"But I'm not smart enough" vs "I'm colour blind"
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Hi guys, I've had a difficult conversation with an old friend in Singapore today. I didn't think I came up with all the right words to respond in a sympathetic, empathetic and kind way - that's why I am writing this post to try to organize my thoughts on what is a rather complex issue. Let's call his old friend Guava - obviously not her real name, it's just that I remember she liked the fruit. She has been going through a difficult patch, she's my age and when you get to my age, the bar is raised rather high. You look around your peers and you can't help but feel that now that you're in your 40s, you're expected to hold a certain position, earn a certain amount of money to at least look decent compared to your peers rather than be the one that people gossip about being a total loser. Guava has a good job today but gosh she works hard and she told me, "I am sick and tired of being bullied by my boss. I just put on a brave face and pretend that I'm fine, I'm just too embarrassed to talk about it sometimes but I wish I had a better job and better work environment. The working hours are crazy and I'm not sure how much more of this madness I can take. Sometimes I'm working 16 hour a day and I get only a few hours of sleep a night."
So I came up with the usual response - after all, if she was that unhappy, the first thing to do was to look around for something better. I did exactly the same thing a few weeks ago when there was something that really upset me at work, I just wanted to know what my options were should I decide to leave my company. So I spoke to a few people and got no less than three job offers within 72 hours (and one of those offers actually look amazing) and that was simply achieved through chatting casually with some friends and clients. I didn't even speak to say a recruitment agent or a headhunter - nor did I upload my CV onto any of those job websites. So perhaps I am a bit naive at just how easy it is to find another job for us older working adults in our 40s, but I asked Guava if she had started looking for a new job? She replied that she has indeed already done so but could not find anything that is suitable - the closest thing that came close involved a pay cut but she was not willing to take a pay cut. I did then suggest trying to broaden her horizons and perhaps exploring a job which will involve a change of career, maybe she could perform a similar kind of role but in a different industry. Sure a change like that will inevitably involve a learning curve, but at least that would allow her to cast her net a lot wider. Then she said this to me, "But I'm not smart like you - not as smart as you in any case."
I didn't quite know how to respond to that - after all, both Guava and I are in our forties yet she brought up something that I thought only school children would talk about when they compare their exam results. I was just puzzled. My first response was, "what has being smart got to do with your situation?" Then I realized, perhaps she said that because it was a very Singaporean thing to say and Guava is after all, a Singaporean product of the Singaporean system. But let's deal with this claim of hers, "I'm not smart like you": firstly, what does being smart actually mean? Is this purely a measure of IQ or do we take into account one's exam results then? I had to go back to the dictionary definition of the word clever, which is: quick to understand, learn, and devise or apply ideas; intelligent. So, being clever isn't as much about scoring 100 for your mathematics exam, but rather to be the first in the class to understand a complex concept when the teacher introduces it for the first time. Holy crap, if we use that a yard stick, then I have news for you: I'm stupid. Holy fuck, I'm incredibly stupid because I'm the idiot in the class who would be last person to grasp the new concepts when it comes to mathematics. Of course, being a fast learner is an extremely useful skill both in school and at work and it can give you a massive advantage over others if you have to take loads of exams. It is less useful for us working adults who become set in our routine - dentists will always be doing the same kinds of treatment day in day out with their patients, they would not usually be challenged to learn something new like a new language once they are gainfully employed as dentists. Instead, the dentists would hire a bilingual assistant to assist with the translations should they ever need to deal with many patients who speak another language.
So if being smart or clever isn't that much of an advantage for us adults, then what would be the more crucial factors then? My regular readers will know that I am a polyglot: I pick up new languages at lightning speed - I've become fluent in Spanish without having had a single lesson in Spanish and I speak 20 languages today (all but four of them are self-taught). So whilst I may be utterly retarded when it comes to mathematics, I am a freaking genius when it comes to learning new languages. This may sound like common sense but it is worth saying: play to your strengths and avoid exposing your weaknesses. This is why I work in corporate finance today: as a good friend describes it, "Alex, are they paying you to basically chat on the phone all day?" And I replied, "sometimes I meet my clients in person and we chat over coffee rather than on the phone." But that's all I do, I chat, I talk, I tell stories and I do that in a variety of languages with my clients. I may work in banking but I don't use any mathematics at all and whilst there are certain kinds of professionals like the quants (quantitative analysts) who do quite a lot of mathematics, my job doesn't involve any mathematics at all and the only maths I ever do is when I put my invoices together - but all I do is input the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and the programme does all the calculations for me. That's why I am so indignant about earning so much more than my evil mathematics teachers back in Singapore who subjected me to so much torture in my teenage years. Looks like the kid who failed maths is now earning more in a month than you ever did in a year.
