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• How are We Standing with the Poor?

  Jocelyn Ling 3:05 pm on February 18, 2013 | 3 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: empowerment (13), inspiration (21), personal

  “The more some­one iden­ti­fies with a pro­fes­sion or an “accom­plish­ment” such as an award, the less human he will be (in the clas­si­cal sense). In virtue ethics, the only “excel­lence” worth attain­ing is that of “being human”, with all what it entails (honor, courage, ser­vice, sat­is­fac­tion of pub­lic & pri­vate duties, will­ing­ness to face death, etc.); “achieve­ments” are reduc­tions and alien­ations for lower forms of life.

  IN ANCIENT ROME this was a priv­i­lege reserved for the patri­cian class. They were able to engage in pro­fes­sional activ­i­ties with­out directly iden­ti­fy­ing with them: to write books, lead armies, farm land, or trans­act with­out being a writer, gen­eral, farmer, or mer­chant, but “a man (*vir* rather than *homo*) who” writes, com­mands, farms or trans­acts, as a side activity.

  TODAY, as human­ity got much, much richer, one would have thought that every­one would have access to the priv­i­lege. Instead, I only find it in min­i­mum wage earn­ers who just “make a liv­ing” and feel forced to sep­a­rate their iden­tity from their pro­fes­sion. The higher up in the social lad­der, the more peo­ple derive their iden­tity from their pro­fes­sion and “achieve­ments”. — Nas­sim Taleb

  When I was with Acu­men Fund, we would ask our­selves: How are we stand­ing with the poor? And quite frankly, I wasn’t sure if I even really knew what that meant. For the longest time, I thought it meant putting myself into another person’s per­spec­tive, try­ing to see the world through their eyes and “speak up” for those who didn’t have a voice. And then I came across this post­ing by Nas­sim Taleb, who sep­a­rates out iden­tity and accom­plish­ment and really got me reeval­u­at­ing my def­i­n­i­tion. It also made me real­ize how hard it was, as the higher up the social lad­der you are, the harder it is to dis­tin­guish between iden­tity and accom­plish­ment, the harder it is to relate.

  Stand­ing with the poor is about look­ing beyond pro­fes­sion. Beyond awards and accom­plish­ments. Beyond first impres­sions. Stand­ing with the poor is a reminder to one­self to sep­a­rate the way you look at your­self and oth­ers around you; between their accom­plish­ments and iden­tity. Stand­ing with the poor is about under­stand­ing self-worth, regard­less of what situation/career/social sta­tus you are in.

  And at the end of the day, it all comes back to valu­ing human dignity.

   

• Goodbye Vancouver, See you later New York, Hello Nairobi!

  Jocelyn Ling 3:58 pm on September 23, 2012 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), inspiration (21), personal

  2012 has been my year of being in between sto­ries.  A process that involves embrac­ing uncer­tainty to explore pos­si­bil­ity, con­stant iter­a­tion in future plans, pack­ing and repack­ing my belong­ings into two lug­gages, mov­ing between con­ti­nents and try­ing to make some sense out the dis­ori­en­tat­ing dance of the famil­iar and unfamiliar.

  In the begin­ning of the year, I left my job with the inten­tion of begin­ning a new adven­ture. It wasn’t an easy deci­sion. It was espe­cially hard as I had grown to deeply respect my com­pany and had men­tors at the firm that I still trea­sure to this day. But there was this nag­ging lit­tle voice inside of me that pushed to me to leap. To be bold and pur­sue my inter­ests: one that thrives in the inter­sec­tion of impact invest­ing, design think­ing and change.

  “Once in a while it really hits peo­ple that they don’t have to expe­ri­ence the world in the way they have been told to.” –Alan Keightley

  There is a myth of con­sis­tency in life sto­ries. Peo­ple tend to expect a famil­iar story, a jour­ney that they have heard before and unsur­pris­ingly, we impose this ‘famil­iar story’ on our­selves. We fail to leap because we believe that our capac­ity to dream is in accor­dance to our inher­ited prej­u­dice of what we have been told/come to expect. When faced with uncer­tainty, peo­ple tend to intu­itively, move to find a solu­tion quickly. They tend to rush down a path, usu­ally towards famil­iar­ity, at the expense of the insight and engage­ment that uncer­tainty can bring. It is in these sit­u­a­tions that I am slowly real­iz­ing that our courage and faith must be addressed to the dreams we have been afraid to dream, either because they are too dif­fi­cult, or because it has been too breath­tak­ing to even com­pre­hend how they could pos­si­bly exist within our cur­rent constraints.

  My jour­ney for 2012, has brought me out of Van­cou­ver, to New York, to Malaysia and now to Nairobi, Kenya where I am work­ing every­day to not only “will­ing to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, but under­stand the world as it is and have the audac­ity and moral courage to build the world that could be” — Jacque­line Novogratz.

