Kat Kuan

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reflection

The Biggest Mistake

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I think the biggest mistake we can make in our lifetime is to think that we don’t matter. The mistake of diminishing ourselves and feeling like “oh if I don’t show up, it won’t matter. No one will even notice that I’m not there.”

In the past, I doubted myself and if my presence somewhere was even useful or not. I was hard on myself because sometimes I didn’t say much or feel like I was contributing much. But you know what? I realized how just “showing up” is enough. You don’t need to be the life of the party, you don’t need to be the best storyteller in the room or make everyone laugh. You just need to show up. Even having positive vibes already boosts the energy level of the whole room.

In building my business and sharing my journey, at times I felt like I was creating blogposts and videos that were disappearing into the void, like I had no idea whether anyone was reading it or getting any value from it. But in those moments of self-doubt, people would come along and give me a nudge. They would tell me that I matter, that my voice, my work, and my creativity matter. And that would help me stand a little taller and realize that what I do matters, and that I shall continue moving forward. So to all those people who kept reminding me of this, thank you from bottom of my heart.

And hence, I wanted to pass along that message to you. You matter. Your voice matters. Your life matters. Your choices matter. And your happiness matters. If it’s hard for you to grasp, I would say that’s normal. But my hope for you is that you eventually come to believe it with your whole heart. It’s an ongoing work in progress for me as well.

Many people don’t realize how much of an impact they have on others around them. They diminish their impact on their circle of influence – friends, family, work, community, etc.. They feel quite small about themselves or don’t allow themselves to fully dream about what their biggest and most powerful life could be. They don’t realize how much light they would shed on others if they stepped into their fullest and best selves.

Two Takeaways

So if you see potential in someone, let them know what you see in them and let them know they matter. I can’t fully express how good it feels when you feel seen in this way. 

Second, and probably even harder, acknowledge that you matter. It feels egotistical and self-centered to feel like your life matters, but it’s true. And when we believe that about ourselves, then we start to act in a way like our life has purpose, that we are worth investing in ourselves and worth taking care of. And in nourishing our body and soul, we start to come alive.

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
– Ferdinand Foch

Where I Developed My Sense of Imagination

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I have the most fond memories of going to my grandma’s place – well it was my grandparents’ home, but she was the woman who ran the household, made sure all the kids were fed, and was the glue of the family.

She lived down the street from us, and my parents would drop me and my sister off at their place so they could go off to work. My grandma would bring us to school, picks us up from school, feed us a tasty afternoon snack, and then let us play until our parents picked us up. My two cousins were around the same age as me too, so it was the 4 of us hanging out and growing up together.

It was so much fun. It was a humble home, didn’t really have many toys, but we always found something to occupy our time. We loved to make up games and use the furniture to setup obstacle courses. We’d crawl under the dining table. We would turn the folding tables on their sides and pretend they were cars. We would make ample use of the sofa pillows and blankets and create forts. Or we’d use pens/paper to entertain ourselves for hours. We would draw or make things out of paper and scissors, and use up all her tape!

We didn’t have much technology – there was a TV in the living room that we’d watch cartoons on – Animaniacs, Sailor Moon, Power Rangers, or whatever was on. They had the best shows back then! The TV would overheat and she’d tell us to turn it off and go do something else instead.

There was a small backyard with fruit trees and a grass area for running around in. We’d make up games, play on our little bicycles, play water games in the summer, or kick the ball around.

I smile as I look back on all these memories – playing and using our imagination. Anything was possible with those pillows and people to play along with. 

A couple distinct things stand out:

We loved our grandma’s spaghetti. It was always exciting when that was the afternoon snack.

We enjoyed watching the Teletubbies and even created our own Teletubby club, where each of us were a Teletubby. I was LaLa, the yellow happy go-lucky one! We also had our own Teletubby newsletter complete with “news” and puzzles and other cute clipart images – whatever was available on the Create-a-card software we used.

We dedicated two blank notebooks to each of our grandparents and would each add a page to the notebook. For example, we’d add a drawing or glue in something. Then when the pages would all get filled, we wanted to gift it to them. We never finished it, so we never gave it to them, but we’re pretty sure they already saw it when they would clean up each day lol.

