Eli Hong

I haven’t updated this blog in months as work has taken up yet a lot of my time.

However, this update is critical as it comes at a crucial point.

I haven’t been well in the last week or so and as work becomes demanding, even falling sick doesn’t help.

I fought a great deal mentally and physically to get myself in my best shape possible, dealing with a bad flu, cough and sorethroat.

All these can’t come at a worst time where I was scheduled to be a speaker for an event.

However, there’s a silver lining.

Despite all these, I had a team of people who said that they believe in me.

They trusted that I will be able to do the necessary.

And I trusted God to do the rest.

Such words, the power of belief and positivity is so rare nowadays.

With the team counting on me to perform, that helped shape my mentality towards how I spoke to the audience.

Despite sounding muffled with a flu, I had an incredible breakthrough in terms of sales.

People coming up to thank me for a great presentation.

One person even mentioned that they have heard so many speakers but today they felt that this presentation made the most sense to them.

It was all worth it at the very end.

Words can build or break a person. Even in the toughest of times, it will brighten a person’s heart and mind.

Be very careful with words. It’s a double-edged sword.

Speak kindness, speak positivity, speak encouragement, speak goodness.

The intention will return many times over and the outcome will be a positive outcome.

The outcome will become meaning, purpose and strength to move forward for another day.

I choose to be mindful of my words.

There’s no benefit to tearing a person down.

I’m writing from my grab car returning from a two day speaking event in JB and in my wait at the JB Senai Airport, I had some rather fascinating encounters with people.

One outstanding chat was meeting a Malaysian who became a US Citizen in the 9 years of him living in the USA and he became an owner of a popular chain hotel in Nebraska.

It was truly the American dream that I once was inspired by and to see someone achieve that is absolutely inspiring. He is of Indian descent and the kind of difficulty that he encountered in terms of racism and even just hardcore verbal abuse really made him a tough man.

Made a friend today.

Other interesting people to mention was a man who’s in human dna engineering onroute to Shenzen.

I discovered that the human dna has been successfully sequenced and that vectors are like things you can add to a dna that is missing e.g helping people with alzheimers or leukemia.

Reports can be generated to detect cancer early too.

I also encountered a worker while waiting for my flight working for Greenpeace who’s promoting climate change and orang utans dying every hour due to deforestation. This seems shocking but the monthly contribution is via credit card and starting from RM79 a month as they claim that it cost them a lot to protect the forest. They have a very compelling and emotionally charged 3 minute pitch to find ways to get support.

Phew being a speaker, marketeer comes with great challenges. Prior to my travel I had to juggle some challenges at home with loved ones being unwell.

My greatest challenge was to balance my mind to manage and overcome all kinds of odds while maintaining a straight face in front of an audience.

And this is just one of my travel stories. I’ve been traveling a lot recently and I am definitely a little zonked lol.

Can’t wait to be home.

Wow, unreal, it seems like September came so quickly after my last post in March.

The days are passing by so fast, I don’t even know what actually happened amidst the busy-ness!

But if there’s one thing that I learned — is to practice mindfulness.

With a little help from some singing bowl meditation videos, 10 minutes a day really changes the game.

Thought I’d drop a quick note. Will write more when I can. Busy times.

3 months have passed on so quickly that I can’t pen everything down in words.

The months have been nothing short of busy and dramatic.

If there’s anything to sum it, its a word that I made up “Unreal-ity”

An Unreal Reality.

But reality is real and the challenges that reality brings is real — managing it on the other hand is unreal.

Will write again when time permits.

1. A great part of it was the grind.
2. It was a roller-coaster.
3. Juggling mid-age experiences.
4. Running a community of entrepreneurs, running into the 6th year, regularly, monthly. Not easy but has been fulfilling.
5. Learning how to be more organised.
6. Simplifying.
7. Fortifying my supplementations to keep myself physically protected & mentally sharp.
8. My aim for 2023 was to be healthier and preventing myself from falling ill too often. I think I have accomplished that albeit, I’d still fall sick but recovery was faster.
9. Understanding that bad and good is like oil and water, they don’t mix but yet they exist at the same time and I’ll have to deal with it either way.
10. There will always be discomfort.
11. Growth can be achieved through on-going learning and implementation of what I learned.
12. Did this year pan out exactly the way it should? I don’t think so but I’ve made arrangements so that it would work according to what I planned.

The new year 2024 marks the start of another grind.

I used to have to-do-lists, goals and more, which is plentiful and on-going, but I’ll just focus on developing a strong mind which will arm me for the year of the Dragon!

Goodbye 2023 , onwards 2024!

I realise that my mind is a trickster or rather that I have to be a trickster to my mind.

