I Told 'Em #1: Be Rebellious Or You Don't Get It

This picture reminds me how hard I've fought to get a good paid volunteer work at Korea. Many people said its impossible, it's tough. I searched for 2 years. I didn't give up. I then got the call on Monday, and I settled everything I flew for Korea on Thursday. And I had an amazing time of my life there for 7 weeks! I wanted to share this on the net and yes, my story was published in Malaysia's top K-pop culture blog, read it HERE. Many enquiries came in and I'm so glad I'm able to help them :)

You know, I'm sure everyone has dreams. When I was young my dreams were wild, creative, overwhelming. All kinds of dreams a kid could have dreamed of! When I was young, just like any other kid, if I want something, I won't care whether it's possible to get it or not I'll just heck it and do anything to get what I want, even if it's stealing a pair of swim suis from the store. I repented by the way. How crazy I was!

Once I was talking with my CEO and I asked him a question on why didn't we take certain action earlier:

"What took us so long?"

He paused and answered,

"Rationality."

Indeed. When we grew older, our rationality starts to limit our dreams. Our common senses start to limit our dreams. Our mediocre perspectives of life start to limit our dreams. Don't get me wrong. We do have dreams. All of us have different type of dreams to achieve at different point of life. But still there's always that one BIG dream in our entire life that we want to achieve, but we always feel that it is SO HARD to get it.

I'm not sure about you but most of the time I do manage to achieve most of my dreams, or more like my goals at that point of time. But this only happened after I turned 15. I learned this through one enlightening moment. When I was at the age of 15, I was given an opportunity to perform at Spain along with my band mates. It was also the PMR year, one of Malaysia's most important government exams. Parents said no. Relatives said no. Friends said better not. I was so boiled down to the fact that if I went away for that 2 weeks I'll won't be able to score well in my PMR exam. So I gave up that opportunity.

Sadly, 2 weeks passed and my bandmates came back from Spain. They continued with classes and prepared for PMR. 2 weeks made not a slightest difference at all to them!

That was the exact moment when I started fighting for anything I know my heart desires. That was also when I started to take more risks in life, unafraid of whatever is ahead of me, and fought to get what I want. If I want to do anything and anyone blocked my way, I'll always remind myself that I'm not living for them. This just reminded me of what Steve Jobs said before:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

To add from my end - Be strong. Be courageous. Persevere. Risk more than others thinks is safe. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible. Be rebellious when it comes to something your heart truly madly deeply desire. I rejected a Shell scholarship because I wanted to study something that I can apply to me and my family's health, I ditched the idea of interning at an MNC because I prefer the hectic tasks in a start-up company, I declined an offer to work with an MNC once I left my 1st job because I know that's totally not what I want, I choose to do volunteery work in Korea once I graduate instead of finding a job because for my sake I'll be working anyway in the future, and many more, and that's how it made me who I am today. That's when I have more stories to tell.

My stories are not as amazing as other people. But I don't compare. As long as I continue to outdo myself, I'm able to build more amazing chronicles of myself. I always remind myself that other people are examples for you to look up to, but to benchmark them against yourself, is cruel, tedious, and tiring. You are your only enemy. Constantly pushing ourselves on a daily basis will stop us from being just good; but be great; for Good is the enemy of Great.

So yeah, be rebellious and smart in fighting for what you want, and have faith. With that, you have many life stories to tell :)