Author: Chen Yu
Today I want to discuss with you a very interesting topic, is luck .
I grew up in the United States, but I grew up in a very traditional Chinese family. So in other words, I was trained since I was young, and success comes from the two characters beginning with Har. The first is Harvard and the second is Hard Work. We have to work more, or maybe we can broaden this success. We can say that the success of comes from talent and hard work. But is this true?
Looking back on my life, I have done completely different careers in three big states. First of all, I worked as a real estate developer in Los Angeles from the age of 21 after graduating from college to the age of 31. At the age of 31, I was appointed as the deputy mayor of the city of Los Angeles and became a government. At the age of 35, I changed again and started to be an international CEO headhunter, helping top 500 companies and other large and small companies to find CEOs. And executive talents. When I was 42 years old, I changed again. I came to China and became a writer and new media entrepreneur.
automatically come to me every time these new jobs are made. Every time I enter a new field, I will find that I will be directly invited to the highest Level in this field. I find that there are many people around me who have worked hard for decades.
Why do I always have a dream job? It's because I have always had good luck. When you hear this, you might think that Chen Yu is a bit overly proud; or she is like an ordinary woman. Women will say that our achievements come from our luck, and men will say that their achievements are based on their own genius. Work hard with it. But here is not right.
When I was a CEO headhunter, I was doing this job for 7 years and I had the opportunity to interview some of the most successful people in the world. When I think back to their stories, I will find that they come from many different fields, different cultural backgrounds, and different perspectives on life. and their stories have only one thing in common. They are like me and have always had good luck . Where does this luck come from?
When I think back to their stories, I will find that everyone will point to a point, a moment, and then they will say that everything starts from this point and from this moment.
So when I think about the stories of these people, I will start to wonder, what exactly is this lucky moment? For this reason, I recently wrote a book called "Thirty Years Old Take Advantage of the Situation". I want to explore what this lucky moment is. Why are these people reaching this particularly important lucky moment? And others did not reach? This question may be very important to our lives.
We look at all talented and hardworking people. Some people are truly successful. Their true success comes from this lucky moment. If everyone gets this lucky moment, then all of us can get this kind of success. Talent and hard work are necessary and sufficient conditions for success, and another necessary condition for success is a lucky moment.
Regarding lucky moments, I found three things in common:
first, this lucky moment is brought to us by others, and others give us a chance . Why did he give us this opportunity? It is because they trust us, they like us, and they want their success. However, they found that in order to get their success, they need us to help them, so he will give us an incredible opportunity, a lucky moment.
Second, these lucky moments are often the intersection of different fields .
Third, these lucky moments will give you a very different feeling . This different feeling is also very important. This feeling will lead you to seize this opportunity, and then you can transform your entire life and career. What is the real success of
? Maybe we all position success in different things. Let me tell you about my own understanding of success. I think success is also equivalent to a dream experiment. The dream experiment has only two parts, one is passion and the other is meaning. Passion is that this job meets my personal needs, and I alwaysIt feels good to go to work in the sky. I like my job. This is passion. The meaning is that through this job, I will meet the needs of others and the needs of the world.
So passion and meaning are both important. We should enjoy our life, this is passion. But the meaning is also very important, because if there is only passion, then I don't think this is a career, maybe a hobby.
Back to our original question-how do we all get the lucky moments we need?
Because lucky moments are brought to us by others, we need to learn how to really understand them so that they like us, trust us, and want to cooperate with us. This ability to communicate well with others and understand each other is called empathy.
I have been learning how to cultivate my own empathy since I was young. I was born in the United States in 1969. There were very few Chinese in the United States at that time, so we were a very small minority. My brother and I grew up in an all-white school, and we are the strange, poor, distant, and outside Chinese children in this school. I still remember a dream when I was a child. My dream was that I woke up the next day and found that my whole life was a big mistake. It turned out that I had white skin, blond hair, and beautiful clothes. Because I think, if this dream comes true, maybe other children will think I am beautiful, maybe they will like me.
