just had a two hour long dinner with the captain doctor president scholar.
i have a hunch that those four words may actually be specific to only one person in the Singapore context, or perhaps two. but anyway.
i strongly believe that every person can do amazing things in their life, given the right inspiration. i believe that if you give someone a cause to believe in, they will live their life for the cause. i believe that if you challenge a person to do something great, more often than not they will surprise you. i believe that alot of the things that hold people back in their daily lives are actually just obstacles in their mind. "i can't do this" is a lie.
i guess we found a bit of common ground to talk about, in how to develop people. we agreed on certain things. like how alot of the time, we as people have certain beliefs in our mind which prevent us from doing things. The eye-fo was a case in point - much of the event planning was done by a trio of 19-year-old girls, and the event was acclaimed as the best ever by many. if i had been approached to take it up, i dare say that my first reaction would have been "This is too big for me. I can't do this." As it is, i only got involved because i thought (quite correctly) that my role was small.
i wonder if those three ladies would have taken up this role if they knew how big it was going to become...
and the truth is, they did a marvellous job of it. having been entrusted fully with the responsibility, they rose to the occasion and did hugely amazing things which i never imagined possible for a bunch of girls fresh out of JC.
i think that if you fully take on a responsibility, you will grow into it. if you embrace it as your own responsibility, and set about to accomplish it as best as you can, you will do a pretty good job of it. even if you don't have the talent and the skills to get it done, once you have acknowledged that it is your responsibility and no one else's, you will go and find people who can help YOU to get it done YOURSELF.
i believe that youth nowadays have too few responsibilities. school hardly counts, honestly. young people don't believe that anything they do actually matters, and hence they spend their time doing things that don't matter. if you believed that you could make a difference, would you?
one big change in my life these past few.. months? year? i believe i can make a difference.
I'd like to quote here the words from the adidas ad that ran here some time ago, with apologies to adidas.
Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary.
Impossible is nothing.
If you believed that you could make a difference, would you?
