Simon Ong, best-selling author of "Energized," joins Jennifer K. Hill for Regarding Consciousness

Hello friends, and thank you for being here for another episode of Regarding Consciousness. I am Jennifer K. Hill, and it is my privilege, my honor, and my pleasure to bring this show to you every week and to scour the earth to find you some of the top thought leaders, scientists, and inspirational thinkers and authors from around the world, such as today's wonderful, brilliant bestselling author, Simon Aung. Before we get into a little bit about Simon and his journey and his new book Energize, I want to read to you a bit from his bio so you know who he is and what this extraordinary man is up to in the world. Simon Alexander Ong is a personal development entrepreneur, coach, and public speaker. His clients are from all walks of life, but they share one trait: they all believe that the greatest investment you can make is in yourself. His work has seen him invited onto Sky News, BBC Radio, as well as LBC Radio, while in 2018 Barclays UK featured him in a national— nationwide campaign asking him questions on how families could embrace better lifestyle habits. His insights have seen him being featured in Huffington Post, Forbes, Virgin, and The Guardian, and Simon regularly speaks at organizations and keynote public events and conferences. Some of these have included the Peter Jones Foundation, the World Business Executive Coach Summit 2020, and the LSE. Simon is of Chinese origin and is based in London with his wife Lori and daughter Sienna. And that's actually where Simon and I had the pleasure of connecting, was at a Global Women's Summit event we were both speaking at about a month or so ago. And it's just great to reconnect with you, Simon, and get to share your wisdom with our listeners today.

Likewise, Jennifer, and thank you so much for having me on today.

Yes, and thank you to Mirella for putting together such a wonderful connected group of entrepreneurs and speakers from around the world. And so tell us, Simon, I— you and I just had a couple of great conversations while we were in London, and I'd love for you to share how did you come on this trajectory of becoming a keynote speaker and this best-selling author. I loved hearing about your story of how you came to write Energize?

Sure. So what I do now isn't something that I've always done. When I grew up here in the UK, I was one of 2 sons to Malaysian-Chinese parents, and I'd always been on this journey of being either a banker, a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant— jobs that my parents very much wanted us to do upon graduation from university. And so I was seduced by the route of finance, one, because it aligned with my parents' interests, and second, because it felt like it was the career option that would pay me the most. So when I graduated, I started in the world of finance. Unfortunately, it was the year before the global financial crisis swept across the planet in 2008. So I joined in the middle of 2007, and the company that I started with was Lehman Brothers.

Oh.

Which collapsed into administration in September 2008. Now, at the time, as you can imagine, it was extremely stressful to have all those hopes and dreams swept away from under your feet and to then face this road of uncertainty ahead. But in hindsight, Jennifer, it was a beautiful blessing in disguise because it kickstarted the journey to what I now get to do today. So even though it would take me another 8 or 9 years before I exited the world of formal employment, it began the mental process for questioning the beliefs that I'd held before and really understanding what success meant to me. And when I exited that world of being a financial analyst, a trader, and a researcher, I started coaching people, people in the corporate world, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. And 18 months after I quit and became a coach full-time, I started speaking. And it was really by accident because when I initially started to get my coaching business off the ground, I said to myself, if I could build a thriving coaching practice, I'm a happy man. And so speaking and writing weren't really things that were on my list. They were nice to have, but they weren't really a priority. But, you know, when you put yourself out in the world, when you show up and you do great stuff, suddenly doors start to open. And so I spoke at this one event and that went really well. And I got invited to speak at more companies and more organizations. And that led to media companies like the BBC and Sky News inviting me to be interviewed about my work. And then in early 2020, just before the COVID pandemic closed so many economies across the world, I got contacted by Penguin Random House to write my first book, Energize, which was published in April 2022.

That's extraordinary. And so tell us a little bit about Energize. I love the funny story you shared with me about how it came to be featured. I believe it was at the Conrad Hotel and you came up with this whole creative idea, but talk to us a little bit about the book.

