Chapter 5: Underwear Draft 1.0

Underwear

As important as social interaction may be, alone time for yourself is equally critical. In short,

- Alone time gets you rejuvenated:

o To recover in order to discover new lessons

o To reprogramme in order to programme your life

o To recharge in order to be in charge of your life

o To reflect in order to affect people in the future (in a good way)

o To regenerate in order to successfully build your generations

Alone time doesn’t have to be done cooped up at home in your room! You can spend it on the bus, or while you’re clocking up miles on the treadmill – it’s a frame of mind you can lapse into whenever you can think to yourself, even in the midst of other people. I have a friend, Denise, who has a packed schedule, but uses her cheerleading practices as her alone time. To her, the practices are a form of respite from her tight work schedule.

I learnt the importance of alone time after neglecting it too much.

When I came back from Canada in 2006 & when I started allowing people to give to me, my network grew exponentially. As I got to more people, lots of opportunities arose, which was definitely very exciting! But I was an eager beaver – a kiasu Singaporean who wanted a shot at everything, in addition to being a very restless person, so I allowed myself to be stretched in all sorts of directions.

Although I learnt a lot from the various experiences, I never had the alone time to figure out what I wanted for myself. To make matters worse, I ended up very focused on what people suggested for me, or thought would be good for me…but I’ve learnt that no one can do that better than myself! After all, there are many good decisions and choices to make, but what is best? What was good for them may not have been as good for me.

That is just the tip of the iceberg though. The worst part about being a social butterfly was that I was so busy trying to match up to others’ expectations that I blocked out my parents’ advice, suggestions and expectations. I was completely maxed out, and had reached a plateau in the number of suggestions I could take into consideration. Like any other person, I only had 24 hours and there were only so many instructions I could follow. I realized that if I had some alone time, I would have rationalized that my parents knew me far better than any of my friends could, and that their suggestions were way better than any friend’s suggestions could ever be.