S1:E9 Why Do I Feel Guilty A Lot?(Part 1 on Guilt)

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[00:00:19] And we never get to climb out of that quicksand of not enough. I didn't do enough. I wasn't good enough. And that doesn't feel good.

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[00:00:51] In episode nine, we start a three part series where we're looking at how so many of us. grew up feeling guilty, and this is now a habit that we bring with us into our corporate lives. And because of the guilt, we don't feel confident, we don't make the best decisions for our career, and oftentimes other people benefit from our work, but we're not the one getting the rewards.

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[00:01:40] Most importantly, please tell your friends about this podcast so we can all support each other and learn more how to achieve authentic success without the stress. Now let's dive into our show.

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[00:02:33] It was. In the middle of a divorce, it was post cancer treatments.

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[00:02:55] And I had never had a dog. So I was learning all this. Every day when I came home, I would come through the garage. And when I opened that door

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[00:03:29] And it occurred to me, this is what unconditional acceptance and love looks like. And over the next few weeks, I began to think. I don't treat myself like this. I am very mean to myself. I would replay a lot of sad and embarrassing events in my life over and over. And imagine, I'm 50 now, so the older you get, the more events pile up, and so your whole day could just be spent watching replays of your life, the most shameful, embarrassing, guilt ridden episodes, and why do we do this?

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[00:04:28] And 40 percent said, disappointing their parents. These are people in their forties and fifties, and we're still worried about our mom and dad not being pleased with what we've done with our life. Notice how much of this emphasis is on doing. If we are valued by what we do, then of course there is insecurity and fear because I can make a mistake one day and suddenly my value plummets and someone's going to be mad at me.

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[00:05:07] And I would already be in an anxious, angry state without even having left the bed. And then same thing at night, no matter how much I did that day, it felt like I was still behind. And there was never this concept of acceptance or being proud of yourself, right? Or just being kind. Like those were not habits I had.

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[00:05:46] I don't want to live with guilt and anxiety and depression and fear all the time, but that's almost every Asian female I know. And so if that's the case, guess what? It's not personality. It's not personality. It has a lot to do with our upbringing, our environments, and we're not here to blame anybody, but there's a lot of similarities in how we all grew up that have created This kind of a habit where we accept blame, where we will take on too much responsibility, where we will take care of friends, relatives, neighbors, and make sure we fix their lives and make things nice for them.

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[00:06:53] But I never came out feeling good about myself. And what happens when you do this, even for a few years, it becomes a habit. And if you do this for A lifetime. That's your life, right? You feel guilty your entire life and who wants to live like that? And sometimes we feel like, well, if I just get the next promotion or when my kids graduate or something, when the baby grows up, I will feel better.

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[00:07:39] I mean, there might be a dinner where we go eat out at a buffet and I'm such a foodie that it's, you know, exciting for maybe two hours, but that feeling would fade. And I'd go back to my, my ho hum mediocre feelings at best or depression and sadness at worst. And nobody wants to live like that. So I want to give you an understanding of how this happened, help you connect the dots so that we can start fixing this.

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[00:08:40] I was in Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan. And I live with my grandparents. I live with all my aunts and uncles because my mom was the firstborn. And it was fun. It was so much fun. Not a lot of discipline, I would say, but a ton of confidence and a lot of joy. We went to museums and the And we would go to the zoo.

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[00:09:15] in Taiwan. And so when we came here, my mother would cook, you know, meat, rice, vegetables. And for some reason I ate really slow when I wasn't used to the food my mom cooked. And so meals were always a battle where they would give me a small bowl of rice and food and meat. And I would just sit there chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing for hours.

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[00:09:59] And so I began to feel, I don't know, like I was a source of stress to my parents because she'd sigh a lot and at times they would punish me if I couldn't finish the food after an hour or so. They'd have me stand against the wall till my legs were sore. And I know now that That was not something I should have been punished for.

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[00:10:37] Yes, it's devastating. But what I Got from the relationship was that I was being a bad girl. And one time I remember, I don't even know what the issue was, but my dad was so upset at me. He was going to spank me with a hanger and my mother and him didn't agree on a lot. She was trying to shield me and protect me from my dad.

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[00:11:22] A couple more stories I remember that made me feel like just a bad kid, a burden, you know, a stupid kid that always messed things up, made my mother sigh continually. And one of these was we, I grew up in Illinois and it was so cold. I used to live in an apartment and My mother didn't want me to stand outside with, um, with, uh, the snow and the wind.

