Just Shoot for the Impossible

The one time I really tried positive psychology to achieve a goal, it actually worked.

This was the fall of 2007, the world was rosier and the future seemed brighter.  I had started at an elite practice group within a mediocre consulting firm.  A selected few were invited to join this practice;  I ended up as the only girl.

I thought I was on top of the world, albeit nervously looking around.  I was making good money, wearing good cloth, and strutting my way down Midtown Manhattan everyday in carefully selected business casual.  The smell of the subway, the greeting of the receptionist, the sound of the elevator bell and the smell of lunch delis are the memories of a period so filled with misery and yet promise. 

I imagined challenging dilemmas to be handed to me on a plate, begging for me to solve.  But alas, the real world hit me quick and hit me hard.  3 months into the job and I was still sitting on the bench.  As a student who rarely slept before 2am for the past four years, including summer, stuffing herself with classes and activities, this new found sense of nothing was practically suicidal.

At one point, I was the only person not staffed on a project.  And what would you think when one of your bosses makes politically incorrect comments, another one has a tendency to avoid eye contact with you (and only you) while the rest of your co-workers bonded over sports and rock music (neither subject you could care less about)? 

There is always that fine line between blaming yourself for not reaching out enough, and blaming the world for sexism – I was trying to pick which side of the line should I stand on so I could feel a bit less miserable, and I couldn’t decide.  

And so I decided to try positive psychology.  Positive psychology doesn’t come to me naturally because business people are not startup dreamers - we under promise and over deliver, we expect the worse despite shotting for the best.

To reenact positive psychology, I decided to repeat in my head countless times every day that I am going to become the star player of my team, that I am going to get on amazing projects and peform better than anyone else.  And I also became unbelievably optimistic in manner and practice – despite blatant realities starring at me on the contrary.  People noticed my unfailing personality and once things got rolling, I was on a roll with it.  

Long story short – I did end up ”utilized.”  Soon, one boy from our group of starters left, and eventually, I moved on to a better firm while another got sacked.  The third boy went on to graduate school and the fourth one is still stuck in limbo. Long story short – I ended up well. I ended up well might sound easy now, but it was practically a dream back then, that what I really believed would have never happened had I not “pretended,” which later really led me to believe that I am indeed better. I deserve better and thus received better. 

I want all of you to shoot for the impossible. Because as Adidas would say, “Impossible is Nothing.”

Time is Running Out

One of the most valuable lessons I have learned in New York is to stop envying what I don’t have or haven’t yet become.

It may seem counter-intuitive since the city is practically built on materialism (think banking), but keeping up with the Jones’s in a place like New York will surely drive anyone insane, depressed, or at the very least, jaded of life.

New York has the best of every kind: the most beautiful girl will inevitably find someone twice as beautiful, not to mention 2 years younger, and the smartest guy will find someone making more money and getting more recognition.

Some say they come to New York wanting to be the best, but wanting to be the best is an impossible task in here. Instead, people come to New York end up finding who they are. It is here that I have found the purpose of my voice and the utility of my skills (and if I don’t quite have them, where should I go to get it?) 

I had a quarter life crisis characterized by a panicky feeling because some of my peers are doing so much more than me, because  other peers are either hoping into graduate school or hoping into marriage, because at such a young age, I have this unexplainable feeling like time is running out.  One day I woke up and realized I am no longer looking for the future, the future is here, and the dreams I once had and the realities I am facing now just don’t quite match up. 

And instead of chasing after the things I can’t have or haven’t yet become, I decide to change. Because change is what brings down stalemate, because failures happen to everyone and the most important thing is to get up. More importantly, change is watching other people’s mistakes and don’t make them myself. And change, of course, is sometimes just showing up. 

So when the perception of my life screams time is running out and other people are ahead of me, I’m thinking about the following: 

1. Give myself some more time; some people do it fast, but I do it better. 

2. Stop living lavishly and focus on the soul.  

3. Have a disciplined lifestyle with a routine.

4. Study, and read, a lot. 

5. Get new friends, reconnect with the lost ones.

6. Travel somewhere. 

7. Change my job, completely. 

8. Learn a new language.

9. Stay on high alert so that when chances arrive, I am 100% prepared.

10. Figure out, and go for it, one step at a time.

Successful old people should stop being selfish and retire

Old people with money and power should give others a chance at success: please, just retire!

