Brick Walls

Photo: Mummy, myself and Abah during the Toastmasters District 87 Annual Convention held in Kuching from 20-22 May 2011

This week has been challenging for me.

I was not well - even though it was only a cough, sore throat and fever I had inevitbly lost my voice, it hurt too much to speak and I felt weak. I took the day off and slept - for once I had conceeded and not forced myself to go in to work.

Then there's the usual stress at work that makes me feel like I want to eat everyone up... but that couldn't have possibly been good for my diet. Hence I had to find more effective ways of dealing with the stress.

And mid-week, my body decided to have a backache and my legs which have been nagging me with pain became more evident which generally made moving uncomfortable including needing to change positions when sleeping.

I had two emotional breakdowns where I cried real tears and freaked out my dance teacher whom had said something which I took personally.

Now being the end of the working week, I am relieved to see the weekend again. I have many concerned friends whom have asked me how I have been. I am not out to seek comfort and I appreciate them asking me. What I needed this week was to just go through a low period and not pretend. I was being myself - another part of myself that not many people get to see. And I knew it was up to me to pick myself up again. So I thought about my "brick walls" and how I struggle to get through them in the most effective way possible.

I decided to dig up my old speech which I had promised to post many months ago which I presented in Kuching in May 2011 and was placed 1st runner up in the International Speech Contest. Does it inspire me as I read it? One part of me wishes for more success and the other part of me is still proud of what I have done and who I became as a result of those experiences.

I hope you will conquer your brick walls too :-)

THE BRICK WALL

You and I are great construction workers. We have our bricks and we build walls.

Each brick that we lay into creating this wall is made up of: our challenges, our problems, our negative self-talk that we cannot do it, that we have failed before or why even bother trying? It is others saying we cannot do it or they do not believe in our abilities. It stops us from making progress. This wall is between you and your goals. This wall stops us from what we can be.

Contest Chair, Honourable Judges, Fellow Toastmasters, Ladies and Gentlemen…

Randy Pausch, the author of the Last Lecture said “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something.”

Our brick walls come in many shapes and sizes. Some are low which makes us trip and stumble in life. Others are bigger and taller and look impossible to break through. Our brick walls with can start from a very young age.

I was 8 years old when my parents sent me to an International School in Singapore. Coming from a Malay school in Brunei I experienced my first culture shock. EVERYTHING was in English. I could speak English. After all, I watched Sesame Street and read Archie comics.

I thought I was good but apparently “You eat, you eat already”, was not good enough.

I tortured my English teacher with many more of these in my essays. Not surprisingly, each essay was returned with red pen marks EVERYWHERE.

I wanted to be good at writing. I had a choice – be a construction worker and continue building this brick wall or break through it.

In my secondary school, there were two streams of English. The first stream was for students like me known as English as a Second Language. The other stream was for students whom were more proficient with English and they were in the main stream.

I thought, this is good! Mistakes like mine are common and normal because we speak English as a second language.  I didn’t take advantage of it. I persisted and continued to write pages and pages of essays and it was never good enough. The red pen marks seemed permanent and endless. I felt frustrated and wished I was back in Brunei.

Until one day, it finally paid off. I was told something that not many students who speak English as a second language get told. They said, Rozana, YOU deserve to be in main stream!

I broke through my brick wall and NOW I can proof read, correct and edit Phd research papers and even make money from it.

In reality, no one has JUST ONE brick wall.

Two years ago, this was how big my brick wall was (SHOW PANTS). A 120kg brick wall. This brick wall was standing in between me and good health. In 2009, my doctor threatened to put me on lifetime medication to control high blood pressure as a result of being overweight. At 30 years old, that seemed unacceptable. I still had my whole life to lead! There were boyfriends to date, a husband to marry, children to call my own and the illusion of living happily ever after!

I had a choice – be a construction worker and continue building this brick wall or break through it. This brick wall was so high. It was just too hard. Maybe I am meant to be fat. Wouldn't it be scary to be slim? Chocolate and ice cream was part of my staple diet. I should not deprive myself, why am I going through this torture. But the biggest brick of all was my mental state – could I actually do it? I thought to myself, I have tried to lose weight before, why bother to try again?

Yes, it was hard, but I wanted it so badly. I wanted to be able to put on my shoes without my stomach getting in the way. I wanted to stop people asking me if I was pregnant.

If I was going to get through this brick wall I made a choice to strengthen my resolve. In the first month, I lost 5kg. The element of doubt crept in. There must have been something wrong with the weighing scale. As the months progressed, with absolute determination, I continued to lose 5kg each month. By the sixth month, I lost an equivalent of a 9 year old child – that’s 30kg...

You, just like me have a choice. Be a construction worker and continue building your brick wall or break through it? Do we need super powers to break our brick walls? I say NO. Do we need extra arms and legs? I say NO. Do we need lots of money? I say NO. The brick walls are there for a reason. It is when we want something so badly we would make the choice to have the determination to be what we can be.

Look at the world around us. With the recent events of the floods in Australia, the earthquake in New Zealand and the earthquakes and tsunami to hit Japan, can we afford the time to allow our brick walls to stop us?

IF a disaster were to hit us right now, what regret would we have had in life? And what would you say to your children or loved ones when they are faced with their own brick walls?

LOOK AT IT OR BREAK THROUGH IT!

Photo: The winners of the International Speech Contest 2011 with the District Governor, Lieutenant Governor Education & Training and the Lieutenant Governor Marketing