From Corporate to Authentic: A Conversation with Mary Beth Rodriguez

• Becoming confident in your authentic voice (9:47) 
• The debilitating terms used in corporate culture terms and how to manage (25:00) 
• How cultural pressures impact career choices and hinder you from finding your authentic voice in professional settings (31:42)
• The affirming power of listening to your intuition daily (39:43)

“I was in the corporate world, in a few different contexts. One like running a department, buying department, and also being an executive at food startups. I think you were rewarded more if you were able to create an internal narrative that was palatable and also that was very showy. And I think for me, I always struggled with being showy because that’s not normal to my personality. And also, I think as an Asian American woman, we kind of feel more comfortable if we’re more polite and we’re more accepted and we’re not aggressive. We don’t speak our minds.”

“I think women in general, get busy and they don’t prioritize themselves. And speaking to so many women, they don’t put a ritual in their day that’s just for themselves, whether it be like five minutes or 30 minutes, or taking a class on something even really quick. And I think women of color even feel sometimes more so. I think we’re taught to work so hard and to kind of burn ourselves out sometimes in the corporate world, like, which happens so much and is really creating more women and women of color, creating spaces where women can feel comfortable to say, I can give myself the time and feel like I have a community of really supportive people around me that kind of understand. So you don’t feel guilty doing it. You feel like you can really incorporate it into your life.”

“And if fear is stopping you, that is a place to be curious and to get interested and to start to see what it is that you actually really need to do. And then if you are at that point in that cusp, like where you were, where you’re trying to leave, I mean, I have seen so many people, by the way, get laid off or fired at this time because actually the universe had to be like, you’re not going to do it. I’m just going to push you out the window because you’re not going to do it.”

NICOLE

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the School of Self-Worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong. Today I have a really special guest here for you, and the conversation that she and I had really gives me so much life and energy. It’s the reason I love hosting this podcast so much, because I get to talk to such smart, intelligent women. And today I’m so excited for you to connect with Mary Beth Rodriguez. She is a woman after my own heart.

She left her career in the food styling world to start her own business, ‘With Ritual’, which is all about helping women connect more with having modern rituals, so they can have more ease and grace in their daily lives. So her products are totally beautiful, and Mary Beth herself is such an incredible human. We did things a little differently in this episode where I interviewed Mary Beth, and she also interviewed me. So we had this really wide-ranging conversation during this episode about what it’s like to be a woman of color in industries that are not as diverse, what that experience is like, as well as the experience of leaving a corporate world to go into your own journey, of having your own business, turning your side hustle into your main job. We had just a really incredible conversation that I know you will get so much out of, so make sure to stay tuned for this episode. And if you’re an Asian American woman who wants to get promoted in 60 days, using the new visibility system, DM me new on Instagram @ NicoleTsong, I have got something for you.

Okay, friends, let’s dig into this incredible 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 best-selling author of three books and 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. Welcome to the School of Self-Worth. It’s so awesome to have you with us.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Thanks. It’s great to talk with you, Nicole.

NICOLE

Yeah, and we had a sort of preliminary conversation, which was so rich and so deep that I was just really excited to have the conversation today with you. And then for all of you listening, today’s format will be a little bit different because Mary Beth is great at asking questions. I like asking questions. And so I think we’ll just be going into more of a flow this way today. And I am just excited to have it, because I think what you and I were talking about, Mary Beth, both being Asian American women and the experiences we had in workplaces and in life, really informed a lot of how we got here. So that was where I think we will head. But first, let’s start by just having you share a little bit about your background. Like, tell me a little bit more about yourself and so people can get to know you.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Yes, I feel really lucky. I’ve had such a great career. I went to business school and culinary school. I worked as a chef and a food stylist and a cookware buyer. And then in the corporate world for a while at some food startups. And whilst working in the corporate world, like we talked about before, I had a health scare in my mid-thirties that really made me take a step back, kind of reassess where I was with my wellness. And I started adding some great daily rituals in my life, and that inspired me to start a wellness company called ‘With Rituals’. I’ve been on the entrepreneurial journey for about a year now, and it’s been really rewarding to be on this journey. I feel so lucky.

NICOLE

Yeah. Amazing. Well, I want to hear more about your company, but I’m curious for you if you could talk first about what was it like, really, the differences you’re seeing from being in the corporate world and moving out of that world, and especially food styling, and then also food in general, which I’m curious about, to the world that you’re in now. What are the biggest things that you’re noticing?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Wow, that’s a really good question. I feel like when I was in the food world, it was a little bit earlier in 2000’s, and it was really hard for women at that time. There really weren’t a lot of women for us to look up to. There weren’t a lot of Asian American women. And, you know, it was very traditional. We all looked up to the same chefs and who did the same thing, so it was hard to find your voice and feel that you can express something different and unique to your culture and your heritage and your point of view. I think it took me years really working through being a chef and being a buyer and finding my voice in the corporate world, to allow me to be an entrepreneur, because I think it’s really about just learning to quiet down and listen to your own voice. And I know you’ve had the experience with that as well, which I love to talk about. Like, how do you listen to your own voice and express your unique point of view? Being an Asian American woman in the corporate world.

