My Mum Lived With a Thin Skin for the Past 60 Years
How she’s now embracing the beauty of thick-skinness
Let’s start by saying, my beloved mother is a clever, compassionate and cut-throat woman. She’s a problem solver with novel ideas and bang-on analytical skills.
We’d all be lucky to get her advice.
Yet, she doesn’t think that. She’s now in her 60s and retired. When I discussed with her how I plan my life on the basis that we will live to a 100 years old, she was worried:
She has 40 more years of idle retirement life. What’s she going to do? Watch TV everyday?
For a long time, she thought that’s exactly what she will do, plus a bit of dancing, badminton and social events.
Then she searched hard why didn’t she think she can achieve more, and it’s down to this: she had thin skin.
The problem of “saving face”
My mum and I are both Hong Kong Chinese, so the concept of “face” is well-versed. If you haven’t heard of the concept of “face”, think about it as pride. Especially with Asian cultures, where a person’s pride is tied directly with seniority, this means people become more thin-skinned as they grow older.
This also means that they become more sensitive to failure. It’s not uncommon to hear Asian people say: “What if I try this and fail at my age? I will lose face so I am not taking any risk.”
But this is not an Asian problem. We also see senior staff in the West less likely to change the way they do things, no matter how the innovation can improve efficiency. There are still people going to the bank to deposit and withdraw cash when I haven’t got cash in my wallet for almost a decade now.
Unwillingness to change is motivated by fear of failure.
The problem with saving face is risk-adversity. This is as much of an extreme as being overly adventurous.
But not only that, it’s the fear of failure and others’ judgements that’s problematic. We are limiting ourselves. It takes away our freedom to live happily and constantly challenging ourselves.
The joy of taking risks at retirement
To have a second career at the age of 60, I believe the best thing to do is to have our own businesses.
We are still our own boss and in charge of our own time. We don’t necessarily need to scale it up like young entrepreneurs if we don’t want to.
My dad, for example, has a small business that teaches customers how to bake cakes he tried from his extensive travels (he is cool, I know!).
He schedules the shop's opening hours to his schedule. He always plays a game of tennis with his mates in the morning, follows by a dim-sum lunch, before opening his shop at 1 pm(well, who bakes before noon anyway).
Life’s a series of sales pitches
My mum envies my dad’s business because he has something to look forward to every day and the stress is not very high. I asked her why doesn’t do something fun too, that’s when she told me an incident in the past.
She was trying to convince her friend to give her son a particular cream that will help with his eczema. Unfortunately, that friend wasn’t happy with my mum’s advice, and for some reason, they weren’t friends anymore.
Mum’s taken aback by this, thinking there’s no way she can sell anything given most business will involve some kind of selling. She cares about her friends, what if she becomes too pushy again and lost them all?
Faceless.
When dad heard this, he laughed and said, “So did you think that my customers just signed up to my baking class as soon as I opened my shop five years ago? Of course not! I learn to sell by trying and failing, and let go of the ones that ignore you!”
Letting go of the face and the failures
It was a light bulb moment for my mum. She never discussed this with my dad before, she only saw how my dad radiated with joy even at the beginning of his business venture.
All entrepreneurs will know this. In the beginning, converting interests to cash is painful.
We are convinced that our product/service will solve the problems of our customers and bring value to their lives, yet they don’t always think so. Either they don’t think there’s a problem, or they don’t think we are the solution.
With the former, it’s marketing and education; with the latter, we can do nothing but learn and let go.
My mum hung on to her friend’s dramatic response to her advice (she wasn’t even trying to sell, she was genuinely worried about her son). I think that woman was just going through a tough time and reacted irrationally.
My mum should’ve learned from this and adjusted her pitch next time.
If you are a fellow writer, you’d know the number of rejections we get when pitching to publications. If you are running a start-up, you’d know the scepticism of conservative customers.
I’m doing both so I’m being rejected, ignored and questioned every day. Thick skin is my only armour.
Let those failures go!
Think about it objectively, did they reject our pitch because they aren’t ready for it, or because we need to improve our sales pitch? If it’s the latter, then be grateful, we have something to learn!
Follow my journey as a lazy entrepreneur who tries to build a 100-year life with balance, mindfulness and sustainability (←i.e. not burning out).