A Rare Confession in the Gym

It was nearly 10 o’clock at night, and I felt like a run-flat tire rolling on fumes. My body was spent, my mind scattered, and my heart whispered a confession I had rarely voiced aloud. After pushing through a full day in Singapore, rushing back through immigration, surprising my wife with a cake, sending my son for a haircut, and still dragging myself to the gym, I turned to my workout buddy Joe and said, “Bro, today is one of those very rare days. I wish the day end earlier.”

That line lingered. It seemed innocent enough, a throwaway remark from a tired man. Yet as soon as I said it, I realized something deeper: wishing the day away was not just about exhaustion. It was about stewardship.

We are each entrusted with 24 hours, God-given time measured out equally for kings and beggars, leaders and children. To wish the day would end earlier was to say, “I know better than the Giver of time.” It was not simply fatigue speaking. It was self-centeredness disguised as rest.

And in that moment, I saw the paradox. I advocate stewardship of life, resources, and leadership. Yet my casual wish betrayed a hidden desire to shorten what I had been entrusted with. A contradiction surfaced, and it demanded reflection.

When Life Reminds You That Time Is a Gift

Only hours earlier, I had spoken with a relative who shared quietly about his father’s struggle with liver cancer. The weight of that word cancer landed heavily. It reminded me of Pastor Philip Lim, who chose to honor God even through his diagnosis, recording a podcast to testify of grace. For families facing such battles, each day is not too long; it is too short. Time becomes the most precious currency, every hour borrowed and treasured.

So why would I, in my fatigue, wish the day away? That question unsettled me. It forced me to confront a misalignment Stephen Covey once described in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: when our inner paradigms contradict our outward expressions. Covey told the story of trying to encourage his son in baseball, but inwardly doubting his capability. That misalignment meant no amount of positive words could bring true confidence. In my case, outwardly I preach stewardship. Inwardly I whispered, “Let it end early.”

That tension matters, because small misalignments often grow into large cracks in our character.

The Price Tag of Integrity: RM70 and a Yonex Racket

My father taught me that truth when I was still a boy. I remember standing in a sports store called Macro, staring at a Yonex badminton racket worth RM100. My eyes sparkled with desire, but the price felt impossible. I saw a loophole: the price tags were hidden under plastic covers on the handle. With a quick swap, I replaced it with a cheaper label worth RM30. We checked out, walked away, and I proudly told my father that we had saved RM70.

His response pierced me: “So your integrity is worth RM70.”

I was stunned. He explained: “Would you do the same if it was RM1? Probably not. Too cheap. So your integrity is worth more than RM1, but less than RM70. That is your price tag.”

That conversation haunted me. Integrity, he taught me, is not free. Everyone has a price at which they are tempted to trade it. The question is whether we recognize it and whether we resist it.

The RM3,000 Bribe That Tested My Soul

Fast forward to 2019. After countless rejections, I finally found a potential site for an international school. The landlord had built a beautiful European-style factory that could easily house a Cambridge school. It looked like an answer to prayer.

But the town planner demanded RM3,000 under the table for the permit. In business terms, it was nothing. A few thousand ringgit in exchange for a multi-million-dollar project. The math was compelling.

I wrestled through the night. On paper, it made perfect sense. Pay it, secure the site, report success to my weary team. No one would know.

But sleep never came. In the stillness, I realized that the price tag of my integrity was being tested again. This time, it was RM3,000. If I paid, the project might succeed, but my soul would be mortgaged.

The next morning, I refused. The officer mocked me. The landlord walked away. The deal collapsed. And I sank into depression, wondering if I had sabotaged the future of Stellar with my stubbornness.

Yet years later, that “failure” became the seed of honor. Instead of settling for a hidden compromise, we were led to Puteri Harbour, an expatriate town I never imagined we could enter. There, with no bribes and no shortcuts, Stellar International School found a home. The Ministry of Education itself introduced students to us, honoring the integrity we had upheld. What once seemed foolish became the foundation of survival and growth.

John Maxwell calls this The Law of Solid Ground: trust is the foundation of leadership. Once compromised, it cannot hold. Refusing that RM3,000 bribe nearly broke me in 2019, but it built a trust that carried us into a future I could not see at the time.