Yeah, so in essence, the book is how we can transform our life and career when we transform our energy. Now, when I think about energy, I, I see in 4 dimensions. You have your physical energy, your emotional energy, your mental energy, and your spiritual energy. For most of us, we focus exclusively on just physical energy. So you may hear your friends saying to you, I'm feeling exhausted, I need to get more rest, I need to move my body more, I need to eat healthier. These are things that we all tend to talk about, but we talk less about the mental, the emotional, and spiritual. So if you're focusing on the physical but not the other 3 dimensions, you can still feel exhausted, you can still feel drained. In fact, when we look at society around us, Most are exhausted not because they are physically doing too much, but firstly, they are doing too little of the things that bring them joy. So they are spiritually exhausted. And secondly, they are running someone else's race. So their ladder is up the wrong wall. Whereas in order to— for us to feel spiritually energized, we have to ensure that our ladder is leaning on the right wall. So that's what Energize is really about. And I tell these ideas through the narrative of my own journey from being in a corporate world to running my own business and sharing my message with the world.

Yeah. So let's talk about this. I, I know some of us out there are even feeling it right now, mentally, physically, emotionally drained. What are things that we can do to rejuvenate ourselves and to become more resilient in our consciousness and the way that we approach our lives and our livelihood?

Sure. So aside from the obvious, uh, thing that we can do, i.e., move our bodies and exercise to get blood pumping around and elevate our energy, some other exercises that you can do to elevate your mental and emotional energy are these things. The first is a gratitude exercise, and this exercise has been scientifically shown to elevate your energy and your level of happiness, especially if you are going through a particularly challenging time at the moment. And it's 3 steps. The first is to write down the name of somebody that you can be truly grateful for, the first name that comes to your mind. The second is to write down in as much detail why, why did you choose this particular individual? And the third step is to pick up your phone and to call that person reading out word for word what you wrote down in step 2. Now, if this third step is a little uncomfortable for you, at a minimum, what you want to do is to send them a voice note. The key thing is they must hear your voice because your voice carries energy. If you send a text message or you send an email, they'll still read the message, but they won't know the emotional energy behind it. But when they hear your voice, they can feel the meaning behind those words. So that's the first exercise, is to express gratitude with intention. The second is to begin to understand that you are both the sculpture and the sculptor in your reality. Now, here's what I mean by that. A lot of us live with this assumption that there is one common reality. It is a mistaken belief. In fact, we live in customized realities. So when you go through an event or experience, the meaning that you take from it will be very different to the meaning that someone else does. And so when you understand that you live in the feeling of your thinking moment to moment to moment, you become empowered to choose thoughts that are far more aligned to who and where you want to be. So in the book, as an example, I reference the word that is the opposite to paranoia. So paranoia means I believe that people are out to sabotage my progress. So you might be trying to get a promotion in the company, but you have this feeling, this paranoid feeling that others are trying to stop you getting that promotion, that the world is against you in some way. Pronoia, which is the new word I want to introduce you to, is the opposite. It is the belief that the universe is conspiring in your favor, that life is working for you and not against you. So when you experience, as we all do, failures and setbacks, instead of letting them define you, you use them as fuel for your success because you have the humility to seek the wisdom and the insight from every experience.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I remember you sharing that as you were giving a talk at the Global Woman event. It is so true. It's that we can either perceive that the universe is working for our favor or against us, and it's all about our perception and what are we looking for. If we're looking for how life is hard, life will be able to show us where it's hard because we can always find what we're looking for in the infinite amount of possibilities. You know, we are the ones doing the selecting of what we're choosing to put our attention and focus on. I love that. So step 1, you said, is gratitude. Step 2, you're talking about paranoia versus pronoia. So what was the other one? What was step 3, if there is a step 3?

