Couple Lessons from a Couple Interview

???Relationship Building

• ???Quick Start: Sheng and Olivia initially met over a dating app during the pandemic and bonded over shared values and international experiences. Sheng proposed within only 6 months of meeting Olivia: "When you know, you know."
• ???Living Authentically: Both prioritize being authentic and true to themselves, citing it as the cornerstone for a genuine and lasting relationship. When we are authentic, we can also be vulnerable and honest, which are the accelerants of relationships: “I’ve been in past relationships where I might live with the person for 3 years and still don’t truly know them. That’s because I hadn’t learned yet the art and value of vulnerability. With Olivia, she ALWAYS takes the vulnerable route, which encouraged me to do so too.”
• ???Scheduled Quality Time: Despite their busy careers, they make it a point to schedule quality time. For example, Olivia blocks out "Sheng Time" in her calendar and Sheng has a strict work shutdown time of 7pm every day so they can eat dinner and do sunset bike rides together.

???Personal & Professional Growth

• ???Continuous Learning: Olivia navigated a transition from France to the U.S. in 2020, managing bipolar disorder and autoimmune diseases while honing her marketing skills. Sheng manages a distributed team and has stepped into many new roles this past year including community manager, writer, consultant, coach, and most recently a podcaster with the Mind Map Gurus series.

• ???Resilience Through Challenges: Both Sheng and Olivia faced tough life challenges recently, including the loss of Olivia's father to pancreatic cancer and a sudden move from San Francisco to Houston to support family. These experiences have not only deepened their bond but also bolstered their adaptability to change.
• ???Mind Mapping: Sheng elaborates on how mind mapping isn't just a business tool. He and Olivia use it to plan projects, holidays, and even navigate relationship goals and conflicts, using the Emotion Mind Map as an example.
• ???Balancing Priorities: Olivia emphasizes her daily physical routine as a mental health necessity, reflecting a more holistic approach to work-life harmony instead of a strict balance. This is critical given how unpredictable her bipolar condition is. Her routines give her both a locus of control as well as increases her odds of bouncing back from a “low”.

???Business & Strategy

• ???First Principles Thinking: Sheng explains the utility of first principles in deconstructing complex emotional or strategic issues, applying a framework often used in the corporate world to their relationship and to build personal resilience.
• ???Platform Diversification: Sheng's move from YouTube to writing and podcasting illustrates the value of platform diversification for extending reach and increasing his luck surface area.
• ?? Community as an Intellectual Hub: Sheng describes Mind Map Nation as more than just a community—it's an intellectual dojo for like-minded Learners to sharpen their decision-making and critical thinking skills in a world that’s increasingly noisy and chaotic.

I’d love to hear your thoughts (or even want me to expand via writing or video) on these points. Simply reply to this email or message me on @ShengSilver.