In the weeks leading to the mark of Own Your Story’s (OYS) first anniversary in August, I found myself lost… again. Instead of mesmerising the wonderment in our journey, I was troubled by the urge of monetizing it and turning it into a business, showered in many well-intentioned advices and couldn’t hear my own voice. During the…
I felt stuck… in a perfectly fine life. People would tell me that I was doing a good job building community, touching lives, and getting hitched; but deep down I was lost in the narratives the felt more and more like a cage — what I am supposed to do, who I am supposed to…
When I was able to breath smoothly, it dawned on me how close I was to death. It started with a post-run walk where I suddenly felt uneasy and rested on a bench. Thing got worse when I had difficulty breathing, literally fighting for air. It gradually slowed down to light, long breath, that was…
When Own Your Story started our first ‘Think Tank’ initiative, we believe that every one of us has a voice to shape the future of Malaysia in the topics relevant to all of us. For this think tank session, our team decided on the theme ‘reading’ since the community started from a book (The Art…
In the midst of the wedding planning, I found myself in a lot of resistance that often leads to negative emotions. A close friend told me that the root of my resistance laid in the false expectation that I could have things my way. I agreed, and a lot of ‘but’ immediately popped into my…
When we organized a community dialogue about personal transformation and career transition, I didn’t expect ‘parents’ to be a major challenge that many participants resonate with. One of our panellists has an extreme case of hiding her career change from her parents for 6 months; when her parents found out about it, it led to…
From a movie based on the life of a 20 something female who built the most exclusive high-stakes, an underground poker game in the world and a book written by a shame researcher on her life work, I learned a common life lesson in these 2 vastly different sources — the power of owning our story. In…
When I saw Sadhguru on Impact Theory podcast, I was so excited to explore the intersection between the world of spirituality and entrepreneurship. While Tom Bilyeu, a Type-A entrepreneur, was passionate about inspiring people to be more and do more, Sadhguru’s teaching is about seeing the world as a whole and we are part of the…
When K. Wanderman (a creative entrepreneur and active contributor of OYS) brought up the subject literature for Own Your Story community, my first internal reaction was a huge question mark. Somewhere along the process of exploring our approach, I had a paradigm shift when Kevin mentioned a quote scripted under the statue commemorating Vietnam War in the US — ‘freedom is…
I came across the book ‘The Alchemist’ when I was on a ‘soul-searching’ trip in Vietnam. I was in a noodle shop when a man I just befriended showed me the book he read on the mountain top that morning — The Alchemist. At that point, I’ve heard of the book but haven’t read it yet. So…
I always feel that going through a minor depression and hitting the rock bottom was the best thing that ever happened to me. In the process of letting go of everything and restarting on a blank page, I discovered the most precious life lesson — I am in charge of my life! It was an important turning…
In his global best-selling book ‘Sapiens’, the world’s renowned historian Yuvah Noah Harari said that we, the Homo Sapiens, are able to dominate the world because of 2 things that we do extremely well — storytelling and cooperation. These are the exact ingredients that enabled us to build trust and connection with one another so that we…