Many people asked me later, how can a Chinese, a woman be appointed as the deputy mayor of Los Angeles at the age of 31? In fact, when I look back at my life, I will find that my life is a story of stalemate. I think it's because I was an outsider when I was young, and I didn't dare to speak when I was young, so I was forced to develop my empathy ability since I was young.
Empathy is an ability at the bottom, is called listening ability. All of us can develop our empathy and our ability to listen from today. You may think that listening is too easy, too simple, why should we talk about listening again? This is what our ears do. But this is not right, listening is what our brain does .
Psychologists divide listening into three different levels.
The first level of listening is a perfunctory listening. Mom is talking to you, and you say, my mother heard it, and she's still browsing the circle of friends. This is the first level of listening. The second level of
is when someone talks to you. You are listening to what he says, but you don’t know how to study his body language and other meanings. Just listen to the literal meaning of what he says. Listening to the third level of
is that you are deeply understanding what he is saying. You are not just listening to what he is saying, you understand what he is saying, you will also think about what he is thinking and what he means. Because you know that what most people say is different from what they mean, so you will have a deeper understanding of what they mean. Also, you will understand his goal, what does he mean, what his words are, and why does he say these words? This is a very deep matter, you need to pay full attention to, Focus is on this person.
If we want to develop our empathy today, we have to use the third level of listening ability. Only when we can truly understand other people's goals can we think about how I can help him get his goals and at the same time let me get my own goals. Because this kind of win-win cooperation is true cooperation, and this is successful cooperation. So we have to form a habit to achieve this kind of win-win cooperation every day.
We need to understand the goals of others, but at the same time we need to understand our own goals. Do we know what we want? Will we really know ourselves? is the second ability we need to develop.
My eldest daughter told a story about her in kindergarten when she was 5 years old. She said that the teacher said that we should all pretend to be a little frog. We just squat on a little lotus leaf. If someone bullies us and tells us that we don’t like it, we raise our hands to create a big Bubbles. This oneThe bubble is very strong. If others, their actions cannot enter our bubble. No one in the world can break this bubble, only I can break it. So I can squat quietly in my bubble, observe the person who is not good to me, observe my world, breathe, smile, and enjoy my life. When I want to leave my bubbles, I can jump out of my little lotus leaf and return to my world.
I was very moved when I heard this story. Because I think, if we all grow up, or if we all learn how to build a healthy emotional boundary from today, how strong will we all become? We can all pretend that we are a little frog at any time and create such a bubble that no one can touch us. We have no control over others' words, but we have to accept bad influences, unhealthy words, and unhealthy actions. This is completely our choice, so this is self-knowledge.
After we have self-awareness, we must balance our empathy . How to balance?
I started dating at 18 and got married at 38. So my dating experience may be more abundant than all of you, and my mistakes must be much richer than all of you. I still remember being younger. When I like a man, I suddenly become a little woman. No matter how successful my career is, I will suddenly think about him all the time, even more than my own emotions and my own. Feeling thinking about him more. I am a woman who can't cook at all, but for him, I will learn to cook, I will find recipes online, go to the supermarket to buy food, and then cook what he likes to eat. I just hope he will be happy. Call him every day, give him a small gift every day, and consider him every day without considering me. why? Because I hope that if I take care of him in this way, he will take care of me in the same way. We can all be very happy.
But the world is not like this. Good men are scared away by my excessive care every time, bad men will stick to my side instead of me. So I thought, maybe many of our women have been trained since we were young to take care of others and not to think about ourselves. But we want to be a healthy, strong, capable, and energetic woman. We may need to learn how to balance, take care of and understand others, and also take care of ourselves.
There is still a very practical question, how do we get out of our boring, low-paying, and nasty jobs that have no way out and get the job of our dreams? Get the lucky moment we need?