NICOLE

Yeah, totally, I want to talk about that. I want to ask you one more question. When you say, you weren’t able to really express your voice in food, was it cultural? Like, was it around the types of food that were being created? Because I feel like now it’s really different in the food world. There’s still people out there who haven’t really heard of different kinds of Korean food. I am obsessed with Korean food, so I know, even though I pronounce it very poorly, I’m obsessed with all kinds of Korean food. Would you say, back then, people were much more sort of the straight, old school style of what’s popular, contemporary? I figured probably, like, new American, European takes on food?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

I think the big difference was when I was coming up into the early 2000’s, it was kind of like, Korean food was a novelty. Do you know what I mean? Certain Japanese food was very much a novelty that people would say, like, I’m going to use a certain ingredient from this Korean cuisine and add it to a European fine dining cuisine. So it was kind of like you used ingredients from Asian cuisines, but you always did it within the context of a French or classical cuisine, to make fine dining, and that’s what fine dining was. And now I think it’s so great, I mean, I live in Chicago and we have a Michelin star Filipino restaurant. So now I think younger chefs are coming and saying, you know what? I don’t have to use it within, like, a French context. I can actually use French context, but use it through my cuisine and make that the star. So  as opposed to being kind of the side, little accent flavor, I think now it can be the main ingredient to your cuisine, and to your point of view, which is what we’re seeing so much now in chefs, which is really great.

NICOLE

Totally. A lot of them, I know, have probably classical backgrounds for school, but they just kind of dabble it in there. But they’re still using the foods that they grew up with, or that they ate and knew as kids. That’s super interesting. I mean, I love food, and I feel like I could talk about it forever, which is why I had to get that question in before I answered your question. But, yeah, I’ll talk a little bit about finding voice. It’s interesting you ask it that way, because as a journalist, that’s actually a really important thing, is finding your writing voice.

I really struggled with that when I was a young reporter. My editors would be like. there’s no voice in the story. And I’d be like, but we’re supposed to be objective. What are you talking about? I really didn’t understand that when I was younger, and then the more I learned to develop my own voice as a writer, I felt like that really helped. But it wasn’t necessarily that I felt I didn’t really find my voice as a person and human probably until after I left journalism. I think I found my voice within my writing, when I was a journalist, but I didn’t necessarily have total ownership of who I was in that context, because I was still trying to please people. Like, I still wanted my editors to like me. I still wanted to get on the front page. I still wanted to be considered good at my job. Whereas when I became a yoga teacher, I was very much about being yourself, literally. And I remember when I first started training to be a yoga teacher, and you have to be authentically yourself in front of the room. I was like, is this a job, where you actually are just supposed to be yourself? That seemed weird to me.

And I also thought it sounded like the best job on the planet, because I just had never even considered that I wasn’t myself, until I started teaching yoga. Then I really had to push myself because what happened is, I would stand in front of a room and I would be teaching certain poses, and I experience this to this day in classes.  Like, the teachers who are really who they are, their personalities, or they crack jokes, or they don’t take themselves too seriously, are the best teachers, because they are being themselves, and they’ve also really honed their craft at the same time. So I kind of think of it that way. And then I feel like as an entrepreneur, I’ve definitely had to develop it a lot more, because being an entrepreneur requires you to put yourself out in a much bigger way, much more consistently, whether it’s social media or trainings, or a podcast, or whatever it might be. I’ve had to really learn to step more powerfully into who I am. But I will say that the writing voice is where it started, and then my speaking voice developed as a teacher, and then it’s where it is today.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

That’s so interesting, because I feel like with your authentic voice, you came to it in some of the way I did later in my career. I had to go through certain things to kind of get to a place where I didn’t care what people think, you know what I mean? And you can step into your power. And that’s when you start incorporating things from your heritage and being Asian American, and being a woman, and you can do so without being so scared of how it’s going to be received. And, you know, that’s such an interesting thing to come into, as being an entrepreneur, because we each have such unique backgrounds. But sometimes in the beginning, you’re kind of taught not to put that in the forefront, you know what I mean?

NICOLE

Oh, yeah. And I still feel that way sometimes, being Asian American women, we can  still be in this category of, acceptable, you know, for the larger white population. Then your culture just makes you cool and interesting, because you have background. But then underneath that, you’re still a person of color, and then you still had these experiences and things where people were diminishing you because of what you look like. So it’s sort of this interesting layer of giving yourself permission, and this is a big thing I’ve had to learn, of giving myself permission to be able to just speak frankly. And I will say, too, I also notice where sometimes I do edit myself a little bit when I’m not around necessarily other people of color, because it’s just not a conversation I want to have. And I think it’s always something I feel like I’m really on a journey with it still. It’s like, where do I share? Where do I not share? How much do I want to share? Because there is just fundamentally some stuff that’s going to be particular to my own experience, that people who are not like me are just not going to be able to understand, because it’s just the way it is. But I’m curious how it has been for you, and actually about your journey, too, when you were in the corporate world, and what you noticed about owning your voice, and even probably to leave, and what it’s like for you now?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

I think because I was in the corporate world, I’m in a few different contexts. Like running a department, buying department, and also being an executive at food startups, the very west coast, very tech startups. I think you were rewarded more if you were able to create an internal narrative that was palatable and also that was very showy. And I think for me, I always struggled with being showy, because that’s not normal to my personality. Also, I think as an Asian American woman, we kind of feel more comfortable if we’re more polite and we’re more accepted, and we’re not aggressive. We don’t speak our minds. So I think that’s where I had to come to how do I still be myself, but still be straightforward and still be honest and authentic within this corporate world? And it’s not easy. I think it took me a long time to be able to be more straightforward, but still do it in a way that felt like it was me. I wasn’t trying to act aggressive for someone or, you know, be a straight shooter. Be like a shark, people said, be more like a shark!. But I think you should still be who you are and find that voice, and in leaving the corporate world, I kind of realized, you don’t have to be that way to succeed. And sometimes being the person who asks the most questions and listens and tries to create a relationship, I think that’s more lasting sometimes than being the aggressive shark.

NICOLE

Totally. And I would say I really relate to what you’re saying because sometimes people are like, okay, be that way. Which I think typically, is like a white male way to succeed. That’s the standard. Then there’s another layer of that,  how do you balance, culturally, the same way? I was literally always the kid at the back of the room who did their homework and never talked. Classic, quiet Chinese American kid. I’m a younger sister, too, so I think all of those things played into it. I just never spoke up. And then the older I got, there are certain times that benefits me. Like, I’m a coach, and I have really great listening skills because of some of that. And you have great observational skills when you’re never talking. You can see what everybody else is saying and what they’re doing, but then there’s this side where it becomes a disadvantage, and then is it actually you? Is it just what you’ve learned culturally? Is it serving you? Right. All of those pieces come together, and I’m in some groups that are really big, like, 100 people. And I had to train myself to literally just raise my hand all the time, not to be loud and express an opinion, but just to ask a question, just to be able to get what I came for. And the only way to get what I came for was to raise my hand.

I was in an event in New York last week, and for whatever reason, I usually like to get there early and sit in the front now, instead of the back. And I didn’t do that. I ended up in a table that was kind of in the back, then for the first half of this event, I found myself being very passive. I was falling back into that old pattern of being quiet in the back of the room, and I didn’t even want to raise my hand, and it was, like, 40, 50 people, so I actually had to. We had to change tables halfway through the day, and I made myself sit in front and raise my hand, because again, that was going to be how I got what I came for, which was to ask questions, to get coached, and to get worked on. It’s was interesting for me to see how quickly I fell back into that old way that I had learned as a kid. And I’m kind of curious if that is similar for you, or what you have noticed about your own patterns with that?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

I love what you say, ‘got what you came for’, because I think how I was in the corporate world, when I was in a meeting that was a bit bigger, I would say, you know what? I’ll wait till after the meeting, and then I’ll go ask the question. And I’ve talked to a lot of people who do the same thing. They don’t want to speak in the wider group, and then they end up missing asking the question or making the connection, or speaking about something, an idea they have, they’re really passionate about. I would always say, well, I’ll tell the idea afterwards, and I’ll talk to them. And then you kind of miss your opportunity. I think that for me, it was partially because of how I grew up, with how you don’t want to put yourself out there. You kind of just want to do your work and do everything kind of properly. But I think more so, it was a fear of people thinking that they don’t understand you. For me, it was kind of coming to a point where I think I have a different point of view. So if you have a different idea or a question that’s kind of out of the box, it’s okay that people are like, oh, that’s kind of out of the box question or idea.

NICOLE

Well, and I wonder sometimes, too, if it’s more subtle than that, that we didn’t want to stand out, because we already stood out.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Yeah, that’s interesting because I think you had the same kind of background as I did. I grew up in Florida, in Tampa, so it was a very predominantly white suburb. And I think for a while I almost rejected being Asian American, because I just wanted to kind of fit in. I almost kind of said to myself, why would I want to hang out with Asian people just because they’re Asian? I’m going to hang out with people because I do a sport with them, or I do this club with them, I’m friends with them. So I think in some ways, I kind of purposely rejected it because I didn’t want to be this stereotypical Asian person. I think in a lot of ways, it kind of hurts you from just realizing you should be friends with who you want to be, and be who you are, and people are still going to really accept you.

NICOLE

Totally. Yeah. I definitely grew up that way too, and it’s hard. You struggle with what part of your culture do you embrace? What do you reject? I remember I didn’t want to be like all the other Chinese kids who played tennis and played violin, and then I played tennis and played violin! It was really funny, I had this resistance to it, but then those were things I gravitated toward. I did like playing the violin, and I was really good at tennis, and so I did that too. But in my head, I was like I’m doing it, but I’m not the stereotype. It was sort of funny because I wanted to fit in, and I was like, gosh, why didn’t my mom put me in soccer or softball? Those are the cool sports when you’re in high school, the acceptable sports. Tennis was fine – it’s not like tennis wasn’t cool, but it just didn’t have that same cache, right?  And it’s interesting how you try so hard. It’s just this tension and. You’re just being pulled back and forth of how can I be acceptable? How can I be what other people think is cool?

But then there’s the part of you that wanted to achieve, I wanted to do well in school. I wanted to get good grades, and I was in all kinds of sports and activities, and when you’re a kid, it’s really hard, that tension. So I think you only want to stand out in the right ways and not in any other way. Then you get into the corporate world, and you need to stand out in all the ways. Yeah. To actually make it right.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Can I ask you, did you find that kind of balance between standing out and also being reserved, because of who we are as Asian American women? Have you always felt like that has been an issue for you in your personal and corporate life, or did you find a balance faster in your personal life than your corporate life?

NICOLE

I mean, that’s such a good question. I feel like it’s still both. Oh, my gosh, how long do you have today, Mary Beth, for me to talk about all of these things? I think ultimately, my friends have always been pretty diverse, actually, and not just Chinese American or Asian American. I had south Asian friends, and other people from a lot of different cultures were actually who I ended up being friends with in high school and then in college. But then I was in the journalism world, and again, I was sort of diverse and independent, then I ended up in the yoga world, which is really white. All of a sudden, I felt like my whole worlds were shifting to this very predominantly white place, and it’s just because of who I was around, you know? So I often would check in on myself, like, what do you want? Where is your culture? How can you be present with your culture? And are you pushing it away? But I also spent time in China. I lived in Wuhan, China, for a year, and spent time in Taiwan with my family. So it’s like this constant pull.

When I was in college, I had so many identity breakdown crises, and I feel like that’s probably pretty common in your high school and college years. After I went to China, I was like, I’m definitely not this. This is not who I am. It’s so foreign to me.

Taiwan is closer for me, because I have family there, and I grew up more with it. But then I really came to the conclusion back then, that I am Taiwanese American, and just that identity worked for me to have both. But I do think, especially in my own life, I have to. It’s weird. Because I think it’s weird to have to say it, but I have to be really intentional about reaching out to people of color to make sure that my world is as diverse and rich as I want it to be, because I think it’s very easy to kind of fall into a place where my friend groups and my career groups are not as diverse as I want them to be. I’m curious about your experience?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

That’s really interesting for me, too, because I think growing up in Florida, it was really easy to keep the Asian group separate to my white friends in high school, because I went to a predominantly white high school. And then when I went to college, it was the first time I was around more minorities. I actually felt like I stood out more, as I had said to myself I don’t really fit in here, I don’t want to be friends with you just because you’re Asian, and I’m Asian. So I had kind of a little bit of a crisis where I had to say, oh, as the diversity in my group is expanding, I don’t need to push back against it so much. You know what I mean? You just kind of accepted it more. So I think my personal life in college and my early twenties is when I was really able to have the wholeness of being an Asian American person, and having a diverse group of friends, and feeling really comfortable in that.

It was more in the workplace that it was harder to find that balance. Like you’re saying, going back into the wellness world now that I’m older, it is predominantly for affluent white women. So how do you reach back out and make sure you’re not losing the diverse group you’re specifically reaching out to, and being intentional about your choices?

NICOLE

Totally. And I think it’s actually a never ending kind of a thing, honestly. I would say that in my high school, it was 20% black, very tiny portion Asian, and then white. I grew up outside of Chicago, so that’s a big part of it. Then I moved to the west coast, where it’s much more white and Asian. So it was interesting to me during Black Lives Matter in 2020, I had a big reckoning of why? What are my groups looking like? Who are the people I’m spending time with? And why does it look the way that it does? And then really starting to recognize I had to be much more proactive to have the kind of diversity around myself that I actually really desired, whether it’s personally or professionally. I was the chair of a board, Yoga Behind Bars, for several years, and one of our goals was 50% of our board was BIPOC, and it was a nonstop, full on, year round effort. The people who worked with me on recruitment on that board, and anyone who’s listening, who’s ever been a nonprofit board member, probably knows what it’s like, but it was so, so, much work to do it. 

