#bondbreaking

Is there someone in your life that you can’t seem to break away from? Do they keep intruding in your sanctuary or causing undue anxiety? Maybe they were once a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor, a lover but the bond you have now is unhealthy and damaging. It’s time to let it go, to severe what ties you together. 

1. Find two candles of any color and carve your name into one and the other person’s name into the other or signify which candle is whose with symbols or other words.

2. Take a piece of twine, string, thread etc and tie a candle on each end. I recommend using something you aren’t attached to and is easy to break/cut. Also be aware of how close to your wick the string is because it can catch on fire, use caution always!

3. Light both candles and recite the following spell 3 times. While growing confident in what you want as you repeat it each time visualize the anxiety, pain, and negativity this person has caused you dissipating. It may also help to visualize chains breaking.

*this can be modified to encompass different relationships, more people, deities etc* *bonus: Create a sigil of protection and fold it into a heart by your candle to create an amulet to protect you from that person’s attempt to reestablish the bond*

4. Let the candles burn out (safely) or as close to nothing as you can get it. Once it is out you can dispose of the debris in the garbage, bury it, flush it (within reason) or whatever you normally do with spell materials.

I used to think I had a bottomless well of empathy for all unhappy scholars. But lately, when I receive these bondbreaking emails, I find that I have nothing to say. 

When I started getting emails from unhappy scholars a couple of years ago, I was overflowing with eagerness to help. I wanted to share my experience and help these scholars make sense of what they were going through. Each time I received an email, even if I could not fix their financial constraints, I felt that I needed to go out of my way to help them shift their perspectives to see the possibilities and make the most of their situation. Most of all, I wanted them to know that they were not alone. Their frustrations were valid. They should expect their jobs to make them happy.  

When I had dinner a few months ago with a friend who finally broke his bond, I was reminded that what I do is so small, but also huge for a handful of people. My friend told me how much it meant to him to know the story of someone who made it through, did the deed, and built a very happy life on the other side. Because, to him, in the middle of all the stress and the sacrifices made, there were times when he wondered if it was all worth it. He needed something to help him believe. The gratitude in his smile just made me feel like... like I was doing the most meaningful job in the world. 

But along the way something changed. I became increasingly irritated by the emails.

It started small. Emails that just rubbed me slightly the wrong way. One person asked, "What does 10% compounded mean - is that costs multiplied by 10%?" It makes you wonder how they are selecting these scholars. A couple of people revealed without apology that they frankly just wanted to make a lot of money. I started to ask myself, do you really want to spend your time helping people like these? 

Then I encountered someone who has known since college that he wanted to be a chef. He was not interested in the research career path ahead of him at his scholarship organization. Despite this, he not only finished his undergraduate degree but also completed a PhD, because he lacked the guts to get out earlier. Now he wants to break his bond. By this point, the bond is worth close to a million dollars. I felt like I should have had a lot more compassion for this scholar - how unhappy he must be! - but all I could think was, "You seriously have no idea how much a million dollars is." As the grown ups used to say, money does not grow on trees. 

I have become one of those grown ups. I know I have become one of them because these days when someone asks how to get the money, I think, "You think this stuff grows on trees?" As a young scholar, whether it's $300K, $500K or a million dollars, all the numbers sound unimaginably large. I don't think it's something you can even appreciate when you receive your first paycheck. I think you have to get to the point where you or your peers are considering purchases of that magnitude - a house, a child's education - that the enormity begins to sink in. We are talking sums that many, many people never see in their lifetimes. Kids, seriously. This stuff does not grow on trees. 

Then I got an email from someone who was determined to break even without the money lined up. This is a first among all the emails I have ever received. This person sounded like he was willing to consider leaving his guarantors stuck with the bond. Your guarantors are the two people who agree to be financially responsible for your bond should you fail to serve or pay it. The idea that a scholar would be willing to leave his well-meaning, probably unsuspecting guarantors in a position where they could go bankrupt... I was disgusted by the whole thing. 

