The last 15 months have been a huge experiment and exploration of what my next 1 billion seconds will look like. October 2025 concluded by first 1 billion seconds of my life. Perhaps I have 2 more billion seconds to experience and I want to take some time to reflect on my journey, experiment with new versions of me and conclude on the lessons I want to take with me in my next 2 billion.
This video was made in Oct 2025. Whilst this post is written in Dec 2025.
Past
For the longest time, I’ve been known as a “Type A” person. Someone who’s a go-getter, someone who’s very strong in energy and someone with a large presence. I now learn that that’s called masculine energy. To be fair, my childhood is very masculine. My cousins are mainly males. I studied economics, and there were a lot of males. I work in technology-finance-economics which is even more dominated by males. So it became natural for me to operate like a male in a male-dominated space. That was the only way I knew how to work.
For context, I think masculine energy is:
Being super structured. Like having systems all around your life. At one point, my life was so systemised I thought I was autistic and asked people around me if I was. I am not lol
Very assertive. I have a goal, I achieve it. That is the only way I know how.
Extremely logical. I remember having argument with girls when the girls want to rant and complain, when all I want to do is to break their problems down to a logic flow and figure out how to solve it. Turns out, that’s not what a good friend is. I know better now. Being logical is second nature to me while I had to learn to be more emotional.
In general, masculine energy is rational, stable, focused. And I operate in this world.
What changed.
Lots of things changed at once and long story short, I got to learn about feminine energy. It was something I HAD to learn. It was not natural to me. This coincided with the time I was learning all the weaknesses of me. For example, because I’m too structured, I’m not adaptable enough. Sure I can adapt and I do, but it takes a much longer time to adapt and pivot that I would like. I had a large goal, and despite a company not finding product market fit, I was still adamant to go ahead by pivoting new customer segments. In reality, I should have assessed the company’s business model and pivot the whole model instead. (E.g. move away from providing analytics to providing insights or advice)
Learning how to be more adaptable took a long time. Gosh. It took 1 whole year, and that’s why I didn’t write many entries in 2025. I was busy experimenting, learning, trying, pivoting. I can only now sit down and reflect on my journey and lessons because I have experimented. It may feel like a costly activity in terms of opportunity cost, but I think this 12-15 months of experimentation is very beneficial for my next 1 billion seconds.
This is what feminine energy is to me:
Of course, the lesson here is that you need both types of energy, I’m just trying feminine energy in its full form first then figure out how to integrate both
Being flexible. I stopped my structure and focus on feeling, being, and feeling intuition instead of relying on structure. It was UNCOMFORTABLE initially! I felt quite lost without structure. But I’ve learnt enough now to know how to integrate both structure and flexibility.
Embracing the nurturing, receptive and fluid side of me. The time I felt nurturing was when I have calls and mentorship sessions with my team. I feel like a mother sometimes lol but otherwise, I’m usually just logical and quite “cold”. I’ve since learnt to be softer (?) and warmer. I used to be proactive bc I think it reflects being prepared. But reactivity is also good, as it IS being adaptable. So I’m learning now that being reactive is sometimes good and that is being fluid. For example, I definitely move in a much softer way now. I think ballet helped.
Vulnerability. I talk about vulnerability so often because I think I’m still horrible at showing it. In the last 12 months, I actively showed vulnerability and asked for help. It feels uncomfortable to be to show weakness. It feels embarrassing that one is not enough and one needs external help. Asking for favours is also another very challenging task but I’m learning to show my vulnerable side. This is really great because I found various mentors and build closer deeper friendships this way.
And of course, I also started to embrace my feminine side physically. I am styling better, I am wearing more feminine cuts like dresses and skirts. I take more care about my skin and highlight my feminine side. I’m learning to be my feminine self in a male-dominated space. I think THIS is how I can encourage more women to come into the space. Competing on being masculine with men is just not fair game. I like playing a different game with my own rules.