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[00:12:07] It didn't even stop because it didn't see any kids, right? So it just went by and I didn't even try running out there. And I remember walking back to my apartment, out of the hallway, into my own apartment, knocked on the door and my mom had a fit. I remember her going on and on for maybe an hour. About how I'm causing so much trouble and why didn't you run out there?

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[00:12:48] There was never a, Oh, I'm sorry. I had a fit. And so what happens to children is this when you're four or five years old, if you have any kind of criticism or punishment or something that is just a dramatic. And it's not warranted. You don't know that you're too young. Your brain's not developed. You're not mature.

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[00:13:31] Some of us still think that we are wrong and our parents were always right. And if that's the case, you need to stay on this podcast because I have a lot of freedom for you. And so I felt terrible. And I didn't go to school that day. I missed school. It was not fun. The entire day I felt miserable, like I was burdening my mother.

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[00:14:09] She wouldn't believe me. And so at a young age, I started taking on this guilt, feeling like whatever happened was always my fault. I remember not ever being taught about how to use money and what money is for at the school and there's this beautiful shop set up where there's all kinds of little figurines and books.

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[00:14:49] So I took the box. I think it was something like 18 or 12, which is quite a bit. It was in the seventies and then I took this little figurine. It was a rabbit. She was grayish blue, about four inches tall. And she was holding this beautiful apple and I love cutesy things like that. So I took those things and I don't even remember what happened, how I made it to the checkout line.

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[00:15:33] It was my mom again. She yelled and screamed and yelled and screamed. She didn't say, I'm sorry, we didn't teach you anything about money. I didn't know, right? So again, I feel like a terribly mean child stealing from the store. And... She gave me cash and said, go give this to your teacher. I don't think there was a note attached to it or anything.

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[00:16:11] Even right now, as I'm telling this to you, it was so humiliating and I tried to give them money and I didn't know what to say. And I was so scared because they wouldn't take the money. And I knew if I went home with the money, I was going to get in big trouble. And I kept shoving money at them and trying to say, take it, take it.

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[00:16:52] And when they just blame you and blame you, you can bet you're going to have some severe guilt issues when you grow up. And what kills me is I've talked to thousands of Asian American girls. This is how many of us get treated, right? There's just this sense of, you know, Oh yeah, what are you doing wrong?

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[00:17:30] Jeannie, can I see you in the office? How many of you automatically panic and go, Oh no, what did I do wrong? Cause that's been your experience ever since you were little. I don't believe my parents at that age, three to five, no one ever said, good job. I'm proud of you. Or, Jeannie, come here, I want to share something with you.

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[00:18:04] And we ought to feel proud. But instead, each of us lives in anxiety and stress, anticipation of getting yelled at. We're acting like we're still five. And that breaks my heart because I know how scary that is. And we need to start changing that, getting strategies to heal that so that we can act like we are the age that we are and have confidence and be decisive and know our value and not constantly be scared of disappointing people and feeling guilty.

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[00:18:59] Now let's get back to our show.

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[00:19:08] Freshman year of high school, I began doing speech competitions. I had no idea I was talented in this area. I had a wonderful teacher, Mr. John Hires, who I will always, always be grateful to wish I had a chance to say thank you to him. He saw some talent in me and said that my transitions were really good and suggested that I joined the speech team.

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[00:20:00] And so I didn't do choir. I didn't do speech. I did nothing that year except study. And so senior year, I had a chance to go back and Start my activities that meant so much to me. I was able to be in choir, but I didn't make the senior Elite choir group because I didn't sing for a year and I was so disappointed and I was behind in speech I used to get first place at every single meet and now I was placing fifth six not even placing I felt bad about myself Eventually though I rewrote my speech and I started to get on a winning streak And so for the state final which was in Carbondale, Illinois Uh, I was expected to win and I was pretty confident, but something spooked me at that final round where the time limit was supposed to be 10 minutes.

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[00:21:03] Ceremony in the auditorium. I was so scared. I thought for sure I'm gonna get sixth place, but I placed fourth which means that if I had not done that I probably would have won Do you know how many times I played that scenario in my head? I played it over and over and over again probably for the next 30 years Do you do that?

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[00:21:46] And I want to tell you, if you have a similar situation here where your teammates were depending on you and you didn't, for whatever reason, succeed, that is not something to be guilty of. That is not something that you need to hang on to for years and years and beat yourself over the head again and again.

