonest, hurtful situation did not take place.  It was just my way of giving myself peace of mind.

So if I had to fill the pages of my blog with every incident that described this path of learning, I would not have enough pages left.   I was determined not to let my hurt and disappointment experienced, cast a shadow of doubt on the people I had invested time and energy over the years as  I tried to lift and inspire them with positivity. 

I felt that if I could no longer fill the pages of my blog with authenticity, then I could no longer write that blog. 

This point of view also took a toll on my passion for freelance writing for sports events.    I was disillusioned when I was delivered key messages about athletes during interviews, that had been “massaged” by their PR teams, painting them to be “inspirers of community with a personality governed by humility and a great work ethic..” then see a couple of them behave like depraved thugs.  How could I bring myself to share an article with the public with the objective of convincing them about how wonderful an athlete might be when he clearly was not?  Strangely enough, the current environment was one where many took a dig at fake news.   I was not going to be a perpetrator of fake news.

The start of my recuperation from all of last year’s “bullshit” came in the form of a family trip back to the UK.  I stopped writing.  I just took lots of photos.  Writing could hide my disillusionment. Photos could not. When I had to be present to my family for 3 weeks in the UK, I spent less time on emails as well as reading through all the social media news.  I just made time for self and I had meaningful conversations with my family.  I had no contact with drama, toxicity, inauthenticity and anything that drained me.  And most importantly, I came out of that trip making a pact with myself, that I would always choose to walk away from any form of drama and never allow anyone or anything to invade my peace. I would never allow anyone to feed me with untruths and expect me to sell otherwise.  I would never allow anyone to tell me to stop writing or saying something, just because it would “open a can of worms” and not aligned to what was written on that label pasted on that pre-engineered fizzy koolaid. If I was forced to do anything, or say anything  outside of my values, I would rather not have anything to do with it. 

I am starting to write again.  Slowly just getting back into it. I remain adamant about walking in the light of what is true, never writing or saying something unless it came from the heart.

 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  She is a passionate observer of life bent on inspiring others to live life positively through her writing by combing through moments worth celebrating every day.   Due to her ardent love for sports especially boxing and MMA, she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing articles to several sports media when time permits.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She enjoys Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

Genuine Pride In Our Work

Putting The Team Through The Test

This afternoon, while having lunch with some business partners at DOMVS restaurant at the Sheraton Towers, I came across an interesting statement printed at the bottom of the menu which said, “Women Only Wednesdays” – Women diners get free dessert for every set meal ordered.  I thought, “WOW! That was a creative way to honor us, women.”  There was definitely a big reason to celebrate and I wrote this blog post to celebrate a wonderful team of women whom I am fortunate to work with.  I call them the A-Team.

In the last couple of months, the team was put to the test when we were suddenly asked to support a mega project at work.  We were not strangers to mega projects, but this one came falling on our laps at just a couple of months before launch as the list of action items on that project plan seemed to get bigger on a daily basis.

Last week, after many sleepless nights, stressful deadlines and almost seemingly insurmountable hurdles, we finally completed the project and launched the program to plenty of accolades. 

One of the bosses patted me on the back praising me for the leadership rendered to the project.  Frankly, I disagreed.  It had nothing to do with my leadership, and everything to do with these women who had built a sisterhood of authenticity.

Authenticity

What did I mean by authenticity?

That was the key driver to the success of this team.  However big or small the projects were, these women were authentic about everything they did.  And here are the reasons why this is so:

Genuinely Cared About The Business

These women genuinely cared about the company and the value they brought to the business.  This meant that when it was necessary to voice their concern on decisions that were not right, or when they felt that an idea could be better improved, they were the first to speak up in front of senior management in a bid to do the right thing.  It was this spirit of authenticity that allowed the team of non-actuary trained “fluffy” marketing professionals to influence the creation of a product that was launched as a first-in-market insurance product that provided coverage for pregnancies from conception through IVF.

I asked this team of women what drove them each day to want to come to work in the morning, and to leave the office happy in the evening.  They said, “Pride In The Work.”  That said it all.

This was a team of very bold women who approached their jobs with the sole purpose of doing the right thing.

Genuinely Cared About Each Other

These women genuinely cared about each other. They formed a sisterhood bound by an unbreakable bond of trust, honesty and open communication.  When that mega project unceremoniously dropped on our laps, they banded together to work as a team.  I saw resilience, “response-ability” and proactive efforts to step up to the plate when one of us dropped the ball for some reason or other.  

During the planning stages for the launch event, two of my team members were hit with family emergencies, so the rest of us banded together to divide and conquer, and filled in the gap where there was one.  I saw a team member stepped up to the leadership role of managing all the “business-as-usual” product marketing work when the rest of the team was thrown into delivering on the last minute details of the creative work or launch  plans for this mega project.  I saw another team member who was hired to do something completely different earlier in the year, only to have her scope changed midway to deliver on this mega project.  I saw yet another team member who was never part of the project team initially, who had decided on her own accord to step in at eleventh hour to manage the execution of all the creative materials when she saw the team struggling with the workload.

I asked them what drove them to support each other with so much enthusiasm every day, even when sometimes; the work goes beyond their respective agreed scope.  They said, “Pride In The Work.”  Again, that said it all.

This was a team of visionary women who had a generous spirit that allowed them to work with each other, with a lot of selflessness and mutual understanding.

Pride In The Work


So for anyone who asked how I managed to build an exceptionally strong team of co-workers who managed their roles with depth of authenticity and almost always exceeded expectations in the delivery of their work, the secret is not my leadership, but the genuine pride in our work within the team.

I am very grateful to this team of women who have done so much to create value in everything they did for the company, the generous sharing of the tears and laughter within the team, and the gift of authenticity they brought to the table.  I am so proud to be the manager of this team of wonderful women.


About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a 43 year old mother of one, who spreads her time between her day job as a marketeer at a financial institution, her hobby as a certified professional tarot reader and numerologist, and her family which includes a 19 year old son.  She's married to a Scot who has been affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" and prays that he does not find out that the term when translated, has labeled him as a "Ginger Head".