Simon Alexander Ong - How To Connect Your Heart and Mind To Energize Your Life

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way This is your invitation to slow down with us Welcome to Slow Mo

0:33Welcome back. My guest today is of Asian origin, born and raised in the UK, which drove him to work his backside off, to learn and study and earn degrees and then start in the financial sector in a way that I think life perhaps didn't support very much. So around 14 months from the day he started work, he was hit with one of the biggest financial crisis in history, taking him out of that belief that being in a corporate job for life is the way to go. He chose a coaching, speaking career that took him time to get to where he did, but definitely, I think, was worth it for quite a few of us. His book, Energize, came out in 2022 and was an instant bestseller.

1:30And his ambition in life is to help as many people as he can connect the heart to the mind. Simon Alexander Ong is truly a remarkable thinker that uses true wisdom rather than glamour and shine to communicate a message that can make all of us more productive, happier, and hopefully more energized. I think you will love this conversation today. I've researched Simon's work and I think we will find quite a few gold nuggets. So without further ado, Simon Alexander Ong. So I jumped right in and I actually know from your life that you also, I mean, in an interesting way, have lived a life different to your parents, let's say.

2:21So you were born in the UK, originally Chinese Malay, and you were one of the early ones in, you know, in your school being from China. And so your life is very unexpected to me, perhaps your cousins or, you know, far relatives. I see that also a bit, you know, having been raised in emerging markets as a bit of privilege, isn't it? Definitely. I mean, to have been raised in the Western culture, despite the background of being Malaysian Chinese. I think it was, in hindsight, very, very privileged. At the time, I didn't understand it. I was part of a minority and often felt like I didn't fit in.

3:03And maybe I'm different. It's not good to be different. But looking back, I think that difference and that ability to be raised with Asian values, but in a Western environment was actually very, very powerful for my own thinking and my own development. But Asian values are a bit pushy, aren't they? I mean, Chinese specifically pushes you for... No, I mean, I say that with respect. The work ethic in Asia is just impeccably, almost over the top, probably over the top, right? So you have to work really hard. You have to gain a very, very distinguished degree. did you contribute to the collapse of Lehman Brothers?

3:44Is that what you did? That's what I tell a lot of people. I was like, I started at Lehman Brothers in the middle of 2007 at what was probably the worst possible time a year before the global financial crisis. And I joked that 14 months later, it collapsed. And I say, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. For sure it wasn't. No, it's funny. When I heard that about you, I was like, oh yeah i'm definitely going to see how he responds to that to that to that assumption that you that you collapsed it it is quite interesting though because it's so this you was right out of university weren't you yeah it's my first job out of university and and just to touch on what you said earlier about asian values i i think the thing i took from that is yes hard work is important yeah but the way it was channeled was not so productive it was hard work academically and i i thought that was quite restrictive because what if your talents lay outside academia yeah and then so i had this belief that i had to be a banker a doctor a lawyer or an accountant these very traditional job role yes and so i jumped into the world of banking and i was like yes i'm going to be successful i'm i'm going to make a career out of this i'm going to show my parents how how proud they can be of me it's it's funny you say that sorry to interrupt you because in it where i grew up you could either be an engineer or a doctor you know when people asked you what are you going to be when you grow up are you going to be an engineer or a doctor or are you going to be something else like you know there is engineer and doctor and then everything else yeah I think that's the same with you yeah yeah it was very limited and I think it was because nobody in my immediate family had had run their own business and and so their own thinking was was very limited by certain job functions.

5:35Yeah. And I still remember telling my dad, I've got a job in Canary Wharf in London, one of these financial centers. And he was really proud. He was like, Simon, it's so exciting. You're going to start in a well-paid job. And a year later, of course, that story was very different when I had to tell him that I'm going to be having to look for another job because the company I was with was heading towards bankruptcy. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because at this young age, this would sort of count as a trauma, no? I mean, Lehman, for our listeners who have not lived the 2008 meltdown, economic meltdown, was really at the core because of their practices of really melting the world's economy.

