A lot of people don't realize we are our own worst enemy, we are our own worst critic.

And that voice of criticism comes from maybe like your parents always criticize you or it could be anything really, but it's learning to rewrite the voices that are in your head. Because once the voices in your head become positive and supportive and loving, like you look in the mirror every day, you tell yourself like, I got this. The only thing worse than someone being mad at you is someone being disappointed in you. Guys you know that feeling whether it's a friend, a partner, a boss or a parent. When you fail to live up to someone's expectations it just out and out sucks. So much though there's so many of us live our entire lives for other people and today's guest was no exception. Growing up in a very traditional Asian family, she knew everything about pressure and expectation. She felt that her parents' love was conditional based on good grades, attending a good college and getting a good job and failure to do so was unacceptable and

continued in dishonor to the family and the culture. So in her early 20s she found herself living out someone else's life. It already been written for her and she was just acting out the scenes on autopilot. But it wasn't her. She didn't even know who she was. But realizing she She was a director of her own life, she finally decided to yell, cut.

Cutting the tie between her value and worth to other people's approval started her on a journey of self-discovery and impact. Sharing her journey in personal growth and lifestyle design along with actionable takeaway tips has turned it into a YouTube phenomenon with over 70 million views on her channel Lavendeir and four million downloads on her podcast the Lavendeir lifestyle. If life is an art then today's guest is here to help us paint our masterpiece. The ever-fessant I lean to. Welcome to the show girl! Thank you so much for having me. That was an amazing intro. Probably the best I've heard. Well, to be honest, I'm just listening to your content and watching all the stuff that you do. It is so incredible. And you speak to such an audience that has been where you are, whether it's an Asian culture, my personal experience, I come from a very traditional Greek culture. So when I started to read your story, I think for so many women, they could relate. And so I kind of want to start at the expectations that your parents had and the fear of disappointing them, because I think that is so relatable for people. So how did you overcome that in order to take that first step? Yeah. Well, growing up in an immigrant family, my parents were both immigrants. My mom was a refugee from Vietnam and my dad was an immigrant from China. So I feel like a lot of immigrant children can relate to the feeling of like the pressure your parents put on you to succeed because they sacrificed so much. They went through so much in their life so that you could have this new life, this American dream in America and obviously they're, you know, they can get really strict on you having the expectations to do well in school, get perfect grades, just be like the perfect child, go to the perfect college, get a high-paying job, and be set for life. And all of this was an expectation since you're before you can even remember. And you just thought, like I just thought that was how everyone's life was and how life is supposed to be. Like you're told what to do, society says like this is what success looks like. And so that's what you aim for and you just do it. And I feel like a lot of my life, I mentioned in my videos that I felt like I was kind of running on autopilot and then came the turning point during my second and third year of college was the time I started asking questions. Why am I doing this? Why am I putting so much pressure on myself, stressing out in school, Why am I trying to get a good job? I did so many internships while I was in college. And I realized in the internships that I didn't want that boss's job. I didn't want this lifestyle working in an office nine to five every day. And that was the turning point because it made me realize like, this is not what I want. but I don't know what I want. And so it's scary and it's risky and I have no idea what I want to do and what's suited for me, but I'm not going to waste my life away living something that doesn't feel right, living a life that's not aligned. And it was a very big push and pull with my parents. You know, they didn't understand where I was coming from.

I told them, I want to be creative.

I don't want to work in an office. And to them, I probably sounded really irresponsible. They were really like mad. Like, why can't you just get a job like your other friends? But each one of us has like an inner voice that inner compass that's guiding us, right? And as we mature from childhood to, you know,

teen years, we forget that we have that voice that knows what's right for us because all the voices outside of us become loud. You know, the voices of your parents, teachers, society, and it was just the journey of like coming back to myself and what was right for me. And also the discovery part because like, I've always had a plan in my life. I always, you know, you get a syllabus in class, you know what to do to finish your homework, get good grades, and you know like the step-by-step rules, right? But life doesn't have a syllabus. Life doesn't give you step-by-step how do you succeed. So that was a really frustrating for me, to not have a plan, and to just live my life without a plan.

And that's exactly why I want you on this show, women.

So tell us what that plan is.

So take me back, because you said some really strong things

that I really want to kind of just hone in on

and go a little down.

So once you start to discover this isn't the life I want,

you go on internships, you're like, I don't want that position, what am I doing? All of those thoughts, but there's a massive chasm between that and then taking action. So even just approaching your parents, like that is so freaking scary. And like as I start to process in my own head about me having to tell my own family, I don't want children. Like that was a big deal. And I carried around a lot of guilt because the guilt of what my parents had gone through in order to give me the life that I currently have, I felt guilty in trying to follow my own dreams when they had given up everything for me. So talk to me about how you overcame that fear and actually still took action and still approached them. Like how did you approach them? What did you say? And then how did you not let them see you a stray from your goals and dreams? Yeah, I mean, I have to be real. Like that, it's not like you tell them once and then you switch. It really was like a two to three year process of just going through a really hard time in life and them not understanding where I was. And then I just became so flaky. I started becoming really depressed because I was just not happy about anything in life. It's kind of like all the pressure came down on me senior year of college where I would do the actions of like, okay, I'm going to try to apply for

these jobs, send in my resume, and then I would get an interview time. And then once the interview came, I just like, I didn't wake up for it. I was like, I don't even want to go. So I was sabotaging myself because I just couldn't go through with it. And so like the whole time my parents didn't really understand what I was going through. I was just arguing with me like,

why can't you just get a job, any job, even if you don't like it.

Just in the meantime, while you're figuring out what you want. didn't really understand what I was going through. My dad was just arguing with me like, why can't you just get a job, any job, even if you don't like it.

Just in the meantime, while you're figuring out what you want to do, because you don't want, you don't know. But the way I grew up, my dad, like, my dad left their family when I was in elementary school. And so he lived in China for most of my life. And he's like a parent that's super strict from afar,

because he still financially supported our family,

just not physically being here.

So he did, he had to say in everything. And there was the pressure of my mom would give us this pressure. Like, if you don't listen to what your dad says, like, he's gonna cut us off, and we're not gonna be able to feed ourselves. And so that was like extra pressure on me, because'm the older child and it's kind of like,

you're expected to, you know, be able, in the Asian family, you're expected to get a job so you can take care of your parents down the line, right? So that's always in the back of my mind plus my dad's very, very high expectations of us was with us our whole life. So yeah, I told him I was like, I want to be an artist. I'm creative. to do something like, you know, in that realm. And he's like, artists are crazy people.

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