“If you’re not breaking your back working, are you even working?”

This story has been an interesting one that I’ve heard over and over again growing up. The more my parents instituted this idea of working to the point of exhaustion, the more it didn’t make sense to me.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, my dad worked almost til the day he died. He put so much effort, blood, sweat, and stress into his job that it consumed him. It became him. If you asked anyone about an Asian land surveyor in the GVRD, they would probably refer you to my dad because well, let’s be honest, it’s a white man’s game in that industry. I watched him work and he enjoyed it. Which I was so happy to see. He truly loved to do this work. Outside of the family, it was his pride and joy.

The same goes for my mom. No matter what she did, from volunteering, making my dance costumes, cooking, to working at Rogers Arena, she would put her everything into it. It’s what she took pride in. And she instilled that way of thinking in me.

The part I don’t agree with, from both parents, was letting the work consume you. Where you ignore all the pain signals your body is sending you until it becomes too late.

It Became an Obsession

I started dancing at age 2. I choreographed my own dances, put on my favourite dress made by an aunt and performed for my family. Then my mom signed me up for proper Chinese folk dance lessons. And I had one of the hardest dance teachers from China push me to my limits so I could go beyond them. Which was great, in a way. But it also broke my body. When I felt an odd pinch in my back during dance class, I ignored the warning signals my body was sending me and kept right on dancing.

That’s when it happened. I could feel fire shooting down my legs. But you know what I did? I kept right on dancing. I ignored all the warning signs my body was throwing at me. That’s when I barely walked out of class that day. And I couldn’t even stand up straight. Thankfully, after years and years of physio, acupuncture, massage, RMT, everything, I can now sit without screaming in pain. But I can’t dance professionally. Or at least that’s what I’ve told myself.

Then when I started working in the fashion industry, it was intense and stressful work. There were days when panic seemed to be the word du jour in the office. The harder I worked, the more I could feel the stress leaking into every part of my body. But I learned to ignore it, as I did with my dancing. I cut off all signals from my body to my brain just so I could hit deadlines.

Because what’s more important in life than deadlines, right?

Am I Really Even Working Then?

Cut to today. After my car accident waking me up to the life path I was going down (which definitely wasn’t for me), I finally started to listen. Like, really listen to my body. It had been trying to tell me so much about how wrong I was, how when I pushed myself to get results I didn’t want, and how all those choices lead to me being so unhappy.

But I didn’t get it. How could my parents, my dance teacher, society, be wrong? I was pushing myself, sometimes to the detriment of my own health to deliver something. Did that mean I wasn’t really working? That I’m not trying?

It’s taken me some time to work through this. I still have days when I don’t make my health a priority. For example, I’ve been sick this entire past week yet I decided to head out and do work. Which was a mistake because I didn’t let my body rest. And it pushed my recovery back. *insert eye roll*

Coming Out The Other Side

I’m working on not being “perfect”, on not obsessing over something, and not questioning how it might look to others on the outside. Because not everyone knows what’s going on behind the scenes, right? There are so many factors there. (I also have one of those obsessive personalities where I’ll keep at something until I get the sweet release of finality, i.e. the whiteheads on my nose. After my dance teacher opened my eyes to them, I spent a good 2 HOURS digging almost every SINGLE ONE out. That kind of obsessive.)

I laugh now because there will be days when I push myself to get something done, for the sake of doing it. My foot may not be pressing the accelerator to the floor entirely, but I’ll still move forward.

Will I follow this idea of not breaking my back working every day? I’ll try. But I won’t guaratee I’ll always do it. Because I’m human and I know I’ll fall back on old habits.

But that just means I get to keep trying the next day.

Do you have this sort of mindset? How did you move past it? Leave a comment below.

“I have nothing (smart) to say.”

It took me a while to write this post. Not because I wasn’t able to download all my thoughts onto the screen, but because I have so many fake stories running through my head.

Basically, the bottom line was: Why should I share anything? No one wants to hear from me. I’m not a super intellectual person, though I can pretend to be one. (How many of you have pretended to know about a topic when you were frantically waiting for a moment alone to Google it?)

Being seen as an intelligent person provides you with a lot of respect in society and your family. It’s that level of achievement you can lord over everyone else at family gatherings or in your friend group. (No one else wants to do that?) There were so many times when I sat there, an answer or question burning inside my mind yet I never uttered a word. When I went digging for the answer, I realized something happened in my childhood that laid the path to these fake stories.

It Finally Dawned on Me…This Year

As a child, and even throughout my adulthood, I was called stupid.

Now, I’m sure you can trace a whole bunch of childhood traumas that are much worse than this but it doesn’t make this simple message any less hurtful.

Growing up in my family, I constantly heard:

• Why are you being so stupid?
• That is so stupid. I can’t believe you just said that.
• You’re really dumb for asking that.

And that’s from my immediate family.

Even now as I write this, I can feel my skin flushing with embarrassment. The word ‘stupid’ became so embedded in my psyche that I started living from that space. And as a result, I dimmed my light. I became reliant on others to have the answer so I wouldn’t need to feel stupid. (All I would have to do is listen to their reasoning, and if it sounded good, I’d agree and take on their stance.) In my head, there was no need to shine because if I had a spotlight on me, it would showcase how ‘stupid’ I was.

It took a lot of work but I’m getting better at rejecting this old story, to stand up and take on the position of occasionally appearing unintelligent. I still stumble at times and curse myself for saying, doing, or asking things that I deem as idiotic, but in the end, we’re all human. We are capable of doing things that may not make sense to others (that would be deemed stupid) but that’s okay.

A New Start

I’m starting this blog as a way to counteract all the old stories and beliefs I have in my head about myself and society in general. I feel it would be good to really pull back this mask I’ve created to show that underneath it all, we’re the same no matter what culture, religion, gender or country we come from.

It’ll be hard.
It’ll get ugly.
There will definitely be some ugly crying.
But in the end, I know it’ll help.

I’ll be covering different topics that align with different aspects of life (i.e. money, sex/relationships, love, family, career, health, reality) on Mondays and Thursdays, and really digging deep into the reasons why these fake stories still exist and how to break through them.

If you’d like to join me on this journey, feel free to sign up here. I hope to see you in there and help you dispel some of the stories you may have going on in your head.

Because it’s time to shed our old selves that have kept us stuck for too long and allow the new, evolved version to come through.