Unstuck Journal #1: Prologue

If we can’t see, we can’t do. If we don’t unlearn, we can’t relearn new things.

Humans have close to 100 billion neurons in our brain, all wired in different ways that make us truly unique. But if we don’t unwire ourselves, we can’t untangle those beliefs, biases and assumptions that no longer serve us well. Our brain is smart. It knows that in order to help us process and remember so much information, it needs to create short-cuts and autopilot responses. When we don’t have the answers, we have a tendency to default to our experiences of how we were treated before.

Let’s say you see a misbehaving child on the street. The child is nagging the parent to buy an ice-cream. The parent refuses and the child starts rolling the floor screaming for it. What would you do? Ask any rational person what they would do when a child misbehaves. Give them options such as, “be more patient”, “try to talk to them differently”, “negotiate for something else”. No one would say they would “raise their voice and scream at them”. But it happens in real life. Have you wondered why? We let our emotions get the better of us and we default to how we were once treated without even realising it.

Have you seen parents scream and tell their children to calm down when they themselves have lost their cool? Everything that we are trying to teach grown-ups these days, whether it is about showing vulnerability, being kind to one another or being patient, are the exact same lessons that we try to teach kids. Was there an implicit timeline for these important virtues? When did we stop learning? When did we stop being curious?

In this book, I am going to highlight some of the mental filters that I did not even know existed in me.

What mental filters do you have? Are you aware of them? Where did you get them?

There are many questions throughout this book and many of them I have either asked myself or asked others during our deep conversations.

Clarity often comes from the questions we ask ourselves when we spot learning cues. Our world is becoming increasingly complex. Information is multiplying at record speed. Change is the only constant. To help us deal with change, to become a better version of ourselves, we need to short-circuit what we think we know, ask better questions, reflect and put them in action. It has been a liberating experience getting out of my comfort zone, which includes talking to strangers on my podcast, going down on one knee and getting eye-level with my own children to see what they see and what perspective I might have missed being a grown up.

If you want to think, feel, or do things differently, try to become a kid again. Life experiences often inspire us to look at our lives differently, I am no exception.

According to research conducted by Boston University and the University of Michigan,1 80% of life’s most significant events happen by age 35 and most life-defining moments take place in our twenties. I thought I had reached the pinnacle of my life at age 35. I was married. I had a place to live. I had a son. I had a job. I travelled a couple times a year. I got into watches as a hobby. The kind of pinnacle we tend to measure other people by. I was not rich, but my life was comfortable. I thought my life was complete. Until I felt stuck. That fuzzy feeling that you are experiencing a level of emptiness inside you, but you don’t know what it is just yet. The kind of question you ask yourself, is this it? Is this what life is about? Fulfilment isn’t the same as happiness.

In April 2019, my new-born son suffocated for five minutes in my arms. I thought he wouldn’t make it when I saw him look past me. His limbs were not responding and his body turned bluish-purple. I tried to act stoically while patting his back, while my wife was trying to get help from our neighbours and calling my sister and father desperately for help. One thought kept looping in my head. I couldn’t save my own son. At that point, his stomach was hardening like a rock. I put a little pressure on his tummy with two of my fingers. A few minutes later, he opened his eyes and then his eyes quickly closed again. I wasn’t sure if he was alive. But thankfully, he made it through.

We are forever indebted to whatever it might be that saved him that night, and to all the firemen, policemen and medics who responded to our neighbour’s call and came to our house.

Why did I feel guilty? Why was there a level of emptiness in my life?

I was stuck. I lived in guilt and fear. I would wake up to the slightest sound. I would jump out of bed and slide a finger under his nose to make sure he was breathing. This went on for about five months until one day I reflected on my feelings. The near-death encounter with my infant son was a catalyst that made me look at myself in the mirror and ask myself a series of existential questions to which I had no answers. How could I become a better father? What could I do to become a better person whom my son would look up to? How could an ordinary person like me contribute to the world? Why am I here?