On occasion, she’d take us to McDonald’s, which we loved because of the food and the ball pit.

We would also play “school” to mimic our teachers and teach my little cousin. Looking back, maybe that’s when I started to like teaching! It’s so funny to find early traces of our current selves in our childhood. 

All in all, I am so grateful for this time in my life when I had time to play. Life got much busier as I got older. I started doing more activities and running from extracurricular to extracurricular. Unfortunately, there seems to be less time to play for adults, but I’m realizing how much fun it is and how necessary it is for my soul. So I’m trying to make more blank spaces in my life to imagine and create things! Who knows what can come from it? Perhaps the best part is to have no expectation at all about any result, and just let things unfold.

Was there a specific place you remember your imagination developing? 

Two Types of Discipline

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As an entrepreneur, it’s so hard to be the boss of yourself. You work on something for a goal or deadline, but you’re also the one setting the deadline on yourself, so you can just as easily change it. With better tools, I’m learning to manage myself better, and I came to realize that there’s 2 types of discipline in this world.

Discipline Out of Fear

This is the type of discipline I grew up with. Being in an Asian household, there are strict expectations to study hard and do well in school. In school, there is pressure to do well on homework and exams, otherwise you could *gasp* get a bad grade. School turns into the myriad of college entrance exams and college applications where the constant driver is to do well otherwise *gasp* you may not get into a “good college.”  The pressure doesn’t let up in college either. You vie for good grades otherwise you may not get a “good job.” And once you land in a good job, there’s the fear of getting a bad performance review or disappointing someone who’s a higher-up, so you work and work. It’s really a culture of fear that we’re brought up in. And it’s quite toxic because we do things because we’re afraid of disappointing others or bringing shame onto ourselves. We fall prey into thinking that if we can’t do something, it may reveal that we’re incompetent or not good enough.

All this to say, I got very good at being disciplined out of fear. I could crank through lots of work and memorize my way through a class to remember the content long enough to pass a test and then forget it afterwards. I was able to pull through on an extremely challenging deadline by sacrificing my own health and well-being, but it was for a good pat on the back or a good grade / performance review.

But when I left the normal world of formal education / corporate America, I found it very hard to get things done because I had operated so long on discipline out of fear. Sure, I was afraid of failing at my business or being embarrassed that I couldn’t meet a goal that I had announced publicly on social media. But that fear wasn’t enough to get me out of bed and to the gym, and taking care of myself, and doing the hard work of building a business every day. 

I learned that I needed a different type of discipline.

Discipline Out of Love

I’m starting to learn that there’s a new source of energy, a new source of motivation which is much more boundless than fear. It is doing things out of love. You can be disciplined in your work and show up raring to go every day because you love it so much. You’re so pumped to make progress towards a dream that puts you on Cloud 9 just thinking about it. You can be disciplined in how you take care of yourself – exercise and eating healthy because nourishing your body feels good to you.

Here’s another way to put it. You can eat healthy because you fear dying early or getting some incurable disease. Or you can eat healthy because it feels good in your body and gives you energy. 

For a long time, it felt weird to do things out of love, especially out of love for myself. But when you do things that make you feel good, or find a way to make something feel good (finding a form of exercise you really like), then you are much more willing to stick with the consistency of discipline because it feels great each time.

I also had a mental block on this because sometimes “feeling good” in our society is labeled as indulgent or short-sighted or irresponsible. We’re conditioned to expect that we need to suffer in the short-term for a happy future. But actually self-inflicted suffering just cripples our energy and enthusiasm for life. So I call BS on that. I think “feeling good” is a good thing, and we should pursue more of it, in a healthy way of course.

Instead of doing things out of obligation, I continually challenge myself to do things out of love for myself, love for others, or love for my work. It’s definitely a mind shift, but I think one that will ultimately change the course of my life. 

What mode are you operating in these days?

Feeling Guilty for Having the Opportunity to Chase My Dreams

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This is a hard post for me to write. But a part of me likes being challenged to be honest with myself and to the world, so here’s my best attempt at finding words to express myself.