That way, I can increase control and rein it in for my benefit.

The only way is to fill my mind with ways to improve.

Yet, the mind is susceptible to suggestions, especially when unprepared.

Got to trick the mind to get the body to move.

The mind as I age, becomes weaker chemically and mentally.

Having it exposed to all kinds of information, experiences.

Having it subjected to self-abuse by external factors when the abuse(r) has all but forgotten.

Fact is, I beat myself up too much when the other party doesn’t care much at all.

There’s this guy called Dr. Amen, which I read somewhere which said that it’s recommended not to place a label on the good and bad (on specific events) that happened, as the mind will then put weight to either the good or bad events.

That weight will cause someone to go out of balance, choosing either the bad or good and causing a mental imbalance due to what it prioritise as in terms of information of what it chooses to belief that is good or bad.

I interpreted that as having mental neutrality. The ability to be able to stay neutral on both the good and the bad keeps the mind in a balanced state to be able to process better and allow a person to decide and choose how they want to react vs reacting immediately on that information received at that point.

How to take information in is in itself a kind of discipline that requires an on-going detoxing process. We really don’t need to take in more rubbish in the brain.

At the end of the day, it’s apparent that self-care for the mind, self-love for this brain is critical in order to fully function as a person especially in a day-to-day basis.

What’s the point of holding that pain, letting it go would be a lot more better.

Move forward and always be improving the health of the mind.

When I was younger, the state of my mind doesn’t seem all that important,

When I’m now older, the state of the mind becomes pretty apparent and ever more so important.

I’m mindful of the mind and mindful that what matters now are just illusions and will eventually be the past that doesn’t dictate my future.

So I strive to not let my mind be abused by daily ruses.

I’m awake pondering in the past 3-4 weeks, reason being I am reminded that life passes on pretty quickly, given that time doesn’t stop for anyone despite all the crazy ups and downs.

It’s terrible to see that another war has erupted and people holding on to their own factions.

I’m reminded of Michael Jackson’s “Heal The World” and Black Eyed Peas “Where Is The Love?”

I once heard from a speaker and he said, we live in parallel worlds, where there’s famine, there’s war and yet where there’s much to eat and peace.

I’m grateful for peace and yet I have an uneasy feeling that this peace will not last.

Even with all of these happening, companies are still talking about profits, the stock markets are crashing, people are doing good and doing bad. The full yin and yang.

Just got to focus on what matters the most. It’s also very easy to succumb to negativity given what’s happening to the world now.

Cultivating a positive attitude and mindset is a lens that has to be trained and with the people whom I encounter, their tongues can be made of serpent poison.

These are some very established business persons, wealthy in their own right but have pretty much lost control of their tongue.

There’s a saying that the tongue can either build or destroy.

They choose to tear down, testing character.

In my learning and encounter with such people, I try to practice discernment.

Some people I’ve met recently who just loves to come from a position of superiority.

Playing their age. Playing their connections. Playing their experience.

Or rather — power play.

I’ve also met recently some people who just doesn’t understand boundaries.

Crossing it without much consideration and yet continue as though nothing happened.

The world is full of conflicting value systems, beliefs and some can appear imposing.

Without a firm foundation, a tight grip on principles, one will waver without good roots.

This is something I’m trying to plant firmly and yet also uprooting any roots that do not serve me as I age.

Just a month after the passing of my father in law, another person, a friend passed.

He was an important figure who taught and helped shaped, some of my turning points in life.

He asked deep questions like “What do you want?”

He woke me up on personal grooming.

He made me like the colour black a lot.

He took service to another level.

He believed in my potential and invested in it and have even once said things that stunned my personal beliefs that I could be more.

He showed me great empathy, hospitality, next level generosity, how he would have fun to the max and his genius, long winded conversations that often stimulate the mind.

He knew how to connect with people at a very personal level.

He had strong principles, shared my pains and knew how to solve those pains.

This was a man who I could have in 3 hours of a night have beer, whisky, a bottle of wine 3-in-1 and leave me wondering how does this guy do it?

He has also shown sadness, empathy, his true self, yet put on a courageous front.

He could be brutal at times and those times are not exactly easy but he did it because he wanted perfection and only the best.

There were some things that I did not align with, which I was quick to cut-off or I’d fall in a pit but that’s how life is.

Yet, in the face of death leading to his death, he still lived on doing what he loved and still pressed on.

Always a never ending learner. Always sharing insights.

He did it his way and made it work for him.

May you rest in peace. You left the world too young with so much to give.

Thank you for the teachable moments and many of which were transformative and pivotal in some parts my life.

Makes me think and ponder that life is again a candle in the wind.