The incident made me look at the world differently through the lens of a small child. Since the beginning of 2019, a number of events have unfolded worldwide. Social unrest, Black Lives Matter, an unprecedented global pandemic that lasted for almost three years. Through their eyes, I saw a world that is disconnected. Many of us are caught in a negative spiral.

While we are more digitally connected than ever, we are less connected with one another on a human level. Every 40 seconds, someone decides to end their life because they fail to see hope. Someone could have stepped in, said something to change their course. Yet media and content producers are writing eye-catching, sometimes biassed and misguided content to spread fear and hatred just so they can attract eyeballs.

Our way of thinking and receiving knowledge is becoming more binary, and that’s not the world I want my son and his friends to live in. At that time, I did not know where this would all lead me to, other than thinking I wanted to spread positivity and my belief for hope, kindness and humanity.

I had a conversation with one of my dormant ties, Doreen Siu , a senior Human Resources leader whom I respected a lot for her composure. I asked what she thought of me. She told me I am someone who is always positive and authentic. Deep down I knew that wasn’t true – she was referring to the person I was projecting because that was the expectation of the industry. I was a business consultant who had to act smart and pretend I knew everything (the Dunning-Kruger effect), putting on a poker face for my customers all the time.

Several months later, I decided to lock myself in a room and write out the experience, and what it had meant for me as a first time father. I published it on Amazon hoping that some day my son would read it when I am not around. I thought it could be a good way to connect with him and for him to understand what it means to be a parent, beyond that fact that he scared the shit out of me. I started sharing fortuitously about what happened and why I am dedicated to spreading positivity.

My impact was not clear to me until a talented and young woman from Vietnam thanked me for my podcast, and 20 minutes into our conversation she broke down and said she had tried to commit suicide. That conversation taught me perhaps my own struggle could be an inspiration to others who are in need and I could rub off my positive energy on more people to help them think differently.

I haven’t read that many books in my life, but I have always loved self-help books. One of the first books I read and enjoyed a lot was Tuesdays with Morrie. One thing leads to another. There’s a book, a second book, and then this third book that you are reading now. I learned about video shooting and made some viral videos on social media. I started inviting people on my podcast to have a deep conversation. I found joy in what I do outside of work. And the more I do this, the more serendipities and people are attracted into my life.

The law of positive attraction is real, positive changes come from manifestation and consistent actions. My optimism is not innate. It came from losing some things in life and almost losing my own son.

The purpose of this book is to share what I have learnt from my own ups and downs in life. I learnt that these ups and downs are not perpetual moments. I learnt that everything in life is impermanent. When our self-worth and state of happiness are dependent on external events, we become vulnerable. I was reminded that we all come from the same place, our mother’s womb, and will all wind up in the same place too. I need to redefine my own life, and not live someone else’s life. Every one of us has up-and-down days in life.

I hope this book will be a timeless one that you can just open to any page to remind you what you can make out of challenging times and stay true to who you are. Just like our life, this book is a journey and there is no start and no finish. And you can open up any chapter any day. I hope a little bit of my positivity will rub off on you and that you will act to manifest it, to become better than the person you were yesterday.

I hope that as you read throughout this book, you can gain new perspectives, ask different and better questions about yourself, develop the ability to unlearn, unwire and relearn what you think you know about the world and yourself, and commit to positive actions to become better and inspire others to become better together. I can’t thank enough all the wonderful podcast guests and people in the community who have been supporting my work. I hope this book can help inspire you to discover your transformative purpose, ask better questions to explore your mental filters, question your belief system, assumptions and bias, and practise some of the principles mentioned in this book daily. Thank you to everyone who motivated me to write this book.

I hope this book can help you think differently, think positively, and rediscover that curious kid in you.

Become unstuck.

Aaron Pang

Founder at TP Consultancy & Community

Join our global community of positive thinkers who are making our world a better place.