Feb 12, 2025 |
No one taught me how important my Asian ancestral heritage was in helping me be good at business.
I had to figure it out on my own. And here’s what I figured out.
I am thankful for my Confucian heritage.
It instilled in me one of the most defining values I hold, which has been passed down in my family: education is the most valuable asset in the world. More than any material possession. Without it having to lead to any capitalism-friendly “outcome.” Enriching one’s mind is its own reward, and the most valuable one.
This kept me focused on learning business for the way it sharpened my mind, without being anxious for material “returns”. This non-transactional relationship I had with business is exactly what kept me in it long enough for me to get really good at it.
I am thankful for my Taoist heritage.
It taught me that no one thing is separate from the ecology surrounding it. That you are not separate from me. That there is only Oneness.
That cultural knowing is exactly what planted the firm attitude in me that my thriving is vitally interlinked with yours, that I cannot use, manipulate, and extract from you to get ahead. When I cheat you to get what I want, I only end up cheating myself.
The Taoism baked into my culture also taught me this. When there is an up, there is a down, and when there is expansion, there is contraction.
Don’t get too excited on a good day, and don’t be too depressed on a bad day. Proverbs of this nature are passed down and repeated in my family.
This is exactly what gave me the steadfastness to keep going long enough to see my efforts bear full fruition in the long term.
I’m thankful for my animinist/shamanic heritage.
One of the teachings I’m known for is the idea of “the spirit of your business.” I believe your business literally has its own spirit. So does your social media account. So does your phone. So does your email.
I’m often asked where I got this idea from. And while certain sources gave me inspiration for articulating it out loud, it was always obvious to me because of the animism that is part of our traditional culture.
Western culture sees certain things as living (birds, trees, humans), and other things as inert (mountains, seas, the soil).
Animism recognizes everything as alive and conscious — each different thing in its own way.
This way of seeing everything in my business ecosystem — even things that are dead or inert according to Western culture — as ALIVE, CONSCIOUS, and being in a LIVING RELATIONSHIP — has been key to my creativity and genius-level intuition about making strategic moves for my business.
The ideology around ancestral veneration that is central to my culture (which is half-Confucian and half-animist/shamanic, I think)… also turned out to be critical for my business success.
Koreans believe that our lives are closely interlinked to our ancestors.’ We are also taught that everything good that happens to us is NOT only due to our own merit, but due to our ancestors’ benevolent deeds.
Almost like I’m receiving delayed good karma for what my ancestors did.
For example, my mom tells me the story of her grandmother, who would always welcome into her home travelers who needed a place to rest.
She would feed them the best food, give them a warm place to sleep, and send them on their way with more provisions.
And she would tell my mom: “I do this for you. All the good I do will come back to you. So, when you grow up, you must remember to be kind to everyone, and help as many people as you can.”
The recognition of interrelationship across time and space is baked into our worldview.
Do you know what this means?
It means that, from day 1, I knew that my business would fail if it didn’t benefit others before it benefited me.
Generosity and benevolence had to be the primary values through which I filtered all of my business decisions.
This was not only the way I created success for myself (it all flows back to me, always), but the way I create good fortune for my descendants.
Actually, I’ve oriented my business to community care in much more radical ways since I became a mother.
Because now I think acutely about my son’s well being, and I want him to have a good future.
The best way for me to invest in his future well-being is taking care of the community around me now.
Yes, we were a colonized and impoverished and war-torn people, living to this day with a legacy of trauma.
But.
I’m not prosperous in spite of being Korean.
I’m prosperous because I am Korean.
(Please, substitute “Korean” with whatever you are.)
What about you?
If you’re from a non-dominant culture, in what ways has your heritage made you stronger, better, more prosperous?
Feb 11, 2025 |
I promised my clients I would post this publicly.
I would 100% be living with my parents if I weren’t married.
Whole-ass adults living with their parents is still the default in cultures outside of pathologically individualism-obsessed America.
Living alone is also just not financially feasible in many parts of the world where living spaces are much more cramped and expensive.
Fuck anyone who shames you about it. Literally tell them “why yes, I live with my parents. I’ve been lucky enough to escape dystopian individualism.”
If given a choice again between living alone (ew, I hate being lonely), living with roommates (ugh), and living with people who gave birth to me and love me (and getting to save on rent!), it’s a no-brainer choice.
Warm bodies of family members nearby is a good thing for humans and that doesn’t change because you’re a grown-up.
Big big caveat: I’m not talking about if you actually enjoy living alone, or don’t have a good relationship with your parents.
