Emotional Health: Jocelyn Chong on Mastering Self-Care and Unlocking Your Leadership Potential

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It. Welcome to the A World of Difference podcast. I'm Lori Adams Adams-Brown and this is. A podcast for those who are different. And want to make a difference.

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Our guest today comes to us from. Australia by way of Malaysia, where she grew up. Jocelyn Chong is on the show today. Jocelyn is a business growth mentor and coach, four time number one international bestselling author, keynote speaker and certified life Coach. Jocelyn has worked in the banking industry.

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She's got over 20 years of experience leading multiple eight figures businesses and building high performance sales teams in both banking and finance for the leading banks in Australia. She's been featured in many publications. She also infuses spirituality and her business intuitively. And she's a heart centered, entrepreneur, compassionate and resourceful person who thrives on human transformation and loves to help others create a life by design. She's been featured all throughout Australia and in other countries and her work that she's done and I am really excited to have this conversation with her today because she's not only worked on her own self development, but she also enjoys nature, loves to get away, prioritizes rest.

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And as we're in this emotional health series, one of the places we find emotional health very difficult to pull off is in the banking industry and finance sectors because of the busyness of those kind of worlds. Jocelyn is going to talk to us about that today, how she's navigated that in her own career and how she coaches people to do that as well. So, a very warm welcome today all the way from Australia to Jocelyn Chong.

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Hello, Jocelyn, and welcome to their World of Difference podcast today from Australia. How are you? Well, thank you, Lori. Delight being here. It's just been so fun just getting to know you and chatting with you.

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And now we are on this space where we are just going to dialogue and we're going to dive deeper into a few more aspects that we can share with our audience. That's right, yes. I am really excited. You have such an interesting background and all the things you've done, just career wise and different languages and cultures. And that is really our sweet spot here at the A World of Difference Podcast.

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We have so many who are multicultural, multilingual, have lived in different countries and do all kinds of wonderful things in their career and their hobbies, just volunteering to make a difference in the world. So I'm really excited to get to talk to you today both about who you are, the work that you do, and how you can be helpful to us. We're in a series now, we're just finishing our change series and we're in a series now where we're talking a lot more about our own emotional health and happiness as leaders, as difference makers. And so your coaching and your experience are so valuable. I wanted to start off, though, asking you, you at some point in your life, moved to Australia from Malaysia.

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And tell us about what your background is like and how you ended up in Australia doing the work that you do. Absolutely. So how many of you have traveled around the world and moved to a different country? If you have, maybe you can just put your hands up or whenever you listen to this and say yes to yourself. Well, Lori and I had lived in different countries and we are very privileged to be able to do that and live and immerse ourselves in the culture.

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For myself, a little bit about my story. I was born and raised in Malaysia and I left homeowner 17. I was shy and introvert and still is. And I learned so much about self confidence. Like, I was in a family business growing up.

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I knew the people around me only. And then I had to uproot myself, move to a different country, learn the culture, learn the policies, learn the system, learn to interact with people. And that was how I was so stretched. And I always tell my clients about this, that your dreams are always on the other side of the spectrum where it's uncomfortable. And when we can think about that zone, you will always get closer to your dreams when you do uncomfortable things.

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And that was my learning curve. And then from there, I completed my degree in accounting and finance. I then decided to live in Australia and pursue a career in banking and finance for two decades. And in that time of two decades, I've learned so much because I was very privileged to work in a very multicultural company. It's the top bank in Australia, and so we serve the population of Australia.

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And also we were the third largest taxpayer in the country because our share price was one of the highest and still is. And so there's so much of a work that I do with clients, one on one with different people in different division, and we serve so many different types of profession. And I've learned so much about along the way, not the strategy side, but the mindset part. And it's actually the mindset part that really takes us to a whole nother level. And so, earlier on, Lori is mentioning about a season of how we manage our emotional health.

