COACHafiz

Better Men,  Better Families ON 20 JANUARY 2021, the We Are Dads Too* podcast started its first episode,  Papa, Don't Teach . Despite having zero knowledge about podcasting until I attended a course just two months before, we managed to hit the goal of releasing fifty-two episodes in a year. How did we do it?  The following are six questions forming the acronym GROWTH that guided us. 1. What do we need to achieve? (Goals) Before setting the goal, we made clear that our mission was to reach out and inspire more fathers to take action to be the best dad they can be. We believe that fathers face a multitude of problems due to a lack of resilience, not physically but rather mentally and emotionally. We gathered a few friends who all happened to be educators and mostly parents themselves, to brainstorm the issues surrounding fatherhood and suggest what fathers need to know to improve themselves. I must say that without them volunteering and supporting us at the beginning, the...

                                                  Approximately 54% of people who resolved to change their ways failed to make the transformation last beyond six months, and the average person made the same life resolution ten times over without success. Journal of Clinical Psychology   Consider this: if you have had the habit of saving only $1 daily from the age of seven and increasing the amount by a mere 50 cents yearly, by the time you reached the working age of twenty-three, a total of $30,000 would have been saved! To have in hand an equivalent of six to twelve months of salary before your first job would have placed you on a financial headstart compared to most, if not all of your peers. Many may have started some kind of savings when they were young. However, because changing and sustaining habits are difficult for most people, having such headstart i...

Is my job safe in this Covid-19 pandemic crisis? Will I still have a job until my retirement?  Will I have enough savings when I retire? Are these the right questions to ask in these difficult times? The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused the most severe disruption of the global economy since World War II. With many jobs, businesses and livelihoods affected, it's not surprising that many are anxious about their future. As experts have warned that life will not revert to normal like before, the above questions naturally become more pertinent. However, the above questions only scratch the surface. We need to peel off the layers and dig deeper to get to the bottom of those questions. It is akin to the moment in  Alice in Wonderland when Alice was asked by the Caterpillar a seemingly simple but fundamental question:   “When the Caterpillar asks Alice, 'Who are you,'  and Alice can barely stammer out a reply, `I—hardly know,'  Alice seemed unsure when s...

Leaving a job I love in the social impact space to join the corporate world seemed just a pragmatic decision, but having to work my way back 15 years later was destined, yet not so straightforward. Having a career as a teacher in government schools seemed destined for me due to my educational background and parental expectations. Not to mention the promise of a well-paying and stable job. However, I resisted all that and hard-headedly pursued my passion -  empowering communities, especially the youths, through education and entrepreneurship.  For the first 8 years after graduation, I was involved in capacity building and social enterprise projects, including setting up schools and agriculture plantations in remote communities in Indonesia and running social enterprises  to support the works of a social service youth organization in Singapore.  However, the frequent overseas travels and the "long hours-low pay" conundrum of having a career in the non-profit space re...