A few weeks ago I had coffee with three wonderful minds, two innocently eager, and one blazing with purpose. I'm sharing as much as I can remember what we've discussed that day.

We met up to talk about the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. It was organised by Dr Noor Affizan – a brilliant lady with a big heart who wants to see the youngsters around her do well. She's more than that of course, but that's what I admired about her most (You can know her more here). She wanted to share and discuss what's in the book after being “blown away” by the ideas presented.

Our discussion eventually moved on to self-development in general and touched on topics like building habits, personal values, and even entrepreneurship. But, admittedly, what I was more surprised with was the fact that there would be such a meet-up in Brunei.

The book

David Epstein argues the need for more generalists as much as (and maybe even more) it needs specialists, and that most of the top performers in the world don't specialise early on in their life.

It argues that dabbling in different fields makes you more capable in whatever field you finally end up pursuing; How – in many fields – you would do better when you have knowledge from other fields too.

That afternoon, Dr Affizan shared the experience of her residency in Singapore, and how the book described her work experience there. From how those who only studied and do well academically can't perform well in a real-life clinical situation because of a lack of experience in other aspects of life.

That motivated her to bring this idea to more Bruneians, especially students and young adults who may think that specialisation is the road to success in the modern world.

And how, like the book says, many of us are pressured (by our teachers, parents, even ourselves) to lock in the course of our life in our teenage years. Epstein emphasised that we should be fine trying out before deciding what we want to stick with, and two decades of living is usually not enough for most people to truly know what we really want.

Really, even if you got another 20 years, it shouldn't lock you into one field for life. As difficult and uncomfortable as it is, the best kind of mindset is to give ourselves permission to delve into a new interest at any point in our life.

Connecting the book to Brunei

I shared with her how while I was in university, UBD has the GenNext programme with the intention to give undergraduates a breadth of skills, but most of us felt it was a waste of student's time and energy. We just want to get it out of the way and focus on our core modules.

In such situations, I asked, would the students benefited from the GenNext programme?

She believes it would, even if the students were not aware of what's being done for them. The knowledge and insights would still stick with the students as they specialise. It will come back to help them in the form of insights like coming up with analogies.

Her main worry for Bruneian is the lack of curiosity or hunger to grow, which is crucial to anyone, not just the local youths. You have to be curious or hungry enough in the first place: that's the main drive for a person to sample different knowledge, skillset, or industry. That's how generalists appear.

To me, it is very familiar, my ex-boss talks about this a lot whenever she looks at hiring new team members. She has taught me a lot in my self-development and personal growth.

So, when it comes to us Bruneians, maybe it is due to our reliance on “systems” that have been put in place for us, taught to us by our elders. A system, as in a belief that there's a set path for us already in our life, and we just have to put effort into completing the list of tasks.

From beliefs like “being a good student means you get a stable job in your 20s”, to “do your work properly and you'll be able to marry by X years old”, the underlying premise is that some things will happen because of another. These are not written in stone. Like that false logical causality of “if you don't have a pen, you'll die a sad lonely death.”

Maybe this is due to how our culture is. From religion to our educational assessment system, everything implied that “here's a set of rules, now try to finish this stage. We'll move on to the next stage after this.”

It gives a certain comfort and complacency to know there's a “next stage” that's already been prepared. It gives the illusion that life is a straight line that only ever goes upwards.

It's even reinforced to some extent by how success stories are always told as if everything that happened were meant to be meaningful and relevant, when in fact, the storyteller actually only brought up the few events that matter to the story. He or she would omit irrelevant details or details that might weaken his objectives of telling that story. Without being intentional, it gives the audience an impression of success being “tidier” than it actually is.

Everyone does it, and it's not to serve some nefarious purposes. It's just the nature of storytelling. This might be partly due to limitations in verbal storytelling as a medium of communication: It's easier to tell a story by omitting out the boring, messy, “unimportant” things that don't move the story forward.

That usually meant brushing past from mentioning the efforts, the struggles, the pain and doubts, and the detours in life that didn't end up as a stepping stone to be memorialised. It meant storytelling discounted the failures we have had in life that told us “nope, not this way. Turn around, try another direction.”

“Nice guys don't finish last”

Naturally, when you are given the green light to “try out lots of things and see if you like any of them”, we felt only prudent to ask how we can determine if we're being too stubborn when we should have just quit and try something else? Who knows, this might be your actual calling/passion and you might just be a hair's breadth away from the most important day of your work life?

That how we got into the topic of learning about ourselves by identifying our core values and using them as our compass.

Dr Affizan shared with us the ideas of thought leaders like Simon Sinek, Victor Frankl, Susan David, and Stephen Covey.

To briefly put it, we just got to make sure our actions are based on our values, and that get our self-worth based on living out these values. It's got to do with being aware with the intention behind our actions and decisions, too.

That lead to a discussion on how living our life and being successful in the world basically boils down to just giving values to others. A.k.a Just be a good person.

From aeons ago, mankind has always been reminded to remain unflinching to virtues and always reflect on ourselves to see where we can improve further. From the idea of self-reflection, treating others well, to perseverance and consistency – there are many familiar concepts and call-to-action.

We touched on the idea of abundance and growth mindset, and how the perspective of the world affects people's reasoning. I don't know if they understand what I was trying to say: I see that from a certain perspective, greed or selfishness can be an incentive to create a gentler and better world.

That's because those who think of the economy as a zero-sum game would never choose to cooperate. While those who see the economy expanding forever would find it crazy to spend energy slowing others down – they would be busy cooperating to increase each others' profit.

As for selfishness...

Spirituality and what religion teaches us

Afterwards, I met with a friend who studied psychology. At one point in our conversation, I asked whether “fake it til you make it” can also apply to mindset, not just habits. He said yes: By surrounding ourselves with people with positive thoughts.

He also shared about the feel-good chemicals in our brain that gets released when we perform selfless acts – they stimulate dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. It won't be released if we are calculative with our action.

He concluded that a lot of scientific research actually proves the wisdom of many religious teachings.

This was also a comment I echoed earlier in the afternoon: it seems that the values uphold by religions still remain pathways to success in a modern secular world.

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It was really a thought-provoking afternoon. I can't recall the last time I felt that pumped up within such a short time. Dr Affizan wants to share more big ideas to more people, and I hope this post can do its part in that movement.

If you've read all the way here, please reach out to me and tell me what you think!