In the past, transition of power in any industry has happened naturally: as one generation of youngsters enter the work force, another generation over 65 has gracefully exited into the sunset of Florida. 

The transition of power and opportunities has not only been important, but poignantly necessary for industries to shake things up, for equality to progress forward, for conventional methodologies to revolutionize, and perhaps most importantly, for young people to have opportunities to do something amazing. 

This natural transtion has all but died. People are not retiring at the age of 65, partially because they couldn’t afford to anymore. But even those who have obtained success and have savings stacked up despite this recession, they are not retiring either. 

65 is hardly old anymore. We have CEOs, editors, senators and professors who are 70 and 80 years old and still working. I have no problem with people keeping their lives busy because a retirement of not doing anything can be cruel. But please – quit those posts you have been occupying for decades and do something else, give that young person a chance to shine the way you had your chance back then.

We now have youngsters who can’t find jobs not only because this recession sucks, but also because old people are choosing not to retire. They are not retiring because this new generation of “old people” think they will never die due to modern advances in medicine. They are ambitious workaholics who are also too selfish and egocentric to step aside and believe that a younger person could do just a good of a job, if not a better one. They are the first generation who have received so much: peace, propsperity, and technology.

And now: they don’t want to give it all up after squandering away our environment and screwing up our market. So next time when you can’t find a job, don’t blame the minority for filling some quota (that is extremely rarely the reason why you don’t get hired), just go ahead and blame the people at the top.  

This is why I love Anna Quindlen.  She is retiring from Newsweek. I first fell in love with her column the Last Word when I was 15 years old. She showed me a world of ideas and perspectives I didn’t know existed. Her writings on immigration are some of the most eloquently observant and intimately relevant I have ever read. For 9 years she has been at the forefront of discussion on subjects from oppression to fairness. She is a role model, an inspiration for young people and a woman I still aspire to become. But the time is right for her to leave, and she too agrees, because there are too many amazing journalists out there with too many stories to tell, and after 9 years, she’s had her time. 

I urge others to follow her choice, because there are too many young people with too many dreams who are too hungry to take this world into a whole new era. And they cannot wait.

My love and hate relationship with my job

I have a love and hate relationship with my job. Most of the days it’s hate but some days it’s love

The days I love my job are far and in between, but they are precious: the fleeting moment when the client tells me my graphs are sort of amazing, a successful meeting we thought might fail, or beating Mckinsey at a selection round.

Most of the days, though, I am spiteful: the inventor of powerpoint must be a total dick, my male co-workers have egos the size of the sun, too much numbers without a storyline, and all this money being spent… why are we doing this and who decided to pay me for all of this nonsense?

I have said how much I want out, how much I need an escape though I have no where to turn to.

But today I’m going to talk about love. Because last night, it was love.

Courtesy of my boss’s wallet I had a glass of the most wonderful red wine I have ever tasted.

It’s burgandy and purely classic.

But tasting expensive wine is not why I fell in love with my job last night. Not completely why.

I fell in love because my boss told me he wanted to contribute back to this world with all the success our small company has been able to achieve.

He wants to give back to the world with our knowledge base, not just building a house for habitat humanity but really taking advantage of what we have and others don’t have: consulting probono cases.

And he asked to look into it.

I smiled. I smiled because contributing back to the world is the reason why I want to quit this job.

And now my boss wants me to do exactly that, on the job.

I smiled because what an opportunity this is for me to be creative and thought-provoking. And I thought, “this could never happen at BCG or graduate school.”

I smiled because I have a boss who believes in diversity and supports Obama. And I thought, “this does not happen often in corporate.”

I am probably never going to be one of those people who say, “I Love My Job!” because I am never able to say “I love my life!” or “I love my parents!”  But life is never suppose to be simple, simply good or simply bad.