  The work of embrac­ing uncer­tainty requires the dis­ci­pline and wis­dom to make trade-offs, the best way we can. It is about know­ing when to pick up your belong­ings and leave. When to fight and when to con­cede. When to lis­ten and when to lead. When to be gen­er­ous and when to be hum­ble. When to hold your breath and when to breathe through it. When to be adven­tur­ous and when to be grounded.

  It is these trade-offs, that forces a shift from uncer­tainty to pos­si­bil­ity, from real­ity to abstract and back again: one of the most fun­da­men­tal processes by which we unlock our imag­i­na­tions and open our hearts to new insights. To under­stand our sto­ries is to embrace uncertainty.

  With that, I bid you farewell Van­cou­ver, see you later New York and jambo Nairobi!

   

• Matters of National Pride: When All is Said and Done

  Jocelyn Ling 8:10 am on August 5, 2012 | 6 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), collaboration (21), education (12), empowerment (13), Government (6), personal

  I have long since desired to write about this topic to some degree, but it was only after a series of recent con­ver­sa­tions and fol­low­ing the Olympics Games that called forth an unex­pected wave of patri­o­tism towards my country.

  I grew up as a Malaysian, through and through. Born and raised in Sarawak, edu­cated in Malaysia’s pub­lic school sys­tem and seen first hand my country’s polit­i­cal and racial stance. The older I became, the more I came to under­stand the indoc­tri­na­tion of nation­al­ism that the coun­try has imposed on its cit­i­zens, the more I con­cluded that we were made to love! From stand­ing in the equa­to­r­ial heat dur­ing assem­bly salut­ing our “Jalur Gemi­lang”, singing the dif­fer­ent anthems: Negaraku and Sarawak, Ibu Per­ti­wiku on a daily basis to mem­o­riz­ing Malaysia’s geog­ra­phy and his­tory every­day in our pub­lic school sys­tem. The older I grew, the more I ques­tioned the under­ly­ing racial intol­er­ance in our coun­try, the more I heard my fel­low com­pa­tri­ots scheme to “study over­seas and stay there”, that if you could obtain a PR from a first world coun­try, “go for it and don’t look back”, the more I saw a brain drain in my country’s top minds as they throw their hands up in frus­tra­tion at Malaysia’s eco­nomic and polit­i­cal situation.

  

  Appar­ently, being made to love some­thing is a flawed strat­egy, and right­fully so. As my gen­er­a­tion grew up, our under­stand­ing of the world expanded and we look back and crit­i­cize the flaws in our own coun­try. We tell peo­ple, “I love Malaysian food, but to go back and be dis­crim­i­nated based on the colour of my skin and last name? Why should I sub­ject myself to such treat­ment?” spo­ken some­times out of dis­ap­point­ment, some­times out of dis­dain. When I saw Dambisa Moyo speak at my uni­ver­sity on Dead Aid and devel­op­ment, some­one from the audi­ence asked her whether she would ever go back to Zam­bia to help her coun­try. She retorted that peo­ple often for­get that every human being at the end of the day craves equal­ity, dig­nity and access to basic needs. If Zam­bia could pro­vide those needs for their cit­i­zens, Zam­bians would go back in a heart­beat. I looked around and saw my friends: South African, Iran­ian, Pak­istani, Chi­nese, all nod­ding silently next to me. Appar­ently, I was not the only one who felt this way.

  Now, work­ing and learn­ing in the social enterprise/development space, I come across many indi­vid­u­als who are pas­sion­ate about chang­ing the lives of oth­ers in devel­op­ing coun­tries. Some take a more econ­o­mist stand­point of help­ing where peo­ple need it the most, other are dri­ven by a cer­tain cause/skillset — be it health, finance or human rights. I see oth­ers have a deep drive to help coun­tries that they never even grew up in, and some­times have never even set foot in that con­ti­nent, let alone coun­try. I ask myself: Why? Then, I look at Malaysia and won­der: What good is it that we are made to love a coun­try when our hearts are filled with complaints/disdain for it? I look around again and I see my friends: who have gone back to Peru to cre­ate change in her home­town, who have dreams to advance South African films in the world and who are wait­ing for an oppor­tu­nity to return to Kenya. Appar­ently, I was miss­ing out on con­nect­ing with my birth­place and identity.

  I can finally say that work­ing in the social enterprise/development space, have meant per­son­ally for me, of under­stand­ing Malaysia bet­ter. For its decay­ing polit­i­cal and admin­is­tra­tive struc­ture, for the incred­i­ble courage of Bersih pro­tes­tors, and for new eco­nomic pro­grams that are aimed to improve the coun­try. More impor­tantly, I think I have finally under­stood what it means to love uncon­di­tion­ally, even if I was made to in the first place. To love any­ways despite all of Malaysia’s flaws, because love keeps no count of wrong. It is this choice — To love, not for a tol­er­ance of cor­rup­tion, crime or racism but to love unfailingly, stubbornly, for a beauty of a nation is not in the laws or the rul­ing party at that time, but in the dig­nity and essence of every cit­i­zen who have con­tributed in one way or another to shape our early views of the world.

