DEFG - Desire, Effort, Faith, Grit

I am only at the second chapter into Napoleon Hill's 'Think and Grow Rich', the contents are so impactful that it took me into my reflective mode almost right away.

"Desire" is a key word which appeared many times from the very first chapter and it resonated strongly with me as I recalled my childhood. I am born to Singaporeans and not born with a golden spoon, I think not even a silver spoon. I am born to a below-average family with my father working in a blue-collar job and my mother a homemaker.

Life was simple and just enough. I roughly remembered there were times the family was trying to make ends meet through my parents' conversations. In my primary school days, my pocket money was $1 a day. Most of my clothes and books were hand-me-down from my cousins and I owned no big ticket gadget (watch was my priciest gadget). My first computer and printer were also hand-me-down from my cousin when I required them in secondary school. In primary school, I would go to my friend's house to 'borrow' from her for projects and playing computer games. When my peers were learning ballet, piano and abacus (yeah "zhu suan" was all in the rage those days), I was learning swimming - because that was one of the more 'affordable' activities. Somehow I never felt deprived, perhaps at that times there were less high-tech stuff and material wants, children were somewhat pretty satisfied with collecting small ticket items such as stickers and books. My biggest deprivation in school, I felt, was my poor grasp of the English language as my parents were both Mandarin speaking. My mother have had very strong hope for me to become highly educated and earn a better living than my father when I grow up.


Desire

Her hope and desire were so strong that she would constantly nag at me on every opportunity to buck up in my school work, do my homework properly and scrimped what little household money she had to buy me Assessment Books. Of course at that time I didn't have much inkling about the significance of her desire nor the emphasis on my academics. That's until when I got a little older like 9 or 10 years old, her nagging must have taken some magical accumulative effect (thanks mom) and I started to feel the same burning desire to do well in school. It was also partly due to a coincidental and unlikely motivator at that time - I was victim to this horrid bully in my class who was lined up to stand behind me at every assembly and she would step on my shoes whenever I 'disobey' her. I made myself study harder, read all the English storybooks that my cousins gave to me, scored A in about every subjects (except English) and got myself into EM1 (ultimate goal of being in a different class from the bully who didn't do as well in her studies).


Effort - Desire alone is not enough

Being in EM1's environment felt very different from the norm because the students there were exceptionally competitive and smart. I felt compelled to study just as hard because I really don't want to get 'kicked out'. When I managed to get ranked amongst the top 5 in class and got some bursary award, my desire kind of paid off. This desire stuck with me very well throughout my secondary school days, because in order not to be looked down upon you either need to be tough or you need to be good in studies (or appear smarter).


Faith & Grit

The desire to do well in school continued to burn into JC. At that time I have come to understand better the society's definition of 'being highly educated pays off'.

Singapore's education system has a rigorous filtration system, where only the 'brighter' kids who excel in exams are put into the better schools/ tracks (now the landscape may be changing with the recent change in policy by MOE to scrap some examinations). The year of GCE A'levels, I recalled, was the toughest year of my studies. Among the cream of the crop, I was just a dull gem and at most mediocre. Midway, I was forced to drop Physics as no amount of remedial classes could rescue me (my parents could not afford private tuition even with scrimping as my father was retrenched) and I desperately need to focus on my other barely above- water subjects like Chemistry & GP. In every exam, it's a test on extreme writing speed, thinking and a race against time. At that time we also had to study and sit for the useless SAT (for English and Maths). I relied on my desire to enter NUS / NTU to pull myself through because there was no turning back (unlike diploma, a bad A'level cert was not much of a use then). I put full faith in myself during exams but no 100% confidence, as I have never once scored an 'A' in those internal exams. So my name did not appear on any of the top-scorers board in JC before... but it only needed to for that one time (A'level)... and it did. I passed with flying colours, even my form tutor was shocked and I successfully entered uni. It's a combination of effort, faith and grit and maybe a sprinkle of luck. Thus, I believed that in Singapore, you don't have to be from privileged family in order to excel in school. 起跑点或许有些不一样，但后天的努力还是能让你实践学业目标的。

On completion of my A levels, I had the option of taking up MOH scholarship which was supposedly the 'safest route'. However, I did not take it. I felt I have had enough of school life (including a stint of relief-teaching for 6 months) and being bonded as a teacher is not appealing to me. I wanted to experience the outside corporate world after I have graduated. So I chose a course, which did not have any scholarship offer then, relied on bank tuition loan, bursaries and side income of tuitions to survive the 4 years.

When I have desires, I won't take the easiest route out because I know the easiest route won't get me where I truly wanted to go. I think I have fulfilled my mother's desire, albeit not the full expectations of me.

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Through multiple stories from the book, stories from people around us and my own story which I have shared, it is fact that we are shaped by our past experiences and motivated by our desires in life.

Our desire can start off as a dream and when the desire burned strongly enough, it can ignite something in us to transmute that thought into reality. Mind is a wondrous thing - it gives us our desire to win, our desire to be free, our desire to invent wonder, our desire to perform, our desire to be rich. Our desire will then condition our behaviour towards 'playing to win' instead of  'playing not too lose'.

Guilty to say, I am almost at a cruising phase now. My desire to win has stopped burning some time ago. My desire for financial freedom is strong but I think it is not strong enough. This could also be a wake up call for me. My current goal is to have my own property in a few years.


What's coming next...

H stands for Hanging on (perseverance)

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