For me, things are always complicated.  But for now, I want to turn my hate into love, strive to be an agent of change.

Everybody is popular somewhere

How do you tell your boss you hate your job and you are only doing this for the money, that is why you consistently avoid his phone calls?

Well, you don’t.

You tell him how much you love the job and the people.

When performance reviews arrive and your manager asks you if you are doing good, never tell him you are not. He is not interested in your well being, well, maybe he is. But even if he is, he can’t do anything about that because he is not THE boss, and the people who are actually bosses don’t want to hear that you are not doing okay. Unless you are the boss’s  favorite, but if you are , you wouldn’t be not doing great.

The point I’m trying to make is that everything is a popularity game. In order to stay on top, you have to feel chilled under crisis and remain bold and smart under fear. And guess what: this sense of ownership and confidence shouldn’t be forced out of a job, it should come out naturally if you are meant to take up that job. Perhaps you may not be so great at it in the beginning, but trust your intuition.

Everyone is meant to be great at something.  Find that thing and stick with it no matter how tough the times are.  You are meant to do a job and only there could your approval rating skyrocket.

Go find that thing. And if you don’t know, start trying.

Methodical Life-Changing Plan

I have been confused for a long time on what I should do with my life.  It’s an existential crisis.  The past 5 or so posts I have written have all been obsessively about what I should do with myself and who I should be.  I also write about how I am freaking out because I don’t have answers and can’t seem to find them.

This has been extremely uncomfortable and disorienting, and scary.

Here’s what I have come up with on dealing with such gridlock situations in life:

While I can’t figure out what I want to do, I make as much money as I can because:

1. It sucks when I don’t know what to do, but it’ll suck even more if I am also broke. Money does not make things easier (or me happier) – believe me I’m here and I know. But money allows me to take hip hop classes, learn the guitar, buy annual membership to artsy fairs, and plan a trip to South America. They open my eyes and while I would much rather that money be happily earned, at least it’s earned.

2. The money gets me a career coach and a therapist. It is ironic that I make money from a career I don’t like then use that money to talk about not liking my career. But irony is life. My confusion about who I am and what to do with myself comes from emotional/psychological blockage being raised by a hyperventilating mother and an overbearing father, though I am told this is actually kind of normal. The career coach provides me action plans to shake things up, and the therapist explains why I can’t get myself to shake things up. This is all useless, but kind of necessary. It’s part of the process. Part of me think it’s just me being White but I’d like to believe it as a truly modern endeavor.

3. I will pay off my student loans. It’s a legal barrier that needs to be taken care of. I really hate loans (and people with old money).

But soon (maybe by the end of this year, I don’t know) if I still can’t figure out what I want to do I am just going to quit. Quitting totally makes sense because:

1. If I get promoted later with that 50% raise, it’ll make quitting that much harder; then I’m going to be truly stuck in this ever-lasting corporate climb because I’m going to start lying to myself that this is all how it’s suppose to bee (I could afford a house now!), just like that guy from Revolutionary Road.  Promotion is really the only reason why people get stuck and die sad. Quitting now makes sense.

2. I am legally free (of student debts). Knowing the worst that could happen to me is keep hitting zero and not spiraling into the negative is incredibly comforting. It’s sort of like buying options versus just stocks – I don’t buy options.

3. I have had money and have known the feeling of knowing I could have more – and I choose to give it up. This makes the perspective of “what-ifs” simple.

4. I have received advice on finding who I am from every alternative source possible: the parents, friends, shrinks, career advisers, corporate mentors, cab drivers, Jewish people, Chinese people, Black people, and my dear Grandmother. After exhausting every route except my own, I feel less guilty about ruining my “career” and going out there starting at zero – exploring the route on my own because I have listened and they don’t work.

After I quit anything is game, this is the part I have not figured out yet, but isn’t that the point.

Sick people

Do not fly if you have a cold. Or else, this is what will happen: rapid changes in elevation will cause mucus within your nose to shoot through the eustachian tube into your middle ear, resulting in hearing loss lasting days. This is also why babies cry nonstop during flights.

Every time I get sick at work I receive positive encouragements from my boss: “feel better,” “don’t worry about the assignment,” “take a day off”, and “get some sleep.” It’s sweet and he sounds just like my mother. Employers understand everybody gets sick once in awhile. But getting sick has a bigger story behind just getting sick.

I was on a project with 5 people: we are all sort of new so we inevitably compete. 4 of us caught the flu and 1 person didn’t. Health was never a defining factor in performance but it was brownie points in a competition where we are all uniquely talented in different ways. It may just be luck, but the healthy guy proved that he took responsibility of his health and was strong enough to defend what the rest of us could not defend against. I was slightly in love with him for awhile because he looked so healthy among a group of sick people.

If you work long enough at a company you will notice that certain people consistently get sick while others consistently remain healthy.

Those who consistently get sick are also less predictable in personality and performance at work. This is because risk-taking people tend to get sick more often while risk-averse people tend to take better care of themselves. Staying healthy is a positive trait and people value that, because drinking enough water and eating a balanced meal are consistency exercises and consistency leads to promotion. Consistency also promotes trust; leaders are people others trust. So being sick all the time shows you cannot be a leader.

I am not consistent and I get sick all the time. While at the end of the day your intelligence, creativity and hard work make you who you are, consistency allows your intelligence, creativity and hard work to turn into measurable outcomes. So I try very hard to be consistent in all aspects of my life, including staying healthy; and I hate it, it takes away all the spontaneity and fun. But I guess that’s part of being an adult, oh being an adult.

I have worked with managers with multiple health problems: people who are erratic in health are also erratic in project management. These people freak out and I am always scared the world is going to collapse under their management. But they also tend to be witty and weird, and overall extremely fun to hang out with.

And I have worked with managers who are healthy/positive all-around: these people tend to be easy to work with because I know exactly what’s expected of me and there are less panic episodes during a project cycle. But I don’t laugh as much. Of course, they have got to be good at what they are doing; being consistently wrong is useless.

But the bottom line is if you are consistent you don’t have to be as smart as if you are inconsistent. If you are erratic you better be very intelligent in order to make up for the times you screw up. I wonder if there is a middle ground: someone who can be consistent but also fun? I use to think that’s not possible, but perhaps that’s why great leaders, those who are both consistent and fun, are rare and significant.

And then there is cramps. I cannot talk about being sick without talking about the plague and source of gender inequality. Although, calling cramps an illness is sexist in and of itself, perhaps.

We don’t talk about cramps but just go to a discussion forum on “cramps at work” and you will be amazed at how common this happens (and how bad the episodes can be) to well, 50% of our work force. This is why I think women are tough: we suck it up, we pop pills, we call in sick but we rarely talk openly about the discomfort to our fellow male coworkers.

I had a debate with a fellow girl about how women in Corporate America should receive 1 extra day off per month, a “cramp” day to level the playing field, kind of like maternity leaves – it’s only fair. The friend argues that this difference in treatment will push back feminism because we have fought hard to prove that women can do anything men can do – employees are already less likely to hire women, imagine what would happen to recruitment of women when the federal government passes a “Cramp Day Act”.

Does that make Cramp Day an affirmative action policy?

The guys I use to work with wonder why I am really quiet on some days, and I don’t tell them it’s because I have cramps and would really like to just go home, crawl into a ball and go to sleep. I was rejected from a job at the Federal Reserve because I had an especially bad episode of cramps during an interview and instead of allowing me to go home the Fed people forced me into an emergency room where I laid there for about 4 hours, paid $600 and went home (back when I didn’t have health insurance.) The Fed never called me back for a second interview because they didn’t know I was in pain because I had cramps, and that’s because I didn’t tell them I had cramps. So they decided to better not hire a girl who randomly collapses.

Then I met a mentor / co-worker and she changed my mind in talking about cramps at work. Her cramps are worse than mine and she is completely unabashed to talking about cramps to everyone she works with, not just whispers to us fellow female coworkers. She would announce the fact that today is her period day during morning meetings. She would talk in detail about her “contractions” to my male manager, completely oblivious to the horror in his eyes. She would proudly display the hot water she drinks and recount stories after stories of “this one time when the cramp got really bad.” And when other girls secretly tell her that they too have cramps, she would announce her sympathy to the world and make sure they skip meetings and not receive any amount of stress.

She was my mother in Corporate America.

And I love her for it. Talking about cramps is talking about being women. It’s kind of like talking about your culture if you are Korean, Black, or talking about going to Mecca if you are Muslim. Cramps are such big parts of our lives and we should not feel embarrassed to talk about this to our fellow friends from the other gender.

And for the rest of us sick people: consistency in drinking your water is hot, literarily hot.

Do we ever stop dreaming?

It is a privilege to dream. 

I have been working since I was 15 years old. I have worked at toy stores, dim sum restaurants, basketball stadiums and psychology labs. I have worked at auto companies on the other side of the ocean and consulting firms across the State. I have washed dishes in school cafeterias and conducted group dialogues on intercultural exchanges.

Some of my jobs were so physically demanding I come home collapsed on my bed with grease fuming through my hair, while other jobs were so mindlessly draining I go to work imagining myself jumping off from Manhattan’s midtown skyscraper.

Jobs are like relationships; it’s never as good as it seems on the outside, and when I get one I want something else. And right now, I can’t imagine myself having a long-term career; the narrowing of the field kills my soul. And similarly, marriage seems like a distant folklore. But I am ever so pressured to find both elusive prospects that seem to mean more than my own self, if I am lucky.

I wonder, if there will be a job somewhere out there that I could actually be content doing for the rest of my life – and, thus, make it into a career? Because finding a career is a lot like finding your soul mate: I’m not sure if either really exists. Some people just settle after awhile when looking got tiring. And really – when you say you know what you want, how do you know that? 

Because not everybody dreams like me, constantly and persistently, about anything and everything, from the practical to the utterly ridiculous, without proper definitions of what is appropriate, and what is not. 

I worked with an old African American man when I was in high school selling beer and chicken fingers at basketball games. The old man has the kind of southern black accent I could barely comprehend. We became friends because he would always cheer me up. 

We use to chat about his tight-knit family, his devotion to God, his entire life working at minimum wage jobs because he never had a high school education. And we use to chat about my dreams, my decision to move all the way to a midwestern state I have never visited to attend college. 

He couldn’t fathom my insatiable desire to get out of Texas, thought I thought he of all people should understanding, being a Black man in Texas. He thought I was both brave and crazy, taking my chances to the limit. As for me, to be honest, I couldn’t understand how he could be this content working at this job for the past 20 years and not want to commit suicide. 

One day we were watching the news (they have them all over the stadium) and Kobe Bryant’s involvement in a sexual scandal came on. The old man and I got talking and he said, “people are never satisfied with what they have. When they got what they want, they want more. People should stop wanting more and just be glad with what they have.” 

This old man said it back during the booms of our economy, when none of the “less is more” fad ever existed. Back then (almost 10 years ago?) it was all about borrowing on credit, reaching for the stars. And there I was stunned by a whole new way of looking at life. 

I write this because I have been so convinced lately that I am the kind of person who needs variety in life: surprises that are both good and bad, as long as they are not health-related. I need changes and shocks to spur my creativity. I need a better looking body and some additional friends. I need a job that makes just as much and a little more passion. And my preference for guys, let’s not even go there. 

But really, deep down, I just want to find it. I just want to find the it career and the it person and stop looking and being so competitive. And then the old man’s words come to mind and I wonder, do I already have what I’m looking for? Should I stop dreaming now? 

How do I fit into my womanly shoes?

I can’t handle my level of importance at work. It stresses me out more than the work itself.

I’m 23 and I just want to make sarcastic liberal jokes, drink beer instead of wine, and wear tight skinny jeans and a t-shirt that says “Che.” I want to be that carefree girl with a pretty skirt and long hair, opinionated and cute. But my attempts always fail, especially at work.

Instead, I am surrounded by married people and couples in serious relationships; I hangout with men whose wives stay at home and girlfriends either dance or teach. I would be less of a weirdo if I just lie that I have a fiance; maybe he could work in banking.

I wear wrinkle-free dress shirts even though I look horrible in collared shirts. I am a mac user, but I carry my company PC in tumi laptop cases and seriously, when a tiny girl like me carries that “awe-inspiring” bag through the airport, no arist/hot frequent-flier guy wants to flirt with me. I try to read Obama’s autobiography to get their attention, it does not work.

“Older” people assume I have years of experience in their “industry” when really, I just started two months ago and am scared to death they are going to discover I know nothing. Oftentimes I allow this fear to overwhelm me.

I am quiet during meetings, it delivers a horrible message for me as a woman, especially an Asian woman. Silence is practically career suicide anyways. Everybody from the billionaires to the crooks (these days they are really the same thing) talk their way to success. But how do you talk about a topic you have no confidence in?

I feel out of place all the time; part of me thinks I don’t belong here and the other part thinks I should get over this and find my place. And the last part fears that when I do find my place, it will kill my passion in social change.

Sometimes, I think I don’t know how to be a woman in business because I don’t know how to be a woman period. But what woman knows how to be a woman?

I fail in feminism because I can’t help but feel that my co-worker’s girlfriends and wives really know how to be “women” and my mere presence in a place filled with men suggests that somehow I am not being women, enough.

The bottom line: I am uncomfortable in my own gender.

I have struggled for years to come to terms with my race and nationality. But gender is something I only started to notice within the past two years. How do you become a woman and what should a woman be? These are questions feminists have struggled for decades to answer and un-answer. It’s going to take me some time.

Occasionally I see an “older” business woman carrying her laptop case in the hotel or at the airport. She is almost always white, with short hair. She usually looks like she is in a hurry, sturtting away in her stilettos while talking on the phone. She is polished and her mannerism suggests a certain level of command and power. I want to talk to her and ask her if she was just as insecure as me starting out in this business. I want to ask if she is happily married. Or happy, period. But right now, I just can’t see myself in her shoes 10 years down the road.

Someday, Maybe

I drew the picture on the bottom because I started on a new project across the country and the pressured made me depressed and I desperately needed to get away from the spreadsheet.

I can’t pinpoint why I’m depressed. It might have been the pressure of learning something new, the fact that I’m surrounded by men, the hotel, the flight, the spreadsheet, the PowerPoint, the numbing meetings, the fake professionalism, the lack of meaning in everything I do, or the fact that I am pretending too much to be this nice person that I am not. 

I flew back to New York, and strangely, the pissed off faces I see on the streets made me feel better. And I realized, I belong here.

The very next day I went shopping, there is something soothing about spending money. And my friend gave me a Valentine’s Day gift, I felt loved (even if it’s only from a girl).  

I stopped by my favorite coffee shop and called my dad for nearly an hour over coffee and Swedish meatballs. I told him I don’t like what I’m doing, but I am sticking to it for the time being because I have $25,000 loans left to pay. I told him I don’t know what I want to do in life, but since I have no kids and no mortgage, I’m going to go out there soon and try to find a career I feel empowered by. I told him I’m not afraid of failure, of taking risks, I’m afraid, however, of never finding my “thing” in life. My dad first argued that nothing remains interesting forever, that most jobs are mundane, and that other people’s opinions do matter. But eventually I convinced him otherwise, and he said he trusts my choices, whatever they may be. And that made me cry.

I walked to the container store and bought some files and a basket, I went home and dumped all that paper on my desk into the basket. I then cooked myself some Korean ramen noodles with a big jolt of Chinese vinegar. I missed vinegar. The sourness brought back a feeling of serenity, and now, I’m ready for some chocolates. 

I have an overwhelming amount of work I still need to do. But the people I have met and the things I have done made that daunting task seemed a bit smaller, a bit less surreal, a bit more “just work”.

And tonight is Valentine’s Day, I am just going to use that as an excuse to push back the work until tomorrow. Tonight, I am going to party it up… with some friends, and some strangers. 

Someday, I will find life.