Yeah, for me, step 3 is that the secret to feeling energized and experiencing any level of success is giving. Now, I didn't truly appreciate this until I adopted this practice into my business. So what I mean by giving is when you go into relationships, when you go into conversations or networking, don't go into them thinking, what is in it for me? Go into them thinking, what is in it for them? Or how can I create win-win opportunities? Because at the end of the day, people don't really care about who you are and what you do unless there is something in it for them. So if you can give them a reason to want to do business with you, to build a relationship with you, to partner with you in some way, you've got to get their attention by showing that you're thinking about how to make their lives better. And this is something that I learned really early on from a mentor of mine, a man called Bob Burke, who co-wrote a book, The Go-Giver.

I love that book. I interviewed Bob years ago. He's a great guy.

It's a beautiful book. And I remember as soon as I finished it, I reached out to Bob, and he has been such a giver in terms of helping me on my journey. And I remember one of the things he said to me was that, Simon, your worth as a human is determined by how much more in value you have given to the world than you have taken from it.

Hmm.

And before I started my business, I didn't practically understand that statement. But once I got going and I was serving people, I was helping clients, I was marketing, I was looking for partnerships, I really started to understand the importance of that statement. It's really going into it with a mindset of service, whether that is somebody you're looking to partner, whether that is a client you're looking to work with, whether it is somebody you're looking to partner to grow a project in unison. The ability to operate from that mindset will allow you to build a circle of network that will help and support you to overcome whatever challenges you may face.

I think it's such a beautiful thing. And one of the things that I would recommend to piggyback on what Simon just shared is the idea of finding a mentor or being a mentor. It was very powerful about probably 5 years ago, one of my teachers said, Jen, do you want to learn how to mentor people? I said, okay. And so in turn, he mentored me and then I learned how to mentor other people. And it just became part of my life. It's so powerful when we, when we can share that wisdom. We all want to feel valued and appreciated. And it really is, to your earlier point, Simon, a win-win. Mm-hmm. Because when I'm sharing something that I already know that you might not know, then I'm adding value to your life. And it can look many different ways. For me, I have some people like you, I'm sure, who they pay us for our coaching. But then at the same time, I also have people who I might mentor or be an advisor to their company. And then I have other people who mentor and advise me. And I think it's a beautiful symbiosis that someone in our life is always mentoring us in some capacity. And in some way or another, whether it's for profit or not, we're always mentoring somebody else.

And I think that, that taps into the fact that every single human has stories to share and lessons to tell. And the more people you get to know, the more learning you get to receive from those conversations.

Now, who has been one of your most influential mentors aside from Bob?

So many. I, I remember early on there was, uh, there was a guy called Mark Alford, and he ran a mastermind group. for entrepreneurs. And this was at the point where I was still in the job. I hadn't formally exited yet and started my business. My business was still a side hustle at the time. And Mark invited me to join a mastermind group. He said, Simon, come along, see what you think of it. I'm pretty sure with the way you see the world and what you want to do, it would be very useful for you. So I went along and I remember there were other entrepreneurs sat around this table. And they were far ahead relative to where I was. So one had already started a company, it was growing exponentially, it's now IPO'd at over a billion dollars on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Someone else had just flown back from Los Angeles after winning an award for, for his book. And there was a lady who came from Italy who blew up her YouTube channel, uh, to a couple hundred thousand. And I was sitting there overcome with imposter syndrome. I was saying to myself, why was I invited to this? This is way out of my depth. But I realized that it is so important to put ourselves into situations where we do feel like the dumbest person in the room, because that's how we grow. And it made me want to do that more. I mean, the first time you do anything, you're always going to feel a little imposter syndrome. You're gonna feel a little out of your depth, but then you become comfortable with it. And it made me want to seek out other experiences where there would be people way ahead of me in different ways that I could become a sponge to soak up their knowledge and their inspiration.

