Feel stuck in life as you get older? It might be your ego, says Tan Kheng Hua

Tan Kheng Hua – the actress who stole a scene in Crazy Rich Asians from Michelle Yeoh with just a wordless stare that would shrink the largest of testicles – was sitting on my sofa, looking fabulous in her T-shirt and jeans, snacking on murukku. And it occurred to me, quite simply: I want what she’s having.

The Singaporean actress who’s making a new life in Hollywood at the age of 57 knows how you feel – and she’s got advice on how to age according to your rules.

Not the murukku, mind you (I had another tub squirrelled away for eating my emotions), but the way she’s growing older… and feeling happy about it.

“At 40, in terms of my career, I felt jaded, old… I remember, I just felt like, oh gosh, I really needed to change,” said Kheng, in an unfiltered conversation for our CNA Lifestyle podcast series House Party For 2. “I just felt… stuck.”

It’s a sentiment many of us who are no longer in our 20s (or 30s) can relate to. It’s a growing realisation that you’re so far from where you wanted to find yourself; that perhaps you’re starting to simply “exist” instead of “live” like you once did when your joints didn’t ache as much.

This, however, is Kheng at age 57: “I just have never felt more free, more independent, more at peace, more myself. I feel myself finally on a path where I think this is really how I want to grow old and eventually die,” she said. “I feel so much lighter.”

I first met Kheng back in 1997. She was already a respected name in theatre, had recently come off starring in Singapore’s first English-language drama series Masters Of The Sea, and had just started what would be 11 years on the sitcom Phua Chu Kang. I was acting in my very first play, and Kheng was very kind to me when other theatre folk were less than warm. At the reception, she marched right up to me where I was stationed at the buffet table (my history of emotional eating goes back a long way) and told me straight up that I had done a good job. Her encouragement meant a great deal to 19-year-old me.

It was also a wonderful counterbalance to my mother telling me she would never watch another theatre show ever, now that she’d been psychologically scarred from watching her teenage son play a gay, drug-addled, stripper / porn star with mommy issues who wears a sequined thong and dies of an overdose. I told her it was art. Mum said it was a good thing she didn’t bring grandma.

I think there is a big difference between ‘how do I want to live?’ and ‘how do I want to die?’

I’d bump into Kheng over the years and we’ve stayed friendly. But the woman on my couch had a different energy than what I remember. She really did feel lighter. Even as we talked about dying.

“I think there is a big difference between ‘how do I want to live?’ and ‘how do I want to die?’” said Kheng. “About 10 years ago, I was going through some pretty difficult times in my life… And that was actually when I came about this concept that has helped me a lot then and now: Rather than thinking about how I want to live, I started thinking about how I want to die – and then work backwards from that.”

It might sound dark, but the woman’s got a point.

“The first thing I did was really visualise who were the people I wanted around me when I die. And, immediately, you will then answer all your questions about who are the important people in your life today – the people who you should actually consider deeper and in a more profound way,” she said.

“And then, suddenly, your world becomes very clear. Because from maybe 30 people or 300 things that you think you need today because this is how you want to live, it is whittled down to a very comfy bed and maybe about three people… It just gives you some perspective.”

Kheng has been doing a lot of thinking – or practising a “review on life”, as she calls it – since she upped and moved to Hollywood to explore new terrain. She’s been working, having scored roles on Grey’s Anatomy and Netflix’s Medical Police, as well a series regular spot in the Kung Fu reboot pilot from US TV network The CW. But she hasn’t been on her own like this since her university days, said Kheng. And that’s forcing her to “man up” and “just sort it out”.

Here’s what she’s learnt from those “review on life” sessions.

If you want to feel excited about what you do, you need to surround yourself with like-minded people, to be “immersed in talent”. It’s the vibe you’re looking for. “Once you find the right people that you vibe with, you just suddenly feel like waking up, and working hard, and doing something. And the day just suddenly becomes enjoyable.”

Next, it’s about tackling your ego. “Honestly, ego is the enemy,” said Kheng. “Don’t get me wrong – for anyone who wants to be good at what they do, ego is necessary. But ego is still the enemy in that it can make your life centred around something which may not necessarily propel you towards where you really want to go.”

Maybe it’s important to be curious rather than to be defensive and keep going for something that you may be past your use-by-date for, you know?

For example, offered Kheng, if her ego had made her turn down jobs just because they weren’t big roles, she would have missed out on Crazy Rich Asians, the UK miniseries Chimerica and HBO Asia’s The Garden Of Evening Mists.

“In the last five years, I’ve played more supporting characters than I’ve played lead. In fact, perhaps, in my entire career, I have played more supporting characters than I have leads. I want as much recognition as anybody else, okay? I won’t lie about that” she said. “But these projects were great to be on. My daily life had a quality. My daily acting life had a quality that I loved and that I want every single day of my life.”

