一篇关于她写我的文章

上个星期，女友电邮了我一份她所做的大学功课（Peak Performance）。我觉得她把我写得很好，所以就把文章放上来，分享给大家阅读的同时，也让自己能起到一种提醒的作用。这篇文章内容是她对我以前至现在的人生做出了总结和分析，透过访问和对我的了解所写出来，同时内容均以题目“Peak Performance” 为导向。

这篇文章可说是我中学毕业后人生的一个缩影过程，如我所做的、所牺牲的、所付出的等等。因此我希望不认识我的人，能透过阅读这篇文章，对我的人生坚持信念有些微的认识和体悟。

文章是以英文书写的，内容颇长，如果有意了解我的就看看吧，没有也没关系，一切随缘。刊登这篇文章只为自己的人生留下一些记忆和记录。

谢谢她写我，让我仿佛在这段岁月里，有位愿意陪伴、聆听以及了解我的人。

Written by Chai Yee May
                Speaking of peak performance, people always relate it to the world-class people who achieved remarkable world records or those who are wonder to behold such as world's leading businessmen, investors, athletics and so forth. Just name it from Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett to Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan (Valdes, 2007). However, people tend to forget that these so called peak performers were also nobody at some points in their life before they turned to somebody and became renowned. Their success was definitely not by chance. All these peak performers went through all hardships and sustain in the adversity. We hear a lot of their successful stories and their great undertakings, but we do not always put emphasis on their process of achieving the success and what takes them to become who they are, the stars in their field. According to Charles Marcus (2002), peak performance is a commitment to one's physical/mental/spiritual being and to one's personal growth and development at all times. I personally like the words commitment to one's physical/mental/spiritual being and this reminds me of my friends, Anderson Lee Yee Hang who has such a great charisma. He yet to achieve any astounding success at the moment but he has the key characteristics that envisage sustained success.
            Anderson Lee is born in the 90's, just like other millennials as classified and studied in most research; he is passionate about making meaning and seeking out new challenges in his life (Asghar, 2015). But what makes him unique and different from the stereotyped Generation Y is his self-discipline and perseverance in accomplishing his goals. He determination in fulfilling his goals can be discussed in many aspects. The first evidence is body building. He used to be a very small skinny boy in high school and always being treated like a kid among his classmates. His body size has troubled him at school as he has lost confident especially at the stage of puberty. He decided to make a change after graduated from high school. He started to build his body not only to become more appealing but also for his health purpose. There was no difference at his body figure after the weight training at fitness centre for the first few months. Despite with no outcome, he was not discouraged but rather putting more effort in weight training by reading more information about health and body building through magazines and internet. He educated himself on eating right and doing right through continuous reading and exercise regularly. He credited his self-discipline of working out regularly to his will power and self-belief. After a year, his effort paid off, he became a healthier person and his body shape became more apparent. Exercise and weight lifting have now turned into his habit where he finds it very pleasant to do regularly.
            Besides looking after one's own health and diet need discipline, saving also requires discipline. Anderson is an idealist person and yet practical, he has big ambition which he wishes to explore the world outside his homegrown. In 2013, he made it to the United States and proved that American dream can be achieved at the age of 23. It was never been easy for a student like him who needed ten thousand ringgit to join the Work and Travel Program in the USA. He found out this opportunity through a friend who planned to join this program two years ago before he took his journey to the USA. He made up his mind right after a brief discussion with his friend about this chance to explore the outside world and it took him about two years to prepare for this adventure. As a full time college student, he seized every opportunity by working as a promoter every weekends, public holidays and during semester breaks. He earned as much as possible just to make sure he is able to make it to the USA after he graduated from university. He saved most of his income and counted everyday how much more he needed for his dreamed journey. Without any surprise, he was able to save the money for this adventure and fulfill his dreams just as planned two years ago. The persistency of saving money in two years time has sacrificed most of his social life and holidays. However, he found it worthwhile to do so even without any inspiration in those two years. What he achieved may sounds trivial for many people, but peak performers are not just about doing greatest things, it's the little things they do that matter. Just like a quote by a British politician, Charles Simmons, "True greatness consists in being great in little things".
            Second factor of peak performance that can be seen in Anderson is his talent and continuous learning and practice to achieve excellence. Anderson has a great interest in writing which he discovered this talent in high school when he used to write journal as an assignment in class. He enjoyed sharing his daily life story to his teacher through journal writing and got motivated when he received feedback from his teacher. For him, writing journal is enjoyable and interesting rather than a compulsion. His interest in writing did not just stop there. His found that his writing skills got improved when he wrote something about travel and he loved how his ideas percolate when sharing his adventurous journey. His talent in writing also has been acknowledged by a travel forum from Taiwan, Backpacker.com.tw where few of his articles have been selected and posted on the forum’s "Best writings column". His passion in writings has induced him to pursue his career in writing. With a completely different background as a degree holder of Marketing in Business, it is hardly to get employed as a journalist or published writer. However, he knew that he needs a job to get experience and needs experience in this field to sharpen his skills. Hence, he decided to start from the bottom and worked as an editor with low starting salary in a business media company. At the beginning, the articles he wrote were full of flaws as he has had no knowledge in writing business review. He accepted the criticism and learned from the basic from his senior. He reminisced how disappointed he was when he was told that his pieces were unworthy. Rather than focusing on his problem and frustration, he chose to find ways to improve his writing skills. Through excessive reading, continuous practices and even stringent self-criticism on his write-up in order to produce more quality works, his writing skills improved. With his hard work, he not only enhanced his skills in writing but also earned him a senior position in the company.
            The next factor that contributes to his peak performance in life is he has a constructive and positive mentality. Anderson has a clear sense of direction of knowing what he wants and how to get there at every stage in life. As evident in the above-mentioned examples, once he set a goal, he will develop an action plan and strive to give his best effort to achieve his goal with an unwavering belief. Besides staying connected to his goals, he also developed his unique set of emotion management. Through writing he is able to relieve his stress and recognize his emotion and his reaction toward the situation when his emotion arose. He asserted that writing is a very good way to relieve one's emotion, especially one's inner thoughts. Further, he also meditates every morning before going to work just to ensure he has a calm and positive state of mind to meet the challenges of the day. For him, physical and mental calmness is his optimal arousal level which ensures his ideal performance in work. In addition to mental preparation, Anderson also invests in proper nutrition, health and wellness to enhance his readiness to perform.
            Peak performance also can be defined as a state as being in the zone of optimal functioning and flow whereby a person is totally focused and immersed in the activity (Marcus, 2011; Wells, 2012). Anderson's commitment to strive for his personal goals is completely in the state of flow where he has a narrow focus of attention and confidence to strive for every success. Repeatedly he proved that things are possible and achievable in his life. When I asked him what his greatest motivation is, he answered me assertively that what he does is just meant for a simple purpose - happiness, the intrinsic motivation which is also the key to his peak performance.