If you’re new to my blog, I left my job to start a business (see Reflection on Leaving Google).

One of the hardest things is to figure out who I am and what I want in life. And for me, that can also trigger feelings of guilt.

If a friend told me they were feeling guilty for having the chance to leave their job and have time to figure out what they want in life, I would encourage them not to feel guilty. So on the obvious level, I shouldn’t feel guilty. But my subconscious mind can still hold onto those feelings.

I wanted to write this article because I don’t think this topic of guilt is acknowledged much in the media / literature on entrepreneurship.

SEEING EVERYONE ELSE OVERWORKED AND STRESSED

Being around other people in Silicon Valley and witnessing their overbooked, overstressed, and overworked lives – trapped in demanding jobs because of all their bills / debt, made me feel guilty that I was free from that (at least temporarily). I mean, I have my own stresses and problems, but I would say our struggles are different.

Anyways, it made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough and wasting time “enjoying” life, when others were working their a$$es off. It made me scared that I’d have later regrets for enjoying my life in this moment, and wishing I had worked harder and self-sacrificed now. For some reason, I also felt like I must partake in their suffering, otherwise I would be falling behind in life. Weird, I know.

I knew that comparing myself to other people’s lives wasn’t a good idea. I knew that enjoying life in the present is all we can do. But the guilt still lingered.

GUILTY THOUGHTS

A lot of my guilt was around the thought, “Why do I get this opportunity (and this time in my life) to chase my dreams? And why do others not?” It would make me shrink back because I couldn’t fully accept this opportunity or think I deserved this chance.

The best way I was able to overcome this thought is through this poem by Marianne Williamson called “Our Deepest Fear.” This is my favorite poem, so I highly recommend that you read it. I printed it out on paper (archaic, I know) and put it by my bedside so I could read it and absorb the words.

In the poem, she actually says “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Which is very similar to the questions that were circling in my head.

Her response in the poem is, “Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.”

Well damn. I guess that’s the answer.

The journey in dealing with this guilt was a long process and more complex than just reading a single poem, but this poem helped me reach a turning point.

NEW THOUGHTS

I try to see this time in my life as a gift from God – an opportunity to break the bad habits of my old life and create a life on my own terms. I try to see it as I got this opportunity and I’ve got to take a hold of it and run for as long as I have this opportunity.

Here’s another thought that helped me.

It’s this mental image of a big globe. And all these people on the earth, who are standing on different parts of the globe. (I should really sketch this out at some point.) And they’re each given a different path for their life that extends outwards from the globe in different directions. Yet these people don’t realize that everyone’s path is different and going in their own direction – the beautiful uniqueness of each person. Instead, they try to look at each other, they get competitive, and try to travel someone else’s path and follow that person’s steps – neglecting their own path that God had laid out especially for them. So I think the lesson is to follow our own path, and not get distracted by the paths other people are on. We all encounter pain and suffering along the way, but in different ways. And it’s not productive to take on someone else’s pain that was meant for them to learn from.

The guilt has waned over time as I’ve read more, talked to more people, and reflected more. It doesn’t bother me as much, but that was a mental mountain to climb. Just like I’ve been trying to declutter to get rid of things that don’t serve me in my life, I’m trying to let go of the thoughts that don’t serve me. And guilt for sure does not help me at all.

Guilt holds us back from embracing all that we can be. Guilt can clip our wings and ground us, when all our soul really wants to do is spread its wings and fly in all its beautiful glory.

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The Self Journal

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I’ve been on the hunt for a better way to manage my time and priorities and goals.

Hence, I ordered the Self Journal from Amazon in the color Charcoal. It is a daily planner for 90 days, and includes places for you to track your weekly progress towards your overarching goal. I just started using it, but it seems very well thought-out in terms of the structure and seems like it aligns well with the psychology behind what we need to achieve our goals. It’s created by the company Best Self Co.

To see more of what’s included, here’s an unboxing video that I posted on my YouTube channel:

If you decide to try out The Self Journal too, let me know what your experiences are with it!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I purchased this journal on my own and am hopeful about it!