To the general Singaporean public, bondbreakers have a reputation as selfish, irresponsible brats. In being very public about my story, I wanted to shed light on what it's really like to be a bondbreaker. Most of us actually do want to contribute meaningfully to society. We want our skills and talents to be put to good use, and not wasted in some corner of bureaucracy due to incompetent human resource management. But when I received that last email, well, it is one of the most irresponsible things I have ever heard. I want no part in defending that.  

But here is the thing. I am particularly incensed about that selfish brat case (let's call it that for now) because I know there is a fine line that separates him from the 23-year-old version of me. Are our motives that different? I have vague memories of my parents trying to tell me, "Why do you have to be so unhappy about the bond, it'd be good if you served your country." All I could think about at the time was the depth of my despair. I hated my job. It did not occur to me that my problems were, if I had cared to just lift my head a little, first world problems. Why should anyone, even one's parents, fork over several hundred thousand dollars for someone to pursue their happiness. 

At this juncture in my life, I see both sides and hold incredibly mixed feelings. On the one hand, I believe strongly that professional fulfillment is an important part of a well-lived life. You should invest the effort to have work that makes you happy and helps you grow. Your relationship to your job should not be hatred or even indifference. On the other hand, a happier job is not a right. The world does not exist so you can have a happier job. Certainly, no one else's retirement fund should be emptied for it.  

The 23-year-old version of me would have rolled her eyes, but now this is all I want to tell some of these scholars: you don't get to have what you want at any cost. There are bigger problems in the world than your professional dissatisfaction. 

To be fair, I also receive a lot of emails from very nice scholars. One unhappy scholar would not even ask her parents if they had enough money for the bond, because she knew they couldn't afford her siblings' education as well.  

There is a wonderful NYTimes Modern Love column where the writer is talking to an inmate, Mike, who has served 16 years in prison and has 8 more to go. (It may seem a little dramatic to compare a scholarship bond to a prison sentence, but trust me, any unhappy scholar will find that the analogy resonates.)

Mike says:

“These young guys - they just got locked up and they’ve got five years to do and they hate it. I get that. When you’re 20, five years is a long time, so they act out. I used to be like that... But then I realized: Man, this is my life. Do I want to be that guy? Always mad? I’m not going to get married or have a family... There are some things I’m never going to do. And I can spend my life being mad about that, or I can try something else..."

What else?

"I decided to be the best prisoner I could be."

His wisdom is humbling. 

I don't believe for a moment that we should all suck it up and accept our fates as prisoners. My admiration for Mike is not that he gave into his fate, but that he saw what he couldn't change and instead turned his attention to what he could. He decided to "try something else" within his constraints. Even within prison walls, one can be some kind of "best".

I don't know that you can accelerate maturity. Maybe you do need to "do time". It is true that when you cross 30, a six year bond no longer seems to stretch out into eternity as it once did. When you live long enough to face your own share of disappointments, you learn to hold and hope with more open palms, instead of insisting with closed fists. You learn that resilience trumps stubbornness. 

I would not have changed my decision in any way. The day I walked out free remains one of the happiest days of my life. And what an incredible ride it has been since. I have always known that I am beyond fortunate that I had that option. I have also always known that I wasn't grasping the full magnitude of my good fortune. Now I know what I was missing: I cannot imagine what it must have taken for my parents to trust that my happiness was worth it. That magnanimity, too, is humbling. 

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I received an email that made me very sad. It gets to the heart of what I think we don't answer in the Singapore Scholarship Guide: what are one's options if you don't take a scholarship? 

This Singaporean student is deciding whether or not to take a scholarship, and cannot afford to go overseas for college without one. This person wrote: 

"I think very few of us have any idea what taking charge of our own destiny means... Even if I do decide to study locally, I don't see how it can be much different, i.e. choose degree - study - graduate - choose job in related field. Just an extension of the education system so far. There isn't really much opportunity to 'find myself' in the sense that an overseas liberal arts education allows. So, in perhaps an over simplistic way, am I trapped?" 

When I think back to my high school self, I understand how this person feels. Up to that point, I don't think I did anything that I would consider vaguely original or self-initiated in my life. I didn't know how to start. (My high school self would probably be appalled that one day I would write a public blog that has become a platform for helping strangers break their bonds. !!)

