Overnight Success-Lucky, You Are Kidding!

#OvernightSuccess

Most people have a strong desire to be successful. Many a time, however, we do not know exactly what success means or how to pursue it. Whenever we find people who become a overnight sensation in something, we feel jealous because we envy them and want the great job they have or that acclaim bestowed to their outstanding success. Average people will play the blame game. They believe it’s because they were more “lucky” or born rich, have better genes or any other excuses they can come up with.

 

Let look and evaluate three #Singapore cases and see what made them so successful in their own right.

  • Case No. 1 “Crazy Rich Asians” has proven to be crazy popular with moviegoers. The romantic comedy story follows native New Yorker Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) as she accompanies her longtime boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding) to attend his best friend’s wedding in Singapore. It is the number one film at the box office in US, Singapore, Philippines, and possible more in other parts of the world. It is adapted and inspired from Singapore-born writer Kevin Kwan’s book of the same title. The most common emotional response I’ve heard to watching “Crazy Rich Asians” is “I cried”: I cried 30 seconds into the film, I cried in the last act, I cried when they played mahjong, I cried during the wedding scene, or I cried on Twitter later that night.
  • Case No. 2 “Singapore 1st Olympic Gold Medalist” Joseph Isaac Schooling is a Singaporean swimmer. He was the gold medallist in the 100m butterfly at the 2016 Olympics, attaining Singapore’s first-ever Olympic medal in swimming.
  • Case No. 3 “Singapore Renowned Tech Entrepreneur and Businessman of The Year” Sim Wong Hoo, founder of Creative Technology Ltd has won accolades from industry and government for his prolific innovations. This includes his winning Singapore’s Public Star Medal Bintang Bakti Masyarakat in 2001 for his outstanding achievements in the business field. During the early days where entrepreneurship and Technological products were still a  buzzword, his company produced the first Sound Blaster, which was the de-facto standard for for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95. By 1995, Sound Blaster cards had sold over 15 million units worldwide and accounted for seven out of ten sound card sales.

 

What Are Common Features Of Their Success

Their ground breaking achievements are no mean feat during their era, just like Roger Bannister, the first runner to break the 4-minute barrier in the mile on 6 May 1954. In Bannister words, “It became a symbol of attempting a challenge in the physical world of something hitherto thought impossible. I’d like to see it as a metaphor not only for sport, but for life and seeking challenges.”

 

  • Case No. 1 “Crazy Rich Asians” It is the relief of seeing an Asian character without a threatening onslaught of racist stereotypes, or the marvel of seeing so many Asian characters in one space, an all-Asian cast of asian americans, singaporeans, malaysians, filipinos, other asian support casts and crews. And Rachel Chu, played by Constance Wu and her boyfriend’s Nick Young, played by Henry Golding of asian american and erasian heritage respectively to boot, playing the lead roles in the movie. All of them have their struggles or challenges in career and personal lives. Success requires hard work, courage, humility, patience, resilience, talent, teamwork and, yes, sheer hard work again. When the time is ripe, they started a movement of hearts & souls in acting and promoting of the movie. It is not that surprise afterall, the movie is an “Overnight Success” in the cinemas.

 

  • Case No. 2 “Singapore 1st Olympic Gold Medalist”  While many can picture that glorious moment when Joseph Isaac Schooling stood atop the podium, Majulah Singapura playing, not many know about the turmoil the Schoolings faced, and the pain they had to put up with, for him to succeed. Schooling parents’ May and Colin believe the seeds of Joseph’s Olympic dreams were sowed from a conversation he had with his grand-uncle Lloyd when he was at a young age. He set his mind of wanting to go to the Olympics. The Schoolings had decided to sending him abroad to further his dream. Flights, accommodation, living expenses and school fees totalling more than $1 million would sap the Schooling’s finances. May practically exhausted her savings and they had to sell an overseas property to finance Joseph’s dreams. During his early years in the United States, the young swimmer found it really hard. He said: “I was homesick all the time. I would call and say I want to come home.” But he slowly got used to life there and eventually blossomed into a star. The rest is history.
    (Extract from The Straits Times’s article, “Joseph Schooling-Pain Behind The Glory“)

 

  • Case No. 3 “Singapore Renowned Tech Entrepreneur and Businessman of The Year” In 1999, Sim Wong Hoo, released a book entitled ‘Chaotic Thoughts From The Old Millennium, in which he coined and popularized the term “No U-turn syndrome” to describe the stereotypical Singaporean mindset of requiring permission from higher authorities before taking any action. Following that, this analogy is used to explain the red tape he has encountered with hard-nosed bureaucrats, which in turn stifles the very creativity that the Singaporean government has been trying to promote in the recent years. He made his pot of golds in US first and then get recognised in his home country #LittleRedDot for his achievements.

 

 

I want to quote a few advising words from an article, “Overnight Success Is A Myth — Here Is Why” written by

  1. It is economically and psychologically impossible to have it all—meaning, it is impossible to have all of the good and none of the bad.
  2. Life is about making choices. When you choose one option, you are also saying no to many others. You can have what you want, but you cannot want it all and have it all. Or, as Peter Senge said, “You can have your cake and eat it too, but not at the same time.” If you really, really have it all, it means that you have had both victory and defeat; celebration and disappointment; abundance and lack; love and heartbreak, and so on—and you have learned to appreciate it all and learn from it.

 

In concluding, Steve Jobs’ speech ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish to the graduates of Stanford University is a speech worth repeating.

If you look at iPod, iPod wasn’t viewed as a success, but today it’s viewed as an overnight success. The iPhone was the same way. People were writing about there’s no physical keyboard. Obviously nobody would want it.
– Tim Cook, Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.

I’m starting a Mastermind Group, with the aim of members achieving Zest For Life with the guiding motto of “Heaven On Earth”.

If interested to join the group, please drop me a line to reubeno@zestinlife.com, stating your aim and how the Mastermind Group can help you to achieve your fulfilling life goals.

Thank you for dropping by.

Reuben Ong
#Singapore Is Our Home
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