The best mental health cure that costs you nothing. And I hope you learn this starting now. 

Please remember that people only show you what they choose to show you online.

Whoever they are.

Including me.

I’ve had friends who know me personally look at my Instagram and start doubting themselves. Comparing where they are with what they see me doing.

And this is what I always tell them:

You know me. But even then, my Instagram doesn’t give you the full picture. Please don’t use it to measure how well you’re doing in life.

Because I, too, look at other people’s social media and feel shitty about myself. (Even BLACKPINK’s Rosé said she does that too in one of her interviews—who would’ve thought a glamorous celebrity could be doing this while crying in her bed?)

In this age of information overload, when everyone is preaching about “bringing value to your audience” and “helping your audience,” every day, someone is telling you that you’re not enough. Maybe not always explicitly, but through something like…

“5 ways to make 7 figures in 2 weeks.”

“You’re falling behind if you’re not doing this.”

“Fix your abandonment issues to marry a good husband.”

“Read these 5 books to change your life.”

After a while, it’s easy to look at your perfectly ordinary day and feel like you’re doing life entirely wrong.

You start carrying ambitions (or worse, a sense of desperation) that you never actually chose for yourself.

I work in marketing. I’ve been writing copy for about 8 years. And I can tell you: words are chosen to make you feel something and, often, do something.

The opening line, the photos, the result someone leads with. The details they leave out.

That doesn’t mean everything you see is fake. But what you’re seeing is only part of the story.

You see the revenue, but perhaps not the expenses.

You see the opportunity, but not the support that made it possible or the cost that comes with it.

You see the achievement and think it was all about “being lucky,” but you don’t see the years of failure it took to get there.

Even knowing how this works, I still catch myself comparing unconsciously. It’s somewhat sad that understanding marketing doesn’t make me immune to it.

But it does give me the awareness to pause when my inner demon creeps up:

What context am I missing?

Did I want this before someone told me I should?

Was there an insecurity or dissatisfaction within me that triggered this feeling?

Truth is…

You can want more for yourself and still give yourself credit for the life you’re living now.

That is called GRACE. I didn’t quite get this word back then, but now I do.

So if something I share ever makes you feel behind, I hope you remember this: You’re seeing a part of my life, from where I’ve chosen to point the camera.

I hope you find something here that inspires you, keeps you company, or gives you something to think about. And I hope there’s room for you to feel good about your own life while you’re here.

You don’t have to turn yours into something that looks like anyone else’s. 🤍

Before I knew what "content creation" was, I was already documenting little pieces of my life. 

Maybe I've always been a storyteller. Or maybe the real companions I had growing up were just my cute stationery. 

From "dear diary" scribbles to Friendster statuses, to blog posts (this is it), to Instagram... I learnt along the way, very literally. 

In March this year, I suddenly had this idea of putting myself in front of the camera to build my personal brand with my own voice and face (including the tea and brain juice that I'm spilling). So I started to learn how to speak in front of the camera, how to shoot and edit videos. 

Fast forward to now:
I got flown out to Singapore by a brand to sit down with their internal team AFTER creating 1 reel for them. 

But this trip wasn't about filming videos.

It's to advise them on what to say, how to say it, and how they should show up on social media as an advisor and strategist, 

At one point, someone from the team asked me, "how did you know all of this?

And I said, "maybe because I'm just chronically online". 

The truth is...I don't really fall for marketing tactics. So, I'd just reverse-engineer and think: what would make ME really wanna buy this? And that's the answer. 

I think "content" nowadays is such a broad term. Almost as broad as: Let's all use (or not use) AI. 

There's never a straight-forward-rule to this thing. Whoever that tells you there's one is straight-up bullshitting. At the end of it, everything in life is all about one's opinion. Just opinion and nothing more. 

For me, it has always been about context. perspective. curiosity. storytelling. 

Because good content isn't always about finding the next viral format. It's simply understanding: Who are we taking to? What do they care about? And how should they feel? 

Sometimes, I look at this journey and think "Wow. Little me would be so proud". 

And sometimes, I question that too. "What's there to be proud of?" There's still so much I want (and need) to learn. 

But one thing's for sure: that girl is still going to write this into her diary. 

I forced myself to learn how to shoot and edit videos around March/April this year.

And I don’t mean pressing record on my hamster, slapping on a few words, and calling it video-making. It’s not that.

I mean actually sitting down and talking in front of and into the camera. Basically, yap! God knows this is a skill and a body of knowledge in and of itself.

Writing scripts that fit a video. Shooting B-roll. Adding voiceovers. Learning all sorts of editing just to make a video flow better and keep the audience watching for as long as possible.

So now that it’s been a couple of months, let’s do a quick check-in.

