For much of my life, I have followed the advice of what is deemed to be the “correct” knowledge. To not expose our weaknesses to others and to focus on our strengths, show a strong front to other people even if it means wearing a mask. That is how I imagined many have chosen to live their lives and so did I.

It was good advice. If people have wanted to get a job or higher position in a company, they have to focus on their strengths and when interviewed about what is their weakness, they skilfully twist their answers in such that a weakness is a strength. The interview game’s standard answer for your “weakness” is to work too hard and being too much of a perfectionist.

Smiles should start to appear right now because most of us know that is the truth, the point of the game is to treat the interview as an exam and get into the company with the standard answers you have prepared. Not necessarily always the truth as long as it is what they wanted to hear. I never failed to become sick in the stomach when I try to be someone I am not, I hate to put on a fake appearance in front of others and that is why I seldom do. I suppose you and me are on the same stand in regards to this, both of us would rather be ourselves.

I know, because I have done it brilliantly well before, and that was why I was told I was not selected to be the chosen candidate for what was then my preferred job as an renewable energy engineer at a company I was very keen to get into, the reason they gave was that they felt I was too good and they were afraid I will overgrow the position too quickly. Honestly brutal tall poppy syndrome. I failed, because even though I was the winner of two prestigious awards in the University in which one was a thesis research prize chosen as the best not only in my University but among the top 5 universities in the state, I could not gain entry to a middle level company.

They wanted static Robots, not thinking Humans

They wanted a robot who do what they want to do but I gave them a human who could think. I imagine Henry Ford was right when he mentioned that the problem of hiring labour was that he wanted to hire hands but what he got was a pair of hands which came with a human instead.

Eventually, I got into a prestigious engineering company as an electrical engineer when a manager from the firm appreciated what I showed him. He knew I was a human, not a robot and that was what he wanted. My manager turned out to become the greatest manager I have ever had, he became a mentor to me about the human side of life and business and I am forever grateful to him.

However, I had to disappoint him when I chose to leave the company in Australia to fly back to my homeland Singapore because of the tragedies that struck my personal life and I was thrown into the greatest sorrow I have ever felt in my entire life. The betrayal of love and friendship from the closest people to me in a foreign country. I could no longer hide my true self when it happened, my strong appearance was shredded to bits, I lost my confidence I once had in abundance but I became free, I was allowed by the sadness I felt, great enough to become weak.

I was given the gift of feeling useless…the gift of shivering with failure…because if I had not fallen into the pits of hell that the great depression allowed me to enter, I would not have learnt so much about myself. I finally allowed myself to be reborn of my own will.

As you would have expected, I am in my mid twenties, the age when throughout history which research in psychology and biographies have consistently proven, the self identity crisis which strikes many, women in their early twenties and men in their mid twenties. This is the important part of life when one has to decide to follow the crowd or seek his own destiny. My intelligent reader, you know which path I have chosen. That was a year ago. I have now found my will of living and how I want to create a life that matters.

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