It was in college that I was exposed to a dazzling range of opportunities. That is where my ability to invent possibilities for myself was born. But really, it was the bondbreaking that sealed it. I made one big decision to choose something I really wanted, that nobody else really wanted for me. From then on, the only perspective that made sense was that I can choose for myself. 

This got me thinking: can you achieve a similar effect by other means?

I don't think the question is about whether local Singaporean universities are as good as overseas ones. I don't even think the question is about the value of living overseas and all the changes in perspective it can bring. All students - from any country - should try to find a way to spend time abroad, and students in Singaporean universities have no shortage of such opportunities. 

I think it's about creating a sense of self-propulsion. That you can take charge of your own destiny, as the student puts it. 

But how does one create a sense of possibilities? What are things you can do if you have no idea where to start? 

This got me thinking about the idea of a Self-Propulsion Project.

You need to do something that you want to do. You need to get used to the idea that you can craft your own outcomes. Choose a project that will give you a sense of doing something original for yourself. Don't choose something that the system tells you is good to do, or that your parents think you should do, or that all your peers are doing. Pick something that is for you. 

So. What could you do? Ideas for starters: 

Learn to code. There are so many resources for this. Build something.

Take an online course in something that intrigues you. There are lots of MOOCs out there. Don't pick something that you should know. Pick something you want to know. 

Go on a round the world trip. Again, so much info out there! People have done it on anything from $12K to $30K (and of course, much more). But it can be done for less than 10% of the S$500K your bond would be worth. 

Run a project that will earn you $1000. See SVA's Entrepreneurial Design syllabus on their $1K project.

Fundraise to sponsor a water project for charity:water

Get inspiration from the things you could do to get yourself an arts education if you didn't want to pay for art school.

"But all of that is so hard!" you say. Of course, it is. Leading an interesting, fulfilling life, in general, is hard. All this takes an incredible amount of discipline. It takes saying "no" to a lot of things that your peers or that the system might want you to do. It even takes saying "no" to things that you want to do that are easier - like wasting time on Facebook.

I have to admit that it never occurred to my high school self to attempt any of that. I lacked the knowledge that there might be other options. I couldn't imagine the possibilities.

But things change, and one day very far down the line it became perfectly reasonable to do things like run a Kickstarter and teach a class and publish an ebook. On a larger scale, it becomes possible to go after interesting jobs that you believe would be engaging and fulfilling, even if from the outset you feel completely unqualified to do them. 

There is this quote that life is an exploration of one's appetites. I think that's the idea that Singaporean students (and Singaporeans and all other people) need to get used to. 

So here is my offer to you: 

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If you are a Singaporean student or unhappy scholar who wants to try out a Self-Propulsion Project, email me your project plan. I will work on it with you and help hold you accountable. Set yourself a deadline to email me - a week from today whenever you are reading this post - and do it. 

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Posted earlier this week. It's about bondbreaking. 

It was pointed out to me that I've never been so blunt about my opinion on the topic. Usually, I say, this is my experience but your mileage may vary. It is true, your mileage will vary. But well, I got tired of hiding the fact that it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. 

Read it here:  A life that reflects who you are

I wanted to reflect on what I have learned from pursuing professional happiness. 

Tony Chu has a great post called Life Design, where he is trying to decide what factors are most important as he chooses his first post-grad school job. He listed a few ways to evaluate potential jobs - "growth, do-gooder-ness, money, network, and flexibility". 

Having changed jobs several times since starting my career, and having advised many others on their job changes, this is what I have learned.

Money This matters to the extent that you must not feel underpaid. More is of course better, but more cannot compensate for other factors beyond a point. Oddly enough, whether or not you feel well paid is only partly correlated with the actual number. You can be paid a lot and still feel underpaid. I had this experience in investment banking where I was paid more than I had ever been paid up to that point in my career. And still I felt resentful about how "little" I was paid, because it was a "bad" year for bonuses, because my expectations were blown out of proportion, because I felt the job had extracted so much work, so much life out of me that I felt grossly underpaid. Money is a factor but just one.

