I grew up in an environment where I suffered great harms caused by negative feelings, the most serious of which from my parents. It seemed that my parents never tried to understand and know my real-life situation. My father who strived for perfection often compared me unfavourably with brighter children. My father seemed to have long given up on me, just because he found my school results that had always been mediocre, and my learning ability was always poorer than many other children.

In the stage of adolescence, I became so sentimental, lack of self-confidence, and suffered from the feelings of inferiority and insecurity. When I confronted with adversity, I tended to evade and got myself stuck in helplessness. Gradually I allowed others to make me feel inferior and worthless. Hence, I was afraid of mingling with other people, this negative situation constantly affected my personal growth. In short, I dreaded socialising, and when developing interpersonal relationships, I invariably harboured distrust and fear.

My parents divorced as I was the student of Secondary Four. Subsequently, my mother arranged for me to continue my secondary education in Canada. I thought then that a bright future was lying in store for me. However, I ended up not being able to accomplish Grade 12 because of failure in my English subject, and thus I was expelled from high school. For one whole year, I was schoolless. I squandered all my time in video games centres, playing at night and sleeping during daytime. I felt my life empty and purposeless, with total bewilderment and despair about my future.

With great efforts, I managed to return to Hong Kong, hoping to resume my studies. However, as I was always diffident and had all along been lacking a sense of security, I tended to be mired in self-negating and ended up achieving nothing whenever I encountered frustration or difficulty. It was not until I met Dr Jane Nam (“Dr Jane”), educational psychologist of the Positive Life Association Ltd. (“PLA”). She conducted an integrated assessment for finding my situation, and then I was put back on the right track for a life with optimism and meaning.

Dr Jane’s assessment was thorough, in-depth and well researched. She explained that I tended to focus my time to deal with my psychological trauma, and thus I was often mistaken by other people as a slow learner. While I was receiving training in PLA, Dr Jane gave me encouragement and used the best method to remove my self-negating, for example, teaching me to be kind to and appreciative of myself and to persist in achieving my goals. I gradually came to realise that failure is not the end of the world and that the most important thing is to re-build my confidence, learning ability and self-image, with which to face and eliminate the causes of my failures.

As a result of the training provided by PLA, I learnt not only to accept my shortcomings but also to use my strengths and merits, positively and actively attending to and caring for my own needs. As both Dr Jane and I are Christians, she encouraged me to build up positive values and outlook on life based on the Christian faith.

Subsequently, Dr Jane further helped me to seek opportunities for continuing my studies. Time flies. I am now a university graduate and have found a suitable job. My graduation has fully proved the correctness of Dr Jane’s assessment of me. The training provided by PLA could not only remove all my learning disabilities but also develop in me a strong learning ability.

I know that PLA is currently raising funds for building a “barrier-free learning” kindergarten for children with learning disabilities so that they can all have a brighter future. I take this opportunity to call upon all philanthropists to lend full support to PLA’s school building plan.

With compliments from Martin Tang