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[00:22:11] That was my fault. And it felt terrible. It felt really bad. We were all quiet in the bus ride on the way home. Everybody was silent and I felt it was my fault. Like I was responsible for the entire school being let down. And I still feel bad to this day if I, if I really let myself do that and let me ask you this, what is the benefit of that when you go back and replay these horrible incidences where you felt so bad that you let everyone down, what is the benefit?

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[00:22:43] And when you're overcompensating for the feeling of guilt, you will overdo it and probably sabotage your own relationship in any case. Anything that went wrong in the marriage, I would assume blame for.

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[00:23:15] And so after a while I felt taken for granted. I felt resentful. I felt like I was doing everything, but the relationship wasn't getting closer. It wasn't getting more intimate.

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[00:23:53] Maybe there's even some toxicity in politics and you've been thinking about getting a new job. Many of us have been in this position and we think about this for a week. Two months, a year goes by, two years goes by. We're still here. It's been three years because we feel guilty that if we leave that new hire that just is trying to onboard, I'm going to leave her behind.

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[00:24:35] How many of you have a situation in which you are in a sinking ship in your career and so many people have tried to fix this problem and now it's your job and you feel guilty not being able to do it. Many of us who are the hardest workers who are very competent in our job get stuck with the worst projects.

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[00:25:15] And so guilt is a problem because we don't know when to quit. And if you do this two years here, five years there, you've wasted a decade of your life. And so there's no forward progress. And that's why you feel stuck because we've stayed too long in situations that are not productive, that are not successful for you, maybe for your company, but certainly not for you.

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[00:26:01] That's why we often have a partner who doesn't work and we keep supporting them. And maybe we thought about leaving or pushing them to work harder, but we feel guilty leaving them. It is also the reason why we don't get promoted because when we don't, instead of having confidence and realizing we deserve it, we feel guilty that, Oh, maybe we didn't work hard enough. Maybe the assessment is right. And because of this, we have no self advocacy. And again, we're the ones getting hurt.

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[00:26:39] we want to be useful. And so many of us. Feel guilty for not doing enough because we're seeking love. You know what the antidote is to this though? It's not doing more. It's not apologizing more. It's not rehashing those stories. But the truth is you need to start falling in love with yourself.

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[00:27:31] And just being around you is a joy. If we had An environment that we knew we were loved and cared for and that we mattered just by being who we are. None of us would develop such huge guilt complexes. If you made a mistake and spilled milk and people just said to you, It's okay, everyone makes mistakes.

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[00:28:11] That's gonna cost us 2 and now we don't have money for groceries. Because many of us grew up in difficult financial circumstances. I want to tell you, you don't have to feel guilty for that anymore. If any of you felt like a bad daughter, because your parents have over and over again criticized you for your choices, or your personality, like you're too loud, or you're too quiet, or you're not social enough, or you're not...

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[00:29:19] You are not stupid. You are not the embarrassment of your family. If you like creativity and art, you're not worthless. You're not less valuable than an engineer or a doctor. Just because people could not see your worth and your value, does not mean you don't have value. And what you need to do is start exploring what is in that beautiful treasure chest that is you.

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[00:30:11] who you are and then being brave enough and strong enough to just be you. So you don't have to hide. You don't have to pretend to be something you're not so that you can please somebody else. That's not success.

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[00:30:43] And I let it go and then take a deep breath and I'd like you to do this instead. I want you to write 50 reasons why you are an amazing human. You've been so full of guilt and we play these stories over and over again, but if I ask you to give me 50 examples of why you're an amazing human being, do you even know where to start?

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[00:31:23] And so I want you to thank yourself 50 reasons why you are an amazing human. Start turning that guilt into gratitude. for yourself. Okay. Gratitude for yourself is self love. Self love is not just cucumbers and yoga and doing your nails. It is being thankful for who you are. Isn't that a crazy concept? If you were thankful for who you are, your confidence will start to build day by day.

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[00:32:12] It is, it is the way to live, my dear.

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[00:32:36] So be sure to tune in next week when we talk about. Why guilt is the reason behind us not being able to say no and not being able to have boundaries. I'm going to tell you hilarious stories from my childhood. Problems I got into because I was so afraid to say no. I didn't practice having ownership of my own decisions, and I said yes to everything, every situation, and everybody. And you can imagine the kind of difficulties I got into. In my workplace, as a result,

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[00:33:32] See you next week.