First of all, here’s one new habit I’d been implementing.
No cell phone in the washroom.
And that’s because every time I bring my cell phone into the washroom for shower, I end up spending way too long in the washroom.
What do I do?
I friggin’ reply to messages (I’d chatted with people while I stand in front of the sink for 20 min, what? yup!)
I watch stupid FB videos while I sat on the loo.
So enough is enough, and I’m declaring no phone.
I started yesterday (my birthday), today was hard, but I stopped myself from doing it. So great job! Woohoo!
*******
Today I wanted to share with you what I told my son about being fair.
A few days ago, my son had a meltdown, because he said that it’s not fair that he doesn’t have the same amount of screen time as me and my husband.
I told him, if he wants to have the same amount of screen time as me, then he’ll have to switch roles with mommy.
I said, if I have 5 hours of screen time, two of which I have fun, but the rest are for work, how is that fair that he has 5 hours of screen time for fun?
It took him a while to calm down, but I don’t know how much he took in.
Today, during dinner time, we chatted about something, and he brought up the topic of fairness again.
So I took this opportunity to repeat what I said.
And then I added the following:
You know Damien, when you grow up, you’ll be using more social media.
Maybe you’ll see a boy who will post photos of his birthday party, and you’ll look at it, and you’ll say, mommy I want to do this!
And I’ll say, no, and you’ll say, that’s not fair!
But here’s the thing, this boy may only post things that are good. He’ll never post things that are not so good.
Maybe he doesn’t have a good relationship with his parents, maybe his brother keeps chasing him and hitting him.
You don’t really know what goes on behind.
Maybe deep down, that little boy may actually want his parents to speak to him like how mommy and daddy speak to you.
So in order to be really fair, if you want that birthday party like that little boy, you’ll have to switch spots with him, then that will be fully fair.
What mommy and daddy are trying to make you see, is that we’re only looking at things on the outside, but we don’t really know what’s going on on the inside.
As I was telling him this, he was staring at me intently. And I think he got the just of it.
It was a reminder for myself too, because that had been me throughout my life. Always comparing myself to others, somehow wishing I have what other people have.
But I was really comparing apples to oranges.
Often times, we have a tendency to look at other people’s glamorous sides, and we may secretly wish for them, and then we forget all the great things that are going well for us.
Other times, this feeling of envy may make us act harshly against others, maybe we put them down, or say bad things about them, because we feel that unfairness.
Has there ever been a time in your life, where you really want to celebrate other people’s achievements, but deep down, you can’t bring yourself to be happy for them?
Yup… That was me, and sometimes, still me.
I can still remember how deep I got pulled down into that darkness, hopelessness.
It was something I had to work really hard to get out of.
And I’m sharing it because.. it’s normal to feel that.
******
So to get out of it, this is one exercise I practice.
I give myself 5 full minutes to thank everything in my life.
This is what I’d chant:
Thank you Anthony (my husband) for being in my life, I let you go.
Thank you Damien (my son) for being in my life, I let you go.
Thank you my condo, for providing a roof over my head, I let you go.
Thank you mom, for sometimes being a pain in the butt, I let you go.
Thank you mom, for loving me the way you know how, I let you go.
Thank you my job, for providing me money, I let you go.
And I’d go on and on for 5 minutes, giving thanks to whatever comes to my mind.
I thank all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, all the painful stuff, all the mundane stuff, all the amazing stuff, etc.
Every time I do it, it takes me out of my darkness.
So if you’re interested in it, give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Today is my 44th birthday, and I want to write a love letter to my 14, 24 and 34 yo me.
To my 14 year old self.
Hey gf, this was the year you just finished Gr 8, about to head into Gr 9. You grew so much from the previous years. Remember when you just got here to Canada (near the end of Gr 5), and you didn’t even know how to speak English? Guess what? You’re now able to speak English well, and you had a great year in Grade 8.
Your class teacher was Miss Wong and, she got you to do some calligraphy work for her. Believe it or not, this will become one of your future businesses!! You got a Math award, (ok sure, extreme Chinese for acing Math, but hey, if you’re good at it, you’re good at it right?) You enjoyed an end of year school trip to Quebec, where you and the other girls kept getting in trouble at night because all of you wouldn’t stop laughing and joking around! AND! You wrote a note to your crush, letting him know that you liked him! (Whatttt??? Dang girl! Even though it was super scary, and nothing happened from it, I am glad you took the chance to express your feelings!)