6:19So it wasn't just that this company went bankrupt or, you know, shut down. This was a company that was in the news every single morning saying you're destroying the world, right? Or you destroyed the world. And you being, you know, 14 months in from university, it must have been a big trauma for you. It was a little bit, actually, because when I think about it at a macro level, Mo, this was my second big experience of loss. You know, my first loss was when I was 17 and I lost my mom to a tragic accident. And then here now, I was facing the loss of a job. I mean, loss in a different form, but a loss nonetheless.

6:57And all those hopes, and dreams that you would have when you graduate and entering the world of work was suddenly swept away from under your feet. And so for me, it was very traumatic because I was giddy with excitement just 14 months before. And now here I was at a very early stage of my career questioning, is this for me? Is this what I want to be doing? What's next? Do I have a future? and I don't think I was ready that early to answer those questions. In hindsight, I think it was a beautiful blessing because it kick-started the journey to what I now get to do today. Isn't that always the case?

7:39It's funny, when you think about it, you're within that tragedy and it's hitting you left and right and you're so struggling with it and then you look back at it now 15 years later and you go like wow that is the the core reason why i am who i am yeah i remember journaling about the experience and one of the things i wrote down was that it is actually in life's darkest moments our most challenging times that equip us with the wisdom and the insight to build our best lives and i think if i look back i probably wouldn't have the insights i now have if those events did not occur. Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

8:22So you shifted your life completely. So you decided, I'm not going to apply for another job. My dad might not think of me as the continuation of his dream, basically. And you decided to do something very different. Yeah. So I actually was in and out of jobs within finance after Lehman. So I jumped from job to job for a number of years. But the thought process started. I started to think to myself one what did success mean to me and two what sort of impact that I want to have in the world yeah and so on the side of still continuing in the nine-to-five job I began to lay the foundations to the work I'm doing today I love this that's actually my biggest advice for anyone that comes to me and says I'm I'm unhappy with my work that's my biggest advice is just keep doing it.

9:12Work is not really, I mean, for very few people in the world, working in a corporate fulfills you in any way. I mean, I was chief business officer of Google X, like the best job on the planet, theoretically creating innovations that changed the world, and it wasn't fulfilling. I mean, I say that publicly in front of everyone. I consider that job the second best job on earth. I don't even know what the first best job is, but I'm thinking there must be one, right? And yet a corporate job is never fulfilling. And so, you know, when people come to me and say, hey, I'm very, very unhappy, I feel unfulfilled, I say, keep doing it, do it right so that you're ethically earning your income, but then go and look for what it is that you want to do with your life.

10:00If it takes you a month, perfect. If it takes you a year, that's still okay. If it takes you five years, that's absolutely fine. But now you're moving, you're heading in the right direction. it's interesting because i had this conversation with uh with a friend recently mo who was also looking at exploring what they wanted to do longer term and i said the same thing i said the reason a lot of people don't do anything outside of their day job i.e they don't start to lay the foundations it's because they tend to feel exhausted and drained after they come home from their life to fight yeah and so sometimes yeah and so what i shared with him is that actually we have to reframe the experience of the nine to five and we have to act as if we are already an entrepreneur.

10:45So you begin to see your nine to five as capital. It's capital. I love this definition to finance your dream. You become grateful for the fact you have a nine to five because that nine to five is giving you the freedom to explore what you really want to do outside of work after the work during the weekdays on the weekends so what's happening is you're creating a more positive association with the nine to five it's not this thing that you dread that you you don't want to do i mean you know you don't want to do it forever so why not see it as something that is a stepping stone to what you can do and i think when we see it that way suddenly we have a more positive association with with that experience i i think that's brilliant i will quote you on this for a very long time.

11:32It is actually, I mean, any entrepreneur who's ever started his own business or any individual contributor who's become a coach or an author or whatever, there is that period where you dread your life more than you dread the nine to five because of lack of capital or because of pitching to investors and so on. And, you know, to view your job as that source of capital, source of stability so that you can build your dream is a wonderful way of reframing it. It's it's really actually very clever so you did that for how long so i i sought out some qualifications in coaching in 2012 and that took me around two two and a half years to complete and from that point the transition began so so i started working with people outside of my nine to five i got to three clients and i had to make a decision mode yeah it was do i continue with my nine to five and limit my side business to just free coaching clients?

