It’s one of those rare instances where I’ve signed up for, and attended, a talk but have yet to find out more about the speaker’s background. I went for this ‘free’ talk by a Dr Douglas Kong yesterday at the Lifelong Learning Institute. The topic appeared attractive as it’s about “Success Mindset: how to Get There”. Words like “Secret”, “Success”, “How To…”, etc all end up sounding very enticing, no? 
So I was a bit perplexed when, sitting in the audience, I found that the good doctor did not introduce himself very much, beyond stating that he’s a Performance Coach, and launched straight into his presentation. No radio interviews he wanted to talk about? No media articles he’s been featured in? No list of impressive places he’s worked at or people he’s worked with? Strange.
So before putting together this blogpost, I did a Google search for “douglas kong” and the second search result on page 1 of Google is a Sammyboy forum post about an AsiaOne story on a psychiatrist who got suspended for a 10-year sexual relationship with a patient. The dates appear to tally based on what I’ve read on Dr Kong’s LinkedIn profile and the AsiaOne report. So he’s the one the report is about?! (@_@)
But I guess that chapter of his life has been concluded some 7 years ago. So what is important now is… what has the Doctor / Performance Coach got to offer?
He spoke about fears (especially in relation to entrepreneurship), how our beliefs / thoughts end up influencing our feelings, actions and results in a negative (or virtuous) cycle, how we should transform our beliefs to be empowering (with the help of a coach ;)), etc.
I found it a bit weird when he brought up an example of how some “girls are petrified of sex” to make the point that we should revise (some of) our beliefs. I even made a note of it in my notebook. First time most of us are meeting him and we’re talking about sex already? Isn’t this about the success mindset? (@_@”‘)
Anyway, I found some of the other examples he gave pretty boring, such as Roger Bannister and the 4-minute mile, Tiger Woods (yawn), Michael Jordan, Edison, yadda yadda.
Many of his sentences were punctuated with “… isn’t it?”, “you see…”, “…so there you are”, “…so that’s what it is” and, my favorite, “get it?”
I’d say that most of us in the audience actually don’t know who Dr Douglas Kong is. A number of participants were very helpful in answering his questions posed to the audience (while I just put on my poker face). So I was a bit taken aback when a guy in a purple shirt, sitting right at the front, spoke up when Dr Kong was talking about the Michael Jordan example (I took 9000 shots and missed… blah blah) to share about how it’s like Edison and his numerous unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Dr Kong kinda snapped at him to say “Never mind, we are talking about Michael Jordan now!” Then… as luck would have it… the next slide was about… *tadah* the Edison example! 
He could have simply said “Wow you can read my mind, that’s exactly what’s on the next slide” and the purple-shirted guy would probably have been so pleased.
But it really wasn’t all bad.
I liked the part about the Growth Mindset vs the Fixed Mindset.
“If you succeed, I’m inspired” VS “If you succeed, I feel threatened”.
“Let me listen – however painful it is – and learn whatever I can”
I’m not sure how many people have been there before, you know, when you envy someone else’s success. I have. In the early years of starting this blog, the green-eyed monster reared its head whenever I saw other bloggers getting sponsored stuff that I didn’t get. It then became something like a race to see who can get the most sponsors, review the most items, gain the most followers, etc. All ridiculous nonsense, in the end. How much more worthwhile it is to be able to sit back and be truly at ease with other people’s successes. I blog only when I want to, and sometimes I don’t even care about tags and keywords, sometimes I just upload blogposts as reminders (not ordering something from a certain restaurant again, or to order more of something else and not share it! :D) or just as a record of the day. This post, obviously, is not sponsored by the Doc. 
Dr Kong also mentioned numerous times how important it is to have a coach. I thought that was overkill. But he may have many other things to share / teach. He made some valid points, such as how the 10,000-Hour Rule includes two fallacies. (1) 10,000 is simply an ‘average’. You could take just 5,000 or 7,000 hours. And (2) It’s deliberate practice and not simply practice or else you could be practising your mistakes. Also, in a company, it is important to take care of your people, so they can in turn take care of the processes, which will take care of the performance of the company.
Easier said than done.
So, yes, if the opportunity arises for (free) group coaching or some other (free) seminar I may attend, I’d probably go find out what I can learn from it. 