“So the ego can be your friend and it’s very, very necessary,” said Kheng, “and the ego can be the enemy – and it is up to you and your character to discern which ego you want.”

And that brings us to accepting the ugly truth. “Maybe it’s important to be curious rather than to be defensive and keep going for something that you may be past your use-by-date for, you know?” she said. “Because when you try too hard in anything – whether it’s fashion or losing weight or acting – it never looks good. And it doesn’t feel good.”

“A real curiosity brings about a sense of humility. And those qualities bring about a sense of peace.”

It’s important to grow old gracefully, said Kheng, just as long as you play by your own rules. "'Graceful' is not just Audrey Hepburn, you know? It’s not just Grace Kelly. 'Graceful' is about some sort of truth and honesty. And if honesty to you is cussing every sentence that comes out of your mouth, then you know what? Go for it."

Now that is advice I can go for. Sorry, mum.

Listen to the full House Party For 2 podcast to find out how Kheng auditions against thousands of actors per role, and what she makes of people thinking Crazy Rich Asians wasn’t "Singaporean enough".

New episodes of House Party For 2 are published every Sunday at cna.asia/podcasts.


Taken from this article:
Feel stuck in life as you get older? It might be your ego, says Tan Kheng Hua

How to give compassionate, constructive feedback in the workplace

Imagine a company where directness is prized above all else. Managers deliver blunt, harsh feedback in the name of efficiency.

Now, imagine another company with a very different culture. Here, directness is nowhere to be found. Managers are accommodating and kind, overlooking mistakes or issues so as not to hurt feelings.

What’s the problem with each? The first creates a toxic culture of brilliant jerks that drives people out and eats itself from within. The second ignores issues until they build up and affect business metrics.

We have all seen these companies in the news, as a trending topic or even firsthand. You may be at one now! But it’s when we combine directness and compassion that we create a culture in which people can truly thrive at work.

People want feedback that helps them grow and improve. But how you deliver it matters, too.

At Thrive Global, the behaviour-change tech company I founded, we call this compassionate directness. It’s our core value – the one that fuels all the others.

Compassionate directness is about empowering employees to speak up, give feedback, disagree and surface problems in real time. But it has to be done with compassion, empathy and understanding. It’s what allows us to course-correct, improve and meet challenges while also building teams that collaborate and care for one another.

Of course, you can’t just declare you have a culture of compassionate directness. You have to create an atmosphere of mutual trust. When we get feedback from someone we trust, we know our best interests are at heart. We can see that the feedback isn’t some kind of personal attack, it’s actually a kind of support because it’s offered in the spirit of helping us improve. Without an atmosphere of trust, feedback can be a catalyst for stress and self-doubt. If you’ve ever found yourself puzzling over what your manager really meant, or whether there was some kind of coded message hidden in the feedback you received, it may be a sign that you’re not working in an atmosphere of trust.

How feedback is delivered is one of the most vital – and underappreciated – indicators of a company’s success.

People are hungry for feedback that helps them grow and improve. According to a survey by Zenger/Folkman, a leadership development consultancy, 92 per cent of people agreed that “negative feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.”

But that’s a big if. A recent Gallup poll found that only 26 per cent of employees strongly agree that the feedback they’re getting is helping them improve their work. Poorly delivered feedback makes us disengaged and disempowered. As we see at many hard-charging companies, including hypergrowth brands like Away luggage, directness without compassion can work – until suddenly it doesn’t.

In contrast, cultures that value only compassion go off course in another way. Years ago, I worked with a leader who had a habit of giving critical negative feedback padded with so many positives that his direct reports often came away thinking they were getting a promotion. Studies have long shown that managers have a tendency to soften feedback out of aversion to what they perceive as conflict. When this happens, challenges that should easily be identified and dispatched are instead allowed to take root and fester – and the opportunity to course-correct (“Captain, perhaps we should go around that iceberg”) is lost.

“By presenting subpar performance more positively than they should, managers make it impossible for employees to learn, damaging their careers and, often, the company,” Michael Schaerer and Roderick Swaab, organisational behaviour experts, wrote recently in Harvard Business Review.

It needs to be said: Being told we’re missing the mark can be a blow to our ego and even our identity. That’s why it’s so important to shift our mindsets around how we receive feedback. Constructive feedback, after all, is how we learn and grow. It’s the basis for healthy parenting, lasting friendships, career development and so much more. If we shelter our children, friends and colleagues from information that might enrich and enhance their lives, we’re not being caring – we’re actually doing them a disservice.

For many of us, especially those of us who have been raised in families or within cultures that encourage indirectness, compassionate directness may seem really hard. Fear holds us back – fear of negative reaction or of rocking the boat. It doesn’t just apply to workplace situations. Have you ever agonised over whether to tell individuals they have spinach in their teeth? The same is true for receiving feedback and learning to see it as information we can use to improve instead of letting our negative self-talk take over.