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

And as you started reaching out, because I think now that I’m new as an entrepreneur, I’m kind of doing the same thing that I think you kind of already went through. How does it change your approach to wellness when you start working with a more diverse group? Because I think wellness is so different for minorities, because they weren’t raised with thinking about self-care as much, as a whole. A lot of women I spoke with when I was doing research from my business said, especially women of color, we didn’t really think about wellness growing up. We were just kind of taught to suck it up, especially being an Asian American, don’t complain. Don’t say anything about it. So I think about that as well, and I was wondering how you kind of dealt with being a coach, and if you’re writing towards people of color as well, being more inclusive. How does it affect your point of view?

NICOLE

You know, it’s interesting, because I came from yoga and I was doing that for so long, since 2011, so when I think about it, I have been in a world where self-care and wellness had been the priority for a really long time. And so I don’t know that I went to yoga thinking of it that way. I just went to it as a way to move my body. And then just being in that world, it taught me that you inevitably are paying attention to your food and your diet and how you feel, because the whole goal of yoga is that internal looking. So I feel like in certain ways, it’s hard for me to say, because I feel like not taking care of myself was just trained out of me, even if that was how I always existed before.

And I don’t know that I ever necessarily thought of it as cultural, even though I’m sure when I look around at my mom, she didn’t necessarily do things like that herself either. But yoga really taught me to prioritize my own health and well-being. And it’s been more than a decade of that, so I don’t feel I have a great answer for what you’re asking. I do think in general, though, a lot of women, and women of color, struggle more because they’re taught that they have to work harder to get the same things. I think that’s the piece that really undermines them. Not self-care so much, but the idea that they have to work twice as hard to get the same thing.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Yeah, I think women in general, especially when they get busy with their lives, they don’t prioritize themselves. And speaking to so many women, they don’t put a ritual in their day that’s just for themselves, whether it be like 5 minutes or 30 minutes, or taking a class on something even really quick. I think women of color even feel sometimes more so. I think we’re taught to work so hard and to kind of burn ourselves out sometimes in the corporate world, which happens so much and is really creating spaces where women of color can feel comfortable to say, ”I can give myself the time, and feel like I have a community of really supportive people around me, that kind of understand.” So you don’t feel guilty doing it. You know what I mean? You feel like you can really incorporate into your life.

NICOLE

Yeah, and because your whole company is really around this ritual practice, how do you think about teaching and supporting women? And I don’t know if you’re necessarily focused on women of color per se, but teaching women how to actually bring in the component of taking care of themselves?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Like you’re saying, I didn’t go into it to target women of color. It was just from my personal experience saying, you know, I was just burning out from the corporate world. My health wasn’t in the best place, because I wasn’t giving myself space. So how do I reset? How do I make sure every morning I meditate, I either have a bowl of matcha or cacao. I do something intentional, and I show gratitude in the morning. And when I started the company, I just was like, how do I? Who else needs this? And I just started talking to my immediate group of friends, my very diverse group of women, and I found a lot of them need it, but a lot of women, especially women of color, they don’t have time. So for me, it was about how do I find something that is really quick? For me, having a bowl of matcha or cacao or a matcha cacao snack, something that you can do that’s less than ten minutes, I think a lot of women were looking for something like that, so I kind of fell into it. Speaking with women of color, they’re saying, “I would love to learn more about wellness. But one, I’m intimidated by it, not welcomed by it. And then secondly, I don’t have time.” So it’s just trying to find something that’s an easy gateway for women to try it, start giving themselves the time to reconnect with themselves.

NICOLE

So what did you find for yourself then? When you started to actually put in those ten minutes per day? What does it do for you?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

My grandfather was a big meditator, and I used to think that meditation was about emptying your mind of all your thoughts. And then I realized it’s not being empty. And I think so many people go into meditation and say, I can’t meditate because I can’t. The thoughts keep coming in, and I can’t. But then when it shifted, I was about a year into it, when I was going through some treatments and doing a lot of meditation, I realized it’s not about emptying, it’s about being full of space. Once I had that shift and that realization, it was like I’m full of energy now. I’m full of space. I’m full of that quantum divine energy that allows us to be creative and whole. You know what I mean? And to heal. So that was the biggest thing I learned, those ten minutes that it gave me, and I think that was kind of the barrier. A lot of women think it’s like you have to stop thinking. You can’t have a thought flow through your mind. That’s what meditation is. But for me, it’s not. It’s about letting those thoughts come in, but also,  just being so full of space, it feels peaceful and calm, and you can reconnect.

NICOLE

Yeah, that’s really beautiful. Does your family have a history of meditation, or could you talk a little bit more about that?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Yes. I’ve always been a little part of it. My grandfather, when he came to the states in the seventies, he went to Indiana, and was one of the first yoga, meditation and aikido teachers in the country. He actually faced a lot of diversity, a lot of racism, but he was really open. He would teach people of every color, and he always taught us to take spirituality and make that an important part of your life. But at the same time, he was such an outlier, because he also worked in the corporate world. And I think a lot of us, the grandkids in the family, we still felt pressured to go in the corporate world, because that was more acceptable. So it’s funny that we always talk about how a lot of us wanted to explore more nontraditional wellness. It just took us a while to get there, because we felt like we had to go to the corporate world first, which I think happens sometimes.