But why is Guava so hung up on the 'smart' thing then? I tried to explain to her that I wasn't smarter than her, I do think I'm a lot more streetwise and I have certain personality traits that serve me well in the work place - that cannot be easily quantified. For example, I would travel to a third world country like Indonesia or Tunisia and then navigate my way through the country with public transport. Is that being 'smart' per se? Okay, there's the language barrier to get over so being a fast learner and picking up a new language or three probably helps but then there are different skills involved which are never tested in any exam. Let me give you an example from Tunisia, we were near the small town of Kelibia when we discovered this old fort on a hill. As we drove up to it, we found that there was a man selling tickets to enter the fort and I thought yes let's do this since we've come all this way. However, as I got my wallet out to pay for the tickets, I realized that we didn't have enough cash left on us and the man didn't have the facilities to take payment by credit card. But by then he had been fascinated by the fact that I was a Chinese looking guy who spoke French flawlessly (Tunisia was a French colony, so French is widely spoken) so he asked me where I was from - I then chatted with him about a number of things before switching to Arabic. I'm far from fluent but I have lived and worked in Dubai, I knew enough of the basics to have a basic conversation. So through this bilingual Arabic-French conversation, I established rapport with him over a few minutes and next thing I knew, he said he couldn't let me leave Tunisia without having visited Kelibia fort and he let us in for free. When I thanked him, he just asked me to promise him one thing: tell your friends in Singapore to visit Tunisia.
So, in that case study, yes on one hand, it was a kind of language exam whereby I had to prove that I can speak both French and Arabic with this Tunisian man - however, in your typical oral exam in school, you don't have to persuade someone to give you something for nothing. I did a lot more than prove my ability with those languages at Kelibia - I established rapport with a stranger I had just met, I got a man to like me enough to give me something without asking for anything in return. Sure you need to be smart to learn foreign languages, but what about the second part then? I don't quite know what to call it - we tend to lump such people skills under the vague umbrella term of 'soft skills' - as if it's something peripheral, something extra that's nice to have but not really that important. It's like the coleslaw you might get for free when you order a steak, or the slice of lime you might find in your glass when you order a cocktail. However, having worked in sales for so many years, I've seen plenty of people suck at sales despite being seemingly intelligent and even multilingual people - this is because they think that simply being 'smart' is enough when it isn't in the working world. Sadly of course, such skills aren't tested in the exams students have to take at school, but you simply have to take a look at what the students do in their free time: those who have plenty of friends are probably going to do a lot better in the working world compared to those who have few or no friends. Heck, kids learn far more in the playground messing around with their friends than in the classroom with a teacher. So why is Guava putting so much emphasis on being smart then? Is this a very Singaporean thing to do?
My regular readers will know that I train gymnastics on a regular basis and I am also a qualified coach - one of the most common excuses that I encounter during gymnastics is this: "I'm not strong enough" and the second most common excuse is "I'm not flexible enough". Often, these are bullshit excuses made by people who are conditioned by negativity, their minds are poisoned by pessimism and this "I can't do it" mentality the moment they encounter a problem. So instead of asking me, "Alex, tell me what I am doing wrong, teach me how to fix this," they start explaining to me why they can't do it and why they will never be able to do this skill. Gosh, gymnastics may be a difficult sport but when you are dealing with people with such negativity, I swear they are their own worst enemy. They can't wait to put themselves down that they won't even listen to the wise words of an experienced coach. Take the issue of strength for example: in 99.99% of cases, strength is not the issue. Gymnastics is a technically complex sport: take a simple skill like the forward hip circle on the bar, it may look simple but it boils down to understanding what you must do to generate speed and what you have to do to stay on the bar once you have the speed - timing is crucial and if you get the timing right, the skill can look effortless and beautiful. Get the timing wrong and no amount of brute strength can salvage the skill, you'll simply fall from the bar. But instead of letting me explain the technical aspect of the skill such as the timing, they just claim 'I'm not strong enough to do this'. It is impossible to teach people like that anything because they won't listen.
Likewise with Guava, when I hear her say "I'm not as smart as you", there's a part of me that roll my eyes because I have encountered this kind of self-defeating attitude before - at the gym. But why do people do this to themselves then? Gosh, the world is a tough place, we are dealing with so many challenges on a daily basis, why put yourself down when you should choose to be your own best friend by believing in yourself? Well, let's stick with gymnastics because it is very clear where this kind of thinking comes from in the world of gymnastics. The most famous gymnast in the world right now is world and Olympic champion Simone Biles from America (please see the video below) - if you take a look at her, it is clear from her muscles and body that she is extremely strong. The word usually used to describe her amongst gymnastics experts is 'powerful' because she manages to make the most difficult skills look effortless. Many people will take a look at her and think, "well surely you have to be built like that to do those gymnastics tricks, I'm not strong like Biles, so there's no way I can learn gymnastics." So that's a trap a lot of people fall into they think they're not ready to learn or do something they really want to do, so they do something else instead that they already know how to do. This kind of gymnast would spend a lot of time doing sit ups and push ups to get stronger instead of actually learning any real gymnastics - yeah you become good at sit ups and push ups, but that's not gymnastics. Is there an alternative to this? Oh yes there is.
