Ten Years

August arrived again this year, the way it always does. And each time it swings by, I take time to thank God. It is my birthday month. 44 years this year. It is also the month, ten years ago, that I was in ICU.

The day I was extubated, but still "tubated"

Intensive Care, Tan Tock Seng, August 2016. Wrestling with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Paralysed, breathing through a tube, fed through my nose. I've written about that before. The helplessness, the prayer, the line that came to me on the bed when I had nothing else left to hold onto.

Victory is not in the outcome. Victory is in the choices we make.

So many things have happened since. I have changed jobs. I have picked up new skills. I have spoken at events on financial planning. I started a blog. Small changes, each one of them, but laid end to end they have left me more measured, and more willing to hold more than one perspective at a time. I can't say the time in ICU has lost its meaning. But the memory has faded. That is not a lo

ss; it is just what living does.

What stayed was the conviction. That line has outlasted the room it was born in. It keeps surfacing, every now and then, in situations that look nothing like a hospital bed.

But being human, I know it is not a belief I hold as firmly as I tell it. Or one I still hold unchanged.

I left teaching in December 2017, after teaching for a decade. I left for a completely different world. Self-employed, commission role. Chalk and cheese. I left because I felt called to make a difference in people's lives through their finances. I left because I had seen the power of a well-planned financial life, the strength it gives us to live better. My own finances had worked out largely by chance, and I didn't want to keep relying on chance.

The next few years were a struggle. I kept telling people I chose this path, that I chose it to make an impact. And an impact was certainly made. On me. I wrestled with a lower income, year after year. I wrestled with the fear of an unknown future. I wrestled with self-esteem. With doubt. With God. I did not like the path I was on, no matter how freely I had chosen it.

Victory is not in the outcome. Victory is in the choices we make.

In reality, more often than not, I wanted victory to be both.

It wasn't until 2024 that something arrived that looked like proof. My income had steadied. Not spectacular, just sufficient, and relatively predictable, which is not a word self-employed people get to use very often. Somewhere in those years the thing I had leapt into had quietly become a business. I could take a breath. The numbers said I would be okay.

And when that came, I noticed something in myself I hadn't expected to find. Not gratitude first. Relief.

So I am no longer sure I hold the line the way I first received it. After those years, the belief has evolved.

The first victory is in the choices we make. The second victory is being allowed to own the outcome.

I still hold the first. We are victors the moment we choose. Not because the choice was correct, but because choosing is the one thing that remains ours. The victory is not the outcome. The victory is the power to choose.

But I am no longer willing to pretend the outcome doesn't matter. A good outcome validates the choice. It emboldens us to make the next one, and the one after that. Success is its own kind of support for success. Anyone who tells you the outcome is irrelevant has probably already had a good one.

I don't know how the next ten years go. I don't know whether I'll get proof this time either, for the choices I am making now, the ones I won't be able to confirm until some Augusts from now. I'd like to say I've learned to stop needing to know. I haven't, not fully. But I've learned enough to keep choosing anyway, with one hand on today and one open toward whatever tomorrow turns out to be.

I am not describing recklessness. I am describing what it actually feels like to trust something before it has paid you back. Slower than it sounds. Less certain than it looks from the outside. Ten years on, that is still the kind of victory I have found worth having.

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I write on topics related to financial habits and decisions. Do explore my other articles at https://www.williamseah.com/blog if the ideas resonate. Drop me an email at reach.william@gmail.com or text me at 9673 1523 if you'd like to chat over coffee or whisky.