08/08/2025

FRIDAY | AUG 8, 2025

10

UNDER ONE ROOF

Q : As a successful career executive, I am honoured to be approached by headhunters offering better positions across the country. I want to provide the best for my wife and children. What family principles should I consider when weighing my options? Focus on the Family Malaysia: A career change can be a tremendous opportunity but it can also place unexpected strain on your family. Many couples focus primarily on the financial upside when making career decisions but major changes, especially those involving relocation, can have far-reaching effects on family life. Here are some important questions to consider: 0 Is relocating to another city or country worth leaving behind your support system of family and friends? 0 Are your children emotionally prepared to start over in a new school? 0 Have you and your spouse discussed how this change could affect your relationship and overall family dynamic? If your answers point towards making the move, then you have laid the groundwork for success, not just in your career but also in preserving the strength of your home life. However, if key pieces are missing, what looks like an opportunity could be trouble in the making. We all want to advance financially but it is vital not to compromise the most important relationships in your life. A higher salary and The flood of messages, emails, deadlines and expectations. Everyone – and everything – seems to want a piece of your attention. We rarely realise it but attention is a precious currency – once spent, it is hard to get back. Yet, we give it away so freely. That is why I believe this: in a world full of noise, protecting your quiet is one of the most powerful things you can do. I am not just talking about silence in the literal sense, though that is a good place to start. I am talking about those little pockets of time where your mind can simply breathe. A morning walk before the world wakes up. A cup of tea in the late afternoon, steam curling softly into the air. The solitude of a hot shower after a long day. Moments where you are not doing anything for anyone but simply being. It is in those moments, more often than not, that your best thoughts arrive. I have lost count of how many times an idea for an article, a teaching strategy or a long-delayed solution to a lingering problem popped up, not during a meeting or staring at a screen, but while tying my shoelaces before a slow run or while absentmindedly folding the laundry or during a quiet drive between the city and home. That is not wasted time; it is integrating time, where all the loose ends of our thoughts find ways to knot themselves into something useful, or at least, meaningful. Rumi wrote: “There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” But how can we possibly hear when our ears, eyes and minds are constantly being pulled in a dozen directions? We can’t, not unless we make space for it. The irony is that we tend to undervalue these gentle moments. We label them as idle or unproductive. We try to fill every pause with something – a scroll through social media, a podcast or a reply to a WhatsApp message. But not every blank space needs to be filled; some of them are sacred.

Choose wisely when making career move

If perfection has quietly become the unspoken rule in your home, it is worth stepping back and recalibrating. The goal is to raise resilient, emotionally healthy children – young people who can make mistakes, learn from them and keep moving forward with confidence. Encourage excellence, yes, but also teach them that failure is not the end; it is part of the journey. What they need most is your support, not just when they succeed but especially when they fall and try again. What we want them to learn is not perfection; it is progress. This article is contributed by Focus on the Family Malaysia, a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and strengthening the family unit. It provides a myriad of programmes and resources, including professional counselling services, to the community. For more information, visit family.org.my. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

children is how to fail and then get back up. Becoming comfortable with your children’s failures can transform the way you parent. Think about when your child was learning to walk. That entire process was a series of stumbles and falls that ultimately led to success. A toddler may only take one or two steps before falling but we do not tell them to stop trying. Instead, we stretch out our hands, smile and say, “Come to Daddy”. And they do. They get up and try again, a little more confidently each time. But something shifts as our children grow older. As the consequences become more serious, we often become less tolerant of failure, not out of harshness, but out of love and the desire to see them succeed. Still, the message our children sometimes hear is that anything less than perfection is not good enough. We may not intend to send that message but our high expectations can create unnecessary pressure. Children thrive under encouragement and guidance, not constant performance-based approval.

more prestigious title can be rewarding but they often come with increased responsibilities and stress. Do not assume that more money is the only way to provide well for your family. Career decisions will affect far more than your paycheck. Do not let your ambition for money and success come at the cost of your family relationships. Let your ambition be guided by wisdom and foresight, and choose a path that protects what truly matters – your family. Q: As a dad, I expect my children to consistently meet high standards. It is how my father raised me and it shaped me for the better. However, my wife thinks we should cut them some slack. How do we find the right balance between high expectations and healthy flexibility? Focus on the Family Malaysia: This may sound counterintuitive at first but one of the most valuable lessons you can teach your

LETTERS letters@thesundaily.com

COMMENT by Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri

Fobi: New generation’s social fade-out

Sound of silence: When doing nothing is everything LIFE is noisy. And I don’t mean the traffic jams or construction drills outside your office window. It is the constant ping of notifications.

MANY of us are familiar with Fomo – the fear of missing out – that anxious feeling that comes from the thought of being left out. But in today’s world, a new phenomenon has emerged: Fobi – the fear of being included. Popularised on social media platforms like X, TikTok and others, Fobi captures the rising discomfort some people feel at being invited, involved or socially obligated, even when they are technically “included”. Fobi is essentially the opposite of Fomo. While Fomo is rooted in the fear of being left out, Fobi arises from a reluctance to be pulled in. This hesitation can be triggered by a range of factors – perhaps the person no longer finds value in the event or group, wants to maintain a sense of independence or simply finds social interaction mentally and emotionally draining. For those with introverted tendencies, even well-meaning invitations can feel overwhelming. In today’s culture, particularly among younger generations, there is a growing preference for solitude, self-driven work and selective social interactions. Rather than chasing inclusion, many now value their peace, personal time and boundaries, even if it means having fewer social connections. This shift reflects not just a change in social dynamics but also a deeper issue on mental health and digital fatigue. With constant exposure to online interactions and the pressure to maintain appearances, being invited or included can sometimes feel more like a burden to someone than a blessing. Fobi, in this light, becomes a form of self preservation. Society needs to recognise this evolving mindset. Instead of labelling people as antisocial or distant, we should foster a culture that respects boundaries and acknowledges that opting out is not always rejection but sometimes it is just self-care. Nurul Nabilah Izzati Hashim Kuala Lumpur

Moments where you are not doing anything for anyone but simply being, it is in those moments, more often than not, that your best thoughts arrive. – BERNAMAPIC

of tea is sacred. No phones, no multitasking and no performance, just me being human. So here is a gentle challenge: find your quiet, guard it like it is something valuable because it is. Whether it is 10 minutes in the morning or an hour on weekends, protect that time and make it yours, make it non negotiable. You don’t need to meditate or write a poem or come out of it with anything profound, just let your mind wander, let your shoulders drop and let yourself be. If someone asks why you are “doing nothing”, smile and say, “I’m protecting my quiet”. Because in that space, your sanity lives, your clarity returns and your soul exhales. And honestly? The world can wait. Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and the principal of Ibnu Sina Residential College, Universiti Malaya. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

It reminds me of a lesson I learned (or rather, relearned) during the height of the pandemic. It was a strange period of time – heavy, uncertain and unusually quiet in all the right ways. With no meetings to rush to and no travel on the calendar, I found myself rediscovering the small joys: walking around my neighbourhood without a destination, sipping kopi while watching the rain or just sitting still, doing nothing and feeling okay with that. Somewhere in that stillness, clarity returned. Not suddenly, not dramatically, but slowly. Thought by thought, breath by breath and I realised how often I had traded away my quiet for noise disguised as urgency. Even now, the temptation is always there – to squeeze more into the day, reply faster and be perpetually available. But I have learned to put boundaries around those moments that keep me anchored. A walk is a walk, a bath is a bath and a cup