When we flex our compassionate-directness muscle, we’ll find that it becomes easier and more natural. And we’ll see benefits at work, at home and in our relationships.

Recently, I received a comment about Thrive’s all-hands team meeting continuously starting late. There was a clear reason in that our Leadership meeting, which directly precedes the team meeting, often runs late. And though it may not have been as noticeable in our New York headquarters, the person commenting explained how remote offices and employees felt like their time wasn’t being respected as they waited for us to dial in. It was a great piece of feedback that we wouldn’t have acknowledged had it not been raised, and it had a simple solution – we now start our team meeting 10 minutes after the hour to make sure that we have time to dial in.

To get started implementing compassionate-directness into your own life, here are some of my favourite related microsteps, which are small, science-backed actions you can start taking immediately to build habits that significantly improve your life.

GIVE ONE PIECE OF CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK AND LET IT STAND ON ITS OWN.

Don’t undermine your message by padding it with irrelevant positive statements. This might be uncomfortable at first, but research shows that people are hungry for constructive feedback.

BEFORE YOUR NEXT ONE-ON-ONE, PAUSE TO REFLECT BEFORE GIVING FEEDBACK.

If you’re stressed or rushed, you’re more likely to deliver feedback without compassion or empathy – even if that’s unintentional.

WHEN YOU NOTICE A PROBLEM, FIND A WAY TO SURFACE IT IMMEDIATELY.

Don’t just hope a problem will go away, or assume someone else will fix it. When you speak up with compassionate directness, everyone benefits.

IN YOUR NEXT MEETING OR ONE-ON-ONE, CONSIDER ANOTHER PERSON’S PERSPECTIVE.

It can be as simple as pausing before a meeting to ask yourself, “Where is this person coming from?” By zooming out, you’ll be better able to see others’ motivations and understand their priorities.

WHEN YOU RECEIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK, WRITE IT DOWN AND COME BACK TO IT LATER.

This will allow you to move beyond the emotion of the moment and consider more dispassionately whether it holds truth for you.

TURN A DIGITAL EXCHANGE INTO AN IN-PERSON CONVERSATION.

A lot of nuances of human communication are lost in digital interaction. When you get to know your co-workers as people instead of just names in your inbox, you’ll build trust and camaraderie.

ONCE A DAY, HAVE A CONVERSATION WHERE YOU MOSTLY LISTEN.

Don’t underestimate the power of your silence. Instead of giving your opinion or changing the subject, invite the other person to go deeper.

Arianna Huffington © 2018 The New York Times


Taken from this article:
How to give compassionate, constructive feedback in the workplace

How to be good: 9 ways to be a person who lives and expresses 'goodness'

By the end of the year, I felt tired and overwhelmed, ready to peel away onionskin layers of regret. That’s most likely why, when I wandered by a Little Free Library, Nick Hornby’s book How To Be Good called out to me, the bright yellow cover a beacon, the title offering redemption for mistakes large and small.

The book tells the story of a doctor boldly (and hilariously) navigating the rocky road of self-improvement: “Just because I wasn’t good,” the protagonist muses, “it didn’t mean I was bad.” But as I reached the novel’s end, I realised I had not arrived at the answer to what exactly it means to be good. So, I asked Mr Hornby.

“It’s a constant theme, isn’t it?” he emailed in response. “Especially now, when we have no excuse not to know what’s going on. We are bombarded with images of others less fortunate than ourselves. What are we supposed to do about it?”

This is the question. What are we to do? As we struggle to confront an ever-growing number of crises, how can we be good to ourselves and others? The starting point is understanding what we mean by “goodness.”

Rachana Kamtekar, a professor of philosophy at Cornell University, explained goodness by way of ancient Greek philosophy: “For Plato, goodness is the same as happiness. We desire appetitively because of our bodies. We desire emotionally because of our sense of self in contact with other human beings. And we also have rational desires to understand how to do what’s best. Our goodness requires all of these capacities to be developed and then expressed.”

This can be a lifelong process – something that is never perfectly realised but should always be struggled for. “Goodness is impermanent and organic, meaning it can progress as well as regress,” said Chan Phap Dung, a senior monk at the Plum Village meditation center founded by the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. And that is why, he said, we have to be steadfast in caring for ourselves and the world at large. “In politics and culture, in the media and corporations, we have cultivated conditions that have produced a lot of violence, discrimination and despair for which there is a collective level of responsibility.”

Because many of us have a complicated relationship with what it means to be good, it can help to reframe the subject and widen it. “Some people flinch when they ponder whether or not they or others are ‘good’ because the words ‘good’ and ‘goodness’ have long been associated with obedience,” the author and former Dear Sugars podcast host Cheryl Strayed shared in response to a query from The Times.