Allow me to introduce another gymnast I am also a huge fan of: meet Shang Chunsong 商春松 of China. She may be 22 years old, but she is extremely slender at 1.42 m tall and weighing just 34 kgs. Even by Chinese standards, she is still shorter and lighter than other Chinese gymnasts like Fan Yilin, Tan Jiaxin and Yao Jinnan. She is tiny, she may have the face of an adult but the body of a young girl - that actually makes her very suitable for gymnastics; she excels on the uneven bars and the beam like many Chinese gymnasts, but she is also a deceptively powerful tumbler on floor exercise as well. Shang amasses plenty of difficulty by playing to her strengths, her slim body twists easily and gracefully and that's where she uses her slender frame to her advantage. She tumbled a stunning total of 11 twists in her floor exercise routine at the Rio 2016 Olympics compared to Biles who had 4.5 twists but gained more difficulty through other skills. Furthermore Shang's gymnastics is so beautiful to watch because she cannot rely on brute strength to muscle her way through her routines - she simply doesn't have the kind of power that someone like Biles would have. Instead, Shang relies on perfect technique every time so she doesn't waste a single bit of energy - she uses what strength and power she has extremely efficiently and intelligently to her advantage, she truly understands the biomechanics of every skill she performs, her technique is textbook perfect. This is why she has been able to compete with the very best in the world and has won many medals at the highest levels of world and Olympic competition despite clearly not being as physically strong as someone built like Biles.
So what has Shang vs Biles got to do with our friend Guava? Well I think that the Singapore system doesn't allow room for any flexibility (pun intended) in our approach in this matter - kids in school are bludgeoned through a rigid system and told to follow a certain set path: study hard, make sure you have good results to gain entry to a good university and then based on that degree, you will be able to get a great job that will lead to a successful career. Yes sure that's one way to become successful, but it is by no means the only way to become successful but before we start blaming the system, let's take a closer look at that kind of mentality. It allows the individual to absolve himself/herself of any responsibility, after all, if I told you that I'm colour blind, then it is not my fault that I cannot distinguish between two colours like red and green or blue and yellow - my eyes were just born that way, it is not my fault and there's nothing I can do to acquire the ability to see those colours. But can we treat not being smart (or stupidity - for want of a better word) the same way we treat colour blindness? What if I was born with a low IQ through no fault of my own? We get our genes from our parents so do we blame our parents instead if we're not as smart as our friends? By playing the "I'm not smart enough" card, Guava is putting her hands up and saying that it is not her fault, she is not responsible for the situation she is in and she is a victim of circumstances the same way colour blind people cannot be blamed for their condition at all. Now, let's listen to a famous speech by Will Smith.
I think that's a really powerful speech and in the case of Guava, I can't help but feel that she is blaming her genes for not being born 'smart enough'. Okay, she isn't blaming her parents (well, our parents are responsible for our genes) but she is blaming that random combination of DNA that determined her IQ and whether or not she is as smart as some of her peers. It is a complete lottery whether we're smart or not - I've seen smart parents with excellent jobs give birth to shockingly stupid children and really dumb parents somehow produce a scholar who can go on to become very successful. By choosing to blame something like that for not being 'smart enough', I can't help but feel that she really isn't taking responsibility for the situation. There are very few people out there who are so genuinely stupid that they aren't good at anything, like if they are so uneducated and unskilled that they can only do the most basic, menial tasks - Guava isn't one of them: she is a creative, charming and witty person. She can be brilliant at so many things but is unfortunately trapped in the wrong job right now and she really deserves better. Her real problem is that she never got much help getting the right jobs as she came from a very working class family and her parents are poor. Even if let's just say (for the sake of the argument) that she really isn't as smart as some of her peers, I can't help but feel that her reaction to that is more like "not my fault, I am a victim of circumstance" rather than someone who's willing to take responsibility for the situation whether or not it is her fault. This is why Will Smith's speech went viral this year as it is such a powerful message.
So here's the thing: even by conventional Singaporean standards, Guava is rather clever indeed! Her academic record speaks for itself: she went to all the top schools in Singapore followed by a degree at NUS - now by Singaporean standards, she has done exactly what was expected of her and has proven herself to be very 'clever' by conventional Singaporean standards. So why is she playing the 'I'm not smart enough' card then? Surely the stupidity card can only be played by truly stupid people - not Guava, I didn't think she had the right to play that card. But whether she feels that she is smart or not is another matter altogether: if I were to pick up some of my old maths textbooks today, I can guarantee you I will struggle with the content and feel pretty darn stupid. Yeah, that's why I avoid putting myself in such a position - what I do enjoy however are my adult gymnastics sessions which happens four a week at my gym. I get to train with gymnasts from all over the world and I am in an environment where I get to do two things I excel at: gymnastics and speaking foreign languages. I usually get to speak German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Polish, Portuguese and Welsh most nights there. I get to impress both with my gymnastics skills and my language skills and because I have placed myself in an environment where people are constantly impressed with me, I have a brilliant time at gymnastics and that's why I keep going. Need I state the obvious? We can't be good at everything, so just stick to the things you excel in.
In life we have little choice but to play the hand we are dealt - sure we may not be the smartest person or the strongest person, but we take what we have and play it to our advantage, just the same way Shang did when it came to her gymnastics. Guava certainly has some skills which I thought would serve her well in the work place, but I think she has lacked the kind of guidance and help that she needed earlier in her career to recognize where her strength lies. I do think that she is often selling herself short and lacking in confidence: now I can see where that comes from, she came from a very working class family and her parents were not the kind who would praise her or be supportive of her. I don't even think her uneducated parents realize just how brilliant she is or what she does for a living - by that token, she and I are in exactly the same situation. So in Guava's case, it has really little to do with her intelligence per se, but more the fact that she may not have made the best decisions when it comes to her career and there's probably a dose of bad luck as well. Actually, I did write a piece recently about the disconnect between getting straight As as a student in school and thriving in the working world - after all, we're not paid to simply study and take exams when we have a job. No we're doing something quite different and relying on completely different skills, many of which aren't even taught to us as students and we're supposed to somehow figure it all out along the way with or without any help.