Like if you have crappy parents and want to be away from them, or you are truly living your best life on your own — Woohoo! I celebrate you and your badass independence!
Through this post, I am only attempting to explicitly address all the shaming around people who choose to live with parents for different reasons, especially when it really helps them to reduce their financial burden as an entrepreneur.
I also recognize that having parents you have a good relationship with, and having the choice of being able to live with them and have it be a positive experience and save on rent is a huge privilege. This is not true of everyone who has parents.
I recognize that some have the privilege due to sheer good luck, and others don’t due to no fault of their own. I’m saying: if you do have this unearned advantage, the least you could do is to not feel shame about it.
Generally, life is hard, and life is expensive — it seems like — pretty much everywhere nowadays. Everyone who is figuring out how to make life work for themselves in these crazy times is deserving of our respect and admiration.
Jan 15, 2025 |
Find a Black woman, or Black queer person talking about it, and listen to them.
If you have a problem worth spending money on, hire them.
If you’re skeptical about that, and doubtful that the color of one’s skin makes someone automatically more qualified (and I really agree with that), allow me to explain why.
I guess not all, but an overwhelming majority of man-made problems plaguing our world today are a result of colonization and white supremacy. Everything from housing insecurity to your personal insecurities.
And here’s the thing.
Non-Black people of color (like myself) have a different relationship to white supremacy than Black people.
Non-Black people of color (like myself) were extended a promise — which has always been an illusion and a lie, but white folks perpetuated it hard and for a long time — that we have a chance of sitting with white people and benefiting from their privilege as long as we did the right things.
As long as we spoke English. With the right accent. As long as we worked hard. As long as we renounced and shamed our own traditions and people. As long as we were willing to forget historical harm perpetuated to us. As long as we ate the right food, mimicked white habits, and glorified white ideals and norms.
let me be clear, this was always an illusion and a lie. We were never, ever going to sit at their table and fully share their privileges. They wouldn’t have it.
But we were offered the scraps, and told — if you get in line, you’ll get more. And one day, you’ll be able to have ALL of it.
Just keep being/doing more of what we told you.
Many of us — often out of wanting to just survive, and sometimes out of ambition — swallowed that lie hard and deep.
And fell in line with what white supremacy told us.
And here’s the thing: that same lie was never sold to Black people, and particularly Black women.
The message, for so long, continuing into today, was crystal clear.
“No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be one of us, you’ll never sit at our table. And in fact, the harder you try, the more we’ll deride and punish you.”
This is the reason why Black folks in general, and Black women (and queer folks!) in particular, have the clearest view of reality, and the best access to wisdom about what’s really fucked up about the world and how to fix it.
They didn’t have a choice as to whether to buy into the lies of white supremacy. Because they were systematically excluded from even being offered crumbs that came with “willing” subjugation and compliance.
From the beginning, Black folks (and particularly women and queer people) had no choice to see reality for exactly what it is.
They didn’t have the choice of buying into their own oppression the way non-Black people of color did. So, in a way, they were “forced” into clarity about the entire death cult that is white supremacy.
White supremacy doesn’t benefit white people either. In fact, white people are poisoned by it. Any system that is premised on anti-human principles, poisons those who buy into it.
The same way the patriarchy poisons men.
If you’re white, you both participate in, and are harmed by, white supremacy.
That’s why I say — regardless of whether you’re white or yellow or brown, if you want the answer, go to Black people.
Go to Black women and queer people.
They are the greatest experts and pioneers on whatever problem that you’re trying to solve — whether it’s business growth or relationship issues or nutrition — which has been inevitably created by, and/or perpetuated by white supremacy. Because white supremacy has extended its poisonous tentacles to every area of life.
Sometimes it’s a struggle to find Black teachers. Not because there aren’t a lot of them (there’s TONS AND TONS of them who are way, way more qualified and experienced than the average white counterpart), but because white supremacy has intentionally undermined and silenced them and punished them for doing the same things that white people are rewarded for.
But that’s even more of a reason you should seek them out. Don’t give up on the first day of your search. Tell everyone what you need help with, and tell them that you’re specifically looking for Black teachers, consultants, speakers, and coaches. Keep searching. Follow the breadcrumbs of information.
I’m not primarily following Black creators/teachers for some kind of social justice reason.
I’m following them because they have the best information about how to get from where I am and where I want to go.
History has forced them to be 10x more qualified and 100x more insightful than everyone else.
I feel a little nervous posting this, only because talking pointedly about a group of people I don’t belong to feels… a little risky.