NICOLE

That’s so interesting. I know it is true. Sometimes it is cultural pressure, but then sometimes it’s just our own perceived pressures that make us go the routes that we do. I remember I tried a lot of different majors and possible jobs out on my father, and many of which were shot down. Like I wanted to be a palaeontologist, and he was like, “That’s not really going to make you very much money.” “But I want to study dinosaurs, dad.” So there are certain things like that, that got shot down. When journalism came up, (which, by the way, is not lucrative), he was like, “Oh, thank God. She’s picking something that seems sort of normal instead of, you know, being something out there.”

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Yeah, I did business in college, and I think I mentioned this to you before that I didn’t even tell my parents I was going to culinary school, because I was so afraid that they would be like, “How are you going to make a living for yourselves?” Then they actually found out right before I was going to New York, that I was going to culinary school. I do think we put pressure on ourselves because once they kind of found out, they loved it. They really wanted me to go for it. But I think it was my own internal pressure in my mind. I didn’t want to tell them. I felt like I was pointing them in some way. And at the time, it wasn’t really acceptable to go to culinary school, as it is now. Now it’s so much more popular. I think had I just been more open with them, they would have been great about it. Mentally, we build it up more than it is sometimes.

NICOLE

Totally. I remember when I was in college, I was working with a mentor, who’s not a professor. And he said, “Your twenties are for exploration”, and he was the first adult who ever told me that –  all the other adults were not into exploration. You know?  Adults are like, what’s your major? What’s your first job? What’s your internship? And he was like, you should just use this time to figure out what it is you really want to do. He said, “I didn’t find my dream job till 33”, and that seems young me, to know what you want to be doing for the rest of your life. But I really appreciated that. He gave me that permission to say, ‘I can just try stuff.’

What would you tell your earlier self, looking back at when you went to culinary school and then some of the choices you made in your career, what would you tell her about what she could do?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Ooh, that’s a good one. You know what’s funny? I think I feel blessed I was able to  realise you don’t have to have one career. It doesn’t have to be linear. You can kind of find your own way. It’s more interesting if it’s not linear. Sometimes I look back at my career and wonder why I went to culinary school? And then become a food stylist for television? Then it kind of led me into working with buyers. So I became a cookware buyer, then I started working for food startups, managing a team, and it never really was a straight line. And I think we’re so taught that our career and our life path has to be a straight line, then you find your journey is more like a ping pong, and I look back and realise it was really a beautiful journey, and more interesting that way. When I talk to people, they think it’s so cool, I’ve had three or four different careers, but I’ve actually been in the same career the whole time. If I could tell more young people that you can do that in your twenties. Twenties are a great time. And your thirties are a great time to bounce around, and sometimes the right opportunity finds you, but it doesn’t have to be the next linear promotion or step that sometimes people feel it needs to be.

NICOLE

Yeah, I mean, I have no idea how long I’ll be doing what I’m doing. I constantly don’t feel like I’ll ever work for somebody else, because I just don’t think that’s possible after five years of owning my own business. I’m like, what are you telling me to do?  I don’t know that I’ll be doing this particular thing forever. I feel like I’ll keep changing things or trying new things because, you know, I’m already on my third career. And I always think it’s like when we were young, we’re taught by culture, we’re taught by our parents, and I do think that particularly in the Asian American model, it feels like a lot of pressure to do one thing.

I remember when I was weighing up, should I be a doctor or a lawyer? I don’t really think I want to be either of those things, and everybody else is doing it, in that world that I had, and it sounded really boring. “If dad doesn’t want me to be a palaeontologist, I think I’m going to be a literature major”, and try that out instead, you know. That’s where I went. But I agree with you, because we’re talking about when you’re younger and you put yourself into a box. I actually still feel like a lot of women who are older, do the same thing. Some people really just think they have to live their life a particular way.

I’m not saying that everyone has to be an entrepreneur, because there is room in the world for all kinds of people and all types of jobs, but when you think you have to do it a certain way, you have to be on a certain trajectory. That’s always when I want to challenge people. Yes, you can be really happy in what you’re doing, and if it works for you, that’s great. If it’s something else, then can we also be open to the idea that you can make that change? And it doesn’t have to be scary. Starting over new doesn’t have to be this terrifying, horrible thing. It could actually be an opportunity to grow.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Bouncing off that. I want to ask you, coming from your perspective as a coach, some people feel if it’s scary, then it feels. They say it’s good. It’s pushing yourself out of your comfort zone in your career and in speaking, coaching other women. How did you know, when you’re doing the next career, that this feels right? I feel like I’m on the right path? What was the voice that you heard inside? Yoga or writing a book, did you feel it, at different times along the way, as it was moving, or was it one moment that you’re like, I have to go this direction? Because a lot of us women, we don’t listen to ourselves as much, so I think that’s something that you kind of have to learn or talk to other women about.

