S1:E7 No Work-Life Balance (Stop Shoulding Yourself)

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[00:00:17] But many of us have been brainwashed right in a way that this is what we do. Welcome to Asians Breaking Ceilings. I'm Jeanny Chai, founder of BambooMyth. com and confidence coach for Asian American female professionals. The goal of this podcast is to ignite your confidence. To empower you to overcome imposter syndrome so you can finally break that career ceiling and get what you want in life.

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[00:01:06] Yes, pun intended. When you learn how to finally stop shooting yourself, you will begin to start having agency and lead your life the way you want it. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and sign up for my email list at AsiansBreakingCeilings. com and help spread the word by leaving me a written review at PodChaser. com. Now let's jump into today's show so that we can help you achieve authentic.

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[00:02:02] And you're already feeling pressure. You're already feeling tense. And the same thing happens at the end of the day. Where you're saying, I should have got to that sooner. I should have known better. I should have seen that coming. I should have gone to bed half an hour ago. I'm going to be exhausted now.

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[00:02:48] And yet we do this to ourselves, most of us do this to ourselves all day, all night. And we wonder why we feel exhausted and anxious. And unhappy in our lives. We weren't born this way. I can guarantee it.

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[00:03:35] And so the conversation today is why we need to stop shoulding ourselves, because there's a big connection between this and your career success. You might be going, what is she talking about? Aren't we going to discuss how to manage up, how to lean in, how to have conversations, do presentations, negotiate salary.

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[00:04:36] And this is what these discussions are about because without confidence, everything else is so difficult. I can tell you what to say to your boss. I can tell you how to improve communications, but without having permission, without having practice this, without having had our Asian norms reframed, it's going to be so hard to be able to actually execute on this.

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[00:05:39] Cause I say, if you feel. Like a lot of these things resonate with you, you know, having a hard time speaking up, or you should yourself or achievement is an addiction for you. Like I spoke about a couple of weeks ago. Uh, if you tend to stuff your feelings and emotionally you're able to handle a lot because you don't feel again, that could be a strength or a weakness.

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[00:06:20] And so if you have an Asian background, what you've soaked up a lot of times is being quiet, following directions. Are doing everything your elder parent or teacher or even your sibling tells you to do not complaining, not asking questions, trying to be independent, stay out of trouble. A lot of these norms don't serve us once we get into mid career corporate America, right?

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[00:07:02] And of course, the last one is we underestimate our own value and our own ability to do things. And so imposter syndrome and stress are the two things that oftentimes are the roadblocks to our success.

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[00:07:27] And for the next three episodes, we're going to be discussing how to stop criticizing yourself. And shooting yourself is one of those forms of self criticism. As I just said, many of us wake up in our normal everyday lives and we're shooting ourselves all day. Oh, I should have done the laundry. I forgot this.

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[00:08:07] So that what you say on a daily basis, especially subconsciously, what you're doing, what you're saying to yourself is so important. And many of us do not have a roadmap or an understanding, a clear understanding of what we're doing subconsciously.

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[00:08:50] I went to 20 years of therapy, seven therapists, none of them were Asian, and they didn't get the level of shame and self criticism and procrastination and self sabotage that I had. And so while I felt good talking with somebody week after week, I didn't see a whole lot of change because a lot of times therapy isn't meant to help you move forward to help you practice new habits, but you do feel a little bit better having someone understand you.

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[00:09:49] and by ownership I do not mean more responsibility. I mean, the ability to start to say yes, I want this in my life. No, I don't want this and calling the shots versus letting other people, your boss, the company, uh, random events, letting those things Just come at you and you accept everything by default, right?

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[00:10:25] And so one of the ways that I teach my clients and I've taught over three, 400 women now is you've got to start realizing when are you subtly criticizing yourself by shooting yourself all the time. It doesn't matter if it's in your job or at home in your relationships as a mother, uh, anything, if you are shooting yourself, you are taking away your confidence little by little whittling it away.

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[00:11:16] My teacher had given my parents a letter that invited me to join a special community choir in which she was the conductor and they asked me if I wanted to be part of this group. And my parents never told me until I was an adult and said, by the way, uh, the teacher said that you could have been in this group.

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[00:11:59] So in third grade, I got shoulded. As I got older, my parents would have conversations with me. I was a bit of a stereotypical Asian girl with a part down the middle. It's cool now, right, in 2023, but it wasn't cool to have a part down the middle when it was the 1980s. And I had really... Big front teeth, you can tell that I'm being self deprecating.

