I had a meeting with my accountability partner tonight, and she said, I wish things are easier.
I’m sure many people would say that. And at the same tjme, if things are easier… would we actually think life is easy?
I mean it’s either we may become complacent, or.. we may find some other hard things to complain about…?
So what if life is meant not to be easy?
I mean there are two camps.. one can complain about it and victimize ourselves, or we could buckle down to work on it, figure out what we need to do next.
I knew that part of my life is super easy, compare to others, I was a princess, having been taken care of, didn’t have to worry too much.
And yet I had the difficult parts of my life.
It is now what do I want to do with that aspect, so I can become the next version of myself.
Who I am not is not the same person 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 3 years ago, or even this past year.
So I’d like to ask you to dive deeper, and look into what is the not so easy part. And also celebrating the parts that we’d overcome. The parts that make us who we are.
On a side note, we went to watch Demon Slayer movie. It was amazing!
If you’d watched it or planning to watch it, let me know!
Sending you lots of love .
Some adult children are getting frustrated that their parents are giving them the cold shoulders and would not speak to them for weeks on end.
Here’s how to deal with it.
1 recognize that this is a manipulation tactic
That they want you to change to cater to them.
2 give your nervous system the safety it needs
You don’t need to change yourself to calm them down so you calm down.
To calm yourself: do the 4-7-8 breathing
Breathe in slowly through nose count of 4
Hold for 7 count
Breathe out through nose count of 8
Do this for 3-5 minutes.
Once you’re ready, you can confront them to say, “hey, I know you’re upset because you care about this. And whenever you’re ready, let’s have an adult chat about it.”
If they don’t want to, then at least you tried.
Their emotions is not yours to take care of.
Deal with your emotion, calm yourself down. This is how you take your power back.
Special guest: my son.
Whenever you are ready to do this work for you, book a time with me. And let’s do this together.
I know this can be scary, so if you need, I can be your shoulder to cry on, I can give you tools, and we can figure out what your next step is.
You’re not alone. Sending you lots of love.
These few days I had to complete a small project, I completed it on Wed (super proud of myself!), so on Thurs, I said to myself, “Hey! Let’s make another video!”
My brain started criticizing every idea that I came up with.
“What is this you’re trying to say anyway?”
“You haven’t ironed out the idea yet.”
I made a video, but didn’t end up posting it.
This morning, while I was brushing my teeth, I let some silent screaming, and kept asking my inner critic:
“Why can’t you just support me???!!!!”
As that breath of air rushed from my lungs, through my throat and out my mouth..
Images of my mom criticizing me flashed through my brain..
I knew where my inner critic came from.
And I had to be the one to reparent myself.
Sometimes we may feel disappointed that the people in our lives aren’t supportive of us.
Other times, we may be the ones minimizing ourselves and our efforts.
I just want you to know. Take a look back, and see how far you have come.
You’ve come very far already.
I want you to know that I’m very proud of you.
This is the comic I was talking about.
Sending you lots of love
As a Chinese girl who grew up in Canada, I grew up with “community”, caring a lot able what other people would say, saving face.
Many times, my mom would tell me not to be polish, flawless, I need to be put together, no airing out dirty laundry, making sure other people see me as competent. So I have a hard time sharing my struggles, asking for help.
But that is not the real me.
And growing up in the west means individualism. Having my point of view, sharing my opinions. I was deemed selfish, inappropriate, self-centered.
And every time I tried to stand up for me, it was like I was one of the crabs in the bucket, I get pulled back down.
But where it started off as a “strong” community, I needed to be stronger in my voice. So I have to swing from one side to the other.
And once I have my own voice, where it is strong enough, then I can come back to community.
Where the initial community circle is a “blended colour”. Now that my voice is stronger and coming back, the new community is a circle with individual coloured dots.
So we can care for each other, love each other’s differences, support each others’ struggles, celebrate each other’s successes.
And this is the community I want to create. Because I care for a community where it supports my son, accepts him for who he is, not change him into “someone else”.
And when I can stand up with my voice, then it gives other people permission to stand up with their voices.
What do you think about community vs individualism?
Very short video today
1 be ok to feel how you feel
2 give your inner child what she/he/they need
3 allow yourself to be more you.
I was watching one of my coach’s videos, and he said, forgiveness is not a verb. Forgiveness is a byproduct of things you’re doing. Maybe you’re working through the anger or pain.
So how does gratitude come in? When I work with my clients, I ask them to do a Letting Go exercise. It’s a 10 day exercise where for the first 9 days, you write a letter to the person who’d hurt you. Let them know how they hurt you, and all the feelings you had for them. Once you’re done, you rip it up.
Then on the 10th day, you write a thank you letter, in the form of, “thank you for doing this to me so that I learned…”
And this is where the gratitude comes in. Because once you are able to shift how you look at the situation, what you’d learned from it, then you no longer pay attention to how that person has hurt you, so you let go and “forgive” the person. So it’s a byproduct.
Similarly, when we’re in a depressive state where we feel nothing is working, we do the gratitude exercise, to thank everything in our lives.
I recommend the YouTube video by Ken Honda called One Word. You can search for that.
For those of us who had gone through horrible experiences, maybe sexual assault or physical abuse, you don’t necessarily have to thank the experience, take time to thank yourself, for overcoming the experience. That you are able to survive that. And now you’re here on the other side.
Give thanks to that.
And as we keep being grateful, things will start shifting.
Now someone asked me if it will work.
The honest answer is I don’t know.
And at the same time, try it out, if it doesn’t work, try something else.
The main thing is to be in action, because that’s where shift comes in.
I hope this helps you. If you have any questions, put it in the comment line or send me a message.
I want to thank you for watching. I’m grateful for you in my life.
Sending you lots of love.
I’m going to speak in terms of you being the one whose parents disapprove of, and the one when your partner’s parents disapprove of you.
If your parents disapprove of your partner:
You have to go back into your heart to ask yourself, what is it that I know, and what is it that I want.
Because you want to be certain about this is the person you want to be with, cause if not, then why bother going through the storm?
And at the same time, are you clear in terms of who your partner really is? Because sometimes we may fight against our parents so much that we want to prove ourselves, and we may end up missing red flags.
So it all goes back to your certainty, are you able to have an open discussion/ communication with your partner so you are ONE unit.
If you’re the one your partner’s parents disapprove of.
Then your partner in this instance has to be the one to make that final decision.
And I see this a lot if this partner is a guy, because when it comes to the Asian culture, the boy is the one with “more expectations”, so if they’re not strong enough to say, “I want to be with you”, then they can be easily swayed by their parents.
You then in this instance, also have to look out for yourself, because if your partner doesn’t have the capacity to stand up for you, protect you from his parents, then you have to decide whether you want to stay or not.
When I work with my clients, I always make sure they take away three things: 1 certainty in themselves, 2 tools to calm themselves down 3 ways to navigate through the difficult conversations.
That’s because we don’t know what may happen, maybe the parents may abandon them, maybe the partner may end up leaving, so I need them to know that they have what it takes to handle different scenarios that get thrown at them.
If you have any questions, you can always send them to me.
And whenever you’re ready to do this for yourself, book a time with me.
