What happens if there's no one to force you to make the right decisions?

Hi guys. This is the draft of a podcast and if you prefer to listen to this piece rather than read it, please click on the link here. I want to start a series on my podcast exploring my journey and addressing an elephant in the room that so many people choose to ignore: the working class mindset. Why? Because I was raised in a poor, working class family but have somehow managed to escape being trapped in poverty - was it luck? Was there a formula to my success that can be replicated? It is often considered very bad taste if one were to boast about making money, so people who have made a lot of money often keep quiet about it and it is only scammers online who are offering you fake get rich quick schemes. But why is this such a taboo topic then? Can we try to talk about why some people stay poor whilst others manage to make a lot of money? So today, I'm going to focus on just one small but important aspect of the working class mindset. There's this guy in my gymnastics club - let's call him John, not his real name. In fact, I've chosen the most boring, generic name to avoid identifying him because I'm not making this a personal attack on him but I just want to discuss his mindset. John used to do gymnastics when he was a child so he has been taught all the basics but trying to get him to try anything new, anything that he can't do already is like trying to squeeze juice from a rock. He would just plain refuse to try - he has absolutely no interest at all in improving himself. Let me be clear: I'm not trying to force him to do something dangerous, but I see him doing the same skill over and over again, my natural reaction is, aren't you bored with that already? Could we try to build on it and do something a little bit more difficult, for you to improve as a gymnast? Without any kind of improvement, wouldn't your gymnastics sessions become really boring if you are doing the same thing over and over again? But no, each time I do that, he reacts very negatively and I have learnt to just leave him alone. I don't mean to antagonize or upset anyone at the gym. I would rather spend my time and energy helping others who want to improve. You know the saying, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink - now that's John's attitude. He just wants to do the same thing over and over again and he has zero interest in trying to become a better gymnast. 

Now you might say, that's just an example from sports - as long as John is willing to improve himself in his studies and work, then that's what really matters. Well, there is something scarily familiar about John's behaviour when I look at my parents who happen to be very working class, no make that stereotypically working class. They had a very working class job which really didn't evolve with time - my parents' first day at work wasn't really that different from their last day at work, even if 40 years had passed. Why? Well sorry for stating the obvious but a lot of low-skilled working class jobs are just like that. It is not a highly skilled job so anyone can do it without much training but by the same token, it is usually poorly paid. Let me give you a simple example: on the street where I live there is a pizza restaurant, they mostly do take-away so there would often be a number of delivery couriers standing outside waiting to pick up their orders - they get the order, deliver the pizza and that's it. It sounds easy, but it can be hard work - these delivery couriers make so little with each delivery that they have to be delivering all day just to scrape a decent day's wage. The job is tedious, repetitive, tiring and they don't get paid more if the weather is bad, like if it is one of those rainy days or if we have a spell of particularly cold winter weather. If they decide not to work because of the bad weather, they don't earn any money - yeah, it's a tough life for them. But are there any positive features to this job? I suppose the entry level is very low: all you need is your mobile phone and a bike. The app on your phone will tell you which restaurant needs couriers to deliver orders, you accept the order, turn up at the restaurant and then use your phone to find your way to the customer's address - this is often done on a bicycle,  motorcycle or an e-bike. You only have to speak very little English and thus this kind of job is popular with migrant workers who don't speak much English nor do they have any other skills. They can start working and earning almost immediately if they are willing to accept the low pay. This is pretty typical of many working class jobs. 

A problem with a lot of these low-skilled working class jobs is the boredom factor - you're going to to be doing the same tasks over and over again; that just isn't fun at all. Whilst I mentioned John from my gymnastics class, allow me to mention another person from the sports centre and I'll call him Jim. As I walked into the gymnastics club today, I saw Jim mopping the corridors. Now Jim is like a junior centre manager, I don't know what his job title is but his job is repetitive and simple. He would empty the bins, make sure there is enough toilet paper in the toilets, clean the windows, mop the floors and he is really a glorified cleaner. There was a time when he used to do handle some payments at the front desk but now the sports centre is fully automated - you book your session on an app, it gives you a QR code for the session, you scan that QR code at the front door and it lets you into the building - so Jim doesn't even have to deal with customers anymore. If you tried to book for a session with him at the front desk, he would tell you, "please book it on the app, we don't do this anymore in person here, that whole booking system is entirely online now." I'm glad Jim still has a job at the sports centre as he has worked there for an awfully long time and he is a rather nice guy, but all he does these days is mostly just cleaning. Is he bored? I think he is, Jim is usually quite happy when I say hello to him as he is hungry for some kind of human interaction after having been cleaning for hours. Is this boredom a problem for Jim and if so, just how big a problem is it? Well, that depends; you see, there are people like John who clearly don't mind doing the same thing over and over again, John really doesn't want to learn anything new and if Jim happens to share that trait in common with John, then Jim could be perfectly content doing the same repetitive tasks over and over again, every single time he comes into work at the sports centre. But if you asked me to do Jim's job, then I would get so bored very quickly, it would be totally unbearable for me. The boredom would be too much for me to take, never mind the very low pay. 