Present
The first 1 billion seconds of life had been great. My heart is full. I’m filled with joy, great memories and some scars. I have made tons of mistakes and I have made good decisions. I’m ready to conclude the lessons of the last 12-15 months and carry the lessons on with me to my next billion seconds.
These are going to sound rather obnoxious but they hold true to me after my experiments.
6 Lessons
An intelligence, beautiful and independent person is extremely powerful. And honestly, being a woman is a bonus.
Honestly, keep that mind filled with knowledge to add value to the world. Everyone loves beautiful things, especially beautiful people. And being financially independent or comfortable at least is really powerful. Beauty sounds so superficial, but when you have value share from your brains, the external beauty does help as a medium to carry that message far and wide. Unfortunately I’ve seen intelligent people on panels but people ignore them because they simply show up rather poorly.
Feminine energy and masculine energy work hand in hand.
This yin-yang logic makes more and more sense each day. One cannot simply just rely on a single energy. Being all focused without fluidity or flexibility is a huge weakness. Being all soft and vulnerable without a focus or structure to achieve one’s goal is a waste of time. Both is good. Both in integration and unity. Some days you need one more than the other. And that is okay. Both makes one unstoppable.
Create home wherever you are.
This might be my feminine energy speaking. My spaces used to be practical. A bed, a wardrobe, a mirror. But that is what a hotel room is. There is no character, no cosiness, no homey feeling. That is no longer a space I want for myself, no matter how short-term I am in there. Perhaps it is in my feminine energy phase where I finally learnt to make my place like home. The furniture, the artwork, the layout. The speak of who I am in a place that is mine. I love coming home and being home.
It is okay to pause, assess and experiment.
I’m lucky or unlucky that things were planned and went my way in my first one billion seconds. Go to school, love what I studied, studied what I loved, scholarships, lots of travel, worked abroad. Whatever I wanted, I got it. But that means I never really had much experience with failure and pivoting. It isn’t even failure if it’s a pivot. It’s just assessing and experiment. And yes, it takes time. But this is all sharpening the saw. You need time to do so and you will be much swifter later. I’m excited for the next 1 billion seconds.
One thing at a time.
I excel when I’m doing one thing at a time. The duo-company set up did not work and will not work, at least for me. I simply suck at doing more than one thing at a time. Of course this can go very macro. For example, I was specialising in token economics before and everything I did surrounded that. Now, I’m doing the same with economics being the system design and structure, while the main focus is agentic fintech. And all the clients I’m working with are in this field. That can be quite broad in terms of agentic technology, fintech systems, cross border regulations, etc. But it’s still 1 focus, all coordinated. That makes more sense. As opposed to previously, it was consultancy and advisory compared to tech build. It was a very different domain knowledge and from a fundamental level, they did not cross.
I know who I am. Stop trying to change that for the sake of changing.
Maybe it’s less of a lesson to take away but an affirmation of who I am. I spent all my life reflecting and improving, like a master painter constantly adding touches to that masterpiece. And after experimenting with these various potential variations of me, I’ve come to conclude that I AM living my ideal life and I want to keep living it this way. Nothing wrong with changing, nothing wrong with wanting to change. But I wanted to change for the SAKE OF CHANGE thinking it’s time. Like some caterpillar having to change to a butterfly. I am already changing and that big mission, after going in circles, comes back to the same big mission. That is me, I’ll conclude. And I love her and the big mission.
Future
So what’s next? Proper integration.
Balance is a lie. There is no such thing as balance. Life is constant entropy. Instead, integration is the word.
Back to my systems. 5min daily reflection. Quarterly reflections. This is where I have my masculine structure instead of my feminine intuition. Good to feel, good to also have structure.
Focus on the new direction. I was exploring the various directions, now I have focus. Keep doing what I’ve been doing before and now have an eye out for design of content (e.g. slides, videos).
Continue to show the soft sides of me whilst still being the knowledgable me. (e.g. I started painting again, I’m going to upgrade my gardening skills, my wardrobe is curated)
Pretty easy. I have done them before, and now I’m combining and doing them again. I’m excited!
Here’s to the next 1 billion seconds.
Love,
L