Yeah, it's, it's very powerful. I know exactly the feeling you're talking about. I recently was invited to join a group called Baby Bathwater, and I was like, what? Baby Bathwater? I don't even know what that means. But it's an entrepreneurial group around the world and I'm there day one and you have just incredible entrepreneurs. One woman had IPO'd her company for $1 billion. Another guy, I'm sitting across from him at lunch, he's like, yeah, yeah, my brother and I, he's in his late 30s now, he says, my brother and I started a little company in my dad's garage. I was like, oh cool, how's it going? He's like, well, we're doing about $500 million a year. I'm like, oh my gosh. And you do feel challenged, right? Like sometimes there is that immediate feeling that we can have of restriction before we give ourselves permission to expand. And it's almost like kind of putting on a new pair of shoes or a new jacket that might be a little bit tight and might fit a little snugly at first. So eventually, as we kind of get more comfortable in it and we wear the jacket, wear the shoes a little bit more, then it starts to fit us even though it might be unnerving at first.

And it's, it has been one of the most important decisions in my entrepreneurial journey in terms of constantly optimizing, curating, and nurturing my environment because I've seen the impact and influence it can have on a subconscious level, but also in terms of how I see myself and what I see as possible.

I think the listening— it's such a good point, Simon. I think the listening that we have of the closest people to us does directly impact how great we think we can or can't be. Like, for example, if you're in a relationship with somebody and they're putting you down all the time, they're saying, you suck, why'd you make that mistake again? Then we start to see ourselves through the filter. It was funny, a couple of— maybe a month or two ago, we had Bruce Lipton on the show and he gave a wonderful example. Mm-hmm. Bruce said he was sitting here and he had an audience full of people, of students, and half the audience was given red-colored glasses and half the audience was given green-colored glasses. And as Bruce then put up an image, he said, I want you to shout out, what do you see on the screen, love or fear? And half the audience is screaming love and half the audience is screaming fear. And he says, trade glasses. Mm-hmm. And then once you put the red glasses on and the red people put the green glasses on, they could see that there were 2 images, completely different. One love-based and one fear-based, and it all depended on your perspective. And so too I think, Simon, is the listening of those closest to us, whether it's our friends, our family, our spouse, whoever it might be. If they are telling us that we're not good enough, then we might sometimes start to believe it, as opposed to growing ourselves to have these groups of people who might challenge us to think, oh gosh, can I be with this really incredible, smart, successful person? And yet that challenges us to expand ourselves.

I mean, that relationship, the one we have with our partner, is one of the most important. Because as you said, Jennifer, if they're supportive of you, if they are a true team player, and they want to see you succeed, that's the best relationship to be in, where each of you are cheerleading each other and you're championing each other to that next level in your evolution, it's such a beautiful partnership to have.

Yeah, and I, I will throw in a little tidbit here from a brilliant woman I studied with many years ago called Alison Armstrong. And I studied for about 7 years with her on understanding partnerships and men and women. And I remember a funny thing that she told me is that men who are in a masculine mode or women who are in a masculine mode, prefer to play for points. They want to be sure they're given, like, points for whatever it is they're doing right. And so I started dating my now husband about 5 years ago. And so I actually give him points, Simon. Like, when he— I'm like, honey, you got me flowers for our anniversary, which he just did the other day. I'm like, you get 100 million husband points. And, you know, just little things like that. But he receives it because it's either, oh, you didn't get me the right type of flowers, or, oh, thanks for that. But, like, not really celebrating each other's wins and the little things. we do to uplift one another. What's one of your favorite things that you do with your partner to energize your relationship, Simon?

I think one of the things we've done, uh, ever since we've— we started dating all those years ago is surprises. Because what we, what we reflected on is that when you are in the— and I call it the honeymoon phase because, uh, when you're in the early year or two of your relationships, we all tend to go out of our way to surprise each other. But in many relationships, when things start to settle or you marry or you move in together, then suddenly the amount of surprises you do for each other starts to fall drastically.

Mm-hmm.

And so when we looked back at that, we found that the surprises really kept the spark alive, you know, in terms of like making it feel like a very fun relationship. And so what we've done even till this day is constantly think, how can we surprise each other? Not in necessarily grand ways, but even the small ways by listening to one another and thinking, oh, this would be a good way to surprise him or her, and then put it into action. And it's amazing what that can do for a relationship, because as we get older, what happens is that we tend to just get so caught up in the business of the everyday that many of us put these things to one side. And I think relationships is so important to nurture and to pay attention to. Otherwise, just like anything, it begins to dwindle.

