Principles I Live By

I’m human and although these are principles I live by, I still screw up and need to be reminded from time to time. :p

I am not my inner voice, I’m the one who is listening

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it” — Michael A. Singer

Of all the principles I live by, this has been the most transformative. I am not the voice in my head; I am the one listening and observing. When I first read this quote, I immediately bursted into tears. It was the first time I felt remorse for speaking so unkindly to myself all those years. It was the first time I truly connected with my soul, my greater being. I’m not the constant chatter, the overly critical inner voice. I am the observant of it all. This moment is when I committed to speaking kindly to myself and to love me, the listener.

Blended thinking as oppose to seeing the world in black and white

Blended thinking has helped me be kinder and more compassionate to myself

I grew up thinking in extremes which ultimately lead to an eating disorder. Blended thinking has freed me from the all or nothing mindset I use to play in my head. I learned to maintain a healthy relationship with food by not labeling certain food groups as bad or good. I learned that I’m never bad at something and it takes time to learn and grow. And when I gave myself permission to not think of life in extremes, I became less judgmental and more compassionate towards others

Blended thinking has helped me with my relationships

I strive to be someone who looks at the big picture and stays curious about how I can think about the problem in various lenses — How extreme perspectives and opinions can both have some truth to it. I strive to listen to people’s experiences and stories with an open heart

Lifting people I love with me

An advice I absolutely detest is — you need to be spending your time with people who are always smarter and better than you so that you can also be better. And that the reason why people are successful is because they have a circle of influence that are like minded, share the same future, and the same vision. To me, it is a self centered and transactional driven philosophy to dump friends and loved once if they are not serving you. Although I choose my friends with the utmost discernment, I make friends for life. The core of my friendships are genuine shared connection, trust, love, and support. It doesn’t matter if they are not as ambitious, have different set of goals and achievements in life, have different set of interests, or if they are unable to give support during challenging moments of their life. I believe that just as people can influence me, I can influence and lift people up.

I don’t have to love everything I do by default

I don’t believe in the whole notion of only doing things that bring me joy. Sometimes, you just have to deal with doing things that are not fun and it’s part of life. Even when pursuing a passion, I have found that there are certain tasks I don’t like to do. The key is to persist and transform things that I don’t usually like to do to something I love or at least tolerate. For example, I disliked cooking. In order to help me love cooking, I started to see my kitchen as beautiful area of the home deserving of good things. I started buying high quality knives and well-functional kitchenware. When cooking, I’ll turn on my favorite tunes or podcast while cooking. I’ve transformed what I used to absolutely hate to something I enjoy.

I also don’t believe in the statement — finding what you love so you never have to work in your life. As an American Immigrant who grew up in a low income household, I find this statement too unrealistic especially when thinking about building generational wealth for my family. I’ve instead replaced this statement with find something that is a useful skill and sprinkle your passions and your strengths in that area of discipline. When I was software engineer, I did not have any interest in coding during my leisure time. However, I’ve been able to apply my passion in e-commerce as well as helping diversify the tech industry by pursuing and becoming an engineering manager for a commerce platform. I have learned that there is nothing wrong with not being completely in love with programming to the point that I’d want to use my personal time attending hack-a-thons or building an app. Instead, I used becoming a software engineer and the powerful skill of programming to support and explore my other passions.