“I reject that definition,” she said. “Goodness is expressed through lovingkindness, generosity of spirit and deed, and the thoughtful consideration of others. It can be as simple as offering to let someone ahead of you in line and as complicated as making yearslong sacrifices of your freedom because someone you love needs your help. Over the course of a lifetime, most of us do both.”

Goodness is an act of being and doing.

Goodness is an act of being and doing, requiring that we not only engage but reflect on the intentions behind our actions. Goodness may give rise to immediate satisfaction or demand sustained sacrifice (as those who have fought to bring about social change can attest). Regardless, using it as a lodestar helps point us to what really matters.

The insights below – gathered from a variety of people who think a lot about what it means to be good – are far-reaching. Some suggestions are small, others audacious. Make them your own. Allow them to spark a bit more goodness in you.

9 WAYS TO BE GOOD

1. Be kind.

Harriet Lerner, psychologist and author: “Kindness is at the center of what it means to be good. It may require very little from us, or the opposite. It may require words and action, or restraint and silence. Everything that can be said can be said with kindness. Every tough position we have to take can be taken with kindness. No exceptions. Being a good person requires that we work toward that unrealised world where the dignity and integrity of all human beings, all life, are honoured and respected.”

2. Pay attention.

Brother Chan Phap Dung, senior monk, Plum Village: “In the Buddhist tradition, the training starts with learning how to stop and come back to the present moment and enjoy our breathing. We stop to recognise what is happening within us and around us: Our feelings, our thinking, whether our body is relaxed or in tension, who is there in front of us or what are we doing. With repetition, we begin to see and understand ourselves better – and choose to do one thing rather than another.”

3. Ask hard questions.

The Rev. William J Barber II, civil rights activist: “As a public theologian, I tend to look at what has lifted us when we found ourselves at our lowest – what has called us to a better place. How are we, as a nation and as a people, using life itself to create good for the poor and broken and captive and for those who are made to feel unaccepted? We must constantly raise that question as we live life –  seeking to answer it not only individually, but together. We need to embrace those deepest moral values that call us to, first and foremost, seek love, truth, justice and concern for others.”

4. Put challenges in perspective.

Dan Ariely, behavioural economist, Duke University: “In Judaism, it says that if you save one person, you can look at yourself as somebody who has saved the whole world. In that regard, what goodness means is to scale the problem down to the size where we can have an impact – and then have the impact. If you think about global warming or poverty, you say to yourself, “I can’t; I can’t solve it.” But if you think about one ton of CO2 or one person in poverty, then we can have an effect.”

5. Hold yourself accountable.

Rachana Kamtekar, professor of philosophy, Cornell University: “You have to know what your different motivations are, know how strong they are and if you can get some of them to pull against the others. I was a smoker in my 20s and 30s. Like many smokers, I resolved to quit on multiple occasions. When I was 40, I told my son and his buddies that I had been a smoker and had quit. I knew if I ever smoked again, I was going to have to tell them. My aversion to those kids thinking of me as a smoker swamped any desire I had to smoke. When I added to my rational resolution this prospect of something like shame – that I was going to have to face these kids and say, “I am a smoker” – it changed.”

6. Buy with intention.

Rose Marcario, CEO, Patagonia: “We’re facing an existential climate crisis, intractable social issues and unprecedented income inequality. Think of yourself as a citizen instead of a consumer and vote with your dollars. Buy organic because, with chemical agriculture, we are doing irrevocable damage to topsoil, pollinators, oceans and rivers due to chemical runoff. And buy quality. Make sure that whoever you buy from takes responsibility for the entire life cycle of their product. Most importantly, buy only what you need. Keep your stuff longer and keep it in use longer.”

7. Invest in the greater good.

Ron Freund, vice president, Social Equity Group: “A good investment is one that integrates your value system with the investments that you make and offers a risk level and return that meets your needs. Firms in the industry have demonstrated clearly there’s no loss from investing in a socially responsible portfolio. Consider green bonds that have a specific focus to help the community. It could be toward climate change, church retrofits, or housing that supports seniors and low-income people.”

8. Engage.

Cheryl Strayed, author and former Dear Sugars host and columnist: “Cultivate a sense of optimism. Remember to be grateful. Be happy for others when good things happen to them. Stop complaining about the people, jobs or situations that make you miserable and find a way to change it or end it instead. Go for a walk every day. Goodness is action. It’s being kind, honest, considerate, respectful and generous. It’s holding love in your heart.”

9. And, no matter what, keep trying.

Nick Hornby, author: “I think all one can ever really do is to try and keep goodness close to you as an ambition – make sure that it’s one of the ways in which you think.”

Simran Sethi © 2018 The New York Times


Taken from this article:
How to be good: 9 ways to be a person who lives and expresses 'goodness'