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It is that season. The more we invest into who we are, our emotional health, the more we can give. And so my message today is that invest in your own self care strategies as a leader, as a mum or a dad listening to this, or you might be a volunteer listening to this, or you might be a team leader leading five to ten people, or you could be leading 500 people. Wherever you are in your stage of life, you will need to prioritize your emotional health, your mental health, your spiritual health and your physical health. And so, yeah, we can explore more of that.

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But that was just in a nutshell, wanted to share that message coming through, and I thought that was divine appointment. Yeah, exactly. Well, so much of that was part of my experience in Asia, living there for 20 years in Indonesia and Singapore and just traveling all around Asia, I think in the west. And Australia has this kind of Western mentality as well, even though there's a lot of diversity there. We tend to separate our bodies, our emotional health, our emotions, as if they're not a part of a relational interaction, but just more as if they're individual and almost separate from ourselves and our bodies.

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And then even spiritually, we often separate those as different, but they're all very interconnected. So the business choices we make, the decisions we make toward working toward justice or being complicit in injustice and all those things we carry in ourselves. And so being more congruent with all of those different parts of who we are is so important as we are leaders making a difference. How would you say? Because you grew up in Malaysia, in Sarawak and Kuching, we have actually maybe some listeners listening from there today and people in Australia that might understand what kind of a jump that was for you as you made that shift.

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Obviously, you had to make some significant mindset shifts. As a 17 year old, what were some of your biggest obstacles and how did you overcome them?

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So the key ones were adapting to a whole different culture. And I think it's easy to feel that you are a second class citizen when you move to a different country. You don't have the right network, and you have to build that from ground up. And so that was the first part that I noticed that I had to build my own community to support how I'm going to progress. And then the next part was adapting to the working culture because I was working in a different country's expectation, and it's learning along the way.

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So there were a lot of different types of fears that I had to overcome. And like I said earlier, I was very shy, I was very introverted. So I had to learn to speak up and build that self confidence. Number one, a lot of times in the educational structure in Asia, they don't expect you to present or to speak up or to question. And that was the first thing that I had to learn to understand that it's okay to ask question and it's okay to speak about my opinions, my thoughts, and to present it in a way that is very gracious and elegant.

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And so it took time to develop that skill because all that are skills that we can develop over time. And in terms of immersing myself into different culture, it's to really firstly seek to understand. That was the first thing that I always felt important that we need to understand where they come from. Understand why they think that way, understand that their upbringing is different. And so it's over the years, the incremental learning.

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And as a people leader, I had to lead so many different types of cultures that come into my team because we have a very multinational, I suppose race, gender and age groups. When you are in a group that I've got people I had a staff member, he was in his sixty s and I had people coming from different country working and sorry to be able to bring them together and to get results and to communicate in a way that people understand. And so simplifying the communication aspect is so important. Understanding the universal language like smile, healthy eye contact, healthy open body language is so basic but it is those things that you can already quickly build rapport with someone that people can just warm up and then communicate it in the most simplest way, in a way that everyone could really understand and ensure that it's not complex. Because sometimes I notice that in leadership we want to make things even more complex because we think that that is more important and there's more authority around that.

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It's actually quite the opposite. And to be a leader you will want to communicate in the most easy to understand method and so more people can understand, more results can be achieved. People enjoy working across different culture, gender, age group, background yeah, multicultural I suppose when you work in a country like mine and adapting and adapting and have that change mentality is so important. I continually evolve and grow and learn different ways to communicate more and more effectively because we all grow and evolve, especially post COVID now the world become even smaller with so many formats and AI and tools and methods of communication that brings people closer at a global capacity together. And so with this podcast, a World of Difference podcast is exactly where the message is at the heart and core of it that the more we can connect with the heart and soul of individuals we can touch more lives.

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Wow. I wholeheartedly agree with what you just said and I think that whether people work in business, whether people work in education, government, faith based basis like you said, the world is becoming a smaller place. And when we seek to grow as people and have a growth mindset and care for our own emotional health and happiness, it just turns out that the more we open ourselves up to different ways humans live this human life and understanding their cultures, the more we become open to new ways of finding happiness and emotional health. And I think, like you said, it starts with that risk taking, whatever that thing is you're afraid of to be a bit brave and push forth. And you made that jump as a 17 year old to go to a whole other continent and learn a whole other culture and language and be exposed to many cultures and many languages in a place like Australia.

