James Lim's boss once called him a 'lifer,' predicting he'd stay at the company forever. The insult stung so much it became fuel. Lim used that anger to push himself out and change careers, though he eventually learned to chase positive goals instead of running from negativity.
Chapters
He looked over to me and said, ah, but you, James, you're the type of person who'll be here for the next 10 years in this company. You're a lifer. I can see it now. Have you ever had one of those moments where you've been talking to a group of people or another person and they've said something that's felt pretty negative or pretty mean toward you and it's made you pretty angry inside or frustrated and it's made you kind of like clench your fists and grit your teeth and, and it's fired you up and giving you this source of motivation from this negative energy space. And it's often to kind of prove them wrong or prove what they're saying wrong. I like to call this concept dark motivation. And it's a bit of a taboo subject. A lot of people don't really like to talk about it. I just want to kind of share a little story where this happened and how it helped me achieve a lot of my big goals. So about 15 years ago, I had a boss who was a bit of a joker. I mean, he's a bit of a kind of the clown in the group. He was due for retirement. He'd been working for about 40, 50 years and was looking forward to spending all of his time fishing. He was talking to all of us and we were all quite young and he was talking about how he's passing the baton over and it's in our turn and it's going to be another long slog for us. He looked over to me and said, ah, but you, James, you're the type of person who'll be here for the next 10 years in this company. You're a lifer. I can see it now, that moment. Shivers went down my spine and I just felt awful. It cut so deep that someone could look at me and what he knew of me at the time could think that, that I, I was going to be there forever. Now in that moment I just laughed it off. We were just, you know, he was having a bit of a joke around, so I was like, huh, in that horrible, awkward, nervous laugh and just carried on. Now, obviously the conversation just kind of moved on, but it was a bit embarrassing because everyone took a moment to laugh at me at the time. That conversation that stayed with me for a very, very long time, it kept me up at night, on that night and it really made me question Dan, is that what he thinks? Is that what everyone thinks? And how true is it? The reality is it wasn't even about him. Saying it, it was. He was right. I could see it as well. And I think. I think that was what was so painful about it. I could see that I had so many fears and there was no way I would jeopardize my situation in this role. But I was thinking, there's no way. I. I want. I want to be able to do more than this in some way. And that scenario kept coming back to me for months and even years after as a point of kind of reflection, where I was like, there is no way. There is no way that I will be. I will be stuck in a box because I'm too afraid to move. And that was. I mean, that's what it boiled down to. It was an internal thing for me and something I was battling with. And so every time I looked to make a change and I was struggling, I was nervous or anxious or got overwhelmed, I'd remind myself, there is no way I can let those words come true. Now, this might be all right for some of you who maybe want to stay in a job because you really enjoy it, but I already got a fair good sense that I wasn't going to stay here and possibly not the industry, and it turns out that I ended up leaving. Who knows where we'll end up in the future? At least, you know, for now that was the case. And to think that someone thought all of that of me was just. It was so painful. A big part of a lot of my motivation. It's not all of it, because now it has shifted quite dramatically to much more kind of positive or pull factor or positive motivation factors. But early on, when I was just filled with this fear, that would often be one of the things that would help nudge me over the edge to do what I know I needed to do. The point here is sometimes you can turn some negative comments, some negative words from other people and turn them into a fuel that can get you to move. Now, it's quite controversial because a lot of people don't like being driven by a lot of these kind of bad thoughts. You need to use whatever will get you to move because sometimes the pull factors that you can get are just not strong enough to get you to move. And then you'll pull back and then you'll settle into your comfortable zone. Use whatever fuel you have available to you. If you. If someone has told you that you can't do it or you're the type of person who can't do this thing, or you're going to be stuck in this situation, sometimes it might be worth reflecting about that and seeing how you can use that to get you to move forward and maybe prove those words wrong. It's not necessarily about proving the person wrong. It's about proving those words wrong, often because you hold those beliefs inside. That's why it hurts so much. It hurt me because I actually could see all of the things that I felt. I could see the traits he could see of me that that would result in me staying where I was, for sure. And that was a big part of my journey to change a lot of that.