12:32Or do I quit my nine to five and focus 100 % of my energy into growing those free clients into a much bigger business? And that process was around a couple of months. So it was probably from September, October until the end of the year. Going back and forth in my head, do I quit? Do I not quit? Do I quit? Do I not quit? And in the end, I handed in my resignation and I said, I'm going to do this. I moved from interest to commitment. So at the beginning of the process, I was interested in going all in. By the time I made the decision, I was now committed. And that was a very powerful moment. And as I share it now with you, Mo, it reminds me of what Denzel Washington said when he received an award for his film Fences.

13:21he said without commitment you will never begin without consistency you will never finish and that was my point of commitment yeah but but then can i ask you a question and please don't be offended because i actually see this quite a bit so many people when they're going through tough times they go to coaching which is counterintuitive for me in an interesting way you're supposed to go to coaching when you've solved the problem somehow, you know how to, right? And accordingly, there are many people out there that call themselves coaches and they're struggling because they know the methodology, but perhaps they don't have the weight, maybe is the right word.

14:07So what qualifies someone to actually become a coach, become a successful coach? What made you get those clients and then get so many clients after and really make a difference with this? Sure. So I think the answer to this is probably the same answer as with any business. When you decide to become a coach, the industry is very competitive. It's like if I want to start a restaurant business, the hospitality field is also very competitive. Correct. So half of the game is being a good coach. So that means you understand how to coach, you have good experience, you know how to ask the right questions in the right moment you can read what people are telling you in terms of the non-verbal clues but that's only half of the game the other half is the business development side and i think unless we can fall in love with the process of developing a business of coaching then it's very difficult to be successful it's like if i look at another industry of art i could be a great artist but if i don't know how to develop that into something commercial where people will learn about my work where people will come and see my work then all i'm left with is a hobby and and so that's what i had to learn early on is yes i was working to become a good coach i was building my experience i was coaching people within my network but then I had to enjoy the second part and I really did start to enjoy it you know understanding psychology of well how do I gift people with the experience of coaching coaching is one of those things that a lot of people may not be able to relate to because they've never had coaching before so how do I not sell the concept but how do I sell the experience and so I was getting I was getting business lessons every single day when I embarked on this path 100%.

16:04And it's been the greatest education I've ever had. That's such an interesting side to it, honestly, because you're right. I think there is that element of, hey, I'm doing this. I'm not getting the clients. I'm thinking actually specifically of a very specific friend in my mind, because often there is a dichotomy. There is, if you're a good coach, a good well-being or health coach, by definition, you're not a good business person. Otherwise, you would have been a salesperson, right? So you're saying you need to have those two skills at the same time. Indeed. I mean, it's like, and you will have come across this, Mo, having come from Google.

16:44It reminds me of Project Oxygen, when Google conducted this study to understand what made great leaders. and they they came out with eight factors and number one was that the best leaders were great coaches number eight was that they had great technical ability yeah so what they learned from those results was that just because you are a great salesperson or you are a great engineer it did not automatically make you a great leader correct and it's the same thing with business you could be a great coach you could be a great chef but if you don't have that other side then it's going to be very difficult to build a successful business and that's one of the things I had to learn very early on yeah absolutely I want to talk about energize and I want to also go back to coaching but I want to talk about energize because there is something that I read about you, about your work.

17:42But then I was like, I can't really believe it. And then I watched some of your videos. And I was like, yeah, clearly, there is something special, but I can't sense it. And now when we're talking, there is a very unusual presence to you. So let me tell our listeners, you are attempting to connect the heart and the mind that's at the core of your of your work. And Energize assumes that we are energetic beings rather than rational beings to begin or physical beings to begin. And I have to say, I was like, yeah, sounds like a nice slogan. We understand that from spirituality. But you seem to embody that in a very unusual way.

