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 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 thought, maybe,…
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…
As a community platform run by community for community, Own Your Story is constantly crowdsourcing ideas and co-creating events or projects with our community members. When the subject ‘quarter-life crisis’ is brought up, it immediately got our buy-in because many of us went through our internal crisis one way or another. What is a quarter life crisis?…
If there is one thing I learn from my relationship, it is parallel with the first verse of the Tao De Jing ‘the name that can be named is not the eternal name’ — love does not need words. When he kneeled and asked, ‘will you marry me?’, I looked into his eyes and I knew I…
In Own Your Story, we strive to design ‘fun, explorative, experiential’ experiences that help people find joy in life through connection, creation and service. When we organize a poetry and art jam with the theme ‘courage’, our core belief is that everyone is creative and ‘creativity’ is a way of expressing who we are in a…
At the mark of the 40th episode of Own Your Story podcast, I decided to put a stop to this journey and focus on turning the audio contents into a book, something tangible that people could hold, a medium in which I could express myself most honestly. 40 episodes. They represented 40 times of putting myself out…
Ever since I met Jolene in Own Your Story community, we had a blast working with her to launch initiatives in the realm of happiness and mental health. It is simply wonderful working with a person who is so passionate and knowledgeable about a subject matter that she truly believes in. Challenges in the field…
I connected with Yi Xuan on social media before we met in an event. When I invited him to participate in a magazine sharing session as a curated sharer, he gracefully accepted and brought us a heartfelt story about quarter-life crisis. It took a lot of courage to share his struggles as a millennial who…
While Ridzwan and I got acquainted through a mutual friend, we got to really know each other through our work. I realized that there were a lot of parallels in our journey from an overseas graduate in the professional industry to finding our place as a creative misfit. I found my path as a writer,…
How do you learn to trust? I couldn’t find words to explain it. There were times when following my heart meant that I had to go against reasons, common sense, and wise advises of the important people in my life. Trust is something to be experienced, the result of work and intention, suffering and reconciliation.…