But I have to say it out loud because I wish someone had told ME this long ago. It would have saved me soooo much time and wasted effort.
Dec 17, 2024 |
In our culture, it is so common to use LIGHT as a metaphor for all that is good, healthy, civilized, and virtuous.
And, conversely, DARKNESS as a metaphor for all that is bad, sick, uncivilized and sinister.
You may not be surprised to hear that associations not only have done enormous harm to people with melanated skin across the globe (by justifying racism)…
… but they have also created distortions in our relationships to our bodies and nature.
If you’re used to associating “light” with good…
Consider that: withholding darkness from people is literally a torture technique. Nonstop light, leading to sleep deprivation, is designed to break people down.
24/7 light would kill species and destroy ecosystems.
And while light in and of itself is natural (hello, the sun), light pollution — an unnatural excess of light — is doing enormous harm to humans and the ecosystem.
Fetuses grow in the dark.
All life is nourished by dark soil.
Dreaming happens in the dark — as well as transcendant and liminal visions.
There’s a reason that so many artists, writers, spiritual leaders and visionaries are night owls. Darkness reveals what light obscures.
Now, I’d love to invite you to read some excerpts from an article I just found:
“Should we avoid liturgical language of light and dark?” written by Steve Thorngate, for The Christian Century magazine.
(Be assured, this is enormously relevant even if you have nothing to do with Christanity.)
It said so many things so more eloquently that I could at this moment.
There is a long history in the church of using words like light, white, bright, and fair to connote goodness in a straightforward way and words like dark, black, shade, and dim to connote the opposite.
Most instances of such usage were not written for explicitly racist purposes (though some were). Still, this language has thrived alongside racism in White-dominated church contexts.
And language—especially ritual language, repeated again and again—has great power among those who speak or hear it, power not constrained by the intent of its creators.
The Bible is chock-full of light/dark imagery, with much (though not all) of it presenting light as the positive side of the coin.
Jesus is the light of the world, the morning star, the one who obviates the need for lamp or sunlight, the one in whom there is no darkness at all. Forgiveness for sin washes us whiter than snow.
And then, over on the other side of things, there’s the power of darkness. Why should the church avoid this language the biblical writers use so freely?
Yes, praise for the light is all over scripture… but the Bible says lots of things, and not all of them find their way into our liturgies.
Christian views of scripture vary, and I know there are those who maintain that “Is this biblical?” is the main hurdle for any idea or phrase to clear. But I have yet to visit a church that follows this principle through to its logical conclusion, giving every jot and tittle a hearing on Sunday morning.
So the mere existence of a light versus dark paradigm in the Bible hardly seems like the last word on its suitability for worship.
After all, the plain fact is that some biblical language can be hurtful to some people among us. It has been used to buttress concrete harm in the past, still is in some places, and even where it isn’t the words themselves can be a significant stumbling block.
So while addressing this fact might not be simple or straightforward, we do need to address it. “Deal with it, it’s in the Bible” is inadequate; it fails to take the problem seriously.
So does this mean we should jettison the language of light and darkness entirely? I’m not sure it does.
This language, after all, is more than biblical: it’s elemental. It names a fundamental experience of all living things.
The earth’s days and seasons are defined by the planet’s relationship with the sun’s rays—their presence and absence, the distance they travel to reach us, and the angle at which they arrive.
These cycles of darkness and light have shaped creatures, ecosystems, and communities across generations and continents, and the depth of this shared reality makes it a rich source for liturgical language.
Christian liturgy forms us in no small part by defining the passage of time in our lives. This means it is deeply invested in the role of darkness and light in the life of the planet we live on.
The challenge I faced in my songwriting project was how to explore light/dark language with care, embracing its richness and depth—while also seeking to avoid the harm it can do.
I’m considerably less certain that the particular guidelines I came up with are the best available. No doubt there’s much to quibble with and refine here. But here’s what I tried…
1) Consider the various senses in which positive language about light is used. Light can mean illumination, vision, transparency, openness, the revealing of secrets—ideas rooted in the physical function and utility of light. Explore these with care. Light can also connote color, complexion, innocence, and even cleanness—more immediately value-laden ideas that can be dangerous, especially when paired with binary language like light/dark. Avoid these.
2) Be especially cautious about negative language for darkness. Yes, it’s logically implicit in positive language about light, and some will argue that there is thus no meaningful difference between the two. But I’m convinced that it also matters what we make explicit, what we say out loud and emphasize and repeat—a point that became clearer to me as I wrote things like song refrains and they echoed in my mind. It is possible to use positive light language—and again, some forms of it are more worthwhile than others—while also taking care not to actively disparage darkness.