From not knowing how to make a video, taking over 12 hours to edit, and reshooting the same scene over 50 times because I couldn’t bear talking in front of the camera…

Now I know what I need to prep/record before the process even begins and I could get the entire production down to 4-5 hours.

1 week into starting this journey, I got my first brand collab. It was very low-paying but I was so excited! (I didn’t mind because I was going to practice anyway, and now I was getting paid to practice? I wish I got paid for practising my singing in the shower every day too.)

Fast forward to July 2026, I’ve made around 5,000 bucks in total.

Not much but not little too especially for someone who's starting from scratch. That’s my first taste of internet money. People are paying me to make videos with my face in them — and that’s face card money too!

While I was doing that, I took every bit of money I made through video-making and started buying stocks with it, slowly compounding it over time.

I just wanted to see how far I could push myself.

So now, that money has grown to nearly 9,000 bucks.

And that’s internet money in another form.

It took me 4–5 months of pushing myself to get here, and now I KNOW with conviction that I can make this work.

So, what did I learn from this?

1. Sometimes, you just need to be curious enough to start rather than setting insanely big goals.

I was literally like, “Let’s try and see where this goes.”

I didn’t need a 5-year plan. I just needed to start. Knowing myself, I would’ve given up on day 3 if I aimed too big.

2. I didn’t focus on making money at first, but I ended up making money WHILE having fun and unlocking a new skill.

And now, where am I at? Or where am I headed?

I decided to combine my years of behind-the-scenes experience in copywriting, storytelling, strategy, and branding, and now bring all of that to life in front of the camera.

I sell my skillset, not my follower count.

I don’t need to wait until I have “enough followers” to make money as an influencer.

Brands have more than enough influencers to choose from, but not everyone can be a creative strategist. That’s where I come in! I know what companies need by looking at their websites and social media content. I can tell them where their gaps are (some of them didn’t even know they had these gaps) and how I can fill them.

I am starting to have clients who come to me for bundle packages and monthly retainers. Just this week alone, I was in discussions with 4 different brands from different countries — Malaysia, Singapore, USA, and China.

And last week, I got flown to Singapore by a company just to give their internal team advice on their website, social media, brand messaging, and positioning AFTER I made one video for them.

Read it here

Honestly, I don’t even feel like it’s hard work. Because I'm doing something that I genuinely like. 

And the best part is...

This
is
just
the
beginning!! 

Today, I had a moment of realisation that made me question whether I’d been understanding two terms wrongly all along. So yes, this post is fresh from the oven.

Self-love. Self-love.
It’s a term that’s become trendy, thrown around everywhere on the internet. But if we’re being honest, how many of us truly, truly love ourselves?

I think self-love might be the hardest kind of love there is, simply because nobody ever really taught us how to do it.

I once saw someone write, “No sex before marriage!” and call it the highest form of self-love her mother taught her growing up. Okay, point taken. But just point taken. Is that really the essence of self-love? And if it is, what happens after marriage? Do you suddenly stop loving yourself?

For the longest time, self-love felt like a vague concept to me too. Ask me if I love myself. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Yes, because I guard my boundaries. I don’t force myself into situations or commitments I genuinely don’t want. Notice how I didn’t mention getting my nails done or doing a full closet makeover. That was intentional.

But also no.
Because I condemn myself over the tiniest things. I default to negative self-talk, doubt myself constantly, and talk myself out of things I know I should do.

Before writing this out, I thought I’d score maybe a 70% on this so-called self-love exam. Now, I think I deserve closer to 40%. Not because I’m failing, but because I owe it to myself to do better. I realise I would never, ever treat another person the way I treat myself. I would never be this harsh, this unforgiving, or this mean to anyone else.

It wasn’t until this afternoon that I suddenly had an “aha” moment. I think I finally found the missing piece.

We can’t get to the core of self-love without self-acceptance.

Some people might argue that self-acceptance is just an excuse for settling. A justification for staying in your comfort zone, avoiding challenges, or not taking action. And sure, sometimes it can look like that. But I think there’s another way to see it.

I’m smiling a little as I type this, because it feels so obvious now. Yet somehow, it still took me this long to realise.

It’s simple. How can you love without acceptance? It’s not about which one matters more. They have to exist together.

Take Fibo, my baby, as an example. She sleeps most of the day, and just watching her curled up in her funny little positions makes my heart feel unbearably full. I often think about how lucky I am to have her. On the other hand, I’ve seen people abandon their hamsters because they sleep during the day and are labelled “useless.” Did you accept that hamsters are nocturnal animals in the first place? Don’t tell me you’re an animal lover if you can’t even accept an animal’s nature.

That might sound overly simplified, so let me spill more of my own tea.

As I mentioned earlier, my mental diet isn’t exactly top-notch. And trust me when I say I tried to change it. Repetitive affirmations, journalling, meditation, crystals. You name it. Nothing stuck. What finally dawned on me was this: I couldn’t truly love myself because I never accepted my mistakes, my flaws, or my lack of experience in certain areas.