I know that high school wasn’t the best. I remembered on the first day of your keyboarding class, you asked this girl sitting next to you this awkward question, and she hated you for the rest of the semester, and you wished that you could turn back time and take those words back, I know GF…
High school was where you felt alone most of the time, and more than once you thought about ending it all, but I just want you to know that you are way stronger than you look. You were able to get past some of the darkest hours. And this became the foundation of being different from others, standing alone from the crowd. So hang in there. I want you to know how proud I am of you, and I want you to know that you got this! I want to give you tons of hugs, so you know that you are not alone, it’s ok to be different, and that I love you no matter what.
To my 24 yo self.
DANG GF! Guess what? You just graduated from it all! (Actually not really yet) And you’re now working as a radiation therapist!!!! You started working on Jun 28th, and I’m so proud of you!
It’s been a few years of many late nights til early mornings, hearing the birds chirp just as you were about to close your books.
You almost failed a few times, and I know how devastating it was, sitting with the instructors to talk about the next steps. Your heart pounded and your brain twisted as you went through all those assessments throughout the intern years. You sat through two days of exams, and showed up to the interview that got you through the door.
Everything paid off.
I just want you to know that, as a girl who is never satisfied… you’re going to want more, and that is ok. This is where you get to explore who you are, what you want, try things out, learn about yourself. These years are going to be where the resolve to never settle gets stronger. You are going to start exploring different businesses for yourself, failing, doubting trying again… , because there is more to life than you know.
I want to say that I’m super proud of you. Things are going to be challenging, and this is where it all begins.
To my 34 yo self.
These few years had been the most challenging for you. The never ending fights with your parents, it just seems like everyone is against you.
And you’d been continuously wondering if this the man of your life, yet deep down, you know that he’s the one.
2014, was the year that you went to Paris on your own. Back then you were interested in making macarons, and you took two classes in Paris. And guess what? You don’t know this yet, and you probably won’t believe it, but in the future, you will go back there to speak on stage as a speaker.
All of what you’re going through now will pay off. I admire all the times you say yes to yourself, I want to applaud you for doing it even when others (like mom) were so negative at you. And yet, here you are, even in the middle of this darkness, you still went after what’s in your heart.
Finally, to me, just turning 44.
I am so proud of you.
You married the man you love, you are an amazing mom to your son. You’d worked through the dark pains and did the healings required to be brave enough to stand up prouder, speak louder, and you’re still on this journey.
You created 3-4 different businesses and now you’re a coach and speaker. You’re allowing your son to explore his identity all because you allowed yourself to explore your own. You’re getting ready to write your next book. And I can’t wait, I can’t wait to see what happens next!!
Ladies (of all my past self).. what a journey.
As I’m here reflecting back, I want to bask in the knowing that I had been showing up for me. I want to thank you for experiencing the dark times, for hanging in there, for doing the hard thing, and for cheering on so loudly.
I see you, I am here for you, I love you.
And to my future self, thank you for being here with us. Thank you for shining your light back onto us, letting us know that this is a road worth walking down.
Thank you Me.
And I want to thank all the people who had been walking this road with me, cheering me on, lending me your ears, supporting me along the way.
You know who you are, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Birthday dinner at my favourite restaurant
Tomorrow is my birthday! And we went to the beach today for some fun.
I was going through my coach’s materials, and came across this quote.
“I’d rather be hated for who I really am, than loved for who I’m pretending to be.”
In it, she talked about how being more ourselves is such a wonderful idea, but why wouldn’t more people do that?
That is because in order to be more ourselves, we actually have to actively choose grief, and if I may add, fear.
Grief for the potential of losing the people we love, or losing physical security, financial security, etc.
Fear for potentially getting hurt, yelled at, shamed, etc.
When I had to make the choice between my then boyfriend (now husband) and my family, I had to deal with the pain of my family walking away.
When I spoke on stage about this incident during my speaking competition, I had to take care of the fear of potentially hurting my husband and my parents all over again.
When I work with my clients who want to stand up for themselves, some of them felt paralyzed at the potential of getting kicked out by their family, or at how they might bring “shame” to the family.
Taking each step may feel like walking through fire. And for some people, they'd rather not...
And yet, the question remains to be:
Would you rather to be hated for being who you are? Than loved for who you’re pretending to be?
As this is the last day of my 43rd year, it is definitely a question I'd like to invite you to ponder for yourself.
One evening this past week, during dinner time, our son was trying to “make a point” non-stop.
First, we asked him to wash his hands, and right away he asked why he was the only one who needed to wash his hands while we only “rinsed”.
Then he insisted that he wasn’t allowed to eat food from the floor once it fell down, but I would sometimes pick it up and eat it.
Then as he was about to finish dinner, my husband chose the piece of watermelon that he’d “claimed” from the night before.
