Am I hurting enough?

Ivan Leong
2 min readMar 31, 2022

Amidst the barrage of emails that I receive, I came across this from CBInsights, and this prompted me to reflect on my career journey, and the following story which, I quote, aptly describes how many of us feel.

This guy goes into a bar and there’s a dog lying in the corner. Every so often the dog whimpers and whines a little. The guy asks the barman, “What’s up with that dog?” And the barman says, “Oh, he’s probably lying on a nail.”

After a few more minutes and another set of whines, the guy asks the barman, “So why doesn’t he move?” And the barman says, “It probably doesn’t hurt enough for him to get up.”

Story source: ajdegol comment on Hacker News

I’ve come a long way from lying on a nail within banking to get up and move. No one knows if you’ll move to another spot where there may be more nails, but as we all say: “Never try, never know”

In the past few months, I’ve been reading more than usual, and mainly books from the library. Some of these include biographies/autobiographies of Wang Jianlin (Wanda Group), Tony Fernandes (AirAsia), which have been insightful and thought-provoking.

Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” was a good one, challenging why we do what we do — he refers to ‘The Golden Circle”, and being able to articulate it to your peers. It isn’t just about what or how we do what we do, but rather, digging deeper into why are we doing it.

Another book that I really enjoyed was “Rejection Proof” by Jia Jiang on how to deal with and conquer rejection by going through rejections. I’ve also gone through sales and networking books, listened to self-help inspirational podcasts such as Jay Shetty which I very much am willing to spend the time to listen.

As I embark on a career change and a life change with a kid coming along, I will try to make it a point to note and write about the things I come across which make me think twice. It will be beneficial with meditation, hopefully in time to come. My previous post was more than a year ago, and I’d like this to change.

Till then.

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