The end of the year is a good time to look back on. Not only do we make a year-end review, but also think about how we can start the new year and set new goals for ourselves in 2025.
Since its launch in 2018, the "Play with Time" handbook has entered its 8th year. The title of the workshop, "Island Island Ah Lai, 沓沓仔 Love", is a continuation of the 2025 journal theme "沓沓仔" (Take your time) using the homophone "Island Island Ah", which compares everyone to an island, encouraging everyone to create a unique and rich island ecosystem slowly and at their own pace.
Changing habits starts with changing one's identity
The event kicked off with a hands-on workshop led by Merci.
Merci, the Chief Operating Officer of Women's Fans, is also the coach of the Women's Fans Card Course, Energy Management and Handbook Open Class, leading the students to find their own direction and rhythm for 2025 through the practical practice of "self-coaching".
She shared that when we have a goal in our hearts that we want to achieve, the process from now to the goal not only depends on hard work, but also needs a system of our own. But the establishment of systems often begins with the most fundamental question: How do we see ourselves?
Merci mentions that changing habits is the biggest challenge for many people when pursuing their goals, but what really needs to change behind this is self-identity. "Who am I? What kind of person do I want to be? What do I think of my time and my life?" Self-identity not only shapes our behavior, but also determines how we achieve our goals. The journal is a powerful tool to help us explore these answers.
By sharing her own experience as a working mother, Merci depicts the possibilities of an "inclusive life". When society generally believes that working mothers need to make sacrifices and trade-offs between work and family, she chooses to try to break this binary imagination. She emphasised that each aspect of life is not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing, and this view can also be applied to journals to help us look at our lives more flexibly.
Explore the many facets of life from The Wheel of Life
In the practical exercises, Merci led everyone to use the eight aspects of the "Wheel of Life", choose the one they care about the most, and combine the female power awakening cards of women fans to review 2024 and score the progress in the past. At the same time, she guided everyone to look ahead to 2025 and set the ideal score for the new year for the same aspect.
Merci reminds students that everyone has a different standard for their scores, and that it may be possible to maintain the same state consistently, or it can be a balanced and satisfying answer. And the pursuit of change does not have to be fast, and the pursuit of achieving a perfect score within a year will also be stressful for yourself.
Use "self-coaching" to guide questions and discover your inner strength
Merci further led the group to visualize the future through the "self-coaching" question: "If you were happy with the progress in this aspect by the end of 2025, how would your life be different?" From the future to the present, Merci also guided participants to look back on past experiences and think: What are some successful cases? How did it get there? And what resources or beliefs are supporting you? In fact, these past experiences can be a force to support future action.
She encouraged everyone that everyone has untapped wisdom in their hearts, and they just need to sort it out step by step, and the direction will naturally become clear.
Everyone is a sleeping genius, an expert in their own life, and you have excellent wisdom within you to guide yourself to your ideal life.
For the first time, the founder of Woman Fan has publicly shared the stage, redefining the possibility of life
After Merci led the students to explore their personal goals, Shuan Cheung and Tanya, founders of Women's Fans, joined hands for the first time to share the story of the brand's founding and the behind-the-scenes story of the birth of the handbook. Through heartfelt dialogue, they encouraged the participants to redefine their life stages and embrace more possibilities in life.
Looking back on their original intentions, Wei Xuan and Tanya mentioned that their vision is to help women see their diverse faces, and finally accept and fall in love with their true selves. However, the road to entrepreneurship has not been smooth – both have experienced lows and confusions, but they have also discovered that defining the stage of life is particularly important.
Tanya said that life stages are often divided by age, with stereotypes such as "20 years old should try more, 30 years old should settle down, 40 years old is not normal if you are not married". These frameworks can lead to anxiety and even loss in the labels that are expected of the outside world. Wei Xuan said bluntly: "Society is really uncreative, as if every age is prescribed what to do. It's a shame to be confined because of this, because it's our life, not someone else's."
This linear definition is prone to internal friction, whether it is doubts from the outside world or internal pressure, it may make us lose our self-direction. Tanya shared that she uses three questions to become self-aware and gradually regain control of her life stage:
- "What did I go through?"
- "What was my state at the time?"
- "What did I do to deal with it?"
Through such questions, Tanya believes that she can help herself return to her inner voice and no longer be limited by the framework of the outside world.
When we know that life stages are not linear, but multiple, we can see more possibilities in life.
Wei Xuan also shared his own philosophy of life: there is no absolute "right" and "wrong" in life, and it is a pluralistic concept in itself. It is not what people should do and what kind of life they should have when they are old. In the past, he had forced himself to get out of the slump quickly, only to find that this self-pressure could not really recover. "Then I started asking myself, 'What kind of recovery do I need?' When you take out the dimension of time and slow down, you can love yourself and the people around you more." He laughs and says that sometimes "coming slowly" can find a better way.
Other people's timelines don't matter, what matters is that we know where we are, where we're going, and at our own pace.
The Birth of the Handbook: The Possibility of Playing with Time
Talking about the birth of the handbook, Wei Xuan shared the initial challenges. At the time, many team members couldn't understand the decision, but Wei Xuan believed that the female fan wanted to live an inspiring day, and the journal was a tool to accompany everyone as they explored life.
As for the name of the journal called "play with time", it is precisely to promote the concept of "playing with time" through the journal, and to break the stereotype of time in society. Having your own definition of time is equivalent to being able to define your own life. Take the pace of life into your own hands.
Tanya also mentioned that she was not a lover of journals, but after trying it, she found that writing with the tip of the pen can be separated from the cloud and the screen, and the journals bring a sense of returning to real life and living again. And this workshop also arranged a lot of writing links, so that everyone can settle down and sort out their ideas.
Wei Xuan added that the small p book is a beautifully designed handbook, but when writing a handbook, you don't have to be afraid to destroy it, you can use it as much as you want, because this is your handbook and your life.
"Island Island, Love: Life Flows Half Day Workshop" uses islands as an image, symbolizing that everyone is actually like an island of their own life, a rich ecosystem, with their own mountains and seas, creating their own unique life scene. The island is full and independent, and we expect everyone to come as an island, but not an island. After the event, looking at the students taking photos, talking and hugging with each other, between the students and the lecturers, the venue was full of warm atmosphere, I believe that everyone has found a partner in life here, and we are not alone!
As Wei Xuan said, 8 years ago, the small p book was born precisely to "be by your side every day", and accompany everyone to re-look at time and life stage with a handbook. It is hoped that this workshop will become a starting point for "island friends" to move towards 2025, and in the coming days, we can all build our own handbooks and our own ideal lives.
We would like to thank "Uncle Lemon" for their efforts to create the best event experience!