Why Subscribe to Full Circles?
I am the author of a recommended book among mental health professionals that sounds like a romance novel called The First Kiss: Undoing the Intake Model.
Some say that writing books is an introvert’s way to make friends. I full-heartedly agree. Here’s my other books I’ve co-authored: Better Results, Creating Impact, The Write to Recovery, and The Field Guide to Better Results.
My latest, which nearly broke me, is called Crossing Between Worlds.
What is Full Circles About.
As a clinician since 2004, I’m often thinking about the people I’ve met and the lives that they lead, both on the outside and on the inside. It is often the latter than is hidden from most.
Thomas Merton said,
“There is in all things… a hidden wholeness.”
Full Circles is my ongoing meditation about the inner and outer life, and how we called to live an undivided life.
I’ve been writing the Full Circles blog since 2015. Most of the pieces are short and concise. I hope the writings go a little deeper than usual.
Here an entree of past articles:
Why I write?
This is the first time I am openly admitted this, I want to write for a living. As long as my faculties allow, I probably will write til the day I die.
I have been writing on the side for more than 2 decades. I’ve been writing more regularly for my other blog Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development for more than a decade. Now, I turn my attention to this Substack, Full Circles.
I look at the bookshelf beside me. These authors, have been my instrumental mentors, my trusted companions, my kinfolk I wrestle ideas with. What a joy.
A few years ago, a mentor reminded me of the following passage from an author who has significantly impacted me in my early adulthood, Henri Nouwen:
Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: “I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write.”
Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to “give away” on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches.
Full Circles will not have a paywall as long as I can. If you are interested in supporting my work, purchase one of my books.
About Me
I’m a 47 y.o. Singaporean born Chinese, now living in Australia for more than a decade (this is why my accent is kinda messed up). On board this Aussie ship are the women in my life, my wife and two girls.
I am in clinical practice, and provide coaching/clinical supervision, trainings and talks. On occasions, I get involved in clinical research (I try to put them up on Research Gate as far as possible). I’m not housed in any halls of academia, which means I’m not paid (nor tenured) to do any publications. Bummer.
I am a slow learner, which attests to why I flopped in the education system in Singapore (more about this: When Performing Impedes Learning).
But when I took learning into my own hands later in life, I realised I cared alot about learning deeply (part of the reason I created a course called Deep Learner)
What I’m trying to do with my life: to bring a piece of heaven to others, as others have done for me in the past.
