Lesson 5: Things Move Fast When You Care About What You’re Working On
Written by Amira Aleem
In the early days of settling into life in Bali, things took an unexpected turn. On a morning in November 2014, Andy had been down to the yoga studio and completed a class. After he was finished, he had set off looking for a place for his family to stay when they came to visit for Christmas.
“I turned a corner and suddenly there was a massive explosion behind me.”
A local café made out of bamboo had caught fire. Thankfully, there were no fatalities and everyone had managed to escape, but five houses and family temples had burnt down in the surrounding damage from the fire.
“After three explosions, a huge crowd gathered on the other side of the street. There was concern over the shops on either side.” Instinctively, though he’d never been to the café before, Andy began helping out, moving stock out of the neighbouring clothing and jewelry stores. Emotions ran high, with many of the staff in tears and a looming uncertainty for their jobs.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, Andy found himself getting involved with Peter Wall, the owner of a popular co-working space for digital nomads, who had organised to a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the families who had been affected by the fire to rebuild their homes and family temples.
Being there at the time, with little else filling up days , Andy found himself taking the lead on the campaign to raise money for the affected families, from people that either lived in Ubud or had spent time there. Over a couple of weeks, nearly $18,000 was pledged for the local community.
While which Andy felt a lot of satisfaction of being able to present the gift at a local meeting (the Banjar) at the same time as his family arrived from New Zealand for Christmas, Andy reports feeling frustrated at the lack of active involvement from Bali’s huge expat population who were living and working out of Ubud. Only one lady joined Andy for that presentation ceremony.
“What I saw at the crowdfunding campaign was that people were happy to come along to the meeting, and then wanted no involvement whatsoever. It was astonishing given that they lived and worked in central Ubud.”
For Andy, being able to walk away after seeing the devastation on the day really wasn’t an option.
Seeing the low levels of support from the ‘digital nomad’ community in Ubud troubled Andy deeply.
While the café had been frequented and used primarily by foreigners, the local Balinese families who had had their homes destroyed in it, had felt the full effect of the fire. And the café staff were facing life without jobs.
“It is symptomatic of a bigger problem in the place.”
He was shocked that very few people were even asking questions about what was happening as the rebuilding process started, alongside the many cleansing ceremonies. At one such ceremony with Pak Nyoman’s family, it felt very hollow and lonely as the flowers washed out to sea.
Recognising how much he cared about local communities and their people looking out for one another made Andy’s decision to be involved easy and the work grew organically. It helped guide the decisions he was making would prove to give him stability and purpose, at least for a while.
In another example, while based in Singapore, Andy was invited as a mentor on an innovation weekend in India. It involved four days in Bangalore with the company Capco, working with young consultants who developed business ideas and were pitching for investment.
“I just loved it, I absolutely loved it. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
“What that did is gave me a really good sense of the things I liked and I didn’t like,” he says. Working with a team of young people, digging through junkyards and sourcing pipes and roofing to build a prototype, Andy recalls the thrill of building and creating with his hands.
Going to Bangalore in July 2015 at the end of Andy’s time in Singapore positively, gave him back much needed energy and motivation: “I was just in my element.”
It highlighted just how different the experience in Singapore itself had been. Enjoying the everyday of his work made the entire experience so much more valuable than taking opportunities because conventional wisdom demanded it.
It was a happy ending to a horrible three months in Singapore after Bali also hadn’t worked out. After Bangalore, Andy headed back to London, almost a year after he had left feeling confidence that things at his home of nine years would be significantly better.
Andy’s conclusion on: Things Move Fast When You Care About What You’re Working On
Over the last three years, I tried to get involved in lots of projects, professionally and personally. Looking back, I’ve been able to spot what I call the ‘happy pattern’ and there is a direct correlation between the nature of the work, the motivations of the people involved and the energy created.
The lesson here is clear: where a situation creates a positive energy and emotion that you’ve felt in the past, give yourself fully to it. The more often you do, the stronger your happy pattern becomes.