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[00:12:39] Any Asians around except one other little girl who joined my school in 5th grade, but up until 5th grade, that's age 10, 11. I didn't see anybody who looked like me. So I felt inferior. I just felt different. I felt like I stuck out. And I tried really hard to change that. And I tried to fix this by doing popular things.

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[00:13:24] And then she found out you call it a pom pom girl, whatever that is. And she goes, No, you can't do this. You should be studying. And so I had to heartbreakingly tell my teachers I could not be on the team. And whether it was good or bad, it affected my confidence that I don't. Have the right to make decisions for myself.

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[00:14:22] And so I got shoulded out of volleyball, shoulded out of cheerleading and shoulded out of cross country. And I was very disappointed because I love to run. I wanted to be active. I'm an active extrovert type of person.

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[00:15:08] One of the most painful, painful things was. When I got my only B in high school, well, until senior year semester two, which I just completely burnt out and didn't do anything, but up until that point, I got one B and that was an honors sophomore English and I got shoulded, they saw the grade and they didn't ask me anything.

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[00:15:43] And if you resonate with this, you probably got shoulded as well and continue to do so as an adult. Cause I sure heck don't live with my mom and dad anymore. I've moved out since 1995. That's a lot of years. That's over 35 years, but I still used to should myself if I'm not careful and it's never a nice kind of a should. Right? It's always a critical, self critical, unkind trade off. And the trade off is usually I force myself to do something I think other people want me to do, or that's the right thing, the responsible thing, right?

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[00:16:44] You shouldn't do those things. There's more important things like laundry. There's more important things like cleaning the house. There's more important things like picking up all the toys. Or, you know, buying groceries and preparing so you don't have to do last minute cooking or spend money eating out.

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[00:17:24] I need shoulds. And generally those shoulds are not things that we really want. Right, we do this at work. Oh, I should finish this for my boss before I go. I should go to that meeting so that I don't disappoint anyone or miss anything. Ah, even though I want to go home so badly, I should get this done for my team so they're not waiting on me.

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[00:18:13] Right. People like you. People think you're wonderful and you probably get very good reviews. But in our own minds internally. We don't feel good. We don't feel like we're doing great. We don't feel rewarded. I certainly didn't feel rewarded by quitting Volleyball and cross country and cheerleading. I felt terrible.

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[00:18:58] You're eating like chicken nuggets and boiled eggs for dinner, but you do not ever turn in anything other than 100 percent at work. You could be having menstrual cramps. You could have just had a baby two weeks ago, but you're still putting in your time for work. I knew this lady who I was talking, having a conversation with, and she'd just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

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[00:19:53] Before we start the second half of this episode, if you're of Asian descent and you want to discover what your personal biggest roadblock is to success, go ahead and take the free quiz at asiansbreakingceilings.com. If you're liking this podcast, be sure to leave a review for me at Podchaser.com, and then follow me on Instagram at jeannychai so you can be notified whenever a new episode drops.

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[00:20:28] Here's why this step is so important and so critical before we can even manage our relationships with other people. We're talking about here in season one, about the relationship we have with ourselves. If we have a constant criticizer, that shoulding us all day and all night, we need to deal with her and that voice before we can effectively deal with a real life person who might be our elder.

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[00:21:14] Many of us with Asian heritage have the responsibility of taking care of our parents. It's almost like the role is reversed and they are the children and we do all kinds of things for them. Manage their finances, manage their emotional health, manage their social activities, manage their friendships. And so much of this breaks my heart because in so many of these cases, The parent that we are supporting a lot of times isn't even kind to us and it increases our stress level through the roof.

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[00:22:15] Because if your life is full of shoulds, there is no room for any of the wants. And if you think about it, the wants are more fun, right? The wants are exciting. It's they're passionate. They, they, they are in alignment with your values. The things I want to do, like seeing when I sing, I am in flow. I am enjoying, I am not guilty about anything.

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[00:23:08] You've heard some of my story, and to be quite honest, I am not on a communication level with my mother right now. I will text my dad and we are still in somewhat contact, but, uh, this was not a decision I made lightly and you might have all kinds of opinions, but. For me in the end, uh, just so difficult, so difficult to speak to them and to see their own self sabotage.