I wanted to be better.
I wanted to achieve more.
I knew I could do certain things.

But instead of motivating me, those thoughts turned into self-hatred. I hated myself for not being “there” yet. I pushed myself relentlessly to prove I could do it fast, that I could succeed immediately, just like Judy in Zootopia. If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know how badly that backfired and left me carrying years of trauma.

Even long after I thought I’d “moved on,” I was still blaming myself. It wasn’t until today that I realised why the whole process had been so mentally exhausting. I never accepted that I could make mistakes. That I could be wrong. That I could fail.

This hit especially hard in trading, which is a probability game by nature. I didn’t accept my inexperienced self, and I didn’t accept the nature of the game itself. As a result, I trapped myself in a toxic cycle that felt like my own personal nightmare.

Now, I started to see it differently. Instead of asking which comes first, self-love or self-acceptance, maybe it’s like the chicken and the egg.

You can’t love if there’s no love within you. Sometimes, even if there is acceptance, there may still be no love. But without acceptance, love doesn’t stand a chance.

Back to the animal example. Someone who doesn’t love animals may be able to accept them, but they can’t truly love them. Acceptance creates the capacity for love.

So maybe self-love isn’t meant to be loud, aesthetic, or instantly rewarding.

Maybe it’s quiet. Sometimes uncomfortable. A little inconvenient.

In this pro–self-love era, it’s easy to turn self-love into something performative. Something pretty we repost. Something comforting we tell ourselves when life gets hard. But real self-love is homework. The kind you do even when no one is watching.

Because how can we say we love ourselves if we don’t take the time to notice ourselves? To observe our patterns, our triggers, our fears. To sit with our flaws without immediately trying to fix, escape, or punish them.

Self-love isn’t just manicures, flowers, or outfit-of-the-day moments. Those can be expressions of love, but they’re not the whole story.

Self-love is choosing awareness over avoidance.
Acceptance over self-judgement.
Patience over comparison.
Faith over fear. 

It’s saying, “This is where I am right now,” without attaching shame to it. It’s allowing yourself to grow without hating who you are in the process.

And maybe that’s where self-acceptance comes in. Not as permission to stay stagnant, but as a starting point. A soft place to stand while you learn how to love yourself more honestly, despite being imperfect.

So if you’re reading this and wondering whether you’re doing self-love “right,” maybe the question isn’t whether you love yourself enough yet.

Maybe the question is whether you’re willing to see yourself, accept yourself, and stay with yourself as you learn.

Because that, too, is love.

I want to end this post by sharing something my friend Caca sent me back in December. Our conversation was grounding and encouraging. This post is dedicated to you, girlie. Thank you for reminding me, in moments when I needed it most, that growth doesn’t have to come from self-punishment.

So blessed to be a girl’s girl, surrounded by friends who know how to hold space. Friends who allow vulnerability to exist without judgement, who meet raw honesty with softness instead of solutions, and who offer presence instead of pressure. Those safe spaces matter more than we realise. Sometimes, they are exactly where self-acceptance begins.

PS: here's another manifestation that panned out unexpectedly. 

For the longest time, I only read non-fiction. I liked how efficient it felt. Clear lessons. Clear steps. Clear answers. It made me feel like I was doing life “right.”

I used to think fiction was a waste of time. Why spend my energy reading about “fake stuff”?

Boy, I was so wrong.
I should have started reading fiction much earlier.

Through the characters and their stories, I experienced lives, minds, and emotions far beyond my own imagination.

It reminded me there are many ways to be a person, to think, to feel, to live.

It made me question the perspectives I had accepted by default. Are they really the only way to look at things?

Reading fiction feels like holding up a mirror. What you see in it depends on who you are and where you are in life.

There’s no single right answer. No preaching. Just space to reflect, and to slowly learn how to see for yourself.

Sometimes you just want to run away, not to escape life, but to find it again.

Running away could be a solo trip miles away from home, where nobody knows you and nothing is expected of you.

Running away could be a solo coffee date, sitting quietly, letting your thoughts catch up.

Running away could be a crazy sprint in the gym with K-pop in your ears, letting sweat, noise, and movement carry everything out of your system.

Running away could be turning your phone on airplane mode for a few hours, not because you are ignoring the world, but because you are listening to yourself.

Running away could be a long walk with no destination, just you and the version of you that has been quietly waiting to be heard.

Running away could be journaling at midnight, writing things you would never say out loud, and feeling lighter with every sentence.

Running away could be singing karaoke alone in your room, no mirror, no audience, just joy that does not need validation.

Running away could be returning to something that once made you feel alive, even if you do not know why it stopped.

Sometimes running away is not about leaving. It is about coming back to yourself.