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And so if you were going to give advice to somebody who's experiencing a little bit of fear right now, maybe they're a team leader. We'll just take that as an example. Somebody's a team leader in business. They've been given this role as a people leader, a team leader. And they have people on their team that have very different ways of doing business or working.

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And they feel afraid as a leader to stay curious and explore new ways. What would you say to that person who's listening right now? So if you are a team leader, in many occasions when I support team leaders in the work they do, how many of you have got mentors? How many of you seek mentors to support you? How many of you build relationship with mentors on an ongoing service basis?

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Because if you can really take those three questions and answer that for yourself, you will then really accelerate your growth as a team leader. More often than not, a lot of team leaders do it on their own because they are tasked with that responsibility. And so you want to take charge. But equally, you need someone who has done that maybe 50% ahead of you, 100% ahead of you that had done it well, and ask them questions. Build relationship, get their wisdom, build that network with people who are already successful to give you the guidance so that you then become a very, very strong leader.

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And you really can support people better. If you have not done so, then do that. I would also encourage that you find a sport network that can help you become a better people leader. Because when you do that, you will meet people who also see in that space the same challenge, the same issues that you want to be able to talk to them and support them. There are at that level, certain type of issues that you will solve, right?

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A leader who leads ten people will solve different types of issue than a leader who leads 100 people. Because then there is a next level issue and problems to address. And so find a network of people that does that really well and ask them questions. Ask them how do they lead, what resources do they use, what tools and strategies do they apply to get results and help their people perform at their optimum level? I would also add this as corporate trainer, I use Ed's Profiling because it helps people understand their behavior and how they operate.

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And when they understand themselves a lot more, they know how to communicate with people of different strength and different communication style. And when you do that, you will see a significant difference and change in the energy of the team. And so find mentors, do Edis Profiling to help understand who you are and how to communicate even more. And then find support network that are on the same level, bounce off ideas, find strategies, tools that are supportive to help you build a team that can deliver optimum performance for the organization. Great advice.

00:17:32

Yes. Because not only are we a product of our cultures that raise us, and that could be multiple cultures for some of us who are third culture raised or maybe who have parents from different cultures as well or have lived in multiple cultures. But each of us also has personality strengths, opportunities for growth and our own lived experience, which is unique in the bodies and the brains that we have been walking around in. Right. So it's so important, I think, to understand that self leadership is really one of the hardest parts of leadership.

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And self leadership includes working on our own emotional health and owning what we're responsible for within our own personalities and how we communicate. Right. We are responsible for that and what we bring to the table as people leaders, because we know that leaders set the tone for their teams, for the organizations that we lead, for the volunteer groups that we lead, all the spaces we show up in, guess what? We show up as ourselves. So that's why it's so important to Stephen Covey, the seven principles.

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He would say sharpen the saw. Right. So a lot of us here in the North American context right now who have kids out of school for the summer, if our parents are taking some time off. But it's so important to daily know where that space is for ourselves, that we get the rest that we need, that we sharpening the saw also includes the mentoring aspect getting better because we want to be sharp. Right?

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That's the whole point of sharpening the saw. How have you implemented that type of thing in your life? How do you find rest and renewal and how do you find ways to take breaks in the American context? We are not leading the world in this area. This is an area we look to Europe, we look to Latin America, we look to other places for how they're doing.

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Rest and renewal. Well, how do you experience that in the Australian context?

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Lori, allow me this opportunity to make a confession. The first ten years of my career, I really didn't take rest. And I realized that I cannot give out of an empty tank. And from there, I realized, reading all these leadership books, like Stephen Covey's book, studying so many different leaders who excel, the things that stood out for me from those leaders that I studied their lives was that they went through life events like disease, divorce, death, that triggered that. And I realized that I didn't want to reach that point, to realize that self care is so important.