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[00:23:58] I say to hell with that. I've had, I had cancer when I was 39. If I have stress in my life, the cancer is going to come back. So at this point, it's a choice between me. Living my life in a way that I'm present and here for my four children who are ages 15 to 25 or I can should myself into talking to my mom, trying to have some kind of relationship and in the end, um, probably getting sick because the relationship is so difficult and so at some level you got to protect you, you get to protect you.

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[00:24:58] That's the deal. No improvement after 5, 10, 20 years in that relationship. We call that toxic. Toxic. Right. And so we need to be able to not should ourselves into keeping these toxic relationships.

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[00:25:34] Many of us will accept fault for things at work, and that might be a good trait because we are highly responsible and we almost never complain. We don't backstab others, but we take on a lot of responsibility. So we do our own work, our boss's work, our co workers work. We take one for the team often. And...

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[00:26:27] I call that unnecessary stress when we accept the blame for things that are not even our fault. Here's an example of what happened to me about 10 years ago. I was your typical Asian employee who was very dutiful and did everything for my boss, did extra for her, and one day she took me into a room individually.

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[00:27:08] And my face just turned red. I felt really embarrassed and I accepted all the blame. And I said, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. That he didn't sign an NDA and that that was my responsibility. And I just slunk out of that room feeling terrible. Like I'd failed my boss. She was obviously not just disappointed.

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[00:27:57] And so I had a conversation with her. We went to the snack room and I asked her what happened because I came out feeling terrible and you look like you gained her respect. And she looked at me and said, "Well, It's not our responsibility to make sure that the intern signs an NDA. That's her damn job and she's not doing her damn job and blaming us. What are, what am I going to do taking the blame? And so I just told her, yeah, I didn't know you didn't sign an NDA. Oh my goodness. You're putting our company in danger. You need to do that with the intern right away."

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[00:28:51] I was very easy to teach as a child because teachers never got any kind of Oppositional comments from me. And for the first time I realized this is not going to help me in corporate America. There was a similar situation with the same boss in which I was one of the most badass Performers on the team and I was helping to open a lot of new business In a new area in this company and I got something like 40 meetings for this company, 40 new companies had spoken to us and wanted to continue to work with us.

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[00:29:44] But again, being that. very loyal, uh, woman that I was. I said to myself, Yeah, I should have made sure. I'm sorry. I should have made sure that everybody was on board and that they made this commitment. So I did not get my like 20 K bonus and I was really angry. But I went home just sulking and feeling sorry for myself. I didn't Advocate for me because here's the connection I've been shooting myself just on my own perfectly fine morning, day and night that when someone else should admit and said, Well, you should have made sure that they made the commitment and I believed her.

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[00:30:42] I didn't work hard enough. I had a gap. I wasn't right for the role. It wasn't my timing yet. We fully accept the blame and we get shoulded by our companies. Now, if we behave more like my colleague who knew how to advocate for herself, I might've said, Hey, I disagree with the evaluation and I absolutely need to be put up for promotion. I would like to have a re evaluation.

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[00:31:30] And when we are daily, nightly saying these things to ourselves, our brain thinks this is normal. And so when someone else that we respect or that we need validation from in order to do well in our job, when someone that there says something to us, we automatically accept it as truth. Oh, you should have done this, Jeannie.

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[00:32:09] And here is a affirmation for you that's going to help you to realize you are enough and you have freedom to have fun. You have freedom to use your time, your energy in the ways that you want, not the ways you should, or someone else says you should, but the way that you want. You are allowed to be fulfilled and have impact in your life. You are allowed to wake up feeling some level of excitement and joy. You are allowed to wake up feeling like you are amazing at your job and they are lucky to have you.

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[00:33:10] Do not give your value away and do not give. Your agency away just because someone else says you should have done something and instead of shooting yourself You get to ask what do I really want the part of me that is loving and kind and spunky with confidence What does she want and oftentimes she'll say I don't want this dress I would like to do this instead.

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[00:33:59] Next week we're going to talk about a very similar topic, which is over apologizing. Once you start realizing how often you say, sorry, You're going to notice other people saying, sorry, all the time. This especially happens in women in corporate America, where they'll just start a sentence like, sorry, I have a question.

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[00:34:36] So don't miss next week. And if you have enjoyed this episode, the greatest thing you can do for me is share with your company, share with people, you know, your colleagues. Of friends, they don't have to be Asian, but share with them so that we can start addressing the stuff that really is gonna move the needle, the stuff that brings our confidence to a place where we can be normal.

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