  So to all my fel­low com­pa­tri­ots and those who have yet to make the choice to love for your own coun­try, when all is said and done, here is my chal­lenge to you:

  If not us, then who? If not now, then when? — Acu­men Fund

   

  Thanks to Kristina, Nan­jala, Cyn­thia and Robert for inspir­ing this post.

   

• Three Thoughts On Being a Global Citizen

  Jocelyn Ling 8:54 pm on July 8, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), personal, world (17)

  *Orig­i­nally pub­lished on ThreeThoughtsOn.com. 

   

  When I was eight years old liv­ing in Bor­neo, Malaysia, I used to declare that I would some­day live over­seas. I would hoard sto­ry­books about peo­ple hav­ing tea time in Eng­land or bush­fire tales in Kenya and devour these sto­ries late into the night. Now, I write to you from a hid­den gem in New York City, where this is my eighth move in the last six years, lived in South East Asia, Mid­dle East, North Amer­ica, done devel­op­men­tal projects in Africa and trav­elled to over 25 countries.

  Being a global cit­i­zen, I’ve spent the last few years try­ing to under­stand what this means: being stumped every time some­one asks me where home is, feel­ing strangely at home at air­ports and have yet to obtain a valid form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that I can proudly flash at bounc­ers with­out explain­ing my life’s story. Only recently, I have begun to fash­ion, per­haps lov­ingly, per­haps reluc­tantly, per­haps nos­tal­gi­cally, a def­i­n­i­tion of ‘global cit­i­zen’ that is uniquely my own on Home, Iden­tity, and Culture.

  “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” -­ Robert Frost

  Most peo­ple piously fol­low a tra­di­tional def­i­n­i­tion and asso­ci­a­tion of home: fam­ily and child­hood. I’ve known for a long time that this isn’t so. And some­times home isn’t where the heart it. Home is where peo­ple under­stand you, where you build your love and dreams. Home is where you grow want­ing to leave, and even­tu­ally yearn­ing to go back. Every day is a jour­ney for me, and this jour­ney is home.

  “If you wake up at a dif­fer­ent time, in a dif­fer­ent place, could you wake up as a dif­fer­ent per­son?” -­ Chuck Palahniuk

  In this strug­gle to strike bal­ance, know­ing when to stay true to my Chinese-­‐Malaysian roots, when to adopt a new path, I con­stantly ask myself the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions of who I was, who I am and who I am becom­ing. I believe that we build our iden­tity by the deci­sions we make, by the prin­ci­ples we stand up for and unex­plored choices we have in front of us. When I moved from Oman to Canada, the dif­fer­ence in cul­ture was alarm­ing; from the free­dom in speech to ideas of fun. All I could do is con­stantly emu­late the val­ues I hold true to myself, while begin­ning a ten­ta­tive foray into a new cul­ture. In my recent move to New York, I find myself return­ing to those same val­ues: life­long learn­ing, authen­tic con­nec­tions and gen­eros­ity, and I know that this is at the core of who I am no mat­ter what coun­try I am in.

  “The key to suc­cess is for you to make a habit through­out your life of doing the things you fear.” -­ Vin­cent Van Gogh

  When I moved to Van­cou­ver six years ago, I arrived at the inter­na­tional ter­mi­nal with two lug­gages, knew no one in the coun­try and had a huge ball of fear in my chest. I was fear­ful of let­ting go of my old life. I feared that I would not make friends. I feared fail­ing. Now, hav­ing moved mul­ti­ple times, I’m here to tell you to fear out­ra­geously, fail coura­geously and cre­ate con­nec­tions uncon­di­tion­ally. I con­stantly ask myself: What is the worst that can happen?

  So as time bum­bles along, does an indi­vid­ual become more risk averse, cling­ing on firmly to what is famil­iar, or do you seek to expand the world as you know it? As my cur­rent jour­ney unfolds, I am drunk with the pur­suit of learn­ing, immers­ing myself in old inter­ests and reaf­firm­ing fears that I form healthy opin­ions on.

  So world, here I come! I guess the next thing to do is finally get my [insert coun­try I’m cur­rently liv­ing in] driver’s license.

  Your res­i­dent global citizen,

  Joce­lyn
  Chi­nese sourced. Malaysian made and cul­ti­vated (Miri, Bor­neo!). Omani improved. Exported to Canada. And now, dis­trib­uted in the United States (New York).