Prestige This does not not matter. Prestige is relative. Your perception of prestige will change. Your social circle's perception of prestige will also change, if you change social circles. Once upon a time, I thought a government scholarship and a civil service career were prestigious. I have since learned that I don't care for that sort of prestige. I have found that people who don't have a brand name stamp on their resumes seem to always be slightly envious of those who do. So frankly, I think those people should go get a brand name stamp and get it out of their systems. You will find it opens more doors. I have certainly been given the benefit of the doubt because of the stamps on my resume. But once you have experienced prestige, it will decrease in importance to you. It's kind of like the Groucho Marx quote, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."

Growth This trumps everything else. There is growth of the company, if you're looking at startups. As Eric Schmidt famously told Sheryl Sandberg, "If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on." Then there is growth in the role. Every 3, 6 months you should feel like you have leveled up. You should be able to do something you couldn't have done before. Acquired more skills, deepened in the skills you have, do things you couldn't have done before. Growth doesn't mean you'll enjoy your job every day. In fact, it almost guarantees that there will be days when you crumble under the weight of your job and just want to curl up into a ball and cry. On some days, you will do exactly that. On other days, you will be in flow. And on still other days, you will be cruising. The key is that your job must allow you to grow in the ways that are valuable to you. If you value being better at building relationships, your job had better put you in a lot of difficult people situations. If you want to be better at a technical skill, your job should allow you to solve challenging technical problems. It is hard to choose for growth. But I have found that the less defined, less cookie-cutter a job is, the more room there is for growth. 

People This matters. But it is hard to accurately predict whether you will fit in with a culture ahead of time. Even if everyone you meet in the interview process tells you they love their colleagues, it's hard to tell whether you will feel the same. It certainly doesn't hurt if everyone says the best part of the company is the people. In the mean time, all you can do is ask questions like, "What kinds of people are valued in this company? What kind of people succeed here?" 

Your boss Some people choose to take a job because of a particular person they want to work for. Someone once told me, "All the best job decisions I've made were because of someone not something." But here's the catch: your boss can change. I have changed managers 3 times in the last 2 years. So it is useful to learn to be boss-agnostic. Learn from whoever is in your reporting line. That said, a bad boss is the #1 reason why people quit their jobs. That's from some stat I heard in a b-school class, where many people nodded in agreement. 

Work-life balance Know what you're getting into. Accept your limits. If you like having 8 hours of sleep, don't be a banker. If you don't want to work with people who think a job is just a way to pay the bills, don't take up a 9-to-5 corporate cog job. 

Meaning A difficult one. Having worked in public service at the Singapore central bank and having explored a save-the-world job in impact investing, I think I have pursued meaning and come away with surprising lessons. The most important thing, I find, is that you must feel that you are making a difference on a daily basis. Otherwise, especially if your job promises meaning and you feel none, you will feel dissonance and come to hate your job. Meaning is more important in the sense that you have impact, and less important in the sense that you are saving the world. I personally haven't been able to find enough fulfillment from jobs that are ostensibly about do-gooder-ness. To me, it is the broader definition of impact that matters. Impact means being able to draw a line from what you do to an outcome you care about. In my startup, I feel that I can draw a direct line from what I do to a certain chunk of the company's revenue. It baffles the mind to think how much smaller this number is than than the deals I was doing in investment banking, but it feels far more significant because I feel more ownership over it. The other surprising way in which I have found meaning is whether I can make a unique, positive contribution to a situation. If I can make a better judgment call, extract more insightful analysis, make a process go more smoothly, be a listening ear to someone's bad day, help someone step up and grow, if I can do any of that and feel that I did it better than most would have in my role, then I feel I have done meaningful work. 

Finally, having had all these jobs, we get to the question that trumps them all: should you even get a job?

Years ago, when I was unhappily bonded to Singapore government, one of my biggest fears was that I would become indifferent. That I would become OK with being mildly unhappy all the time with my job. That I would forget how it feels to want something really badly and go after it, risks be damned. That "what would make you happy?" is a question worth asking. 