Many people will say, I want to find my passion, but where is my passion? I have a bad boss and work is boring. I think, in addition to developing some of our own abilities, empathy, self-knowledge, etc., we must find ways to be useful people every day. Let's not just complain in vain, or change jobs in vain, skip from one job to the second job, skip to the third job in 6 months, skip around, in order to find our passion. To find our passion is a good thing, but from the perspective of a headhunter, I can tell you that you will never find your passion by hopping all the time. Your passion is actually that you have to do your work very well every day, and then you have to find ways to create value.
We have to learn every day. Starting from our current life, will be a useful person and do some useful things to help others for free. Every time I get a lucky moment, it is actually through a job.
When I was a real estate developer, I helped the Los Angeles city government demolish some very old affordable housing. I have some friends doing these jobs. Because this is a new project and they want to build some new affordable housing, I will help them. I have been a volunteer for 6 or 7 years, and I insist on spending 5 to 10 hours a week to help them build these affordable housing. At that time, I regarded this thing as a hobby, and I felt very interesting-I can use my knowledge of real estate developers to help some of my friends and stay with friends every day; I can also make some environmental protection, clean, Beautiful new house.
till I am 31 years oldAt that time, Los Angeles assumed the new mayor. His friend told him that you should find someone from the business field to help you manage economic development. One of them happened to see these affordable houses built by me recently. He recommended me, saying that such a little girl, although very young, must have some passion for the work in the city, she must be a woman who can do things, should you consider her? So I have the opportunity to be on the list of candidates for deputy mayor. The mayor elected me. This is a totally incredible lucky moment.
After I became the deputy mayor, I have 50,000 staff members. I have a big platform to improve the lives of citizens. I have been thinking of ways to help them. Through these jobs, more people know about me, and some people want me to participate in their CEO search. After the term of deputy mayor of
expired, I did a CEO search. In this job, you can interview very accomplished, story-telling, and interesting people every day. Being a CEO hunter also helped my personal life. I found that I can "hunt" my Mr. Right by interviewing people. So I found my husband and married him at the age of 38.
But after a while, I found that the headhunting job still lacked some meaning. My job is to help big companies grow bigger every day, but I feel that I am losing the feeling of being close and helping others. So I started an English blog to help Chinese students learn how to resign and apply for jobs in the United States. The blog
is well known through the school intranet and Renren.com. International students post my blog everywhere. Through the small blog UAF, CITIC Press from China asked me to write a book. They said that the biggest social problem in China now is the problem of "leftover women". They spent a year looking for a writer in China and planned to write a book to encourage "leftover women". But found that no one in China can write this book, they want me to write it.
I grew up in the United States and I don’t speak Chinese well. How can I write a useful book for Chinese women? I think this is what we need to know- how do we think of ways to use what we like to do and our passion to give others some help, and contribute these work to the world . If what we do is really useful, truly passionate, and free, and we just want to help others, then your lucky moment has come. Therefore, when I wrote "Don't Get Married Before 30", a lot of new work partners appeared, and a lot of fashion media came out to want to cooperate with me, to do some columns for them, to do some cooperation with brands and so on.
Next, I have the opportunity to write a second book, dabble in new media, launch videos and online courses. I have seen many new friends, many new sisters, and many new opportunities in my life, all of which come from my work.
My new book came out last month. What kind of update opportunities will this new book bring to me? I can't imagine now. But I think that new opportunities should appear soon.
If we get a passionate and meaningful life, how would you feel? —— We have achieved the best self and become the best self through our work!
This year I just passed my 48th birthday, this is my birth year. Maybe after four more rounds, I will start to think about enjoying life, retire, and enjoying the sweethearts and grandchildren. But in the next four rounds, I will continue to think of ways to do more useful work during this period of time. I hope to challenge my every day and find ways to make my career better.
What about you? I may not know you, but about you, I know one thing. You have very important things to give to our world, and very important information to spread to our world. Your life, my life are a very sacred gift, do you accept it and control it?
Have you heard such a voice, Goddess of Luck is calling your name! How would you respond?
Thank you all!
Note: This article is from the TED Conference of "2017 Hexun Caizhi Women Power Speech"The abridged version of the happy speech. The picture is from Chen Yu's personal website http://joychenyu.com/. How can
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