We all learned the concept of “Don’t judge a book by its Cover…” early in our childhood. But of course we are all still guilty of it. Ask yourself this: How many times did you pre-judged a person by your first impression? We are constantly making judgments about the people we interact with – the waiter from lunch, the neighbour next door or perhaps your colleagues at work. In fact, most people form an instant impression about someone within the first 30 seconds of seeing or meeting them. These impressions aren’t based on fact, but instead on past experiences with other individuals we perceive to be similar to the people we are pre-judging.
Today, my account assistant of 6 months was eating dinner with me when he told me something that surprised me. To begin, he is less than 5 feet tall (<150cm), over 30 years old and look extremely young for his age. My impression of him during his 6 month in the company was that he is a very responsible person and is very friendly towards each and everyone in the company – whether for work or personal level. I was always impressed by his attitude of work and intelligence and feel that his current position does him injustice as he is capable of something more.
And then during our dinner, he finally revealed to me that he was a director in his previous job, managing over 50+ people at his work. I was rather surprised to hear the news that for someone who was once Confucian called the “yi ren zhi xia, wan ren zhi shang” (a person who is next only to the highest and above all the rest), he is now taking a very junior role in the current company. Of course he has his reasons for doing so which I will not explained in detail but the main reason is doing what he feels he like doing and is a choice that he can make – a very similar concept to what we have in achieving the light to the financial freedom.
