I was recently given one of the biggest gifts you can receive as a busy professional — TIME. Like, days and days of time.
It all started with jury duty. I was called up, and was planning to do my civic duty.
And then, just like that, I was excused.
And now I had 6 full days ahead of me, free of meetings, work commitments, of anything, really.
But this wasn’t a vacation, so I wasn’t sure at first how to handle it, and plenty of old patterns showed up along with my open calendar.
In this episode, I share the three things that I have learned about self-worth that helped me step into a spacious week, and why it matters for all of us.
QUOTES:
“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 the Nicole from ten 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 you want to know why? It’s what I’m going to talk about today – the three things I have stopped compromising on, related to my self-worth, and this is also a huge foundation for how I stepped into my voice. So I’m really excited about how you can step into a superpowered self-worth for yourself, because it’s 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 five 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 best-selling author of three books and work/life balance expert, helping ambitious women unlock their intuition and step into a life of fulfilment 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 first want to tell you all about that moment of 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’s 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 much 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 my years as a reporter, covering trials. I was really interested in this, so I’ve always wanted to be on one. 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. 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’.
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. Then as soon as my elation from this experience died down, I was also very aware of my old cultural programming about hyper-achieving, 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 hyper-achieving programming would tell me to fill it up. “Move your client calls that you’d already moved back, to schedule the people who you delayed by a week during jury duty week, to get so much work done. You have all this calendar time, you’re going to get so many things accomplished!”… and to not take a break. 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 hyper-achieving 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 about self-worth are things I’ve developed over time, having learned to really put into place with myself, using my promoted and celebrated system. Because these things have anchored me to understand what 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. I spent another day working on my book. So these are all things that, by giving myself space, I knew I actually really needed. I also knew that giving myself space was the highest and best use of my time, and 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. 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 hyper-achieving mentality, you learn that 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, 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.
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, and 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. In Chinese culture, that was the norm. Like I learned the group was more important than the individual, 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, Nicole, am important, 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 is taking a long time for me to reprogram, but it’s really important that we start to understand it, because now what happened is, I have reprogrammed this to understand that I am important and valuable.
When I got all of this time off, and 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 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. Not to mention, I honestly don’t work that much. I work maybe 25 hours a week, so I had to watch judgement 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, or shape your decisions for yourself. And I have learned, over time, methods to really pause, to break that pattern, and to 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, and my deeper value in who I am. I’ve learned now, 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, and in this case, it was actually really relevant. I had to be really clear, in general, that I am worthy of time off work that 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, although this case was different, because it wasn’t for vacation. I was simply given the gift of time, and had to really believe I was worthy of this gift. It was actually a hard gift for me to receive. At first, I was like, I would never have six days with nothing to do. My calendar, like all of you, is full to the brim. Weekends, even if it’s not work, it’s filled with friends and travel, and all kinds of stuff, and way I’ve gotten to the place where I could really receive that gift, is 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, 2025. 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. And what I have discovered is that it is actually the most urgent thing I can think of in the world: to work on it. In this case, if I had just filled up my calendar and I’d just been working like usual, I would have kept thinking about how I could have used this time better? I would have felt a little stressed, a little bit anxious, like I’m not sure that I’m doing myself a disservice by working, and I had to really check myself on this over and over again, and that 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. I would have felt anxious and stressed, which 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. You don’t give yourself the time to love yourself right then, and it sends a message to others for them to do the same thing, like work at all costs, no matter what. Unfortunately, there are corporate environments, and you might live in one of them or work in one of them, that takes advantage of this fact. On the other hand, me taking downtime last week, was really loving myself.
There are other people who might like to jump 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, that 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.
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 around with clients all the time, feeling the need to constantly be productive at work, to be doing something, to be generating all 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, that’s why 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. And home-productive are things like cleaning the house, grocery shopping, working in the yard, hanging out with the dog, and getting stuff done. 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? 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 do 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 like finishing my homework or doing chores, really following the rules that are set out in front of me. Now, as an adult, I have learned to reprogramme myself and my brain, that I can choose rest without earning it, and that doesn’t mean I don’t have a strong work ethic or ambition. I feel like if you follow me regularly here, you can probably tell I have a lot of ambition. I have a very strong work ethic. There’s also a knowing 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. There is no earning, there’s no achieving, there’s no any of that stuff – 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. I like to think of this so much as a dialogue to make sure that what I’m sharing, is resonating with you, hitting with you, and to know that this is a thing that you want to hear from me.
Thank you all so much for listening. I am eternally grateful. And 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 @ 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.
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