18:25In your presence, I am not with a typical business person. I'm not with a typical coach. There is a very immersive experience here. Tell me a bit about that. Well, simply put, the conversation I have around energy, I always like to refer to the Maya Angelou quote, where she said that people might not remember what you said or what you did, but they always remember how you made them feel. And for me, this is a beautiful demonstration of energy in action. And I started to understand the power of energy when I came down from delivering talks on stages. You have a number of attendees that will come up to you and ask you questions and share their thoughts about what you presented.

19:10And a lot of the time, my people come to me and say, Simon, I loved your energy. It was so infectious hearing you speak on stage. You know, if I could have just a small percentage of the energy that you have, I could go on and accomplish so much. and that really spoke to me about why energy is so important because when we think about productivity we often default to focusing on managing our time better yeah but i believe that we can't master our time until we first master our energy because if you give somebody a day off work and you say to them you've worked hard this week why don't you have a day off tomorrow.

19:51What tends to happen is that the average person when they receive that is they might sleep in on the morning. They then might watch daytime television. And by the time they get around to doing what they wanted to do, it's already mid afternoon or towards the end of the day. So when we're time rich, but energy poor, we end up wasting the time we have. But when we're energy rich what happens is that even when time is working against us we still get stuff done because we're bringing more energy into that same time than we do if we just didn't have that energy available so i i struggle a little bit because of my my main education is physics right so i'm a very very serious physicist and i have to say the way we in the well-being industry in the spiritual industry, if you want.

20:42The way we speak about energy doesn't speak to my physics mind at all. I think of it more as presence, as aura, as... But yes, of course, there is also when you said if you have more energy, and that's true, some humans have more energy, but not in physics terms, because energy for a human in physics terms is calories, right? So it's basically how many calories you ate and how many calories are you burning. That's energy, right? But you can see that some people will eat less and be more energetic. Some people will not eat at all. I'm fasting today, it's Ramadan here in the Middle East, and I'll still have a ton of energy, right?

21:21So energy in that sense is not calories, it's not physics, it's not joules, basically. Not at all. I mean, and I think this is the challenge for many people, is that energy is a universal language that you and I understand, yet it has no words and you can't measure it. I mean, if you go to, let's say, a networking event and two people approach you, you are going to be more attracted to speak to one person over the other. And when somebody says to you, what made you want to go and initiate conversation with this person over the other? Often you can't explain it. You might just say, well, it felt natural to go and speak to that person.

22:01It's just something that I felt compelled to do. It's very difficult to explain. It's the same with when you ask someone, how did you know it was the right time to get married? Somebody's not going to tell you, well, we had a checklist and we ticked all the boxes and we knew this was the right time to get married. What they will often say is it just felt right. It felt like it was the right time to get married. There was a certain energy or chemistry that was felt at a particular time that made both partners feel like this is the right time to take our commitment to the next level. And so energy is an aura.

22:40It is a presence. And if you look at different cultures, we might describe it in different ways. In my Chinese culture, we call it chi. In the Maori culture, they call it mana. If you are a fan of the Star Wars film franchise, you might call it the force. Yeah, correct. Whatever we describe it as, energy is a life force. And we all have it. But often what happens is that we lose that as we grow older. and the way that we actually activate that again is by thinking about energy in four dimensions so the four dimensions being physical mental emotional and spiritual yes now often many of us when we look to raise our energy we focus exclusively on the physical i.e get more sleep get rest move your body eat better but that's only one component mental emotional spiritual are just as important because if you look at society around us what we tend to notice is that much of society they're exhausted not because they're physically doing too much but one because they are doing too little of the things that bring them joy and two because they are running somebody else's race very often and that's when you are low on spiritual energy that's when you're going against who you are and what your natural gifts and talents are.