At this point, I'd like to talk about an old friend - let's call him Aaron (not his real name). Aaron came from a very rich family and his late father had a very good job in the government here in the UK. Upon graduation, Aaron said to his parents, "I think I'd like to do something creative, like in advertising." So his daddy made a few phone calls and he got a job at a top advertising firm in the UK - but after two years in that job, he got bored with it and said, "daddy, this is not really me, I don't see my future in this. I think I'd like to do what you did, I'd like to follow in your footsteps." So daddy once again made a few phone calls and he got a nice job in a government department. Just this week, he has posted pictures of himself at the G20 summit in Argentina with the British delegation and what can I say, I'm incredibly jealous. So, what's the theme here? Is Aaron so incredibly smart and talented that he can get great jobs in two different industries? No he isn't, I've known him since my university days - don't get me wrong, we get along well. He's a nice guy, we always have a good laugh together but the one advantage that Aaron had was his father. Whilst ordinary people like Guava and I had to find our jobs through our own networks and efforts, all Aaron had to do was speak to his daddy. That's a massive and unfair advantage he has over the rest of us - that's right, the world isn't fair and I hope you got the memo. The way I see it, the only difference between Guava and Aaron is the fact that Aaron could get a lot further, a lot faster in his career thanks to his father's help - he is by no means any smarter or more intelligent than Guava.
Yet people like Guava would just assume that Aaron is where he is because he is somehow 'smarter' or more capable - which clearly isn't the case. I know for a fact that Guava had much better results in school than Aaron ever did. I've met plenty of people like Aaron in the banking industry, the fact is the hardest part is getting your foot in the door in the first place and people like Aaron don't have that problem. I'm not sure if Guava recognizes this, but it is a fact that many people choose to convenient shove into their blind spot: after all, how would you feel if you were to acknowledge the fact that life is incredibly unfair? That your friend Aaron has a wonderful job not on the basis of merit, but simply because of his family whilst your working class parents gave you no help whatsoever with your career and keep demanding money from you now that you're working? Oh and your working class parents don't even recognize just how little help they had given you and still insist on claiming that they were such good parents who want to claim credit for helping you get to where you are today? Add to that the dimension of religion - what if someone is Guava is religious, acknowledging this fact would simply lead to the logical questions, "God, why do you hate me so much? Why did you make me suffer so much whilst Aaron has such a good life? What have I done to deserve this? It's not fair." Nobody has an easy answer to the 'life is not fair' question - so people simply claim, "I'm just not smart enough" - that implies that it is not their fault, but the fault of their genes.
So where does this leave us then? The crux of the problem is this: the Singaporean education sucks, it is woefully inadequate in terms of preparing students for the working world. However, instead of recognizing this problem, many Singaporeans like Guava simply choose not to question how awful the system is and blame themselves instead which is hardly fair because it totally misrepresents the situation. That's why we have the rather bizarre situation in Singapore when a 64 year old man in Singapore was asked to produce his O level certificate when he applied for a job with the MOE, even though he has a degree and plenty of relevant work experience. Whilst that sounds utterly ludicrous, you can see why someone like Guava thinks that she simply isn't smart enough because she's probably haunted by some bad memory of some poor exam results back in secondary school - knowing her, she probably still has nightmares about getting a B instead of an A for her favourite subject when she was 15. Yeah, she's the kind of person who would beat herself up over something like that. However, all this focus on getting straight As doesn't help one get ahead in the business world - such is the problem with the whole fetid Singaporean system! This misleads people like Guava who clearly are not stupid at all, but are somehow led to believe that there is a problem with their intelligence, rather than the fact that there are some areas in their business skills which could do with more training and development.
You see, if your car simply won't start because your car battery is flat, the only way to rectify the situation is to charge your car battery; trying to fix every other part of the car from the ignition switch to the gas tank to fuel filter isn't going to somehow solve the problem. No, the only way to deal with a flat car battery is to charge it - now that may seem painfully obvious of course in this example, but that is exactly what Guava is doing. She is focusing on the fact that 'she isn't smart enough' when really, she's pretty darn intelligent - she probably just hasn't developed some of her business skills to adapt herself to the working world and these are skills that are simply not taught in any classroom. But the good news is that since her intelligence is not the problem here, there are probably things that she can do to help herself get ahead in the business world but I don't even dare to start offering my help just in case she thinks I am condescending or that I might insult her pride. And thinking ahead to the next generation - I'm aghast at the poor quality of education that my nephew is getting in Singapore given how awful the system is. So take the subject of Chinese for example - my nephew is just being made to memorize chunks of Chinese words and phrases and is simply not at all encouraged to demonstrate how he can use his knowledge of the Chinese to come up with something original or witty. Great, so you've trained the kid to be good at memorizing loads of stuff - how's that going to help him get a job in the real world? That is why people like my nephew are totally let down by the education system in Singapore.