Allow me to share with you what I've been very busy with these days - as you know, America is now at war with Iran and that has led to the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. This has caused major shocks to the economy with oil prices shooting up, causing an energy crisis. We're in uncharted territories here so I am trying to help some of my clients which include governments and private companies solve some major problems caused by this energy crisis. There's no textbook I can turn to in order to find the right answer to solve these problems, there is no expert or boss I can ask for help to solve these problems - I would love to talk more about this but I'm not allowed to disclose specifics of the cases I'm currently working on for my clients. This is in sharp contrast to the kind of working class jobs where you never have to use your brain to try to solve a problem, as you're supposed to just ask your manager for instructions rather than take any kind of initiative. I saw this scene at my local supermarket recently - an old lady wanted a refund or an exchange on an item she had purchased but she didn't have a receipt on her. So the cashier simply said, "sorry, I'm afraid you would need to speak to the duty manager, I'm not allowed to make a decision if you don't have your receipt." This cashier always has a manager, a boss that she can run to if she doesn't know what to do but in my case, if I have no one to run to and I'm supposed to be the one who comes up with a solution when none exists. Sometimes my clients will come up with a solution they think will work and I'd have to say, no actually, I have a much better idea - try things my way, I promise you the results will be better. My parents are very working class, they would look at jobs like mine and think that's so stressful, what if you come up with the wrong answer? What if the solution you come up with fails to solve the problem, then what? Will you be able to earn any money this month in a worst case scenario? Isn't this all quite scary? This is why my parents prefer to do a job like Jim's which is so much easier - you can't mess up, you can't make big mistakes, there is a lot less stress if you know the task at hand is really simple and straightforward. Yes but I prefer to do what I do because I have a lot more fun, I earn a lot more money and quite simply, because I am great at what I do. 

I'll like to use my mother tongue Hokkien to try to explain why working class people like Jim end up in this situation of holding a lowly skilled job. There are times when some phrases just don't translate very well into English. In English, you might describe someone like Jim as 'uneducated' but in Hokkien, we are a lot more precise about this particular situation. Firstly, we have the word "takchek" which means "to study". So if we say, "boh takchek" which translates to "hasn't studied" it refers to someone who hasn't finished their formal education but this could be due to circumstances beyond their control - like a war broke out, or in the case of my late uncle, his family was just too poor so he was forced to drop out of school and get a job to support his family despite the fact that he was a good student who had been doing very well in his studies. So when you describe someone as "boh takhek", there is no judgment or indication that they are stupid. Then you have the term "bueh takchek" referring to someone who "can't study", we're saying outright that this person is stupid. So I've heard a family friend in Singapore say that his son is useless at school, they have tried everything, they've engaged the best tuition teachers in the land but still the boy is failing all his exams and they've just accepted that he is plain stupid. Then you have "mai takchek" which translates to "don't want to study" - this refers to a naughty child who refuses to study for their tests and exams, but it suggests a major character flaw rather than stupidity per se. But whether it is a case of boh takchek, bueh takchek or even mai takchek, you end up with the same end result of someone being forced into a lowly skilled, lowly paid working class job like Jim. As for the case of Jim, I don't actually know him well enough to know why he is doing this job, whether he is a case of boh takchek, bueh takchek or mai takchek but I suppose it is a moot point. Aftr all, some of you might argue that he is a case of mai takchek - like the guy is actually super intelligent but he just hasn't applied himself yet to prove himself, that's why he is where he is today. Then that begs the question, why hasn't he done something about the situation then and found himself a much better job? Why is he still mopping the floors and cleaning the toilets at the sports centre then if he is really capable of so much more? But just to show you how important one's mindset is, I would like to share with you a real story of a guy called David. 

Now David is dead so I really don't care about masking his identity - that's his real name. He died a few years back of heart disease brought on by his obesity. I kid you not when I say that David was morbidly obese. So I have known David for many years through work and this part of his logic kinda explains why he was so fat and that ultimately led to his death - David was once quite thin when he was younger. Then he got old, through years of a sedentary lifestyle and a near complete lack of exercise, David became really fat. Then when he was about 50 years old, he got a divorce, went through a messy break up and decided to hit the reset button. He met a young woman and decided he wanted to look better, so he went on a diet and exercised a lot - it worked, he actually lost a lot of the weight and began to look a lot more like his younger, thinner self, proving to himself that yes, he could lose the weight if he wanted to. Life was good, he was in love again, his business was doing well and he was happy. Then after David got married to this younger woman, who became his second wife and sure enough, he slowly became fat again. But by then he was already married to his second wife, so he didn't really feel the need to lose weight just to make himself more attractive to her. However, each time he was cautioned by his doctor that he really needed to lose a lot of weight, he would just say, "I know I could lose all this weight if I wanted to, but let me just get through Christmas first, or the summer holidays first, or the new product launch etc." David would find an excuse to just kick that can down the road and confidently say, oh yeah I just need to set aside a period of like six week or two months, I'll be thin again - don't you worry about it. I'll just fast forward to the part where David got so morbidly obese that he had a heart attack and died a few weeks later. So it is no point saying, "yeah of course I could do it" if you never actually do it - in David's case, it was going on a diet to lose all that weight and in the case of the mai takchek student who thinks that they are just waiting for the right opportunity to prove to the world just how smart they are, unless they actually get on with it and do just that, I refer them to David's gravestone in the cemetery as a cautionary tale about people who procrastinate when it comes to doing something that must be done with haste. 