3) Ask, in a given situation, if you need to use language about light and darkness at all. Is what you’re saying important to your larger purposes, or are you just trying to pad an illustration or fill out a metrical line? If it is important, is there another way to say it that works just as well? The sort of qualified embrace I’m advocating implies a need to make each usage count.
4) Don’t use black/white language to mean bad/good. Just don’t do it (even though it’s biblical). The racist interpretation is too immediate, too easy to infer. Find another way to say what you want to say.
5) Perhaps most importantly: say positive things about darkness. Fertile soil is dark. A dark sky without light pollution promotes healthy rest and, paradoxically, visibility. Secrets and mysteries aren’t always bad things; their illumination isn’t always good.
What’s more, the biblical witness is not unanimously pro-light.
In Exodus 20 God occupies a space of darkness, in Genesis 15 God arguably takes the form of darkness, and the psalmist praises the protection provided by God’s shadow. In recent years, Christians have begun to write liturgical texts on such themes. There’s even a new children’s book, God’s Holy Darkness… (“Creation began in the dark. . . . Creation is God’s work done in holy darkness.”) We need more of this in the church.
6) Embrace the fact that liturgical images exist in tension with one another. The goal is not a tidy, closed system of what light/dark language is allowed to mean. Our metaphors proliferate, overlap, and sometimes even conflict. This is OK. Here I take my cues from the expansive language movement around God and gender: we need to imagine our way to a longer and better list of ways to use light/dark language in worship, rather than restrict our way to a shorter and safer one.
I’ve found these guidelines useful, but they remain a work in progress.
You can read the full text of this article, if you google the words “light dark Thorngate.” It will be the top search result.
So much of this applies directly to larger Western culture, which is formed in such large part by Christianity.
If you work in coaching or healing arts, where these metaphors are commonly used, what is your takeaway from this?
Feb 16, 2023 |
There are good reasons to use sliding scale, discounts, or scholarships.
And not-so-good-reasons.
Some of us use them as a cop-out.
Is that you?
See if one of the following applies to you.
(1) You firmly believe that There Aren’t Enough People Ever Who Can Pay Your Full Price
Or… even if there are, They’re Too Far Away or Mysteriously Hidden and You’ll Never Find Them.
Then you might be using the “I’m building equity!” thing to avoid building a sales mindset that actually works.
Selling at full price is a skill that, at some point, you have no choice to build if you want a profitable business. If you don’t want to do the mindset work around this, that’s fine… but tell yourself the truth.
You’re giving away scholarships because you’re scared to believe in yourself and the value of your offer.
And it has nothing to do with equity.
(2) When you imagine yourself abundantly, even luxuriously provided for, you feel… guilt, shame, anxiety. Abbunance feels like a zero sum game where, if you’re thriving, you must be taking from someone else.
I’m not talking about the clean pain that comes with acknowledging the fact that some people are grossly economically oppressed.
That is a real thing, and if you are paying attention, that should enrage you and break your heart. It should make you slow down and think twice about creating a flow of wealth that is community-enriching and socially responsible.
But here’s something that will be telling. If you would be genuinely happy to imagine a loved one, or someone you deem “worthy” be abundantly, luxuriously provided for (let’s say your kid, someone who is overcoming hard circumstances, someone you really respect)…
… but when you imagine yourself enjoying the same, it feels uncomfortable, we are no longer talking about your sensitivity to injustice.
We’re talking about “I am uniquely unworthy to enjoy nice things”. If you don’t heal that, you’ll always create and serve at under your full capacity.
(3) You are automatically suspicious of success and abundance, and equate wealth with greed or evil.
Listen, I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of people whose wealth is earned and hoarded in suspect and gross ways. Clearly, there are. And our society is rigged to encourage, enable and abet that in so many ways.
And it’s damn wise to hold onto an awareness of that.
But there are also all a lot of well-off people, financially comfortable people, who have kind hearts and discerning minds and are working damn hard to leave the world a better place than they found it, and ARE succeeding at that in many important ways…
… just as there are a lot of poor people who are shitty, cruel people that leave the world worse off than they found it.
Equating financial abundance with evil wholesale is lazy thinking, on top of the fact that it is a super effective way to make sure you stay under-resourced.
Being a leader of any kind requires the audacity of belief.
Being willing to try on, find evidence of, and indeed, create evidence of what you wish to see in the world, what you envision creating with your one-and-only, limitless, God-given life force.
If your current beliefs are working for you, keep them. If not, dare to imagine having something different.