   

• On Understanding the Learning/Thinking Process

  Jocelyn Ling 7:23 pm on May 21, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), creativity (7), education (12), innovation (13), learning (6), motivation (12), personal

  There has been a theme of learn­ing and cre­ativ­ity in my last cou­ple of posts, and I thought I would sit down and share the way that I have been approach­ing the top­ics as I go through the process of under­stand­ing how I learn and chang­ing the way I think about think­ing. The process for the last cou­ple of months has largely been very unstruc­tured, full of trial and error, experimentational, and gut-driven. How­ever, what I have come to under­stand about my own learn­ing and think­ing process can be syn­the­sized in the fol­lowed illustration:

  

  Let me break it down for you.  When I embarked on this jour­ney at the begin­ning of 2012, I set out with the intent of break­ing my lin­ear process of learning. Along the way, I came across three con­cepts, of which I drew best prac­tices from and found a happy in-between the three as illus­trated above.

  Diver­gent vs. Con­ver­gent Thinking 

  

  When I was try­ing to under­stand a problem, I was going about it in a con­ver­gent way. I would look at my pos­si­ble options and from there, con­verge my options into a con­clu­sive solu­tion. I could attest that my back­ground in account­ing and finance really honed this type of think­ing and learn­ing over years. How­ever, what hap­pened is that I started tack­ling prob­lems with a lim­ited amount of tools in my toolkit.

  I then came across a design-thinking con­cept by Tim Brown in his book, Change by Design on diver­gent and con­ver­gent think­ing. I found that I lacked the abil­ity to think diver­gently, to cre­ate choice, to uncover new insights, to think lat­er­ally and to see mul­ti­ple answers. This approach meant that when­ever I approached a prob­lem, I now start­ing my process by ask­ing: “What if”? I real­ized that in order to ask this ques­tion, I had to expand my learn­ing into other fields, be unre­lent­ingly curi­ous about best prac­tices and con­tinue to build up my toolkit. I cur­rently find myself in learn­ing furi­ously at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­ogy, design and devel­op­ment. Ulti­mately, the optional process would be to nav­i­gate the ten­sion and exchange between these two ways of think­ing, through con­tin­u­ously mak­ing choices and elim­i­nat­ing them as needed.

  Fixed Vs. Growth Mindsets

  

  ‘Two Mind­sets,’ Stan­ford, mag­a­zine arti­cle, 2007

  Data Source: Carol Dweck: ‘Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­ogy of Suc­cess’, 2006. Design: Nigel Holmes

  I stum­bled across this info­graphic in one of Brain Picking’s early May posts and related to both sides of the info­graphic. On one side, a Fixed Mind­set leads to a deter­min­is­tic view of the world, and on the side, a Growth Mind­set that leads to a greater sense of free will. I’m not a fan on how the Fixed Mind­set is por­trayed with rather neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion, but I do like the break­down of cat­e­gories, which is more impor­tant to me at the moment. In this approach, I would argue that sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the mind­sets should instead be a spec­trum instead of a split path, as the con­tin­u­ous move­ment between under­stand­ing effort, chal­lenge, crit­i­cism con­stantly changes. My main take­away from Mind­sets, is really hon­ing in on the cat­e­gories on which I felt needed improve­ment to improve my moti­va­tion and productivity.

  The biggest break­through for me in the last cou­ple of months is in the cat­e­gory of Effort. I dis­cov­ered that I never saw effort on a path to mas­tery as I used to believe that peo­ple were nat­u­rally talented/ inclined to be bet­ter in cer­tain areas than oth­ers. I have come to real­ize though, that tal­ent is over­rated. When peo­ple ask me how I have been learn­ing so much these days, I tell them: I hus­tle. Alot. 

  Oppos­able Mind 

  

   In order to prop­erly extract lessons from the two con­cepts I men­tioned above, I found notion of the “oppos­able mind” extremely help­ful in under­stand­ing how to cre­ate a bal­ance in my thinking/learning. I first dis­cov­ered this book on Acu­men Fund’s Fel­lows read­ing list and picked up a copy myself. The book presents the con­cept of an “inte­gra­tive thinker”, some­one who has “the pre­dis­po­si­tion and capac­ity to hold two dia­met­ri­cally oppos­ing ideas in their heads. And then with­out pan­ick­ing or sim­ply set­tling for one alter­na­tive or the other, they’re able to pro­duce a syn­the­sis that is supe­rior to either oppos­ing idea.” The above graphic is the gist of the book, start­ing with the ques­tion of think­ing how you think.

  My biggest take­away from this book is an under­stand­ing of how I nur­ture my own imag­i­na­tion and how I cre­ate bal­ance to turn my curios­ity into tan­gi­ble out­comes. This under­stand­ing then links back full cir­cle into the orig­i­nal two con­cepts of Diver­gent vs. Con­ver­gent Think­ing as well as Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets.