W3 2023 | Weekly Round-up Returns!
Class launch; On fear, doing the work & convergent evolution; entertaining recs
Disconnecting for most of the last 2 weeks of 2022 and the first week of 2023 was wonderful. I wasn’t sure I’d restart this weekly newsletter but a question this morning (the second time someone has asked me) prompted me to sit down and share my thoughts.
Things I’ve launched:
My class! Last Thursday was my first class for The Mindful Manager. I’ll save my reflections for a separate article, but I will say: I’m grateful I learned from marketing about conversion funnels, from sales about persistence, email templates and personalized invitations, and from product, how to deliver an MVP. :)
Things I’m thinking about:
On fear, doing the work and being vulnerable.
Two dear friends asked me recently, “How are you able to be so exposed in your writing? I admire it - but aren’t you scared?
Yes, I’m scared - every time.
Each time I write, it’s a leap of faith. I forget who said it, but you don’t stop being afraid. But you do the thing that’s in line with your values, even if you’re afraid.
It’s like running. When training for a half-marathon, I naively thought that at some point, running would stop sucking. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t stop being tiring or unfun - you just learn that you can live through it.
Same thing with working out. It does get easier as you get stronger, but you’ll still hit that same moment of tiredness, of exhaustion - because you’ll keep hitting your current limits. If you’re lucky, you transcend that moment though and find yourself supremely grateful to be alive and proud of yourself for being strong.
Yes, and.
And, I have spent 10 years in therapy and I am more comfortable with my flaws, my story, and who I am, than I have ever been in my life. In the class I’m teaching on mindful management & conflict at work, I sent my class a note this week:
“If you're normally conflict-avoidant or new to conflict, think of yourself as someone who is just learning to lift weights. In the same way that you wouldn't immediately try to pick up a 200lb weight, don't try to tackle the biggest, highest-stakes conflict in your life this week! Like a weight-lifter, the goal is to work on form - and lift small, manageable weights - to lay a foundation to tackle bigger conflicts.”
Similarly, if you are someone who struggles to be vulnerable, wrestles with self-acceptance, or has trouble letting go of criticism from others, I would NOT advise starting by publishing your writing on the internet for everyone to read.
Start with journaling in a book that you can lock. Start with being 10% more vulnerable with your friends: safe, trusted people. Start with looking inwards and facing the parts of yourself that are hard to love and hard to accept.
Evolution & common humanity.
Finally, I’m reminded of evolutionary biology and the idea of convergent evolution, where the same adaptations arise across different species and in different timelines, because they’re adapting to similar environments or evolutionary pressures.
For me, being the child of Chinese immigrants in America has shaped me indelibly. I found that part of my writing (and experiences) resonant with other children of immigrants, even if they’re not Chinese or not immigrants in America. Similarly, while not everyone who reads my writing grew up in a fundamentalist Christian culture, those who grew up under other fundamentalist religions can relate.
For everything I share - feeling insufficient, feeling needy, the struggle to accept myself and the fear of failure - these are all universal human feelings. While the specific forces that produced these feelings may vary, the feelings are universal.
Kristin Neff and Chris Germer’s work on Mindful Self-Compassion has been a game changer for me. And even in this article, you can see the three tenets: mindfulness (being able to be present to this moment, regardless of the pain and difficulty I am experiencing), self-kindness (the ability to accept who I am even as I aim to live a more values-centric life), and common humanity.
Common humanity is the “sense of interconnectedness…it’s recognizing that all humans are flawed works-in-progress, that everyone fails, makes mistakes and experiences hardships in life.” (pg 10)
Why do the work?
There’s this concept of doing “the work” - and I’ve liked this term because it describes that I am effortfully shaping myself. And yet, it’s such a vague term - what is “the work”? What is the outcome you’re working towards?
I think the outcome looks different for each person, in the same way that many athletes workout at the gym, but for different aims: skiing, weightlifting, volleyball, curling. ;)
The work is the process of learning to recognize the things that have shaped us, naming the coping mechanisms and internalized limits, embracing ourselves as we are, and getting clear on who we want to be - and what it takes to get there.
Even if we are afraid at each step.
Things I’m working on
My class! (still.)
The future. :)
Things I’m reading/listening/doing:
Workbook Rec | I’m down to the last chapter of Neff & Germer’s book on Mindful Self-Compassion! I’ve done one exercise a month for about 2 years (it’s 24 chapters) and it’s one of the best toolkits/resources I’ve found in the last 2 years. Check it out if you’re curious how to build self-kindness, mindfulness & a sense of our common humanity.
Book Rec | Sci Fi | Adrian Tchaikovsky’s series, The Final Architecture. The third book is due out this year, but books 1 and 2 were phenomenal. There’s a joke among my scifi reading friends that it’s EVERY possible scifi trope you can think of (there’s a character in book two called Captain Ahab who is on a maniacal search of the universe…and he basically looks like a whale) but I utterly LOVED it. I devoured book one and book two is just as good.
Podcast rec | During the pandemic, I discovered a few podcasts I really liked and one of them is Smartless, with three very funny American actors (Jason Batemen, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett). Some episodes are hit and miss, but the recent two with John Krasinki and Stephen Spielberg are both everything I want in a podcast: funny, human, humble, kind and authentic.