And he exploded, he demanded for us to cut up the new watermelon, he cried, screamed, kept saying that that was the piece he wanted..
There were so many moments, I wanted to raise my voice,
“Stop this nonsense now!”
“It’s only a piece of watermelon! We can give you two to make up for it.”
I also thought..
“Ok let’s cut up the other half so he’ll stop the crying.”
But we did none of that.
We just sat with him, even when he rejected us.
We tried to explain calmly to him that what he’s experiencing is called disappointment.
My husband tried to offer him the rest of the watermelon.
Eventually he calmed down enough, and I was able to explain a few things to him. And he was once again willing to share the watermelon with everyone.
Often times, when other people get upset with us, we may have a tendency to change how we do things to appease the other.
Other times, when the other person kept yelling at us, we may end up raising our voices to force the other person to “submit” to us.
Have you ever been in a situation where maybe your kid is acting “out of line”, and you had either thrown your hands up and let them do what they want, or raised your voice until you see them change?
Yea… dealing with kids is not easy.
And yet, this is what I learned from speaking up for myself…
It means ruffling other people’s feathers. Other people will get mad at me, or turn against me.
Which means, allowing our son to stand up for himself will ruffle our feathers.
And even though it makes me upset and want to dominate him, or make me want to throw in the towel, I know he is in the process of learning the skill of speaking up.
This is how he can grow up to be his own person, by allowing him to speak his mind.
Because in the real world, he will encounter many No’s. He will come across people who will be upset at him, guilt him into doing what they want.
But those things shouldn’t stop him from exercising his voice, standing for himself.
I am willing to do this again and again, even if it irritates the heck out of me.
And I know it can trigger us as parents, because unless we had very loving and compassionate parents, we were never allowed to speak our minds. Because speaking our minds came with many harmful consequences.
So one of the ways to allow our kids to speak up, is for us to speak up first. The way to give our kids love and compassion, is to give us love and compassion first.
Because we’ll never be able to give our kids what they need, if we don’t give that to ourselves first.
If you feel this is an area you would like to work on, book a free 20-min consult with me, and we can see if we are a good fit to work with each other.
Let’s stand for you, so you can stand for your kids.
Today, I'd like to present my sizzle reel. 🎬🎥
These are some of the proud speaking moments I had from the last two years.
You may see this clip and say, wow! Look at Claudia! I cannot do that!
This clip is meant to ask, how can you be more like you?
You see, all these video clips only showed one side of things.
As that girl who believed that she couldn’t articulate well, (somedays, that belief still plays loudly in my head), this is what I learned, and I’m still learning.
It is my willingness to face the ugly stuff.
😣To face the fear of others not liking me.
😣To accept the current disappointment, that I am currently not where I want to be yet.
😣 To step into the pain in my past, and sit with them for as long as needed, and watch them transform into strength.
And not only that, the willingness to question, what if it is possible?
🤨 let go of the belief, “I don’t have what it takes” to “Hmmm.. what if it is possible?”, even for just one second.
🙂 To say the next smallest “Yes” to myself, even when a part of me is screaming, “what the F are you doing?!”.
🥳 To keep accepting other people’s continuous reminders: “Be proud of myself.”
Failing, doesn’t matter. Where you are, doesn’t matter. They don’t define you. It is what you do next that matters most.
So Yes, I believe that we are all born a unicorn, in a cow society, where we are made to believe we are cows. And our mission in our lifetime, is to take this cow skin off as much as we can, so that we can see our true unicorn self. 🦄✨ so that You can be more YOU.
Monday was Canada Day, so my son wanted to play on the iPad, I decided I want to practice some Mortal Kombat moves on the Switch.
I was familiarizing myself with the basic moves and specific character’s moves, then my son got interested in it too.
We shared the control between the two of us, until I went to the washroom. He went ahead and chose his own character.
When I came back, I told him I was in the middle of playing!
He went off crying. I was thinking, why the heck are you crying? Arrg.. 😣😣
So I said, “Ok fine, you can choose a character to play. But you can only play for 15 min.”
He started practicing the moves. I had this pressure building up in my chest… I thought, “now what the F am I going to do?”
I saw some clothes, so I ended up folding them.
Then my husband asked me if I was ok, that was when the tears started falling down my face.
At the 15 min mark. I told my son to turn off the game. He had the nerve to say, “You didn’t say please!”
That blow my lid off, so I said harshly, “I didn’t say please because I’m upset at you. I was supposed to be playing but you cried when I tried to take back the game. So please turn off the game now!”
I got emotional midway through the sentence and I started crying, which made him burst into tears and cried too.
Luckily my husband was there to help him with his emotions.