23:59But when you do something that is an extension of who you are, where you feel alive doing it, that's when you enter the state of flow. That's where you feel high on spiritual energy. That's when you're doing what you're doing and time just flies. And so when I started to look at things from that way, I began to realize that what made people magnetic if you will was the fact that they were working on their energy in these four dimensions and so that when they showed up they were able to not only have a certain presence about them but they were able to connect with people in a very different way so how do you do that how do you work on those four dimensions sure so the physical is the easiest and for me the physical is is the most important it gives us that baseline of energy yeah even though we should say lots of people ignore it it is the easiest it is the base and most of people yeah just don't do the right things for it right most most of us ignore it and i think part of that is because we we like to over complicate things much about life is simple but for the human mind we like to over complicate it we think it's such a beautiful statement yeah yeah we think it can't be that simple but if there's anything that the covid pandemic has taught us is that without your health, you can't do much.

25:18You know, I often share with people when talking about our physical energy is that to the healthy person, you will have many hopes, wishes, and dreams, but to the sick, they have only one. And so we must stop making our health a side hustle. We've got to prioritize our health because that gives us a baseline level of energy. Now, when it comes to mental energy, what I'm thinking about here is firstly, our ability to focus. It is then our mindset and then our willingness to access our innate creativity we are all creative some people might question that but if you look at any child you will see that we are born creative souls absolutely how can we bring that out because when we are able to express our creativity that's when we feel more energized emotional energy is really about our ability to not only understand ourselves but it's also about our ability to relate to others and how we respond to things that are not always in our control such as unexpected events setbacks or challenges it's really understanding uh the emotions at play uh when these things occur and then spiritual energy we we touched on just now uh it's really about purpose and fulfillment is it once again i'm just in a contemplative mode this month.

26:39So allow me to ask you this question. I've been contemplating that spiritual energy in that case, in the use of the word spirit, is the non-physical part of you, right? It's the, you know, you can call it consciousness, you can call it your being, your life force, your soul, your spirits, whatever you want, right? And I'm, again, if you mix physics with this view, you realize that everything physical is governed by entropy and is bound to end, while anything non-physical seems to be outside space-time and so accordingly enjoys an eternity of time, right? So why is purpose important for the spirit?

27:21Sorry to say, I mean, my mission is one billion happy, but it's one billion happy in this physical world, right? It's not one billion happier souls, right? It's one billion happier physical beings. and all of this will end very soon while the soul has not yet been nurtured if you want so why why is purpose in the physical world important for the spirit purpose is important in the physical world for the spirit because what it does is it unlocks our greatest source of energy when you are clear as to what you want to be doing with your life what you're working towards what brings fulfillment towards you and at the end of your life you can look back and say I'm so glad I did what I did that provides you with a source of energy that is very hard to replicate I mean if you look at some of the greatest achievements in history very often it's because they had a purpose or they had a mission that was able to bring together everybody in that team no matter your rank, no matter your hierarchy.

28:33Now, if we can then bring that into our own personal lives to understand what is fulfillment for us, what would contribute to a meaningful life, when we're clear on that, we move forward with far more energy than if we're going forward with no direction at all. And that's why I think it's important because knowing ourselves at that deep level not only helps us to live a more fulfilling life but also it helps us to complete that longest journey that we humans make which is the inches from our heads to our hearts never an easy journey but i believe the most important that we will ever take in our lifetime and that's why i think it's so important because deep down we know i think fundamentally we know what it is that will contribute to a meaningful life for us and the definition will be different person to person to person but what we tend to lack is the courage or the belief that we we can achieve that or we can make some of that a reality and and and that's where the role of the mind comes in is it can be our greatest cheerleader or it can be the very tool that sabotages absolutely the biggest weight you drag along so so that journey that journey really matters the journey from the mind to the heart you talk about that a lot what is that how does that happen so what happens is that we tend to make a lot of decisions with our head uh and what i mean by that is when we grow up and i'm relating to my experience here when i grew up as a teenager and then when i entered the world of work a lot of my decisions were influenced by by other people whether you want to group them as society parents close friends uh and and and those that you were inspired by and then as we get into the world of work we want to seek validation from other people we want to fill it up with validated that we're doing something that is going to make other people proud but the irony of this and and bronnie wear shared this in the book the top regrets of the dying the irony is is that if we live a life that way we end up living a life more true to others than than to ourselves yeah however when we start to listen to our heart and it's never easy but when we start to listen to our heart and trust the wisdom that it shares with us what happens is that we begin to live a life more true to ourself and and that's because listening to our heart it may not always get you where you want to be but often it gets you to where you need to be and that's what i found listen to my heart and that's why i i'm a big fan of silence i'm a big fan of going inwards yeah because i believe that when we pause when we step back and when we slow down we're actually reconnecting our mind to our heart we're giving oxygen and space to the wisdom that we all have inside of us which so many of us suppress in the business of the everyday too.