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And so I remember the first time I went to Hong Kong for a holiday. That was the first time that I could leave the country because I was always running projects that require me to be there for approval for signed sign off and a lot of reviews done. So I never had the opportunity to turn off my at the time BlackBerry, if you remember, or you had to bring in your laptop even when you travel. But I realized that that holiday at Hong Kong, I needed the rest and so I needed to disconnect and I slept for 10 hours a day. And that's luxury.

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So number one, good sleep is so important. How many of us have not had good sleep? How many of us had not looked after our health with nourishing food? I am guilty of that. I put up my hands because more often than not I had back to back meetings and I never feed myself with good nourishing food.

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So if you plan nourishing food, drink lots of water throughout the day. If you can't always drink drinks that really nourish your body, take health supplements that build up your body. Vitamin B is good. Things that are so basic that really can really enable us to make sound decisions every time we make decision that comes from our body producing the energy to be able to think clearly. And so, my North American friends, I'm Summer now.

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Make sure you take the time, go out and play. I mean play, I mean go out, have fun, completely, have white space, chill, laugh, do silly things, do things that you have never done before and just really spend quality time with your family. Again, the sleep part. And if you're someone who needed time out, go and meditate. I've got friends who does silent meditation the whole Sunday 6 hours.

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Just shut up and just chill and just really be in a place of stillness. You could do yoga to really allow your body and blood flow to move. You could go out and just buy a journal and journal your future out and think creatively because your brain will feed you creative ideas when you can journal the future out. And so all these things are things that you can do. Some doesn't cost you much.

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So think about how you can integrate them into your day to day lives and work every moment you take, even if you do breath work for two to seven minutes a day, it makes so much in your life. The way you breathe, the way you present, the way you make decisions because there's enough oxygen running through your bloodstream. And sorry, all those things are very important for you to build you up as a human being. And don't take things too seriously. Have a laugh.

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Life is just short and just if things are not right, what's the worst case scenario? We can always do it again in different ways. So yeah, don't take two things too seriously. Love that advice. And I'm going to take it into my body and breathe it in and drink my water and try to be better at that too.

00:24:01

Right. We're all getting older every day and that's just part of human life. We're not the same way we were when we were ten years younger and it just requires different things at different seasons. And I think that the way we lead is also by example.

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I took some notes mentally on some of the things you were saying and I need to do better at just laughing a little bit or doing something just over the summer. That's kind of something maybe I've never done just to give my body a chance to experience something on this planet Earth that we all call home and cherish and love and take advantage of something out there. Yeah, my family is going to cancun for a week, staying in a resort and just reminding myself that I probably should really try to do better at unplugging that week and maybe go do something a little crazy with the family at some point, some adventure, because those are the things that we not only do for ourselves and our families, but that brings us back into our workplaces with more innovation. I work in tech and innovation is a huge value. And I think for many of us in our different industries, we look at what's happening in our world and so much is changing so fast.

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And one of the greatest aspects of being a leader and being marketable with our skills is our ability to innovate. And I think when we practice that in our everyday lives, it helps us to be more creative. And like you said, we need rest our brains when we're unrested, we have less creative thoughts when we're stressed and we have a lot of adrenaline and cortisol trying to keep us awake and caffeine. We aren't as creative as we would be if we had had all the REM sleep that we need. We always talk about the shower ideas.

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Take a long shower, maybe you'll get the best idea there. Right. But at your position as a coach, as somebody who rides and speaks and has had this career working in banking and coaching with different corporate clients and things. What is your observation about how career is changing in our generation, how business is changing and how people who are trying to sort of build their career need to position themselves as leaders for the future of work.

00:26:24

In my view, the future of work really integrate a lot of the digital aspect. So a lot of people might feel insecure of the fact that AI is going to take over their role. But I want to offer you this thought that nobody can take over you. You and I are one of a kind. We have been created and we have been placed on this Earth for duration.

