The Best Investment She Made — Dinner with Belinda Koo, Founder of One Ten & XYZ and Managing Director at UBS

Sometimes the most meaningful and inspiring conversations happen over casual meals. The Time Auction Blog is a snippet of our meetings with people who have found passion in their life and career, where we get a glimpse into their mentality behind their ventures.

Belinda Koo has embarked on a mission to help others create positive change in their lives through the embracement of exercise as a way of life.

As Managing Director at UBS Wealth Management, the demands of her role as a private banker and devoted mother of three meant life were never short of battles. It was through exercise — particularly cardio exercise — where she discovered an opportunity for her to release stress and recharge, regroup and regain control of her life. Her proposition was nothing short of a radical spin on the latest indoor cycling phenomenon XYZ.

After founding XYZ, she started One Ten — a social enterprise that uses non-competitive sports to help youth tap into their warrior spirit, allowing them to combat hardships in their lives and be equipped with tools to strengthen them mentally, physically and emotionally.

Over dinner, Belinda shared with us how she, as a social entrepreneur, aims to implement creative solutions to secure a stable equilibrium with lasting benefits for young adults in Hong Kong.

For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

My childhood. It gave me a very strong foundation for my belief system and who I am. I never had an experience that would prevent me from trusting people or that would scar my future encounters. My mother and my family gave me a childhood that I am very grateful for and helped me become who I am today.

What is one of the most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?

Myself.

Always invest in yourself. Invest in your well-being, your mental health, understanding yourself, creating awareness, the time that you spend on or with yourself, alone time, stillness time, creating happy moments that you can remember, creating meaningful bonds with people. Those are all investments, and some of the most valuable investments that I have made for myself and my moments.

What is a lesson that took you the longest to learn?

It took me many years to train myself and understand how to be a strong person. This meant learning how to be resilient, execute everything that I wanted to and make sure that I am in control of my life, family, and job.

I think being strong can be easily mistaken for being very tough and masculine, so it took me a long time to find my feminine side again and to become soft. I would prevent myself from experiencing emotions in the past because it takes time for it to escalate and settle down and I thought that it would directly hinder my job performance. We all have some kind of coping strategy, so when I would feel sad in the past I would just do something to cut it off.

Now I have learned that being strong is also accepting the fact that you have emotions and that it’s okay to feel the entire process, it’s okay to let your emotions run.

There is a lot of haunted energy within me, the emotions that I have blocked during my past experiences. These blockages can be detrimental for your future, as it can come back and affect the decisions you make. So it’s important to reconcile with yourself and tell yourself that it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling; and that strength can also be revealed in accepting your varied emotions.

What is one action you want everyone to take away from meeting you?

Tell yourself you are good enough.

Self-conversation, and in particular self-affirmation is very important. Tell yourself every day that I am good enough, I love myself, I want to treat myself right, and I want to make choices that will make myself happy. I can see that people that are often influenced by parents, relatives or society, to be very self-critical. They keep telling themselves that they are not worthy enough, not lovable enough, not pretty enough, not fit enough etc. Make sure that you choose wisely how you judge yourself. Always resonate pretty images, happy moments, with yourself and your mind.

Practice positive self-talk.

Thank you, Belinda, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to have dinner with us, and thanks to everyone who volunteered and took part in raising 101 volunteer hours to various charities. Also hats off to The Hive Wan Chai for providing us with such a wonderful venue.

These awesome photos are brought to you by James Ng from KaChick — a marketplace where you can book a photographer anywhere, anytime, for anything!

For more amazing opportunities, visit Time Auction to volunteer and meet inspiring mentors!