2017 Year in Review: A Look at Limiting Beliefs
Every year, I read so many amazing year in review posts and I feel like a bystander. “I should do that,” I think, and then waste four more hours on Reddit. NOT THIS YEAR. I didn’t read 52 books, or travel to 20 different countries, or go to Tokyo. I did leave my full-time job in April as an engineering manager at Medium, start my own coaching business, and just two weeks ago, co-led my first full-day workshop for engineering leaders — oh and helped keep two small humans alive.
If I had to choose a theme for 2017 to wrap it all up in a nice bow, it would be realizing that so much of how I live my life is based on preconceived ideas of how things should be. What a good parent should do, what a responsible adult should do with money, what a career should look like. Some of these limiting beliefs come from growing up as an Asian kid and seeing the implicit and explicit ideas of what success looks like. Some of them come from a decade of working full-time as a woman in the tech industry, and the burden of that cognitive load. Some of them come from being mostly effortlessly high-achieving through high school and college, and never really developing a great deal of grit and persistence.
When I started my own business in April of this year, I was pretty burnt out from working full-time at companies for a decade. The last 4 years, especially, with small children, and commuting into SF from various locations in the Bay Area, were rough — and it snuck up on me like a boiling frog. I figured my “business” would be picking up a few coaching clients, making some base level of income, and figuring out if I liked it enough to continue or just recovering before planning my next move.
Now, eight months into this venture, I realize that even though I took that initial leap to start my own business, I was still so held back by my limiting beliefs about success and money. The people who made money around me when I was a child were all doctors, who had toiled for many years in medical school, residencies, fellowships, before making the big bucks — and they were all men. They worked very long hours and sacrificed time with their families to provide a comfortable life. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree and immediately started making a comfortable software engineering salary. But in my subconscious, there was always this feeling of not deserving — who was I, Asian girl with no graduate degree who managed to make money mostly sitting in front of a computer or talking to people, to aspire to even more success? When I left my “real job” to start a new coaching career of just-talking-to-people, those subtle thoughts of not deserving crept in, leaving their influence on what opportunities I said yes to, what my revenue goals were, and how I thought about my business.
One of the most unexpected benefits of transitioning into coaching is the amount of self-work and introspection involved. As an engineer and engineering manager working full-time with a long commute, time to reflect and work on myself seemed hard to come by. But as a coach and business owner, it feels much more intrinsically part of the job. Part of moving into coaching is that you need to figure out your own shit, so that you can keep your focus on your clients and not get drawn into talking about yourself. I attended three 3-day coach training courses in 2017, and each one was valuable in the coaching skills and tools that I gained. But the true value was the application of those tools on my own real issues and limiting beliefs.
Here’s a particularly surprising example:
I’ve always taken pride in my pragmatism and efficiency. In college, I didn’t drink any coffee and hardly ever pulled all-nighters because I naturally planned my work out so that I generally got 8–9 hours of sleep a night. Anything I signed up to do, I would follow-through. This served me well in excelling at school and being a reliable employee at work. In coaching class, when we learned about naming your “saboteur” or inner critic, I was surprised to hear about people’s very obvious and LOUD saboteurs. They guilt people into doing things, or are people-pleasing and anxious about being liked, or are very blatant and say things like “you’re not good enough.” I wondered if I even had a saboteur. But as I started to be more curious about what kept me from the things I want, I realized that my ultra-pragmatic responsible voice is sometimes also my saboteur. I tend to not take on projects unless I can clearly see how they will unfold — otherwise my saboteur says, “Well, I guess you could do that, but it’s really impractical and probably won’t work anyways, so you shouldn’t even try — good on you for being responsible.”
I had previously figured out a hack around this, by just announcing I would do things I didn’t think I could do, and then I would just do them. Starting my own coaching business is one of those things, as was quitting Google after a year and a half with nothing else lined up. But I would only jump into the deep end like that every few years. A metaphor I found in coach training is surfing. I’ve been really awesome at metaphorically sitting on the beach, watching other people surf — and hey, hanging out on the beach is pretty great! Every few years, I would get bored of the beach and choose to get dropped in the ocean a mile out, and I’d swim my way to shore. But now I want to surf — to constantly live in that state of self-improvement and possibility of failure, to not be so pragmatic all the time and dream big dreams. And the fascinating thing is, once I let myself dream those big dreams, they don’t seem so impossible at all.
I’m still unpacking a lot of these limiting beliefs, but now I know they are there, and it’s my choice if I want to keep them around or not. So 2018 is all about big dreams. For once in my life, I believe that however big the dreams I dream are, I can achieve them.
Reading through what I wrote, I realize this isn’t what I feel a Year in Review should be, and my subtle saboteur asks me why anyone would care about my relationship with my limiting beliefs. I remember a few years back when a relative of mine heard that I sometimes advise/mentor people who email me after reading some of my online posts. “YOU!?!?! You’re so young — how could you possibly give other people advice?!” But these last few months have convinced that there is an urgent need for the tech industry to hear from voices like my own. The vast majority of problems that holds engineering teams and tech companies back boils down to people, relationships, and communication. And yet — the industry still glorifies technical brilliance, often at the expense of psychological safety. So I choose to quiet that specific saboteur, and focus instead on the big dreams and big impact I plan to have in 2018.
Additional resources:
Playing Big — I’m only a few chapters in, but I’ve been recommending it to friends. It’s a book that explores limiting beliefs and how women specifically can get past those barrier to PLAY BIG.
2018 Workshops for Leaders in Tech — As part of my mission to raise the bar for leadership in the tech industry, I will be co-leading many workshops with Edmond Lau. Fill out the form to get early access.
Sign up for my newsletter —My newsletter has been a more casual place for me to write about what’s going on in my business, and things that are top of mind for me. What it will be next year is tbd, as I learn more about marketing and mailing lists!
