Hi !

I hope you are all doing amazing and hanging on, especially if you are in Malaysia with the third lockdown. My thoughts and prayers for all the students out there who have to go back to online learning. Hopefully, things will get better for you!

Apologies for not writing last week - Aiman & I had our COVID-19 vaccinations on Friday and Saturday of last week respectively, so I was quite knackered over the weekend with the side effects. But, Alhamdulillah, I'm all good now and am now one step closer to herd immunity within the community insyaAllah.

Today, I want to talk about the all-or-nothing trap (or also known as the perfection trap).

Growing up in an Asian community, I was a very competitive person when I was young. Everything has to be done perfectly. An A is not an A if it is not 90+ marks. I will obsess over planning anything to make sure nothing goes wrong. And I turn down opportunities if I don't feel that I will be able to give my 100% to it, or if there is a slight chance of me failing at it.

Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all. (James Clear)

James Clear sent the above quote in one of his latest newsletters, and dang, it hits right in the heart. I realized that this has been happening quite a lot lately - from updating my blog, writing this newsletter, updating my social media, and essentially everything that I do lol.

The all-or-nothing trap, when you think that you have to do everything perfectly in the first go, can hinder your progress. Your need for perfection would hold you back from trying out new things. The more opportunities you shy away from, the less you can go forward in life.

Don't think too much - just do it.

Something that I have been working on recently is to ignore the need for perfection in my mind and just do it, regardless of whether I feel that it was good enough or not.

For instance, writing this newsletter has never been easy. I always think to myself, is this good enough? Will people actually read it? What will people get out of this piece of writing? Is it too long? Too short? Too personal? What would people say?

But I realized that the more I think about it, the worse it would get. So I have learned to just do it and send it out, regardless of whether I feel it's perfect enough to go out. After all, any piece of writing is never going to be perfect enough. There will always be room for improvement, so the more I write and the more I publish, the better I will get.

So if you are trapped in the all-or-nothing mindset, find ways to free yourself from it. Think about all the opportunities that you may have missed out on because of this trap, and focus on your goal and what you can do to reach it.

After all, you only live once, no? So why should you hold yourself back just because you're afraid of a little failure?

New post - Life updates & Malaysia's MCO 3.0

After taking a 4-month break from updating the blog, I finally posted something up. Following the theme of the all-or-nothing trap, I honestly didn't feel that this would be a good enough post. But if keep on thinking this, the blog would probably never get updated, so here goes nothing. Feel free to have a read :)

Freebie - LinkedIn guide & prompts for students & graduates.

So, I got bored a couple of days ago, so I decided to compile some notes and prompts into this free LinkedIn Guide for Students & Graduates. As subscribers on this #SayWhat newsletter, you guys are the first to get access to this guide.

The guide is intended for those who are either (1) new on LinkedIn, or (2) have had a LinkedIn profile but never fully utilizing it. The guide features 50+ prompts that can help you in creating your LinkedIn posts and helping you to develop your personal & professional brand on LinkedIn.

Feel free to have a look and let me know what you think of it!

One final question for you.

Before I sign off for this week, I wanted to ask you one question:

In the past year, what has been one spontaneous thing that you have done? How did you feel about it and what did you learn from that experience?

Until I see you next week (back to my normal schedule insyaAllah!), please do take care of yourself. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay awesome & take care!

Love,

Nazu xx