There are moments in the year that naturally invite recalibration — in our careers, relationships, and how we show up for ourselves. If you’ve been feeling the pull to tighten your boundaries or honor your worth more deeply, this episode is the perfect one to revisit. We’re bringing back this powerful conversation on the three things Nicole no longer compromises on when it comes to self-worth.
“Each time you make a decision in the direction of your self worth, you are strengthening this muscle of self worth…. The most urgent thing I can think of in the world is to work on it.”
“So much of this is like looking at where we attach our success and our idea of what a successful human is. And what is success like on the weekends? If I decide not to do these things, feeling guilty can be the norm, right? Like, why do you have to clean your house versus read a book? I mean, truly, if you have never asked yourself that question, right now is a great time to ask yourself that question. Why can you not just read a book? Why? And if you do do it, why do you have to feel guilty about doing it?”
“When you use the magnifying glass and you look closer at that hyper-achieving mentality that you learn of perfectionism and working so hard as an Asian American, the cost on the other side of it is actually you.”
“When you don’t give yourself the time to love yourself right now, it sends a message to others for them to do the same thing, like work at all costs, no matter what. And unfortunately, there are corporate environments that take advantage of this fact.”
NICOLE
Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the School of Self-worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong. I’m so excited to be here with all of you today. And I’m going to start today with a little bit of a story. So at the time I’m recording this, I am just finishing up a week where I was excused from jury duty. I had cleared my calendar for six whole days to accommodate jury duty – and Nicole from 10 years ago would have found every single reason in the world to fill her calendar up again when she found out she didn’t have jury duty!
Spoiler alert: I did not do that, and want to know why? It’s what I’m going to talk about today because of the three things I’m going to share with you about things that I stopped compromising on related to my self-worth. And this is also a huge foundation for how I stepped into my voice. These things I’m going to share with you today. So I’m really excited about how you can step into a superpowered self-worth for yourself because it’s kind of something that goes in tandem with you owning your voice on a bigger, deeper, more authentic level. And if you are an AAPI woman who knows you want to own your voice and get promoted using the new visibility system, which allows you to work 5-hour days and still be recognized for your work, DM me “new.” I’ve got something for you.
Okay, friends, let’s dive into this amazing conversation. Welcome to the School of Self-worth, a podcast for ambitious women who know they are worthy of an astoundingly great life. Join us weekly as we get on the right side of your intuition, redefine success, and reclaim your self-worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong, an award-winning journalist who left it all behind to become a bestselling author of three books and a work-life balance expert, helping ambitious women unlock their intuition and step into a life of fulfillment and radical joy. Every single week, I will bring you diverse and meaningful conversations with successful women from all walks of life who share insight about what it takes to be brave, joyful, and authentic every day. Every episode is thoughtfully designed to leave you feeling empowered with tangible tips and advice that will lead you to your next breakthrough.
All right, so I want to tell you all first about that moment about jury duty because I had been low-key grumbling about jury duty mostly to my husband for weeks. And it’s weird because it was like taking a vacation, but I didn’t get any of the benefits of vacation. I wasn’t going to be with my favorite people on a beach somewhere, reading books, or going hiking. The vacation part was totally missing.
It was just taking time off of work, and I had to clear my calendar for it. Right? There was no other choice there. I had no idea what I would be doing while I was at jury duty. The most I could hope for was that it would be really quiet, so I could at least read a ton and catch up on some books I had. But other than that, there was really not that much that I was excited about. And for those of you who are like, “I want to tell you all about how to get out of jury duty,” I have heard from those folks, and I knew that I actually could probably get out of it because I run my own business, but I had already delayed it.
I actually have always wanted to be on a jury because of years as a reporter covering trials. Like, I was really interested in this. And yeah, so I’ve always wanted to be on one. So I wasn’t really trying to get out of it, but I was annoyed about the amount of time it was going to take to do my civic duty. So the blocking out the week was what was getting underneath my skin. And that was all going on for weeks and weeks leading up until jury duty. But when I was actually called in, so you have to call in on the phone for your reporting instructions, I heard these magical words: “You are excused from jury duty.”
I definitely screamed a little bit, and then I sang “I Am Free.” I was so excited. Like, seriously, just ask my husband, Michael. I played “Free” by Florence and the Machine multiple times at night and danced around the living room because I was so excited. So as soon as my elation from this experience died down, I also am very aware of my old cultural programming about hyperachieving. And I knew that it was likely to show up pretty quick. I could hear it in my brain; it was like talking to me already about all the things that I could get done with these six open days that I had on my calendar.