So there you go, what do you think? Have you ever met someone like Guava who has somehow convinced themselves that they are "not smart enough" despite obviously not being stupid? Gosh, I've met some stupid people and Guava is not one of them. Is she merely a product of the Singaporean system? How do young Singaporeans avoid falling into this trap? I have obviously turned out quite differently, but that's because I have spent more of my life in Europe than the toxic environment of Singapore. I'm just thinking about this because my nephew is probably stuck in Singapore for the foreseeable future so I don't want him to ever feel this way, that he isn't smart enough - he needs to recognize that everyone is different and we just have the make the most of what we have; that the people who are super successful like my friend Aaron have probably gotten a lot of help to get to where they are today and that intelligence only plays a small part in his success story. And finally, how can I help Guava? How do I bring up the topic without causing offence or hurting her feelings? I really want to help but I don't even know how to begin. Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.
I didn't quite know how to respond to that - after all, both Guava and I are in our forties yet she brought up something that I thought only school children would talk about when they compare their exam results. I was just puzzled. My first response was, "what has being smart got to do with your situation?" Then I realized, perhaps she said that because it was a very Singaporean thing to say and Guava is after all, a Singaporean product of the Singaporean system. But let's deal with this claim of hers, "I'm not smart like you": firstly, what does being smart actually mean? Is this purely a measure of IQ or do we take into account one's exam results then? I had to go back to the dictionary definition of the word clever, which is: quick to understand, learn, and devise or apply ideas; intelligent. So, being clever isn't as much about scoring 100 for your mathematics exam, but rather to be the first in the class to understand a complex concept when the teacher introduces it for the first time. Holy crap, if we use that a yard stick, then I have news for you: I'm stupid. Holy fuck, I'm incredibly stupid because I'm the idiot in the class who would be last person to grasp the new concepts when it comes to mathematics. Of course, being a fast learner is an extremely useful skill both in school and at work and it can give you a massive advantage over others if you have to take loads of exams. It is less useful for us working adults who become set in our routine - dentists will always be doing the same kinds of treatment day in day out with their patients, they would not usually be challenged to learn something new like a new language once they are gainfully employed as dentists. Instead, the dentists would hire a bilingual assistant to assist with the translations should they ever need to deal with many patients who speak another language.
So if being smart or clever isn't that much of an advantage for us adults, then what would be the more crucial factors then? My regular readers will know that I am a polyglot: I pick up new languages at lightning speed - I've become fluent in Spanish without having had a single lesson in Spanish and I speak 20 languages today (all but four of them are self-taught). So whilst I may be utterly retarded when it comes to mathematics, I am a freaking genius when it comes to learning new languages. This may sound like common sense but it is worth saying: play to your strengths and avoid exposing your weaknesses. This is why I work in corporate finance today: as a good friend describes it, "Alex, are they paying you to basically chat on the phone all day?" And I replied, "sometimes I meet my clients in person and we chat over coffee rather than on the phone." But that's all I do, I chat, I talk, I tell stories and I do that in a variety of languages with my clients. I may work in banking but I don't use any mathematics at all and whilst there are certain kinds of professionals like the quants (quantitative analysts) who do quite a lot of mathematics, my job doesn't involve any mathematics at all and the only maths I ever do is when I put my invoices together - but all I do is input the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and the programme does all the calculations for me. That's why I am so indignant about earning so much more than my evil mathematics teachers back in Singapore who subjected me to so much torture in my teenage years. Looks like the kid who failed maths is now earning more in a month than you ever did in a year.
But why is Guava so hung up on the 'smart' thing then? I tried to explain to her that I wasn't smarter than her, I do think I'm a lot more streetwise and I have certain personality traits that serve me well in the work place - that cannot be easily quantified. For example, I would travel to a third world country like Indonesia or Tunisia and then navigate my way through the country with public transport. Is that being 'smart' per se? Okay, there's the language barrier to get over so being a fast learner and picking up a new language or three probably helps but then there are different skills involved which are never tested in any exam. Let me give you an example from Tunisia, we were near the small town of Kelibia when we discovered this old fort on a hill. As we drove up to it, we found that there was a man selling tickets to enter the fort and I thought yes let's do this since we've come all this way. However, as I got my wallet out to pay for the tickets, I realized that we didn't have enough cash left on us and the man didn't have the facilities to take payment by credit card. But by then he had been fascinated by the fact that I was a Chinese looking guy who spoke French flawlessly (Tunisia was a French colony, so French is widely spoken) so he asked me where I was from - I then chatted with him about a number of things before switching to Arabic. I'm far from fluent but I have lived and worked in Dubai, I knew enough of the basics to have a basic conversation. So through this bilingual Arabic-French conversation, I established rapport with him over a few minutes and next thing I knew, he said he couldn't let me leave Tunisia without having visited Kelibia fort and he let us in for free. When I thanked him, he just asked me to promise him one thing: tell your friends in Singapore to visit Tunisia.
