Wilson Ng started helping the family business since 9 years old. Since then, he had dreamt to be a successful entrepreneur, one who starts great businesses  ( he has started 7) from scratch with insight, guts and initiative. He keeps his focus on growing the business by creating value-- not on politics, or wasteful distractions. He brings the same focus to community service, teaching, life and family.

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  Saturday, October 30, 2004


  When Feeling Good Overcomes Becoming Good  (on life)

I came across this book which is written by Charles Sykes, and entitled "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add". YOu may not agree on certain things he say, but hopefully you have to give it some thought.

In this book, Charles documents about how the American school system's education has deteriorated, due to the dumbing down of the curriculum so that according to him, the students would pass, and "feel good", but nobody excels. 

As a manager and as parent of 3 children, I do see certain parallelisms in the way we treat our children and the way that we treat our co-workers in the workplace.  Students who grow up on training handled with kids gloves that is more focused on feeling good, rather than in being good, and who are not prodded to excel, will have the same outlook in the workplace.

I wish I could scream agreement with the author that in many ways, we need to be tougher on our kids.  We want to shield them from the harsh realities in life, but unfortunately we can't, and the tougher we are on them, the easier will life be on them in the future.  These bleeding heart, good intentional parents who cannot afford to let a fly land on their child's shoulders are unfortunately bringing up children that are ill prepared to meet life's challenges.  And when they grow up, they become what Jack Nicholson in the movie , "A Few Good Men" famously said, "can't handle the truth" ---  that they cannot hack life's challenges, or simply is not equipped to do the job, and worse, not even trying to, but still wants to feel good.

Of course, I don't advocate dumbing down people who are doing their best, but let us admit it, the legion of people who don't even try to excel, and who insist on low standards are increasing, and invading the work place.  Dumbing down standards of education will inevitably mean dumbing down standards in living life.

I echo Charles' rule #1 and #2 for kids ( and all aspiring employees who want to excel in their careers) so that we will all remember:

1. The world is not fair. Get used to it.

2. The world does not care about your self esteem.  It expects you to contribute something first before you should start feeling good about yourself.

We all want respect, but respect is not an entitlement.  It is something that has to be earned.  And for those who want to get ahead, there is only one  way, "earn " it.  At the end of the day, I still think that conducting ourselves to be deserving of success is a better measure of how well we have live our lives than achieving success.

 

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