7 Habits to Build A City Of Good

[Music]

in this age of selfie which is

technically i think

um entered the dictionary in 2013.

we have a lot of self-oriented things

now these days right we have

self-help we have self-care we have

self-medication

you know um there’s a lot of self um

but at the same time there’s a lot of uh

there’s a lot of pain actually

that’s out there too and when we think

about it like has all this self

focus actually made us happy

they say that the one predictor of

happiness is not

the size of your wallet size your house

how much stuff you have number of family

members or anything like that

the greatest predictor of happiness is

whether you have someone to call

when you really need help and when that

number

of people that don’t have someone to

call

in the society goes up that overall

level of happiness and that society goes

down

so in this age of the me

myself and i how do we become

more other centered not just

self-centered

how do we ask ourselves how can we be

someone that truly knows

another person and feel allow ourselves

to feel known by others too so i’d like

to start with an exercise

you have two options option one

is to look at someone next door to you

in the eyes with your soul

open

for 30 seconds option two

is lean over take a little selfie

okay we’re gonna try this exercise now

three two

one

and i want to see if you can show

kindness with your eyes

and just allow yourself to be you

i remember one time i did this and there

was a woman

who came up to me afterwards and

i noticed that she was crying and or she

had been crying

and i asked her i said gosh you know are

you okay and she said

you know i can’t remember the last time

somebody looked at me in the eye for a

minute

and so maybe just maybe

you have changed someone’s life today

too

by just being seen by being known

and by allowing yourself to be seen and

known

and the difficult thing actually is that

we live in a city that’s just known for

a lot of good things we have good food

we have good

shopping you know with good education we

have good housing

but we’re kind of a busy transactional

kind of place and you know

wherever you go you have this wall of

mobile phones you know we’re taught to

be

suspicious of strangers and actually not

kind to them

how do we stop for the one because the

hidden cost

of being transactional and and

and just absorbed in a city like ours is

that we actually become this sterile

soulless lifeless place

that only has bodies and places and

things for rent

how do we become this city of good i

mean ultimately

a city of goods made up of people people

like you and me

and that means the things that we choose

to do

the habits the practices and the norms

that we choose to have

make a huge difference and so i want to

share with you today

seven habits in the city of good

some of you may recall the joshua bell

experiment the washington post asked him

to stand in the subway and of course you

know

joshua bell has been called the virtuoso

violinist he’s the head of the

saint martins of the fields academy i

mean this man

plays to like huge

concert halls

and he went into the subway

and the a social experiment was there to

test

would anybody notice him would anybody

stop

would anybody maybe give him some money

and so they estimated maybe 10 might

stop

maybe four percent would appreciate the

quality and

150 maybe within an hour

well 27 out of the thousand odd people

that actually passed that day gave him

some money

out of that only seven stopped to listen

and 52.17 was collected

now what’s wrong with this picture how

is it that a man whose life

is celebrated and and who has received

so many

accolades is virtually ignored

how is it that we cannot even appreciate

that beauty so habit one

is notice beauty it is all around us

how do we stop for the one and

appreciate that one

so many years ago i actually um was

working on an

initiative to break the debt bondage

that

um foreign workers actually experience

when they come

to foreign to foreign places like

singapore and i interned in a hotel

and i experienced the other end of a

hotel which is

a really heavy duvets

cleaning up after people bedrooms

bathrooms toilets

and it was messy it was very messy

um and now i clean up after myself a

little bit more because i realized

that those places that i used are used

by other people

and cleaned by other people um actually

too

and i remember on my first day i walked

into the hallway

and there’s a service standard which

says if there’s someone about you know

12 feet in front of you look them in the

eye

and greet them so i tried something

look them in the eye and greet them

and that person walks straight by me

and completely ignored me never even

never even acknowledged my presence

now the fact of the matter actually is

my family owns that hotel and if i met

him in the lobby

or in a restaurant i think we would have

had a different interaction

and there is something fundamentally

wrong with that picture

that second habit is now about for me

respecting those places and respecting

people

it sounds so simple but being known

isn’t about being that rich and famous

person

it’s about that posture of the heart

that posture that we have towards one

another by recognizing that we are that

good and precious gift

and so is someone else

so i’m one of the worst culprits in the

universe

you know when it comes to pausing and

noticing things really because i’ve

been told i talk too fast i walk too

fast

i’m constantly multitasking but what i

try and do now actually on a daily basis

at least twice which is usually when i

you know sit down to eat is actually

stop

notice who’s around me and just give

thanks

and my role model actually for this is

my nana

and in five days she is turning 100.

