[00:00] Shed the fire in the darkest night of Phoenix Birds, it's ready for flight Shadows may come try to tear you apart but you're the.
[00:11] Alright, everyone,
[00:13] it's Valerie here, back with another solo episode of from the Ashes this week and something I've been mulling over for quite a while now, and I'm almost sick of myself in terms of talking about it.
[00:26] But. But I'm going to talk about my article, Unbecoming, acceptable, embracing your unconventional life to be truly happy.
[00:35] And so the thesis is that if you want to be truly happy, you need to embrace your authentic, unique self.
[00:43] So I was having a conversation with my husband, Greg the other day and it was perfect timing for this because he was talking about how he wants to raise our future kids and impart on them the freedom from worrying about what other people think of of them.
[01:05] Because he grew up really wanting to please others and wanting to fit in.
[01:14] And who doesn't, right? Who doesn't want to fit in,
[01:18] who doesn't want to keep up with the Joneses, make us as much or more money than everyone else? Who doesn't want to be first place, who doesn't want to win the awards?
[01:30] But then we gotta ask ourselves, well, what if?
[01:33] What if we don't wanna do that? Is that even possible?
[01:37] And so today I'm going to play around with those questions and I want to ask you first if you've ever found yourself thinking the following as if life feels like I'm just going through the motions,
[01:50] and what if I actually went for what I truly want?
[01:54] Or if I were to be truly who I am without hiding parts of myself,
[02:00] what would happen?
[02:01] Or if you've ever asked yourself,
[02:04] why do I feel stuck while everyone else around me is hitting their career goals, raising their families,
[02:10] why can't I move forward too?
[02:13] So if any of that sounds familiar,
[02:15] I want you to stay with me now.
[02:19] This episode is not for you. And in fact, this whole podcast is not for you.
[02:24] If you love the rat race of achievement,
[02:27] if you thrive by following traditional rules,
[02:30] by all means,
[02:32] if you're one of those people,
[02:34] keep playing the game that works for you,
[02:36] genuinely.
[02:38] Because if that game works for you,
[02:40] you've got the winning game board.
[02:44] Because most other people are playing that game.
[02:47] So keep it going.
[02:48] However,
[02:50] if you are an unconventional thinker, if you are a questioner of the status quo, if you are a seeker of truth,
[02:59] keep on listening.
[03:01] The likelihood is if you're questioning things, there's a reason for it.
[03:05] Maybe you've traveled the world and You've caught a glimpse of what true freedom feels like.
[03:11] Or maybe you've lived somewhere where people who grew up completely different from you spoke a different language.
[03:18] And maybe in those places, you found yourself still building real connections and friendships.
[03:26] Maybe you know the depth that comes from honing a craft or passion with total dedication.
[03:32] You know how to go really deep with one thing,
[03:35] and you know what kind of freedom is on the other side of that.
[03:39] Or maybe you've loved hard with your full heart and been broken before.
[03:45] Or maybe you're just a fiercely curious being.
[03:51] Well, whatever your experience,
[03:53] you know what it feels like to be different,
[03:56] to be free,
[03:58] to be passionate.
[03:59] And sometimes knowing what that feels like and knowing what it feels like to be without it is a terrible thing,
[04:08] because you can no longer live in ignorance of what's real.
[04:12] And the thing is,
[04:13] this world that honors the rat race, that honors convention, that honors tradition,
[04:20] it keeps telling you to fall in line and do what you're supposed to do,
[04:26] what you should do.
[04:28] And as a result,
[04:29] being different,
[04:30] thinking differently starts to feel like a real threat.
[04:34] And it's really hard not to think, well, what's wrong with me that I can't just fall in line?
[04:43] So what if I told you those experiences that you have of being different were actually the key?
[04:50] What if you lean into your uniqueness instead of away from it?
[04:55] The thing is, not all of us are meant to live behind a white picket fence in a white collar job.
[05:01] Not all of us want that.
[05:03] And I'm here to tell you that's more than okay.
[05:08] And if you're someone like me, who's actually absolutely repulsed by the dream of the white picket fence and the white collar job,
[05:18] more power to you.
[05:20] It is okay to want more for yourself.
[05:23] And I'm going to say the controversial thing, that it's actually also okay to want less for yourself.
[05:31] It's okay to want to have less in your life.
[05:36] It's okay to want something so specific that it would make you just completely different from everyone else around you.
[05:45] So how did we get here?
[05:47] Well, I learned early on that what earned me love and safety was being quiet and being obedient,
[05:55] getting good grades, never causing trouble,
[05:58] making life easy for everyone around me.
[06:02] And I grew up on Long island in a traditional Chinese American household built on the promise of this white picket dream.
[06:12] So being good wasn't a personality trait that I was born with.
[06:18] It was the unspoken deal created by the unspoken rules of the circumstances that created my reality growing up.
[06:26] And I was really good at Being good.
[06:30] I was good enough to feel safe,
[06:32] good enough to slip by unnoticed, because guess what? Anytime that I spoke up and tried to stick up for myself,
[06:38] I was punished.
[06:40] Whether it was like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about, or it was a little slap on the wrist, or you need to be quiet.
[06:47] I was told all of those things. And so guess what I learned.
[06:52] And I told myself that to be good and to get rewarded, I needed to be proper, I needed to be silent, and I need to work hard,
[07:03] because that's what gets me the attention that I want and not the punishment that I was getting when I was being too much of myself.
[07:12] So there's a particular kind of pain that lives inside of being good and quiet and obedient,
[07:18] especially when you're not actually meant for that life.
[07:23] And I remember early on that maybe there was something else that I was meant to do that required me to be a different way.
[07:33] And another voice inside of me started to wake up.
[07:37] And that voice,
[07:39] that self,
[07:40] wanted to be seen,
[07:43] not just approved of.
[07:45] I wanted to belong,
[07:47] I wanted friends. I wanted to laugh with other people. I wanted to joke,
[07:51] things that just seem so hard for me to do. I still to this day, do not have a great sense of humor.
[07:58] And I like half the jokes that people tell me go way over my head.
[08:03] But anyway,
[08:05] that self, that creative,
[08:07] unique self, I wanted to dance and I wanted to shake my booty and I wanted to listen to music.
[08:14] I. I wanted to know more about the world and how I could dance through it.
[08:20] I wanted to live in rhythm.
[08:23] And that required an expression that the good girl part of me had no language for.
[08:30] And it wasn't until college that I found that language in hip hop and street dance.
[08:38] I've talked about the role that hip hop and street dance have played in my life before, so I won't go too,
[08:43] too into it.
[08:44] But it became such a huge part of my identity. And I was obsessed for a while.
[08:52] But the thing is, even though I was obsessed, I was caught between two worlds.
[08:59] The world of the good girl got me through college,
[09:02] Top university,
[09:04] grad school,
[09:05] kept me on a safe path,
[09:08] you know, achieving and respected.
[09:11] I had a really good resume that looked impressive on paper.
[09:15] But on the other hand,
[09:16] there was a rebel dreamer part of me.
[09:19] The part of me that went to the clubs late at night,
[09:22] the part of me that just was curious about everything.
[09:26] The part of me that made friends wherever I went in the world.
[09:30] And the rebel dreamer got me onto the stages. It got me into unfamiliar cities. It got me into friendship circles you wouldn't think I belonged in.
[09:41] And for a long time, I thought I had beat the system.
[09:44] I thought I had found a way to have both.
[09:49] But what I didn't realize was that I was at war with myself, trying to live two people's lives.
[09:55] And I was judging myself at every turn. Everything the good girl did, the rebel dreamer was judging. Everything the rebel dreamer was judging, the good girl was judging. And the good girl was always a front.
[10:07] And I knew it.
[10:08] Because anytime I submitted a resume,
[10:11] anytime I had to show up and talk about how successful or accomplished I was,
[10:18] I didn't actually believe it on the inside.
[10:21] And it actually started to wear down on my mental health.
[10:26] So fast forward about a decade after I graduated college,
[10:32] and I had gone through several careers. Cause I was still trying to figure out who the hell I was.
[10:39] Uh, it finally caught up to me.
[10:42] The double life finally caught up to me in the least expected of places when I should have been so happy about my life.
[10:51] I was on a trip to Japan. I was working as a tour guide.
[10:58] I had this job that was taking me to a country that I love. I was in a luxury resort in this beautiful hot spring, looking across the misty mountains.
[11:10] I was back at home. I was practicing parkour.