NICOLE

I definitely heard it for the first time when I was leaving the paper, but also I would say at that time, my intuition was not finely tuned. I just happened to hear it at that time, and actually, but it took me a year and a half to leave. So there is always, to me, the intuitive hit. Train yourself to listen for the intuitive hit, because they will just pass right by you if you don’t pay attention to them. But then the second piece of it is that fear comes, hot on the heels of intuition. So if you’re scared, it’s often because you probably did not have something that told you to do something, but then you got so freaked out that you just didn’t do it, and so that’s typically what’s happening. And so I don’t like to let fear be the determining factor for anything.

Sometimes you’re scared for a reason, and it’s probably a good reason. I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but sometimes there’s legitimately things. Like I don’t  go on spinning roller coaster drops, they do freak me out and I’m not going to get on those roller coasters, you know what I mean? I don’t want us to be like, if there’s fear, go for it. I don’t actually think that’s necessarily true, but I do think that if there has been some kind of intuitive nudge, I promise you, fear comes right after it. So I don’t know anybody where they’re know what to do, and then they’re just on that pathway and no-one can stop them. I feel, more than anything, fear will stop you.

And if fear is stopping you, that is a place to be curious and to get interested and to start to see what it is that you actually really need to do. If you are at that cusp, like where you were trying to leave, and by the way, I have seen so many people get laid off or fired at this time, because actually the universe had to be like, you’re not going to do it. I’m just going to push you out the window, because you’re not going to do it. So for sure, that kind of stuff can happen when we hold back on what to do. But I get it, when you have an intuitive nudge, it’s typically something totally terrifying because you’ve never done it before and you’re really freaked out, and anybody who’s listened to my podcast, has heard me talk about this, but it’s important for us to understand that process, because if you think it’s only intuitive nudges and rainbows and unicorns, and I know exactly my next path and I’ll never have any fear again, well, that is just not the truth, right? The truth is you’re always going to feel a little bit nervous and scared at some point during that process. And your job is to have honed your intuition so deeply that you can listen to it on a daily basis, to reaffirm what you’re doing rather than listening to the fear, because the fear is going to be louder, stronger, very determined to stop you, because your body’s trying to keep you safe. And your job is to let the intuitive nudge be an actual guiding force.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

I love that. I think fear intuition is something we should spend more time exploring. I feel like I only came to that in my thirties, really, where I kind of listened and could tell the difference. I think before my twenties, I couldn’t. Sometimes I would definitely overlap them. Even now, I have to give myself space to make sure I’m listening to my intuition. And it was funny in my thirties, I think when I went through a health scare, it was really the universe telling me, you need to slow down. You’re in the corporate world, you’re traveling too much. You’re not taking care of your body. And it is funny how the universe will step in sometimes. Also, in talking to so many friends, when you lose a job or you lose a relationship, you think the world is inflicting itself on you, but it’s just really guiding you towards where you should be.

NICOLE

I’ve heard so many stories of people with health breakdowns that are coming from  burnout or stress, but it’s really actually your body trying to put you on a new pathway, because you’ve been overriding intuition. To me, really bad health care is typically like a major intuition override that’s just been ongoing for so long that your body breaks down. So when it does that, you have to pay attention. For most people, I find, it’s like major health scares, being hospitalized, massive changes in their lives that are forcing them to take a look at it! Because getting sick and staying home with a cold is not going to stop most of us. You know what I mean? Most of us are just going to keep working from home, or do whatever. So I think what happens typically, is we have to just start practicing it, and we have to pay attention to it.

Even people who practice it, and myself included all the time, you’re just often going to hear things that you’re not super excited about, and we have to understand that that intuitive nudge is trying to get you in a direction that’s the aligned direction for you. And that can be hard for us who are trained to think ‘I should follow the way everybody else does it, or what my parents have always said is going to be the safe route, instead of the route that’s going to be divergent outside the box.’

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

May I ask you, what are some things that you do daily to hone your intuition? So they can help other women also, or other people?