she is amazing she is completely amazing

that was a 95 and that was a 99

year old picture of her she grew up poor

um but truly rich in love she raised

chickens when she was uh when she was

young

um but she was somebody who just really

lived her life um for others was very

active with war widows

um in los angeles uh where she where she

grew up

one day i asked her actually was the

birthday the morning of her 90th

birthday i said nana

what is the secret to being so

amazing and vivacious and i’ve asked her

this since so i know that it’s

consistent and true

and she said

i think i’m just a grateful person

and i thought wow and she said yeah you

know i get up in the morning and i just

say thanks

i’m i got up and then she said you know

what i’m really happy that grandpa could

just get up and

go to the bathroom by himself isn’t that

kind of ridiculous

like what’s the big deal but

actually having interacted with a lot of

older people and i’ve been having my

parents get older i realized that

getting up

and going to the bathroom by yourself is

not something you should take for

granted

so it is that habit of stopping and

giving thanks and truly even though i’m

not even half her age yet i want to be

half as good as her

when i am give thanks

regularly the good news is that there

are more people in this city

um that want to make it more lovable and

not just livable

and i’m glad that this is actually my

job

at nvpc and that’s where we have this

vision that singapore can be the city of

good

and we define that as where people come

together

to give their best not their scraps

you know but they’re best for others

and not just themselves

how do we come together and do together

what we cannot do alone

because change doesn’t just happen by

yourself

and what’s so important actually in this

process of change

is that we remember the stories that

make

up this city of good the stories of our

lives

now about three years ago we started

this this project to actually

tell a kind of people’s history of

singapore it wasn’t about the political

history or the economic history and

you’ve

heard a lot of that in this amazing

bicentennial year but it was actually

about the singaporeans

in our in our recent modern history who

looked out for other people

about hiv counselors who would hug

their patients in the 80s when

doctors and nurses were quitting their

jobs

it’s about policemen who would like look

out for youth at risk

and and and and be and befriend them

it’s about death row counselors

all of these stories are told by the

prophets of our time

the filmmakers and each of those films

gives you an opportunity to click

through and actually

learn more donate volunteer or share

your voice

to help support their cause

now that took us three years and 15

people

and a lot of time to actually uh create

but guess what

each of you also is a storyteller

that story tells every day what is

what is your mission when you

when you come online do you

build up and edify and encourage and

shout out and notice the beauty and give

thanks for others

that’s something that we can do every

day

in the city of good the bigger scale

around this too is how we engage

businesses

amazingly um it is it is actually

what we can use the tech for good

actually to create a massive change

last week um we actually announced to

a collaboration with a benefits

aggregator a benefits company

that was now going to donate um all the

unused benefits at the end of the year

actually to charities and give people

the opportunity to just say okay well i

didn’t use it

let’s let’s actually do something with

that

and that was actually right here just in

in singapore

on a bigger scale when wechat introduced

the giving tile

into their app actually they they

garnered over 3 billion unique donations

and over 1.4 billion yen

the biggest single day of donations

actually

in in china and taobao actually has over

a million

businesses online that are giving part

of what their proceeds are um

to actually charities out there too so

these platforms can be amazing

platforms for good and how does this all

happen

actually it happens because people

regular people actually

reach out and and get involved and stand

for something

now i want to tell you about kylie and

jeremy

i met them at this cafe i was at in um

in rochester minnesota way out there

i noticed that they had these little

hearts um on their

on their name tag i’m like kylie jeremy

you know and i asked them i said what

why are you what is that all about and

kylie said you know um

you know i i wear this i wear this uh

for my grandma and jeremy said well you

know

uh this is my weekend job you know my

day job is actually scheduling

um at the breast cancer screening clinic

and i said how is it that you you know

are you know bringing this into your

cafe at the moment said well you know we

just thought this was something

important so we asked our boss whether

we could do this

and you know then we ordered these

little stickers um which we now cover

the tops of coffee

coffee cups with you know actually too

and we use we use it as

a point of as a point of advocacy kylie

and jeremy are not

massive influencers they maybe have like

100 or something you know customers you

know or two

a day so if you have

a hundred customers a day reach 100

customers

if you have a thousand reach a thousand

if you have a million reach a million it

doesn’t really matter

it’s where you start and it’s what you

stand for another habit

is to stand for something and ultimately

i think it starts at home it starts with

you my mom had this

massive stroke and

and she almost died and they told us

well if she survives this coma she’s

probably going to turn out a vegetable

and and

it was very hard and and but you know

she she did survive and i remember that

next year we

my sister my mom and i decided well

actually my sister and i decided at the

time

that we were going to celebrate my mom

and our birthdays

by raising funds actually for an

organization

that was going to refurbish their

physiotherapy room

because that’s so important as part of

your rehabilitation

so we did that and we thought you know

what this is so much of a better way to

celebrate your birthday

um you know rather than like complaining

you have wrinkles or whether you have

more to love

you know or or whether you’re hosting

the right party

or whether the right people are coming

or whether your kid has a nice goody bag

to go home with you know

wow what if we just rethought this whole

idea of

of our of our of our birthdays too um

and this was a sign that we actually um

put up as our as our fundraiser kind of

like idea and it was a it was a sign

that we would

place at the bottom of my mom’s bed and

we would just have it there

so that if she ever kind of like opened

her eyes she would see it

and we would remind her actually that i

am an overcomer

and yes you are um

and so when we think about it truly the

city of good

is not always about the big things there

are the spectacular and the big things

but

it’s actually about a lot of the small

things it’s about

the small actions that we can take every

single day

because ultimately cities are not just

about buildings

and famous places or pastimes but cities

are about people

and it’s measured by the by the by the

amount of love

that we actually pour into a place the

stories

that we choose to tell the habits that

we keep

and the things that we decide to

practice

so in summary may i invite you all

to notice beauty to respect our places

and people to give thanks and pay it

forward

to share good stories

to stand for something and to start at

home

thank you

you