31:36Yeah, absolutely. We're alike in those two things, like silence and minimalism seem to be misunderstood by a lot of people. I think the modern world is a lot more around, give me more so that I can process more, I can achieve more, I can do more. While in reality, there is so much achievement in doing nothing at all. And there is so much, you know, understanding and wisdom in speaking nothing at all, or even listening to anything at all, silence. I think this is exactly correct what you said there, Moe, because I think we have been believing that in order to get to where we want to be, we have to keep adding more and more and more.

32:18And so we've fallen into this trap of addition, if you will, when actually subtraction is what we really want. Absolutely. Because if we keep adding more and more and more, what happens is that we lose sight of what is most important. Yeah. But when we start to subtract things from our life, what happens is that we actually realize what really is important. We become grateful for the blessings we already have. And I think that is what we need to be focusing on. If we really want to make progress, it's not about always adding more, but about, one, stopping the behaviors that are preventing us from making progress, but also subtracting things from our life so that we actually have the space to do the things that we want.

32:56I think that's absolutely the truth of everything, actually. I normally say that enlightenment is not actually knowing more. It's really, really shedding all of the wrong knowledge that you know. It's the path, really. If you think about, again, I use mathematics and geometry and physics all the time in my life. But if you think that you're born at the point and every possible radius that's coming out of you is a path, the trick to finding the correct path is to actually negate all of the wrong ones there is one path that you want to find and it's not about learning more it's about dropping so that you have less in your life so that you get to the point where your true nature as a child which was so pure is back to where you should be basically it reminds me of the saying that wisdom begins by knowing yourself.

33:53Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is, you can't know yourself if you don't have the time to go inwards, if you don't have the time to reflect. And when I started to prioritize that time in my diary, what happened is I actually started to understand a lot more than I gave myself credit for because we think all the wisdom is out there. But actually, a lot is also in here. And we forget that very quickly. a lot of that is in here and so what i challenge whether it's my clients or the audiences i speak to now is to respond in your schedule with blocks of me time as quick as you do to saying yes to work meetings and yes to social events because we're very quick to say yes to work events and social events but how quick are we to say yes to our own me time in our calendar and until we block those periods of the day or week out and treat them with as much importance as our work meetings or our social events, we're never really going to have that space.

34:58There is always going to be something else that would take that time away. So what's your me time like? So my me time will depend on what I have coming up quarter to quarter. But at a minimum, I have one to two days a week where I just disconnect. And that is to spend time with my wife, that is to spend time with my daughter. It's just a way to be with the people I love around me. Otherwise, I could easily find work to do. And before long, that time would just disappear. And disconnect here is no phones, no technology? Yeah, so disconnect is a day where I'll have my phone, but it'll be on flight mode.

35:37I will check it at certain points, but it will be sort of points where I'm not with my wife and child and my main focus for the day is to be absolutely present because i know that the greatest gift that i can give my child is not time but it's my energy you know a lot of us give our children and family time but are we really present are we really there with them are they able to connect with you and so i've seen the power that i can have with children and uh you know i want to savor those precious moments mo oh i i cannot agree more i promise you it's funny because of Of course, I lost Ali, my wonderful child.

36:15But after he left our world, his very wise mother sat next to me. And she said, I lost him so many times. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, I lost him when he was an infant and he was so kind and calm and never really cried. And then he grew up and became the four-year-old that is speaking and reasoning. And he was so wise and so kind. And then that went. and then I had the school alley and then I had the teen alley and so on. And you'll be amazed. You'll be amazed how, of course, some of those years I was that corporate executive running around like a nutcase with all the right intentions, believe it or not.