After reflecting on it, I realized how my people-pleasing tendency showed up.
When he first cried, I should have held my ground to say “No, I’m playing.” And help teach him about waiting for his turn.
But rather, I gave up on the game because I didn’t want him to cry. I let him play, and then resented the fact that “he’s now playing the game”, I’m mad that it’s not fair.
In reality, I was actually mad at myself for not standing up for me, and then blaming him for the unfairness.
And that is how people-pleasing tendency looks like for me. Giving up on my own happiness to make other people happy, while I’m mad at myself for not standing up for me.
Yeah.. it wasn’t fair, for the both of us.
I also realized how much pent up emotions I had bottled up since childhood.
Since I was the oldest, I was always reminded of the need to share, let things go, be the bigger person. While it hadn’t been fair for me.
Now, here’s the kicker. After my husband talked to him, he said, “Tell Mommy that life is not fair!”
No 💩 Sherlock. 🤦🏻♀️🤣
Yeah, life is not fair, and I get to stand for me, even when other people get upset, even when they cry and yell, even when they try to threaten me.
And thanks to Mortal Kombat, I’m learning to fight for me.
Often times, we have a tendency to get mad at other people because we somehow believe that they “forced” us to give up something we want.
But maybe it’s our people-pleasing tendency coming up, it was the need to make sure other people are happy, at the expense of our own happiness.
Or maybe, we believe that we have no other choice but to do that thing we don’t want.
But maybe it’s because we don’t want to face the consequences of other people getting mad and upset at us.
When was the last time that something had happened to you, that you felt it was unfair, and you were mad at the other person, but reflecting deeper, it was because you were mad at yourself for not standing up for you?
Today I share something that may be a bit controversial.
Because there is a lot of suffering in the world. And we can’t change it fully, but we have the potential to change it bit by bit within us.
Recently there is a post on Reddit, the Original Poster said that she felt very uncomfortable wearing a bra since she was young, but family and school had been very harsh against her, manipulating and forcing her to keep wearing one. Now that she’s older, she doesn’t want to wear one, but whenever she does that, people are leering at her, talking about her, laughing at her, mocking her, and she doesn’t know what she can do to stop fighting it.
I understand that it can be very upsetting, annoying, frustrating, aggravating, especially feeling oppressed by how she’s being treated for it. Because the truth is, she should be able to do what she wants to.
In the ideal world. People should respect that she doesn’t want to wear a bra. It is not right to hurt her for living how she wants.
And yet, because society has already dictated that women “should” be wearing a bra, and when they refuse to wear one, they get shamed for it, mocked for it, leered at.
This is the current reality.
So if this is me, how would I go about living that?
First, I’ll have to acknowledge two things.
I’ll have to acknowledge the current reality.
There will be creepy men leering at me if I don’t want to wear a bra.
There will be people talking about me for not wearing a bra.
There will be people trying to hurt me if I don’t want to wear a bra.
This is the reality. Not saying that it is the right thing to do to me, of course I don’t want that, yet to give myself that power, I will have to acknowledge that this is what people will do.
The second thing I have to acknowledge are the feelings I have toward it.
I’ll feel mad that other people are trying to stop me.
I’ll be scared when guys try to come up to hurt me.
I’ll be agitated when they say mean things about me.
I’ll feel oppressed, helpless, hopeless for “needing” to follow society’s rules.
Once I processed these two things, then I can decide what to do.
“If this is the reality, what do I want for myself?”
Here’re some examples.
Today,
I will take some self defence classes so I can protect me.
I want to stand up for myself, and I want to give the finger to whoever acts out of line.
I want to walk up to the people who talk shit about me, and I challenge them in the face for being rude to me.
I want to look for people who support this agenda, who are doing the same thing, so I can walk proudly down the street without my bra.
I want to not care about what other people say, even when they gawk at me.
I want to feel the freedom in doing what I want, despite other people saying bad things about me.
I want to find joy in going out without a bra, and no matter what other people do, I am being who I am.
I want to inspire other women who also feel the same way, and are seeking the same freedom.
I am willing and ready to fight for me, no matter what.
I’m too tired today, so I’m going to put on another layer of clothes so no one looks at me.
Here’s the thing, going against “the norm” is an uphill battle.
By acknowledging the situation and our feelings, we may be able to see that we have more power over ourselves, because WE can then decide what we want for us, even when other people may be against us.
Acknowledging something doesn’t make it right, this is just the first step to own our own power.
Because at the end of the day, we get to decide what we want to do, because no one else gets to change us.
What is something that you feel pressured to do, and yet you feel there is “no other options” but to follow?
