30th Birthday Reflection (Part 3): On Emotions & Entrepreneurship

Few days ago, I wrote about worrying about people’s thoughts on how I dealt with it. This week, I want to share about something some are afraid to acknowledge it, for various reasons. But I believe that the more you try to deny it, our relationships with others and ourselves will be affected badly. I’m talking about emotions and feelings, including fear.

Here are the lessons that I’ve reflected on.

On Emotions and quitting the bad ones:

All feelings in this world can be condensed into 2 categories - fear or love. Positive feelings that makes you feel healthily good about yourself such as joy, gratitude, excitement etc and they are all connected to love. Anything that makes you worry, angry or sad, it is all comes from fear. DON’T BE AFRAID of negative feelings immediately. When they come, it is alright to acknowledge their presence, because they are indicators that tell you where you stand in life and the underlying reason(s) why you feel that way.

One thing that I learnt is the need to quit blaming. I realised that it’s always easy to blame because the 'blame everyone/everything wrong' statements give off the illusion that we are helpless. We mistakenly believe that we don’t have a choice about the woeful circumstances we find ourselves in. When things don't go our way, sometimes we blame our parents, spouses, schools, government, weather, traffic, etc. Blaming comforts us at least for a while, as though it makes us feel and look better off. However, the blame game doesn’t make us in control, it strips us of our personal power and will to bring about favourable changes needed in our lives. Overindulging in the blame game keeps us helplessly stuck in the victim mentality, not to mention immaturity and narrow-mindedness too.

Remember that whatever situations arise upon us, we actually DO have a choice on how we respond to these situations. If you have been feeding on negative feelings for some time, on a deeper level, you are still hanging on to the past. Do give yourself a chance to live in the now, so that you can have a happier future.

On Entrepreneurship:

On one hand, I understand why some people just keep waiting for the ‘perfect’ time to do something, especially if they lack financial, time, information, energy or human resources to fuel their dreams. Some are fearful to chase after their dreams because they are afraid to make mistakes or sacrifices.

Now the thing is, ‘perfect’ is very hard to find. Like one in a million chances. So, when an opportunity you wanted for so long finally presents itself to you, just don’t hesitate. You see, there’s no right timing. You just got to do it. So take up the opportunity first. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

Me and my co-founder/husband took great courage to quit our stable day job in order to embark on an unglamorous journey of longer working hours, little to no money and difficult people. We to go through this because we believe in something greater, and that is creating great values to customers and to colleagues who are working together. Our business is not just about the product itself- yes, it’s not just about flowers. It’s about the special moments created when someone conveys their love, affection, support, appreciation and care through flowers.

Entrepreneurship is about creating values to other people. It is not just creating jobs for people to feed their families or pay their bills. I believe in giving hope and ‘feel good’ feelings back to society who are generally rushing for something and forget to love life sometimes. I believe something unassuming like flowers can have a powerful, positive impact to the people’s well-being.

And here's a cheers to your well-being :)