[11:14] I was practicing capoeira.
[11:17] And it looked like I had the dream. I had everything that I wanted.
[11:22] But again,
[11:24] a life built on a foundation of shame.
[11:27] And so when you build your life on a foundation of shame, when you actually don't accept yourself for who you are,
[11:36] there's a part of you that just can't hold what's happening.
[11:41] It can't actually own it because you're constantly actually trying to hide.
[11:46] And so in spite of the cool front and the.
[11:50] The glamorous outside,
[11:52] I was miserable and empty on the inside.
[11:56] And if you were to look at my personal life,
[11:59] that's when you can start to see the holes.
[12:02] I couldn't keep a relationship for the life of me.
[12:06] At that point. I had been dumped.
[12:08] I had been ghosted inexplicably by several people that I had dated.
[12:16] And I never knew what was wrong with me. I. I couldn't figure it out.
[12:25] Um,
[12:26] aside from that,
[12:28] my mental health was rock bottom,
[12:31] and so was my financial and professional life.
[12:35] Um, I couldn't seem to ask for the pay that I needed to thrive.
[12:41] I couldn't seem to attract a job that wasn't entry level, even though I had been working for a better part of the decade.
[12:48] And to be honest, that took me a lot, much longer to get through.
[12:53] And then my body was starting to break down in ways I couldn't explain anymore.
[12:59] And I will be so honest, I thought it was burnout.
[13:06] And I called it that for a long time because I didn't really have any language for it. If anything, it was like a full on physical, mental, spiritual burnout.
[13:16] But it was more than that.
[13:18] It was a crisis.
[13:20] And there was no quick fix that was going to make it better. There was no amount of rest that was going to make it better.
[13:27] I had to make a choice.
[13:30] And so the choice that I first made,
[13:33] that started my entire trajectory, I think,
[13:37] was the choice to stop.
[13:40] I decided to meditate for 10 days in the desert. And that led me to a journey of years of exploration and spiritual inquiry.
[13:53] Cannot say and will never say that one meditation retreat will, will heal all of your problems.
[13:59] I can't even say that, you know, one modality of healing is going to, to fix all of your problems, because I pretty much definitively say that that's not the answer,
[14:09] but that's for another episode.
[14:11] So what actually helped me was this. Not only just starting this journey,
[14:17] but going through it and dedicating myself to it for years.
[14:22] So again,
[14:24] spiritual inquiry,
[14:25] books, meditation, yoga, learning to make mistakes and learning how to forgive myself,
[14:31] that was huge.
[14:33] And learning how to sit with conflict with other people instead of running from them, instead of stewing in resentment.
[14:41] And learning to recognize that not all people are for me and not all people have my best interests at heart. And sometimes it takes some real discernment on my part to actually discover who is on my side.
[14:54] And I had to learn to recognize that some people that I admired didn't actually align with my trajectory.
[15:01] But that took learning and owning that I had a trajectory that I couldn't even make a trajectory for myself.
[15:08] I always thought, you know, I just had to listen to my elders and then they would decide my future for me.
[15:14] But that didn't get me anywhere that I wanted to go. So I had to actually choose.
[15:20] I had to let go of relationships with not only friends,
[15:25] but teachers and mentors that I respected deeply.
[15:30] Because, impressive as they were,
[15:33] they had their own agenda and they weren't necessarily willing to see me.
[15:39] And looking back,
[15:40] this journey cost me years of vibrancy that I can't get back.
[15:46] I dedicated getting to know myself,
[15:49] getting to just working through some of these really tough obstacles when I could have just sucked it up,
[16:00] made a good resume, pretended I was interested,
[16:03] got a job,
[16:05] made the money Started the family and pretend that it was all going to be fine.
[16:11] But I didn't.
[16:12] What I did choose to do was pick up the broken pieces of myself over and over again.
[16:19] And for a while,
[16:21] my whole existence became about healing.
[16:25] Because honestly,
[16:28] I don't think I would have been okay with the life of just trying to survive and pretend.
[16:35] Deep down I knew that I have the potential to thrive unapologetically. And so that's what I chose to stand for.
[16:48] So this kind of work that I decided to do,
[16:51] it's the work of uncovering lifelong patterns.
[16:55] And patterns don't just dissolve the moment you see them.