And I knew this hyperachieving programming would tell me to fill it up. It would be to move your client calls that you’d already moved back in to schedule the people you delayed a week during the jury duty week to get so much work done. You have, like, all this calendar time. You’re going to get so many things accomplished and to not take a break. Right? The subtext is do not take a break. That had just been granted to me. Like, these six empty, magical days wanted to get filled up very quickly by that hyperachieving programming.
And the reason I didn’t fill it up is because of the things I’m about to share with you: the three things I stopped compromising on about self-worth. These are three things I’ve developed over time and have learned to really put into place with myself using my promoted and celebrated system. Because these things have anchored me to understand what there is that is true and real about self-worth and to live my life from that place. And I credit these three things with being the reason I could hold the line. What actually happened with the week that I had off is I worked three-hour days, I went to the spa with my friends, I took one full day off just to go hiking with my dog, and I spent another day working on my book. So these are all things that, giving myself space, I knew that I actually really needed.
And I also knew that giving myself space was the highest and best use of my time. As an Asian American, it is very easy to slip into cultural programming, to keep going at all costs and to push no matter what. So I wanted to be really aware of that and cognizant of that. I also understand that when you use the magnifying glass and you look closer at that hyperachieving mentality that you learn of perfectionism and working so hard as an Asian American, the cost on the other side of it is actually you. It’s essential to stop letting these old subconscious beliefs dictate how you work and to actually reprogram it by doing things differently in your day. So let’s look at the three things I stopped compromising on about self-worth so that I could truly step into and own my voice.
So here’s the first one: I stopped compromising on my self-worth being tied to what other people think of me, especially my family. It can crop up in lots of different ways. And I’ll get to how it cropped up in this specific example. But in general, when I outsource my self-worth to other people’s opinions or their ideas of how I should spend my time, what I should do, that’s when I usually start to feel lost. That’s when I start to feel like I don’t know the way forward. When I was younger, I usually deferred to my family, especially my sister, and I always asked them what I should do in so many situations and circumstances. And in Chinese culture, that was the norm. Like, I learned the group was more important than the individual.
And so I always thought of it and interpreted it as other people’s opinions matter more than mine. So I have had to reprogram that to understand that I am important, Nicole, I am valuable, and that when I have that belief intact, that’s when I can actually really support the whole in the group. This has taken a long time for me to reprogram, but it’s really important that we start to understand it. Because now what happens is I have reprogrammed this to understand that I am important and valuable. And so then I got all of this time off. When I shared it on social media, it was interesting how it cropped up this time. My first reaction was, “Oh, well, my clients think that I should put all of that time back towards them.” Or I wondered if people might actually judge me and think that I was selfish for using all of that time for myself or most of it for myself. And not to mention, I honestly don’t work that much.
Like, I work maybe 25 hours a week. So I had to watch judgment of myself like that: “You don’t even work that much. How can you take even more time off?” So it’s really essential to notice when you’re letting other people’s opinions shape your self-worth and shape your decisions for yourself. I have learned over time methods to really pause, break that pattern, and allow myself to make a clear decision for me. Because if I don’t do that, it breaks something actually bigger and more important, and that is trust with myself. If I am listening to other people’s ideas for my life, I am now trusting that they know better than me how to live my life. Over time, that really erodes my voice, my connection to myself, my deeper value in who I am.
So I’ve learned that when I cut the chatter from other people, that’s a huge part of me taking ownership on a much deeper level of my voice and who I am in the world. All right, so here’s the second thing I stopped compromising on, and this is that I can work on self-worth later. This one is really huge. In this case, it was actually really relevant. So I had to be really clear. I’ve had to be really clear in general that I am worthy of time off work. This specific case wasn’t specifically a vacation. And those of you who are listening, if you’re still struggling to take vacation and feeling guilty about it, that’s the first place to start.
But I don’t feel guilty about vacation ever. I take four to six weeks off per year. I know it’s really important for me to rejuvenate myself and reset. This case was different because it wasn’t for vacation, and I was simply given the gift of time. I had to really believe I was worthy of this gift. Like, it was actually a hard gift for me to receive at first. I was like, “I never have six days with nothing to do.”