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And so I want to really invite you to think that you are human. You are wired in a way that robot can never replace your brain power. The way you show empathy, the way you show compassion, the way you love, the way your heart beats, speak from your heart. And that will really, really translate very differently. And a lot of us may have I'm guilty of this, I don't know how many of you might have had times where you never had the opportunity to even process your emotions or feelings.

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You might hide them, you might suppress them. And I had to do a lot of inner work around really acknowledging my emotions, learning to process them healthily and then move on rather than suppressing them or hiding them. And then they start to really clock up and then one day they erupt in a way that is unpleasant and usually they erupt through death, divorce or diseases that can really impact someone's life. And so it is those events that I want to help you think through and manage your own emotions because we are human beings created with a buffet of emotions. And to learn how to process your emotions, I had to learn that.

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And I was masterful in suppressing my emotions because I was raised and born in a family where you don't show emotions, you always put your best foot forward and so you are never showing your failure, your mistakes or your missteps. And so I was brought and taught that I can't and so I didn't know how to be vulnerable. And for those of you who may not know much about a work on vulnerability, go and learn about Bernays Adams-Brown work. But what I wanted to help you understand here is to learn to understand your own emotions and to learn to process them. I did years of processing them and then knowing how to recognize and acknowledge who I am, how I behave, what are my strengths, what are not my strengths, and how to work with others to complement other people's strengths so that we can get the best results, are the best way forward.

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And so in terms of coaching is to really find coaches that can help you understand you better. And that when you understand who you are, what you stand for, how you grow, how you evolve. The world and the future of career will always present new opportunities. You will not be limited by opportunities. We are limitless being and sorrow evolve, find new ways of doing things.

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Just remember this right. Henry Ford, when he was asked what do you want? People would say, hey, you know what, I want to bust a horse. But he didn't. He visualized a car.

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And so think about at that point in time, his visualization skills, which is the tool that all of us have got, which is our brain, we could do the same. And so visualize about your future. There will be jobs that will come up that we never thought of possible. And so take it, champion it and stretch yourself and learn new skills and let go and unlearn here's. The trick to expLoring new opportunities is to be willing to unlearn the old patterns and break them out of your normality and learn to adapt new ways of thinking.

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And when you can break old patterns and traditional thinking style, the world of what is ahead of you is fun. It's inspiring, it's limitless. It's full of great opportunities and possibilities that at this point in time, we may not be able to think about it, but hey, you'll be surprising yourself in 15 years time. There were like, new things, right? Today we might have Internet, but 15 years from now, it'll be something else.

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XYZ and so be ready for change and embrace it. Embrace it. I love that. Embrace change and be ready for the thing that's not been created yet. This gives us a lot of opportunity to come together with our brains.

00:31:13

And that's why conversations like this are so important, because when you share your lived experience and I share mine, we come up with something together in each of our brains that we might not have ever come up with otherwise. So I love the call to mentoring. I love your call to give us mindset shifts around just taking risks and being open, having a growth mindset. Also just being ready with the way technology is changing, but also recognizing that human beings still play a role with our empathy, being open to our own emotions of curiosity and to the emotions of others as we lead. I think this really is going to help us as leaders face the future, whatever it holds.

00:31:57

We can't control how things will go, but we can lead ourselves. And as we practice self leadership, we show up giving people that we lead the opportunity to be themselves too. And that that's wonderful. We can welcome those differences and like we always do, make a difference together. What do you have on the horizon that you're working toward?

00:32:17

I know that you're a coach. You've written some things, you have some opportunities for one on ones, I think that you said, and some masterminds. Why don't you tell us a little bit about those? Yes. So for those of you who really want immersion and really want to fast track your success one on one, coaching is really ideal because then we get to dive deep into your specific scenario.

00:32:38

And I can really hone in on your strengths, keep you accountable so that you play on your strength and really help you excel in the fastest way. I like to work with clients and really help them collapse time so that they can get results. Sometimes you go, I need three years to get there. What if we can do that in six months? And you're willing to commit to that journey together?