NICOLE

Yeah, I have a lot of practices that I do every day, and big ones that are really self-care practices. Ten minutes to me is not even close to enough. I have 2 hours minimum before I start my day. And then every day, midday, minimum 90 minutes break after work. Like, I go to yoga, I do other stuff, and then at night, I read before bed. So for me, it’s like sprinkled throughout the day. For example, I start work at 8 or 9am. By noon, my brain is full. I’ve had meetings and clients, and all kinds of stuff has been going on, and I need to clear that out for me to get tuned back in. So I always have lunch, I go for a walk with my dog. I get some space. I read a book to get myself back into that clear space. It’s really counter to what most people think, because most people are like, “I eat at my desk, I don’t ever take breaks,  I’m just going hard!”  And I’m like, yeah, that means you’re giving no space to even hear anything other than the busyness and loudness in your head. So for me, it’s pretty much an all-day effort to make sure I’m in a really good place.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Yeah, that’s so interesting because I found when I started getting up earlier and I started spending more time in the morning, giving myself more than an hour to really do all my self-care, I actually was more productive. And people are saying, “That’s so much time in the morning to dedicate just to meditation”. But doing those things, like practicing gratitude, making sure I have my cup of cacao matcha and stuff like that, I found I was actually more productive when I gave myself that time. It’s like I give myself the space in the morning, and then it makes the day. I’m able to be more present to the day as well.

NICOLE

Totally. I mean, it takes me sometimes up to 3 hours to get ready for my day. And most people are like, “How?”  I have to get up early, but then I also have to go to bed early. But again, I feel rested, and I can feel connected to myself. I feel ready to start work. I’m not rushing all the time. I used to take meetings at 8am, but I won’t do that anymore, because I feel too rushed. Nope, it’s got to be nine, the earliest. And I have a lot of boundaries, which we’re now getting into a bit, too. I have strong boundaries around this stuff, because there’s a huge cost to me if I don’t do it. So I feel the same about what you’re saying, that it is amazing, and people don’t recognize or realize that giving themselves space is how they’re going to have more productivity. And not that the point is productivity though, to me, it’s not about being productive. It’s more about how can you be focused? I want to be focused during the day and not being  thrown in a million directions. And the way to do that, is to be in really good self-care, all day.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

And I think also when you give yourself space, it’s like you’re reconnecting. I think you’re able to do things more authentically and from something that’s more unique. Sometimes that comes through when you give yourself space. I think when I was rushing, I would end up just going down the path that everyone else went down, because you’re not listening to yourself. You just kind of go to the default, this is what I should be doing next in my life. This is the next step in my life. Then when you stop, it kind of makes it easier for you to listen to yourself and say, “Is this really the direction I want to go with?” Like my branding or my messaging. For me, as an entrepreneur, when I actually get to meetings, having a strong point of view is so important.

NICOLE

Oh, yeah, totally. And I would say the pause is also huge for creativity. If I don’t feel creative and I’m working on my book or something, I go for a walk, or take a little snooze. Just give yourself some space for your brain to wind down, and then it’ll start to give you what you’re looking for.

Well, such a fun conversation, Mary Beth. I appreciate it. Are you ready for some rapid fire questions?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

Yes, I think so.

NICOLE

These are just for fun, you know. So what was the last thing you watched on tv?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

The last thing I watched on TV?  “The 3 Body Problem” on Netflix, which is a really great show. It’s about physicists who are finding that aliens are coming and how we react as humans, and how we find our humanity at that time. So it’s a very interesting sci-fi.

NICOLE

Don’t know if I could watch it. Okay. And then what is on your nightstand?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

What’s on my nightstand? I know this sounds very basic, but I always do a candle palo santo, a crystal, and then I have some sort of thing to write with.

NICOLE

Those are not basic at all. Okay. And then when was the last time you tried something new, and what was it?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

When’s the last time I tried something new? I mean, I think the big one for me is when I started my company. I think it was the last time I really remember saying, I’m doing something totally different, because the business I started is non-traditional, in my mind, because it was about ritual.

NICOLE

Okay, awesome. I love that. That’s so fun. And then what are the top three most used emojis on your phone?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

The kissing emoji. Like the person who gives a kiss. The unicorn emoji. Because I have a group of girlfriends, and we call each other ‘the unicorns’, because we’re there for each other. And I think the third one would just be the heart emoji.

NICOLE

Beautiful. I love that you use the unicorn all the time. That’s so much fun. Well, how can people find out more about the company and what you’re doing at ‘With Ritual’, and what’s available from you?

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

On my instagram @ withritual, and my website is withritual.com, and I’ll be launching a whole line of matcha and cacao snacks at the end of Q2, so just a few months. I’m very excited for that. But right now there’s matcha and meditation sets available on my website, that’s all branded and done with really great artists and artisans from around the country.

NICOLE

So cool. I love what you’re sharing with the world, Mary Beth. It’s awesome. And then definitely get signed up for her. We’ll link everything in the show notes as well, so you can find her company really easily. And I would say do it for yourself, and then also to support such an incredible company as well. Mary Beth, thank you so much for a really powerful conversation. I love talking to you. You asked such great questions. It’s just like fun, the flow. So I’m really grateful that you were on the School of Self-Worth.

MARY BETH RODRIGUEZ

So lovely talking with you as well.

NICOLE

Thank you so much for tuning in to 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 @ Nicoletsong on Instagram, and 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.