[16:59] Intellectually, knowing is not the same as embodying.
[17:03] And a peak experience isn't the same as a sustainable evolution.
[17:12] I know now that my shadow patterns are always going to be there. I'm always going to feel and fight myself sometimes.
[17:24] I'm always going to have to fight my lack of self worth. I'm always going to have to fight sometimes the fact that I just feel too different.
[17:32] But instead of pushing those feelings away or trying to fight them,
[17:37] I now know how to acknowledge them.
[17:41] And I have learned how to actually embrace the good, the bad,
[17:47] and the ugly,
[17:48] and the whole of who I am.
[17:51] Underneath the layers of conditioning, of lifelong masking, are the parts of you that actually make you powerful and the very parts that you once deemed too different to be safe.
[18:06] And it was only when I started asking for help,
[18:09] when I started choosing myself,
[18:11] that any of those layers began to lift. And not before that.
[18:16] So here's a real question.
[18:19] If you wanted to let go of the mask,
[18:23] if you actually wanted to live truly honestly by your values and your passion and your potential,
[18:29] not just manage your life,
[18:31] if you actually wanted to release who you're conditioned to be,
[18:35] to become who you're meant to be,
[18:37] how do you do that?
[18:38] I built this podcast from the ashes, and I built the vibrant visionary for the people who are asking that exact question.
[18:47] And the thing is, it's a question.
[18:50] This is meant to be uncovered in dialogue and in conversation.
[18:55] Not me talking at you,
[18:57] not me talking at you through a podcast,
[19:01] but actually working through the difficult questions that you have about your life.
[19:07] And it's not because you need fixing,
[19:10] but because somewhere along the way, you learned to be acceptable instead of whole. And no one ever showed you it was possible to put yourself back together.
[19:20] So these days, I've arrived somewhere I couldn't have promised myself back in that hot spring. And it's a version of me that actually accepts my all of who I am.
[19:30] The good girl and the purple dreamer. The ambition and the softness and the parts that used to feel like a threat to being loved and the parts that make me who I am.
[19:43] I always say that we have the ability to choose our hard Building a business rooted in your actual values instead of looking what looks impressive is still hard.
[19:57] Being in an artist and still figuring out how to support yourself is hard.
[20:02] Working part time jobs to fund the thing you actually believe in while people you know are collecting a full salary from a cushy corporate job is hard.
[20:11] And there were years that I genuinely wondered if I made the wrong call.
[20:16] But I would not trade this life.
[20:19] So anything else?
[20:21] So if you've listened this far,
[20:23] some part of you probably already knows that easy and cookie cutter was never what you actually wanted.
[20:31] Easy was just the thing that you were told to want.
[20:34] Safe was just the thing that you were told to want.
[20:42] So if anything has landed for you today,
[20:45] I would love to continue the conversation.
[20:48] This is why I do my vibrant Visionary sessions.
[20:53] It's a space for you to just lay out what it is that you want to create for yourself.
[20:59] It is a space for you to articulate what's in your way and it's a space for us to work together to create a roadmap for how to get you to the life that where you feel like you could truly be full,
[21:15] whole and vibrant.
[21:18] So if you would like to book that session, the link is in the show notes and if you have any comments, questions, please send them to [email protected] and if it all feels aligned, let us keep talking.
[21:35] Thank you so much for listening today and we'll be back next week with another amazing interview with one of my vibrant Visionary collective members, Joseph. We're going to be talking about all things healing,
[21:48] psychedelics,
[21:50] identity, evolution, philosophy, and more.
[21:53] So stay tuned and I will see you next time.
[21:58] Thank you for tuning in to from the Ashes. If what we talked about today resonates, if it feels on point with something you've been ruminating on by yourself,
[22:07] that's exactly why I'm here.
[22:08] From the Ashes exists for people who are tired of pretending life is fine and are ready to explore what it takes to truly embrace the road to who they really are,
[22:17] every conversation is an honest, unfiltered account of someone's real life and the path they're walking toward. A life they actually align with.
[22:26] If you want to explore this further for yourself,
[22:28] come join me in my vibrant Visionary newsletter. It's a bible weekly letter filled with the Reflections podcast updates and what I'm contemplating between episodes. You can find the link in the show notes below.
[22:40] Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.