So, in that case study, yes on one hand, it was a kind of language exam whereby I had to prove that I can speak both French and Arabic with this Tunisian man - however, in your typical oral exam in school, you don't have to persuade someone to give you something for nothing. I did a lot more than prove my ability with those languages at Kelibia - I established rapport with a stranger I had just met, I got a man to like me enough to give me something without asking for anything in return. Sure you need to be smart to learn foreign languages, but what about the second part then? I don't quite know what to call it - we tend to lump such people skills under the vague umbrella term of 'soft skills' - as if it's something peripheral, something extra that's nice to have but not really that important. It's like the coleslaw you might get for free when you order a steak, or the slice of lime you might find in your glass when you order a cocktail. However, having worked in sales for so many years, I've seen plenty of people suck at sales despite being seemingly intelligent and even multilingual people - this is because they think that simply being 'smart' is enough when it isn't in the working world. Sadly of course, such skills aren't tested in the exams students have to take at school, but you simply have to take a look at what the students do in their free time: those who have plenty of friends are probably going to do a lot better in the working world compared to those who have few or no friends. Heck, kids learn far more in the playground messing around with their friends than in the classroom with a teacher. So why is Guava putting so much emphasis on being smart then? Is this a very Singaporean thing to do?
My regular readers will know that I train gymnastics on a regular basis and I am also a qualified coach - one of the most common excuses that I encounter during gymnastics is this: "I'm not strong enough" and the second most common excuse is "I'm not flexible enough". Often, these are bullshit excuses made by people who are conditioned by negativity, their minds are poisoned by pessimism and this "I can't do it" mentality the moment they encounter a problem. So instead of asking me, "Alex, tell me what I am doing wrong, teach me how to fix this," they start explaining to me why they can't do it and why they will never be able to do this skill. Gosh, gymnastics may be a difficult sport but when you are dealing with people with such negativity, I swear they are their own worst enemy. They can't wait to put themselves down that they won't even listen to the wise words of an experienced coach. Take the issue of strength for example: in 99.99% of cases, strength is not the issue. Gymnastics is a technically complex sport: take a simple skill like the forward hip circle on the bar, it may look simple but it boils down to understanding what you must do to generate speed and what you have to do to stay on the bar once you have the speed - timing is crucial and if you get the timing right, the skill can look effortless and beautiful. Get the timing wrong and no amount of brute strength can salvage the skill, you'll simply fall from the bar. But instead of letting me explain the technical aspect of the skill such as the timing, they just claim 'I'm not strong enough to do this'. It is impossible to teach people like that anything because they won't listen.
Likewise with Guava, when I hear her say "I'm not as smart as you", there's a part of me that roll my eyes because I have encountered this kind of self-defeating attitude before - at the gym. But why do people do this to themselves then? Gosh, the world is a tough place, we are dealing with so many challenges on a daily basis, why put yourself down when you should choose to be your own best friend by believing in yourself? Well, let's stick with gymnastics because it is very clear where this kind of thinking comes from in the world of gymnastics. The most famous gymnast in the world right now is world and Olympic champion Simone Biles from America (please see the video below) - if you take a look at her, it is clear from her muscles and body that she is extremely strong. The word usually used to describe her amongst gymnastics experts is 'powerful' because she manages to make the most difficult skills look effortless. Many people will take a look at her and think, "well surely you have to be built like that to do those gymnastics tricks, I'm not strong like Biles, so there's no way I can learn gymnastics." So that's a trap a lot of people fall into they think they're not ready to learn or do something they really want to do, so they do something else instead that they already know how to do. This kind of gymnast would spend a lot of time doing sit ups and push ups to get stronger instead of actually learning any real gymnastics - yeah you become good at sit ups and push ups, but that's not gymnastics. Is there an alternative to this? Oh yes there is.
Allow me to introduce another gymnast I am also a huge fan of: meet Shang Chunsong 商春松 of China. She may be 22 years old, but she is extremely slender at 1.42 m tall and weighing just 34 kgs. Even by Chinese standards, she is still shorter and lighter than other Chinese gymnasts like Fan Yilin, Tan Jiaxin and Yao Jinnan. She is tiny, she may have the face of an adult but the body of a young girl - that actually makes her very suitable for gymnastics; she excels on the uneven bars and the beam like many Chinese gymnasts, but she is also a deceptively powerful tumbler on floor exercise as well. Shang amasses plenty of difficulty by playing to her strengths, her slim body twists easily and gracefully and that's where she uses her slender frame to her advantage. She tumbled a stunning total of 11 twists in her floor exercise routine at the Rio 2016 Olympics compared to Biles who had 4.5 twists but gained more difficulty through other skills. Furthermore Shang's gymnastics is so beautiful to watch because she cannot rely on brute strength to muscle her way through her routines - she simply doesn't have the kind of power that someone like Biles would have. Instead, Shang relies on perfect technique every time so she doesn't waste a single bit of energy - she uses what strength and power she has extremely efficiently and intelligently to her advantage, she truly understands the biomechanics of every skill she performs, her technique is textbook perfect. This is why she has been able to compete with the very best in the world and has won many medals at the highest levels of world and Olympic competition despite clearly not being as physically strong as someone built like Biles.
