Eugene Siew · Notes
Notes from the practice.
The thinking the work runs on.
The plan at 15
A Singaporean boy in the late ’90s designs a 35-year plan to win parental buy-in for a musician’s life. What if the curveballs were the better plan getting through?
Money not enough, time not enough
My mom would drive to the money changer, look at the rate, and come home without changing a thing. Years later I did the math on my own version: a part-time job that paid $3.75/hr, and I had to drive to it.
Indispensable vs. invaluable
My in-laws gave us a book when we were newlyweds, and one lesson stuck: make yourself indispensable at work. I applied it for years before I learned the difference between being indispensable and being invaluable.
Coach, therapist, or mentor: which one do you actually need?
You probably don’t need any of the three. A short guide to what each one is for, how to tell whether you need anyone at all, and what to do when a weighty decision fits none of them.
Successful but unfulfilled: what it usually means, and what it doesn’t
The feeling is usually accurate and it usually isn’t telling you to quit. How to rule out the ordinary explanations first, why defining your values runs out, and what’s left when the markers are real and the question underneath has gone quiet.
Looking for Christian executive coaching? What to ask before you hire anyone.
The help you’re looking for is usually free and closer than a professional. What the instinct behind the search gets right, when paying someone makes sense, and the one test to apply to anyone selling faith-based help, including me.
Executive coaching didn’t work. What are the alternatives?
Usually the answer is a different coach rather than a different category. Three reasons a competent engagement leaves the decision where it was, how to tell which one you’re in, and the one test worth applying to anyone who helps you.
Certainty isn’t a measurement
A conviction built on twenty years of pattern and one built on fear arrive feeling identical, because both arrive with the reasoning stripped out. Why more private thinking doesn’t test a decision, what an actual test requires, and why the people closest to you usually can’t give it.
You can’t decide what you want
You can change what you do by deciding to. You cannot change what you want by deciding to, and the wanting is what has been driving the decision all along. Why a clean break so often resolves nothing, whose work a complete change of what a person loves actually is, and the narrower thing one person can honestly do for another.