Yeah, I think that you're so spot on there, Simon. And also knowing how to appreciate one another. There's, of course, Dr. Gary Chapman's The 5 Love Languages. There's Appreciation at Work written by Dr. Paul White in collaboration with Dr. Gary Chapman. And I think it's so powerful to remember that we all love to be appreciated. Every— whether somebody is giving you $100 million, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, points or whatever that might look like, or if it's surprising one another. I think it's about bringing our consciousness to all of our relationships, bringing that conscientious awareness. And, and so on the note of conscientious awareness, you've given us some wonderful tools today, Simon. Were there other tools from the book that you'd love to share on how people can reinvigorate or energize their lives and their consciousness and their relationships?

For me, one of the most powerful acts that we can do, and it's something I share in the middle of my book, is the ability to live more in the present. Now, I'll explain more what I mean by this, because when I work with clients, uh, who often are busy people, uh, they're in very high-demanding, stressful jobs or vocations, they all tend to live this tragic scenario, which is live as if they are never going to die and then die having never really lived. And so it takes us away from being in the present moment. And so the story I share in the book is one about the performance artist Marina Abramović, where she hosted this exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art where she would sit on this chair, have an empty chair opposite her, and she would invite the audience to sit down And just stare at her in silence for as long as they wanted. They could sit there for a few seconds. Some even stayed for a few hours. And the press called it an 800-hour silent opera. Now, what she was doing when she was interviewed after about the reason and motivation behind this is she said she wanted to ground people in the present so that they were not in the past or the future, but just there with her. staring in her eyes, where she was simply acting as a mirror to their thoughts. And she wanted to— she wanted this to be a private yet public event. So private between the two people staring into each other, and public in the sense that everyone was looking at the two of you. And she realized that so much of life is taken away from the present through distraction. We're living in a world in which there is an ocean of distraction to fight against.

Hmm.

And it reminded me when I read this story, Jennifer, it reminded me of the fact that when coaches behind Michael Jordan's career were asked what made Michael Jordan Michael Jordan, they didn't say it's because he was the tallest or the hardest working, because those are often given. You have to work hard to play in the first team. You have to be fairly tall to succeed in basketball. It's just part of the way the game works. But they said what made Michael Jordan Michael Jordan was his ability to be present. When he was on the court, he wasn't worried about the shot that had just come. He wasn't worried about the shot that was coming up next. He was only worried about the shot he was about to take now. And that ability to be present allows us to see things within our awareness that most don't even see. And so that's one of the things I encourage my readers to do, is to be more mindful in your everyday activities, to ground yourself more in the present, because none of us can predict what is going to happen in the next year, let alone the next week. You may have wanted to open up a restaurant in the first quarter of 2020, but none of us would have predicted the COVID pandemic would have shut all of these down in a matter of weeks. And so there's only so much you can plan for the future. Your future comes really from the decisions that you make today. And so when I think about it from that perspective, it's just asking yourself, what one thing can I do today that will contribute to a better person tomorrow? And if you keep focusing on that, guess what? You will naturally be better than who you were yesterday.

Yes, I think it's so powerful if we reflect on what can we do in this moment and even just being present. I admire that trait so much in other people, the Michael Jordans of the world. It's one of the things, Simon, that had me fall in love with my husband is I remember, you know, our first accidental date, we sat down and we had the most engrossing conversation for 4 hours. I don't think I'd ever been that present with anybody in my whole

life, you

know. But that's the thing is one person being present can also elicit and inspire the presence of another person. I think that in today's culture perhaps we've all allowed ourselves to get sucked into this distraction vacuum that we call social media and generalized media, etc. And so often I notice I do it myself. Even when I go to walk our dog, I'll be out for a walk and often I'll have my phone with me because I'll be Responding to a text or listening to a podcast or music. And yet, how often do we just give ourselves permission to be in the stillness, to be in this silence, to just be with our dog, our child, our friend, our colleague, whomever it might be? And it's in those moments that I think real wisdom opens up when we allow ourselves to be present.