So what has Shang vs Biles got to do with our friend Guava? Well I think that the Singapore system doesn't allow room for any flexibility (pun intended) in our approach in this matter - kids in school are bludgeoned through a rigid system and told to follow a certain set path: study hard, make sure you have good results to gain entry to a good university and then based on that degree, you will be able to get a great job that will lead to a successful career. Yes sure that's one way to become successful, but it is by no means the only way to become successful but before we start blaming the system, let's take a closer look at that kind of mentality. It allows the individual to absolve himself/herself of any responsibility, after all, if I told you that I'm colour blind, then it is not my fault that I cannot distinguish between two colours like red and green or blue and yellow - my eyes were just born that way, it is not my fault and there's nothing I can do to acquire the ability to see those colours. But can we treat not being smart (or stupidity - for want of a better word) the same way we treat colour blindness? What if I was born with a low IQ through no fault of my own? We get our genes from our parents so do we blame our parents instead if we're not as smart as our friends? By playing the "I'm not smart enough" card, Guava is putting her hands up and saying that it is not her fault, she is not responsible for the situation she is in and she is a victim of circumstances the same way colour blind people cannot be blamed for their condition at all. Now, let's listen to a famous speech by Will Smith.
I think that's a really powerful speech and in the case of Guava, I can't help but feel that she is blaming her genes for not being born 'smart enough'. Okay, she isn't blaming her parents (well, our parents are responsible for our genes) but she is blaming that random combination of DNA that determined her IQ and whether or not she is as smart as some of her peers. It is a complete lottery whether we're smart or not - I've seen smart parents with excellent jobs give birth to shockingly stupid children and really dumb parents somehow produce a scholar who can go on to become very successful. By choosing to blame something like that for not being 'smart enough', I can't help but feel that she really isn't taking responsibility for the situation. There are very few people out there who are so genuinely stupid that they aren't good at anything, like if they are so uneducated and unskilled that they can only do the most basic, menial tasks - Guava isn't one of them: she is a creative, charming and witty person. She can be brilliant at so many things but is unfortunately trapped in the wrong job right now and she really deserves better. Her real problem is that she never got much help getting the right jobs as she came from a very working class family and her parents are poor. Even if let's just say (for the sake of the argument) that she really isn't as smart as some of her peers, I can't help but feel that her reaction to that is more like "not my fault, I am a victim of circumstance" rather than someone who's willing to take responsibility for the situation whether or not it is her fault. This is why Will Smith's speech went viral this year as it is such a powerful message.
So here's the thing: even by conventional Singaporean standards, Guava is rather clever indeed! Her academic record speaks for itself: she went to all the top schools in Singapore followed by a degree at NUS - now by Singaporean standards, she has done exactly what was expected of her and has proven herself to be very 'clever' by conventional Singaporean standards. So why is she playing the 'I'm not smart enough' card then? Surely the stupidity card can only be played by truly stupid people - not Guava, I didn't think she had the right to play that card. But whether she feels that she is smart or not is another matter altogether: if I were to pick up some of my old maths textbooks today, I can guarantee you I will struggle with the content and feel pretty darn stupid. Yeah, that's why I avoid putting myself in such a position - what I do enjoy however are my adult gymnastics sessions which happens four a week at my gym. I get to train with gymnasts from all over the world and I am in an environment where I get to do two things I excel at: gymnastics and speaking foreign languages. I usually get to speak German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Polish, Portuguese and Welsh most nights there. I get to impress both with my gymnastics skills and my language skills and because I have placed myself in an environment where people are constantly impressed with me, I have a brilliant time at gymnastics and that's why I keep going. Need I state the obvious? We can't be good at everything, so just stick to the things you excel in.
In life we have little choice but to play the hand we are dealt - sure we may not be the smartest person or the strongest person, but we take what we have and play it to our advantage, just the same way Shang did when it came to her gymnastics. Guava certainly has some skills which I thought would serve her well in the work place, but I think she has lacked the kind of guidance and help that she needed earlier in her career to recognize where her strength lies. I do think that she is often selling herself short and lacking in confidence: now I can see where that comes from, she came from a very working class family and her parents were not the kind who would praise her or be supportive of her. I don't even think her uneducated parents realize just how brilliant she is or what she does for a living - by that token, she and I are in exactly the same situation. So in Guava's case, it has really little to do with her intelligence per se, but more the fact that she may not have made the best decisions when it comes to her career and there's probably a dose of bad luck as well. Actually, I did write a piece recently about the disconnect between getting straight As as a student in school and thriving in the working world - after all, we're not paid to simply study and take exams when we have a job. No we're doing something quite different and relying on completely different skills, many of which aren't even taught to us as students and we're supposed to somehow figure it all out along the way with or without any help.