So now, let's look at how David's behaviour relates to the behaviour we have observed in John and Jim. Firstly, we saw two versions of David - a motivated one and an unmotivated one. When David met his second wife and fell in love with her - he was very much motivated to become a better version of himself so she would fall in love with him as well. He didn't think that she would take a second look at him if he was this fat, bald, middle-aged divorced guy - no, he was motivated to improve every aspect of his life to make himself more attractive to her. But also, we have also seen the opposite of that - in the case of David, we saw him in a downward spiral when he lacked the motivation to help himself and that led to his early death. Same person, different attitude and it really does show how we control our own destiny at the end of the day. Hence it is not good enough for someone like John to say, "I can always learn more difficult skills one day if I wanted to, but I don't want to do it for now". I confess I don't know Jim well enough to have that awkward conversation with him about why he doesn't try to get a better job, but I can imagine someone like him saying, "I know I can always get a better job if I really want to, but just not for now." But that's what my parents have done all their lives - they had very working class jobs and they put off any thought of trying to pursue a better job with excuses. My mother had three children so it was always a case of, let's wait till the children get a bit older, then they simply got too old to contemplate a career change so they were then in a position to just look forward to retirement. Therein lies the difference between people who stay working class all their lives and those who manage to attain social mobility - it is that willingness to try. Simply trying is no guarantee of success and many who try do fail, but if you never ever give yourself the chance to try, or if you somehow come up with excuses not to try, then you are dooming yourself to failure in the very way David simply gave in to obesity later in his life and just wasn't willing to try to save his own life. Yes I realize that is a very bleak story but I don't think the image of Jim scrubbing the toilets or mopping the floors every day is any less bleak.

Yet for millions of working class people out there like my parents, that was the kind of jobs they had to do. I suppose they often turned it into some kind of noble sacrifice - I remember a friend from school telling me how her father actually tried to guilt trip her and her sister. I'll call this friend Julie, that's not her real name, I don't mean to name and shame her, but this story is just so bizarre that you can't make it up. Julie's father had a job very similar to Jim's - he was like a janitor in a factory and so that is really a very working class job: it is lowly skilled, involves a lot of cleaning and is very poorly paid. He felt like Julie and her sister didn't appreciate just how hard he had to work to support the family so one public holiday when Julie was about 10 years old, when there was nobody working in the factory, he took Julie and her sister to the factory to show them where he worked. But no, it didn't stop there - he punished the two girls by making them scrub the toilets, clean nasty grease stains off the machinery and this went on for hours. The girls protested, Julie's younger sister even cried but her father felt that it was absolutely necessary to torment the girls, to make the experience as horrific as possible so they would then learn to appreciate just how hard he had to work and feel a sense of gratitude with that new knowledge. Did it work? Did Julie respect her father more s a result of what happened? No, she felt a sense of disgust and resolved to study hard, get into a university in order to secure a job where she could use her brains to earn a living instead of doing what her father did. And of course, Julie often wondered why her father never tried to get a better job, why he was content working as a janitor in that factory. He made it clear that he hated that job but he was forced to do it in order to support his family, to make sure his two daughters could get an education. The way I see it, Julie's father made a mistake, he started a family before he had secured a decent career he was happy with but then he turned around and blamed his two daughters for putting him in that situation when really, it was him to created his own problem in the first place by impregnating his wife. Needless to say, Julie didn't just blindly accept her father's point of view on the matter - she barely speaks to him anymore even though he is still alive and I suppose that's a very similar situation with my own parents. I don't agree with them, I think they're totally wrong but I still want to avoid any unnecessary conflict. 

So there you go, I'm sure you might know someone like John and Jim in your life, but if they are adults you're mostly likely to react like me by taking a step back and not get involved when they make bad decisions because you want to avoid conflict. But this is the message I want to leave you with - a lot of working class people think that they don't deserve social mobility, like it is their destiny to be doomed to do a lowly skilled, poorly paid job just because that's what their parents did and the well paid jobs are for kids who have rich, well-educated parents. However, a lot of people focus way too much on the kind of help they get from their parents and don't consider how they help themselves - people like John can often be their own worst enemy with their bad attitudes. Through the example of David, we have seen what a profound impact one's attitude can have on one's life and a lot of it boils down to motivation. So what do you think? Are we defined by our social class or by our attitudes? Does one impact the other? Perhaps I'm not the best judge of this because I know I'm biased, I come from a very working class family but I refuse to give up on myself and evidently, that got me to where I am today. This is why I wish to hear what others have to say on this topic. Thank you for reading.