In the Singapore Scholarship Guide, I wrote:

When I came back to Singapore and started serving my bond, my biggest fear was that I would conform and "be like everybody else"... I was most afraid that if I stayed in an environment that I found stifling for six years, I would be so drained, so cynical, so beaten down by the end of it that I wouldn't have the energy to get out and start over on something I really wanted to do. I suppose I feared my own weakness.

For a long time, I assumed that my younger self had simply blown that fear out of proportion, because I was too immature and too insecure of who I was and what I could do. Even when I wrote the Scholarship Guide, I was thinking, come on, look at where you are now, how can you possibly think that you'd ever settle into a job to which you are merely indifferent and be OK with that. You are not wired for indifference. 

Over a couple of recent conversations, I realized the fear is real. It was entirely warranted. I had conversations with friends from completely different backgrounds about their peers back in Singapore, who were not exactly unhappy but carried a kind of unacknowledged unhappiness. This is not limited to bonded scholars. We know people from all kinds of backgrounds who suffer from this. (And of course, this is not limited to Singaporeans.)

We know of people whose dream in life is to buy a nice car. Not to find a job they enjoy or to have a real impact or do any kind of worthwhile work, but merely to buy a car.

We also know of peers who now have family obligations and just want work-life balance, which is fine, except that they were never that happy with their jobs. Now they no longer think about whether or not their job makes them happy. It's a non-question. 

We know of people who hated their jobs while they were bonded, but eventually exited into the private sector but basically stayed in the same industry, similar function, and just continued complaining.

So if you're reading this and you're unhappy with your bond or with your job, and you've been feeling that way for awhile now, and you're wondering if you will change and eventually think this is all OK, even though it is not really what you want, the answer is:

YES, your fear is real. 

It is incredibly hard work to figure out what it is you want. It is hard for almost everyone.

But you need to start by asking, what is it that makes me happy? And you need to take that question seriously. And you need to do something about it. And when you are done with that something, you need to ask yourself again, ok, what makes me really happy? Then you keep refining. It may take years, decades, many different job choices and life choices.

We have launched! It is ready for download:

Singapore Scholarship Guide: The $500,000 Decision

Go read. And please share with friends!

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A bit of background that you, dear readers, might enjoy:

The idea started with Daniel, whom I like to refer to as the happy student. He is the best executor of side projects that I know. He came up with the idea and invited me to write from the perspective of the token bondbreaker. All we needed was a happy scholar, one who had completed their bond and was planning to stay on in the civil service. This was a little trickier to find because we wanted a current civil servant who was willing to have their name published. I called upon my junior college classmate Chin Lum, whom I haven't seen in years but who bravely and enthusiastically was willing to write. 

We wrote the entire thing without ever meeting up in person. Dan and I only had one Skype call. Chin Lum and Dan have yet to meet in person. They are awesome people to work with.

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The most striking insight to me was that the three of us say remarkably similar things in the guide. We decided that we would each write a full set of answers to all the questions individually, without seeing the other two people's answers. It was only in the editing that we would read each other's writing. 

You would think that we would be in strong disagreement. You would think especially that Chin Lum and I would say totally opposing things as the happy scholar and the happy bondbreaker, respectively. After all, what separates our points of view is a decision worth a small fortune, as our guide title suggests.

Our paths have completely diverged. But here is the thing: the decision about whether the scholarship is right for you is highly complex. This applies to both whether you should take a scholarship and whether you should break the bond later on, if you realize you've made the wrong choice. 

The decision is essentially asking you to take a bet on what you will be like 4 to 10 years from now. We can provide you with all the information in the world about what the scholarship program and civil service careers are like, but you need to make a call on what your future self will be like. 

This is incredibly hard.

You may get it wrong. In all honesty, even if I had our guide to read, I would probably have gotten it wrong. 

Since the readership of this blog tends to have more Singaporeans who are serving their bonds than JC students considering a scholarship, let me say this: if you get it wrong, the struggle will be very hard but please remember to be kind to yourself. 

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I was in a state of euphoria for 3 or 4 months post bondbreaking. I remember thinking, I will never be sad or ask for anything ever again. Ever! But the toughest, saddest parts of my life were post-bondbreaking. Breaking your bond will not insure you against loss, heartbreak, insecurity, failure, and all the other feelings that are just part of living.