At this point, I'd like to talk about an old friend - let's call him Aaron (not his real name). Aaron came from a very rich family and his late father had a very good job in the government here in the UK. Upon graduation, Aaron said to his parents, "I think I'd like to do something creative, like in advertising." So his daddy made a few phone calls and he got a job at a top advertising firm in the UK - but after two years in that job, he got bored with it and said, "daddy, this is not really me, I don't see my future in this. I think I'd like to do what you did, I'd like to follow in your footsteps." So daddy once again made a few phone calls and he got a nice job in a government department. Just this week, he has posted pictures of himself at the G20 summit in Argentina with the British delegation and what can I say, I'm incredibly jealous. So, what's the theme here? Is Aaron so incredibly smart and talented that he can get great jobs in two different industries? No he isn't, I've known him since my university days - don't get me wrong, we get along well. He's a nice guy, we always have a good laugh together but the one advantage that Aaron had was his father. Whilst ordinary people like Guava and I had to find our jobs through our own networks and efforts, all Aaron had to do was speak to his daddy. That's a massive and unfair advantage he has over the rest of us - that's right, the world isn't fair and I hope you got the memo. The way I see it, the only difference between Guava and Aaron is the fact that Aaron could get a lot further, a lot faster in his career thanks to his father's help - he is by no means any smarter or more intelligent than Guava.
Yet people like Guava would just assume that Aaron is where he is because he is somehow 'smarter' or more capable - which clearly isn't the case. I know for a fact that Guava had much better results in school than Aaron ever did. I've met plenty of people like Aaron in the banking industry, the fact is the hardest part is getting your foot in the door in the first place and people like Aaron don't have that problem. I'm not sure if Guava recognizes this, but it is a fact that many people choose to convenient shove into their blind spot: after all, how would you feel if you were to acknowledge the fact that life is incredibly unfair? That your friend Aaron has a wonderful job not on the basis of merit, but simply because of his family whilst your working class parents gave you no help whatsoever with your career and keep demanding money from you now that you're working? Oh and your working class parents don't even recognize just how little help they had given you and still insist on claiming that they were such good parents who want to claim credit for helping you get to where you are today? Add to that the dimension of religion - what if someone is Guava is religious, acknowledging this fact would simply lead to the logical questions, "God, why do you hate me so much? Why did you make me suffer so much whilst Aaron has such a good life? What have I done to deserve this? It's not fair." Nobody has an easy answer to the 'life is not fair' question - so people simply claim, "I'm just not smart enough" - that implies that it is not their fault, but the fault of their genes.
So where does this leave us then? The crux of the problem is this: the Singaporean education sucks, it is woefully inadequate in terms of preparing students for the working world. However, instead of recognizing this problem, many Singaporeans like Guava simply choose not to question how awful the system is and blame themselves instead which is hardly fair because it totally misrepresents the situation. That's why we have the rather bizarre situation in Singapore when a 64 year old man in Singapore was asked to produce his O level certificate when he applied for a job with the MOE, even though he has a degree and plenty of relevant work experience. Whilst that sounds utterly ludicrous, you can see why someone like Guava thinks that she simply isn't smart enough because she's probably haunted by some bad memory of some poor exam results back in secondary school - knowing her, she probably still has nightmares about getting a B instead of an A for her favourite subject when she was 15. Yeah, she's the kind of person who would beat herself up over something like that. However, all this focus on getting straight As doesn't help one get ahead in the business world - such is the problem with the whole fetid Singaporean system! This misleads people like Guava who clearly are not stupid at all, but are somehow led to believe that there is a problem with their intelligence, rather than the fact that there are some areas in their business skills which could do with more training and development.
You see, if your car simply won't start because your car battery is flat, the only way to rectify the situation is to charge your car battery; trying to fix every other part of the car from the ignition switch to the gas tank to fuel filter isn't going to somehow solve the problem. No, the only way to deal with a flat car battery is to charge it - now that may seem painfully obvious of course in this example, but that is exactly what Guava is doing. She is focusing on the fact that 'she isn't smart enough' when really, she's pretty darn intelligent - she probably just hasn't developed some of her business skills to adapt herself to the working world and these are skills that are simply not taught in any classroom. But the good news is that since her intelligence is not the problem here, there are probably things that she can do to help herself get ahead in the business world but I don't even dare to start offering my help just in case she thinks I am condescending or that I might insult her pride. And thinking ahead to the next generation - I'm aghast at the poor quality of education that my nephew is getting in Singapore given how awful the system is. So take the subject of Chinese for example - my nephew is just being made to memorize chunks of Chinese words and phrases and is simply not at all encouraged to demonstrate how he can use his knowledge of the Chinese to come up with something original or witty. Great, so you've trained the kid to be good at memorizing loads of stuff - how's that going to help him get a job in the real world? That is why people like my nephew are totally let down by the education system in Singapore.
So there you go, what do you think? Have you ever met someone like Guava who has somehow convinced themselves that they are "not smart enough" despite obviously not being stupid? Gosh, I've met some stupid people and Guava is not one of them. Is she merely a product of the Singaporean system? How do young Singaporeans avoid falling into this trap? I have obviously turned out quite differently, but that's because I have spent more of my life in Europe than the toxic environment of Singapore. I'm just thinking about this because my nephew is probably stuck in Singapore for the foreseeable future so I don't want him to ever feel this way, that he isn't smart enough - he needs to recognize that everyone is different and we just have the make the most of what we have; that the people who are super successful like my friend Aaron have probably gotten a lot of help to get to where they are today and that intelligence only plays a small part in his success story. And finally, how can I help Guava? How do I bring up the topic without causing offence or hurting her feelings? I really want to help but I don't even know how to begin. Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.
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