My calendar, like all of yours, is full to the brim. Weekends, even if it’s not work, are filled with friends and travel and all kinds of stuff. The way I’ve gotten to the place where I could really receive that gift is that I have not put off and procrastinated the idea that I can work on it later, that this is something I can defer to the fall or next year – that’s the year I’m going to work on my self-worth. No, I really know that it’s a practice that is an in-the-moment practice. I have to look at it at that moment because each time you make a decision in the direction of your self-worth, you are strengthening this muscle of self-worth. What I have discovered is that it is actually the most urgent thing I can think of in the world – to work on it. So in this case, if I had just filled up my calendar and had just been working like usual, I would have kept thinking about, like, “Man, could I have used this time better?” I would have felt a little stressed, a little bit anxious.
Anxious, like, “Man, I’m not sure that I’m doing myself a disservice by working,” right? I had to really check myself on this over and over again. If I had worked the normal amount last week, I would have suffered to some degree because I would have wondered if that was really how I wanted to use that time. Because I would have felt anxious and stressed, that would have affected people around me. It would have affected my husband, Michael. It would have affected my clients, my family, my friends, anybody who interacted with me. When you don’t give yourself the time to love yourself right now, and me taking downtime last week was really loving myself.
It sends a message to others for them to do the same thing: work at all costs, no matter what. Unfortunately, there are corporate environments – you might live in one of them or work in one of them – that take advantage of this fact. Or there are other people who might like to jump in as soon as you have something like this happen. If you don’t set up a firm boundary, they will break down and jump in and try to take everything you’ve got. So I know this: there is only ever our present moment to work on things. For me, whenever something like this shows up, the opportunity for the lesson is not later; it is actually always right now.
All right? And then the third thing I stopped compromising on related to my self-worth is that my self-worth is tied to productivity. When I say this, this is actually more about home productivity versus work productivity. To me, they are pretty distinct. Work productivity is a huge one and something that I work on with clients all the time around feeling the need to constantly be productive at work, to be doing something, to always be generating all of the time. I stopped compromising on this one a while ago. You know, I don’t feel like my worth is related to how much I work; thus, I can work fewer than 25 hours per week. But the one that was challenging for me in this particular situation is that I was not sure that I could do this without being home productive. Home productivity includes things like cleaning the house, grocery shopping, working on the yard, hanging out with the dog, and getting stuff done.
For me, so much of this is about looking at where we attach our success and our idea of what a successful human is. What is success like on the weekends? If I decide not to do these things, feeling guilty can be the norm, right? Like, why do you have to clean your house versus read a book? I mean, truly, if you have never asked yourself that question, right now is a great time to ask yourself that question. Why can you not just read a book? Why? And if you do it, why do you have to feel guilty about doing it? Like, why can you not just do something that you actually really want to do? Why do you have to earn it? Why do you have to make sure you’re getting stuff done before you can get to that flip side of reading the book or watching the Netflix show or whatever, or literally doing nothing? I learned this pattern as a kid too, that being a good girl, especially in Chinese culture, was related to how much I got done – whether it was finishing my homework or doing chores or whatever. It was really about following the rules that were set out in front of me. Now I’ve learned as an adult, and through reprogramming myself and my brain, that I can choose rest without earning it. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a strong work ethic or ambition.
I feel like if you follow me regularly here, you probably can tell I have a lot of ambition. I have a very strong work ethic. There’s also a knowing for when it’s time to do something, knowing when you’re trying to prove something, and then knowing when it’s time to do nothing at all. When it’s time to do nothing at all, there is no earning, there’s no achieving, there’s none of that stuff. You just get to say, “I get to rest because I get to rest.” And that’s what I chose to do with this time. It’s why I could have so much time for myself during that week. So if this resonates with you, let me know.
Pop me a DM on Instagram. I’d love to hear what you’re noticing for yourself and what you’re seeing from yourself from this conversation. Because I like to think of this as a dialogue to make sure that what I’m sharing is resonating with you, hitting home with you, and to know that this is something that you want to hear from me. Thank you all so much for listening. I am eternally grateful that you listen. If you are an Asian American woman who wants to own your voice and get promoted using the new visibility system while working 20% fewer hours, DM me “new.” I have got something for you. Until then, friends, thank you so much for listening, and we’ll connect again next week.
Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. Before you go, don’t forget if you are a high-achieving woman who wants to uncover your biggest blind spots preventing fast intuitive decisions, I’ve got a 72-second assessment for you, so make sure to DM me “Quiz” on Instagram. Thank you for being here and for listening. We read every note that we get from you about how the podcast is making a difference in your life. Please know how much we appreciate each and every one of you. Until next time, I’m Nicole Tsong, and this is the School of Self-worth.
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