From Malaysia to the World: Integrity as Leadership Capital

The challenge of integrity is not unique to Johor or Malaysia. Globally, the statistics are sobering. The World Bank estimates that over US$1 trillion in bribes are paid annually worldwide. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index consistently ranks countries not by wealth, but by the perceived integrity of their institutions. Singapore, our neighbor across the causeway, ranks near the top globally for clean governance, while Malaysia struggles with perception scores below 50 out of 100.

Why does this matter for leadership? Because corruption is not just about money lost. It is about trust destroyed. Studies by PwC show that companies with strong integrity cultures outperform others by up to 20 percent in long-term shareholder value. Trust, it turns out, is not just moral capital. It is economic capital.

Closer to home, when Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal broke, billions were lost. But perhaps more devastating than the money was the erosion of trust: among citizens, investors, and partners. It takes decades to rebuild what can be squandered in a single compromise.

The same applies in leadership at every level. You may not be managing billions, but your integrity is still your currency. The moment you trade it whether for RM70 in a sports store or RM3,000 at a city council, you declare what it is worth.

World-Class Lessons in Integrity

History is filled with leaders whose legacies were defined by how they treated integrity in the small and hidden things.

When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, the company was struggling with toxic culture and missed opportunities. Instead of quick fixes, he chose integrity-driven leadership: acknowledging failures, rebuilding trust with employees, and embedding empathy into the company’s DNA. Within five years, Microsoft regained its place as one of the world’s most valuable companies. Nadella often reminds his teams that “trust has to be earned, every day,” echoing Maxwell’s truth that leadership rises or falls on trust.

On a national scale, Singapore’s founding leader Lee Kuan Yew built one of the cleanest governments in the world by refusing to tolerate corruption. He once said, “If you want to fight corruption, be prepared to go against your friends and relatives.” Today, Singapore’s public institutions are globally admired, while Malaysia continues to battle perceptions that integrity can be traded cheaply.

These examples remind us that leadership integrity is not measured in grand speeches but in daily stewardship.

The Paradox of Time and Stewardship

Which brings me back to my whispered wish: I wish the day end earlier.

On the surface, it was fatigue. But underneath, it was a subtle compromise in stewardship. If time itself is God-given, then wishing to cut it short is like trying to be God. It is no different from trying to save a few ringgit by unethical means. Both reduce sacred trust into a personal convenience.

John Maxwell’s Law of the Lid says that leadership ability sets the ceiling on effectiveness. If my lid is lowered by fatigue, entitlement, or compromise, then my organization will never rise higher than me. Similarly, The Law of Process reminds us that leadership develops daily, not in a day. Stewardship of time, even in tired evenings, is the daily grind that compounds into legacy.

And so the paradox: we often complain there is not enough time. Yet on days of exhaustion, we wish time itself away. Both reveal our discomfort with stewardship. We want more when it suits us. We want less when it doesn’t. But true leadership is not about quantity of time. It is about quality of stewardship.

The Reverse That Redefines It All

Here is the reverse insight that reframed it for me: The opposite of fatigue is not rest. It is stewardship.

Rest matters, yes. Sleep, Sabbath, renewal all are essential. But stewardship goes deeper. It asks: How do I treat every hour, whether tired or strong, as entrusted to me? Do I honor it, or do I wish it away?

Leaders are not measured by how they perform on their best days. They are measured by how they steward their worst. When tired, when tempted, when tested with shortcuts, that is when character shows.

At Stellar, our PVMC reminds us: Integrity. Empathy. Excellence. These are not lofty words for posters. They are anchors for days when RM70, RM3,000, or the weight of fatigue tempts us to trade integrity for convenience.

And so, when I said “I wish the day end earlier,” I caught myself. I realized even such a small wish can reveal a larger temptation: to cut short what is entrusted, to lower the price tag of stewardship, to escape rather than endure.

But legacy is never built on escape. It is built on endurance, on integrity, and on the wisdom in simplicity: Guard the small things, because they multiply into the big ones.