Canadian geek in Myanmar

After my last, fairly depressing post, I was going to work on a fun, upbeat post next but I have to say, it’s been a little difficult given the various conversations I’ve been having over the past few months.  For some reason, I’ve been surrounded by negativity lately, both personally and professionally.  Investors are moaning that there’s not enough deal flow, entrepreneurs are having a hard time with raising funds. On a more personal front, many of my friends have been in Myanmar for 2-3 years and the rose tinted glasses are certainly starting to dim. Everyone’s just a little too frustrated with life and work here these days.  It’s a good thing the holiday is upon us so everyone can go take a damn big breath and cool down.

While I’ve never been accused of being Susie Sunshine, I also try not to complain and either make the best of a situation or change it.  Living in Yangon, there also seems to be a really strange, twisted kind of insular view of how things are “crazy” here.  For instance, I recently rented a car and have started driving myself around town.  Nine out of ten people are shocked by this and always say, how do you deal with the traffic???  Um….seriously?!?  Yeah, there’s definitely some infrastructure problems here but I don’t see it much worse than most cities of equal size. Would Yangon benefit from a metro system? Sure! But have these people been to other large Asian cities like Jakarta or Ho Chi Minh during rush hour? Forget Asia, I’ve been known to idle for over 1.5 hours in stupid Vancouver traffic to travel the same distance that I would in Yangon in half the time…and Vancouver isn’t even known as a problematic traffic city.  Added to that, the city has half the population of Yangon with a skytrain and extensive public transit system.  So, yeah I get stuck in traffic sometimes in Yangon but I am wondering where all these expats have come from that in a city of 4-5 million, there are no traffic jams and all the drivers on the road are perfect and would never dream of speeding or passing on the right hand lane. Food for thought – according to Time.com, here is the list of the worst cities for traffic jams. See? Someone has it worse.

But this post isn’t meant to be about me ranting but rather to remind everyone that being surrounded by negativity can have major impacts to your life, work and health.  As an entrepreneur, I have to keep not only myself but also my team motivated at all times.  It’s hard enough to do that on a day to day basis but almost impossible when you have people who drag you down.  I have two very distinct situations at early points in both of my startups when I was talking about my idea, bearing in mind they were early stage and with people I trusted. The feedback was so negative that in both instances I almost stopped, which would have been tragic.  Luckily, I also has some really incredible, smart people around to prop me up too.  I wrote more about the first example here.

It is so important to find positive and reinforcing friends and advisors and to surround yourself with the right support system, something I talk about a lot. That’s not to say that you should look for people who are just going to tell you what you want to hear, which is counter-intuitive.  Here’s the best distinction I have read about this: “…there is a difference between complaining and having someone bring your attention to an important matter which needs to be addressed.” This comes from this awesome article that tells you why you become dumber and less healthy just by simply listening to people complain…kind of like the harmful effects of second hand smoke. Time to be more aware of the cost of negativity in both yourself and those around you.

I’ve recently started something called 100 Days of Happiness. It’s basically posting one picture a day of something that makes me happy. It is a simple exercise that is mostly about being mindful. So instead of focusing on the negative, or allowing the people around you to drag you down, try something that forces you to think about things that make you happy every day. I’m surprised at how difficult this can be some days but I’m still really glad I’m directing my energy on thinking about what makes me happy rather than pissed.  Try it, even if you only do 10 days. What’s the harm?