I totally agree, Jennifer. I mean, it's one of the things I often tell people is that silence is far from empty. It is full of the answers, the insights, and the wisdom that you seek if we allow ourselves to spend time in that space. And talking of time, I think ultimately people— and I see this with my daughter as well— people don't want our time as much as they want your energy.

Mm-hmm.

And so when you're present, when you're with them, when they feel your energy, when they feel your presence, that's what they're really after. They'd rather have you for a shorter time but have you fully present than have you for a long time, but you're not really present at all. And I really understand that as a parent, because when I am with my child and I'm there as present as I can be, she really values that. Whereas when she's around other people and they're not really with her, I mean, they're with her but not with her because they're distracted, she senses that as well. And so she will move away from that group because she doesn't feel wanted. Even if they did not communicate that to her, that's what she feels energetically. And so for me, I observed that from a really young age. And I think every parent that has had children, I'm sure can resonate to some degree that what they really want is your presence.

Yes, I think that's what we all want. We want to have our own presence. I think half the time, we can't even count on ourselves to be present because There's something about the feelings. I was recently reading the book Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, which ties in perfectly to our conversation. And I think that we give up on ourselves. We give up on this idea of being present because we prefer numbing ourselves to the feelings of the emotions, the happiness, joy, the sadness, the fear that so often we try to fill our lives with noise, the noise of television, noise of other people's attention or social media, just so that way we don't have to sit and be with whatever is happening in the moment. So what is your— maybe one final piece of advice, Simon. What is one piece of advice that you would give to people on how to connect and to be in the now?

The most powerful activity you can do to ground yourself in the present moment and to better understand yourself is the act of journaling, to write what is in your mind onto paper. Because what happens when you write what's in your mind onto paper, you naturally have to slow down. Because the act of writing— now when I say writing, I mean the traditional sense of writing, uh, pen on paper. So not on a phone or on a tablet, on a computer, because you can easily get distracted. But the physical act of picking up a pen and writing on a notepad or piece of paper, it slows you down because you have to process what's going on in here, in your, in your head. And as you download what is on your mind, whether you're using prompts or you're just doing a brain dump, your mind is then working through what you've put down onto paper to achieve a level of clarity. It's why, in the words of my friend Diana Chow, she said during a TED Talk, Writing is humanity distilled into ink because in the process of writing, you get to know yourself better. And in my eyes, you can't have self-development without self-awareness, and awareness is only deepened when you begin to know yourself.

Such beautiful wisdom. I love that, Simon. Well, it is such a pleasure to have you here today and would love to direct our listeners to where they can get your Energized book or learn more about you as a speaker or work with you. Where would they go to do so?

Sure. So to get a copy of Energize, you can go on to getenergizedbook.com and click on any retailer that you would like to get it from. In terms of social media, I'm on all the major platforms, but the two I use the most are LinkedIn. If you search Simon Alexander Ong, you will find me there, or Instagram. My handle is @simonalexandero.

Love that, Simon. Well, I'm so happy that Marilla connected us. couple months ago and that we've had the privilege and honor to get to be together today. So many gems of wisdom, and I'm intending that each and every one of you, whatever you heard today— maybe it was something that Simon said about being present, maybe it was the gratitude, the way to work through gratitude. To me, that was so inspiring, Simon. I can't wait to do it. And I could just imagine if we did that every day, if we picked one person To acknowledge in a voice memo a day. I mean, what, what could that offer each and every one of us in life? So whatever it is that you may have taken away from our conversation with Simon today, our intention is that it helps you to step a little bit more into your own consciousness, into, as my friend Arthur calls it, your own conscious awareness, and that that allows you to step into the greatness of who you are as a human being. I am Jennifer K. Hill, CEO of OptiMatch, Om.app, and it is a pleasure as always to be here with you. Thank you, Simon.

Thanks.