But the point, I have learned, is not to guarantee happiness. The point is to give yourself an opportunity to live fully and wholeheartedly. 

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Writing the guide has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Every time I spend a few hours on it, I come away feeling satisfied. This project has had the odd effect of making me feel flush with gratitude.

In my original bio, I had a line that said, 

the only remaining artifact of that anger is a photocopy of a very large check written to release her from the bond. 

Even thought a draft reader called this line "epic", the better judgment of my co-authors led to the editing of this line, a decision I agree with. 

But that overly dramatic line is true. I don't know where I've kept the photocopy, but the thought of that check and the memory of the heavy anxiety around the whole bondbreaking process just makes me feel like... like, wow, everything in my life right now has been built on that. Every sliver of happiness that I hold now is possible because of that.

Everything from having a job that constantly challenges me to this enthusiasm for side projects to sitting in cafes in gorgeous 70 degree weather under blue skies in early October blogging. All of this.

Gratitude. Immense gratitude. 

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Singapore Scholarship Guide: The $500,000 Decision

Enjoy! 

[A variant of working in public. This is not about my job but on writing about writing.]

I am co-writing a scholarship guide for Singaporean junior college students who are deciding whether or not to take a scholarship. It is, in essence, a guidebook on how to think about decisions that will affect the next 10 years of your life when you are merely an 18 year old. 

The guide is in FAQ format, and I was trying to find my voice writing out the answers. The voice I use in this blog has evolved over time into a fairly consistent tone. I thought I should be able to channel roughly the same voice, can't be that hard. But it hasn't quite worked that way. 

You see, I know this readership fairly well. I know what works here. I also know which boundaries are interesting to push. 

But I don't know our scholarship guide's audience. I mean, it will be those 18 year olds, and I know what it was like to be in their shoes. But I don't know if the people reading will also be parents, or other Singaporeans who are merely curious, or reporters, or people who think bondbreaking is flat out immoral. Who knows. If all goes well with our marketing, they will probably all be our readers. 

I was pulling back in my answers. I was writing about how one might feel, as opposed to how I actually felt. It wasn't even obvious to me until I reached this one question. The question is about how completing a full scholarship bond will impact your life decisions. I wrote:

It is hard to predict the psychological impact that the bond will have on you. I think my biggest fear was that I would conform and "be like everybody else"... I think I was most afraid that if I stayed in an environment that I found stifling for 6 years, I would be so drained, so cynical, so beaten down by the end of it that I wouldn't have the energy to get out and start over with something I really wanted to do. I supposed I feared my own weakness.

When I re-read it, I thought, did I really write that? Do I mean it? The tone of this answer was different from the rest. I had stopped using all the "data points" I had from speaking with other people. I was using myself as the data point. 

Then re-reading once more, the self judging starts. Why do you think you're so special anyway. Someone is going to tell you how entitled you sound. Do you know how self righteous you sound. Are you saying that everyone else is conformist. Who are you to decide your life is better. 

Regardless of all that, are you willing to, if all goes well with publicity, have thousands of people read that you feared your own weakness? Geez. What a personal thing to reveal to people who don't know you. It's not like this blog where people have context and the persistent readers generally agree on a set of values (or they'd be bored and stop reading, and we don't care about those people around here). 

It's frightening to be seen. I mean, really be seen. You don't know how you'll be judged.

But it's so important to express that fear of conforming for the 18 year old who feels it. I've had so many of those conversations. There is someone out there who needs to hear it, that it's ok to feel that way, and that this is how it looks 6 years later if you make choices in alignment with your self. 

So I am torn. I think out of all my other answers, that one answer has the right voice. Part of me wanted to go back and re-write so many answers, because suddenly the rest of them felt so restrained. So reasonable, so pretend to be wise.

That one answer achieved that stunt where you are so specific, so personal, that it gives way to something universal. 

We have a lot of editing to do. I don't know what will make it to the final version, but I wanted to share this here. If I am on the fence about "being seen" in a scholarship guide, at least this blog is a good space to experiment with getting outside the comfort zone. That seems worthwhile. 

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