Often times gratitude comes at a point too late.

To thank someone after their last breath.

Better to thank the person now than later.

Muster the courage to do it now.

And just do it. There’s only one life. One opportunity.

Make it happen.

Just a day ago, I lost my father in law to cancer. He fought valiantly to the very end and tried his best to push for recovery but was overcome by aggressive cancer.

In the last few weeks before his death, in the midst of busy work, I was told to speak to him soon by my wife and visited as soon as I had the opportunity.

The few words he spoke, was profound. “Take care of your wife and vice-versa.”

As I grief about him, I am thankful for the experiences that I’ve gone through with my FIL. From experiencing kindness, forgiveness, generosity, humour, sarcasm, love (which he demonstrated largely by action) experiencing different stages of his approach towards me before marrying my wife and after and even how he enjoys spending time with my daughters.

He trained both my kids in cycling and did it successfully, systematically.

As I combed through hundreds of pictures shared with him, whether in the capacity of grandkids or just me and him or mostly pictures of me and my family… it occurred to me, every moment is precious. Every month, day, and as the years go by, are critical when compounded and put together.

I’m penning these thoughts down as I can’t sleep and haven’t been able to do so for awhile now.

In my early dating years with my wife, he was still working and he demonstrated how he would treat my mother in law, with love, before leaving the house, a peck on the cheek before going off.

It seems trivial, cheesy and yet this action, done daily was a lesson in part for me, at that time, this affection was just plain and simple, but indirectly, it taught me how I should be treating his daughter.

There were times when he worked from home and I too had the opportunity to do the same, this was when working from home was rare. I see that he stuck to the hours, being disciplined and while doing that, listened to the radio — which he used to listen to BFM a lot.

There were fun times, having TV dinners, the occasional suppers. There were breakfasts and regrettably, some of which I’ve missed but in the last few weeks I had some close moments having dinner and breakfast and yet those are now etched in my memory because I didn’t take pictures and it was once again a moment of hesitation to do so, as it felt like just another day.

But just another day, is a brand new day, an opportunity to seal a picture in that moment of time, every moment counts.

There was a time when he invited me to help drive him to a car service centre and I felt that it was a time where I could bond with him during those moments.

While he was in hospital, he asked for help to move his head and I did all I could and I felt that he gave me the opportunity to assist him.

I wanted to bring him and MIL on a trip to Ipoh but yet due to his condition, that wasn’t meant to be, but we have had our times together, during those times when the timing worked and everyone committed to it.

These are memories that often times taken for granted but now in hindsight, precious.

Daddy in law loves to post news in the family whatsapp group, sharing his favourite eateries or news that matter. He was the one that kept the chat group alive.

In his very last productive years, he contributed much to his local community, church and people around him.

I tried reading about grief and handling this pain but only one answer came up which I think could help was journaling.

What coulda, shoulda, is hindsight and I can only reflect on the wonderful memories of the past.

Thank you daddy in law. Thank you for loving me and my family through your very own unique way.

I will miss your teases, often times, he would declare that I would be the “chef” for CNY or Christmas. At that point of time, it felt strange to be labelled that way…but now as I look at it, I have to say, I’ll never hear it again and I will remember it fondly as much as I can.

I wish to hear your voice again, to listen to your words of wisdom. Thank you for sharing your deep insights, thoughts, solutions and ideas. While I wish we could have more time together, I’m also at peace that you are no longer suffering in pain and are now in heaven.

There is a sense of guilt, regret which I need to let go, in which that I didn’t know how to handle his last moments, didn’t know what to say and these moments of indecision is a painful learning experience. What’s important is to speak regularly in love and practice regular love so that at the very last moments, these things will not add up feeling this way. Perhaps there’s always that sense…of not saying enough and the question of what is enough?

Perhaps coming to terms by saying what I’ve done is enough for now, it is what it is and it’s the best I can do.

My youngest daughter put it aptly, that her gong gong is in heaven to see Jesus and he will be handsome again.

It’s a wonder how death in the eyes of young kids is so beautifully spoken, so deep and yet so comforting at the same time.

I’ve teared a number of times and she has come by my side asking and acknowledging how I felt and reminding me that daddy in law is in a better place now and that he is handsome again.

My your soul rest in peace daddy-in-law. Thank you for everything, for allowing me to be part of your life, allowing me to have a hand of your daughter in marriage, for spending time with my kids and taking care of them when I’ve been so busy along with the wife. I will remember how you often burst into loud laughs, only something unique to you, the badminton games you watch, which have sparked my interest in the sport and the handyman person you are.

There’s so much to say but I think this is all I can write for now.

With love,

Eli