The Journey From The Head To The Heart
by Simon Alexander Ong (he/him)
When I was 17 years old and just one of a handful of Chinese students at my school, I was told the definition of success was graduating from university and pursuing a career as a banker, a lawyer, a doctor, or an accountant. I decided to choose the banking route. This was the middle of 2007—a year before the 2008 global financial crisis—and so my timing wasn't particularly great.
The experience was enlightening because it taught me that this was not the path that I was meant for. This was not the story I wanted to live. This setback, while scary at the time, acted as the catalyst for me embarking on the longest journey that we as humans will ever take: the journey from the head to the heart.
While painful and scary at the time, the global financial crisis would prove to be a blessing in disguise. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on what success meant for me, what fulfilment looked like, and the impact I wanted to have in the world.
It was the first time I had the opportunity to deeply reflect on these important questions and was inspired to do so from the books I was reading. Personal development authors acted as my "informal mentors" during these challenging periods of my life and shifted my energy from focusing on what I couldn't control to what I could.
I attended a two-day seminar held in Central London around coaching and the impact this skill could have on others. I followed my curiosity to see if this was something I wanted to pursue. At the time, there were many things that I was interested in exploring outside of finance but for some reason, this idea of coaching others was a recurring one and after brushing it to the side for a while, decided to learn more about it from this seminar.
It helped that it was free-to-attend. It had a powerful impact on me: a couple of months later, I signed up to study as a coach; a couple of years later, I qualified in two of their certification programmes and six years after that, I was awarded Life Coach of the Year at The International Coaching Awards.
When I first started out, I began to appreciate that the fastest way to make progress in any area of our life is to design an environment around us that makes it impossible not to succeed. As a result, I accepted an invitation to join a mastermind group, which included company CEOs, a Harley Street hypnotherapist and a TV presenter. I felt like the dumbest person in that room, but during my time with these individuals, they inspired me to raise my standards and to go from thinking big to thinking astronomical. In short, I was energised to make things happen.
It's never an easy journey from the head to the heart, but it is the most important and fulfilling that you will ever embark on. This journey inwards and the realisation that silence is never empty but full of answers led me to what I now get to do today: to energise people to see their world differently and to awaken their imagination of what is truly possible so that they can live a better story.
The mental journey from thinking about quitting my full-time corporate job to beginning life as an entrepreneur was a tough one. I would constantly flip between whether to stay and whether to go. One had security but lacked the potential for fulfilment, while the other had the potential to be fulfilling but lacked security. I was reminded by those I was spending increasing amounts of my time with that life truly begins when we take responsibility for where we are and where we are going, and so I handed in that resignation letter and got busy in creating a compelling, magnetic and exciting future.
My story has been one of going against a lot of the stereotypes of what is expected of a Chinese individual and forging a path that is meaningful and fulfilling.