00:33:03

And I will bring my 100%. And if you play 100%, you will see results. I've done that for thousands. Of people, I know that I can do that for you. The other option is that there is a number of workshops that I am facilitating.

00:33:20

So one of them is about self confidence. I know that that's one thing that a lot of people will build and really strengthen it at different cycle of your life, at different business cycle, at different career journey, we all expand our self confidence differently. And so you're welcome to really come and participate in my Master class and also I teach on communication as a corporate trainer as well. Sir, if you are listening to this podcast and you're looking for corporate trainer who wants to come in and facilitate on communications, in leadership, in speaking, in presenting, in really volunteering capacity as well because we can volunteer and really enhance our skills, that is something that I can help you. So, yeah, there is a lot there, but the part that I can help you is come into my space and let's chat.

00:34:17

If I can't help you, I have got a huge network of people that I can reach out to help you find the best fit for you, too. Well, I appreciate you and the work that you're doing. You really are making a difference in your one on ones and in your master classes and your corporate training and I'm sure just in your relationships and your family in Malaysia and in Australia. Wherever you are, thank you for just shining your light today and letting us see a little bit into your world and your experiences and letting us learn from you. Yeah, thanks for being on today and I wish you all the very best.

00:34:52

Jocelyn. Well, Lori, you have been a brilliant podcast host, so thank you so much for having me in this space and keep doing what you're doing. You're doing such a brilliant job and keep shining. And for those of you who are listening to this podcast, share that with two, three people that you really care, that you want them to really grow and expand and excel in what they do. Use this podcast as a resource.

00:35:18

A lot of us meet so many people every single day that need some encouragement. They just need an injection of fun or whatever it may be. Share this podcast with them. That's right. Thank you so much.

00:35:33

That's how we get better is together, by sharing what has helped us, isn't it? Thanks, Jocelyn. And we're going to have you hang out for our Patreon supporters for just one more question, but for now, we're signing off together. Thank you so much for being on today, Jocelyn. Thank you.

00:35:54

Isn't Jocelyn great? Just loved her perspective. I love how she has navigated the world of banking and finance and somehow managed to focus on emotional health, even though it's not easy. Like she said, she's a work in progress herself, but she's coaching people. She's two, three, maybe five steps ahead of the rest of us.

00:36:11

So please reach out to her for coaching. We'll link her stuff in the show notes so you can find her. Please read her books and follow her on the things she's doing in the media that she's been involved in doing interviews with, and other podcasts as well. And yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, whether you're in Australia, Malaysia, the US, wherever you're listening to this and what you resonated with, and maybe something that she said that's your takeaway and you're going to apply that to your life. Sometimes it can get overwhelming when you learn all these new things, but maybe if there's one thing she said that really just stuck with you, put it on a Post It note, stick it on your mirror, remind yourself of it over the next 30 days, and see if maybe things change in your life.

00:36:51

And once again, reach out to Jocelyn for coaching. And if you're not yet a part. Of our Difference Makers community, please hop in there and let us know how you enjoyed this episode. And check out another exclusive interview that we're going to have with Jocelyn posted on there very soon. For those of you who are in different parts of our tier levels, that you can get either one, two, three, or more exclusive episodes per month, depending on the tier level that you join with our Membership Club, I'd love to have you in there with the rest of our difference makers.

00:37:20

And as always, wherever you are, whether it's warm or cold, somewhere in between, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere doing road trips this summer, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere skiing on the slopes, or if you're in the tropics. And it's just warm for you all year round. And we're jealous of you. Wherever you listen to those podcasts, I'd love to hear it. Take a picture.

00:37:42

Take a picture of yourself on the slopes, on that road trip, hanging out by the beach. Wherever you listen to the podcast, I'd love to see it. Tag us on social media. You can find me on Twitter. Or you could tag a World of Difference podcast on Twitter.

00:37:54

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00:38:03

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