Your writing sound like self-therapy — today my friend told me this.
He’s not wrong.
I have a lot of issues, still. Or maybe I never truly got away from them.
1. I’m still a workaholic
4 years ago, when I first started my full-time career in Hong Kong, my friend and I had a chat about where we wanted to be in 10 years.
I still remembered myself saying:
“I want to find other sources of happiness that is not just work. I want to have things outside of work — family, of my own, hobbies, friends. I don’t want that when work goes wrong, my whole world is shaken up”.
Having started working for not even a full year, I was self-aware of my tendency to just pour everything into work.
I was always raised like that. If I’m given a task, I want to do it well.
It hasn’t changed. And the amount of time and efforts I have put into work has only increased over the years.
I don’t feel like it’s something that people make me do. If things are not completed, I just want to finish them.
I don’t need money. I mean — I do, but I don’t need too much. The financial security, I know I’ve got from my parents.
My own money, I’ve saved quite a good amount. And to gradually build it up to what I want it to be, there are other jobs that are not this demanding.
I guess the few things that I have started to practice over the year is:
- to tell myself sometimes: “This one can wait until tomorrow”
- and to take the lead to point out and solve the problems, instead of purely getting assigned whatever work there is
Still, this will still be a long journey.
I shouldn’t only rest only on the day I die.
2. I’m still a people pleaser
Do you remember my story of my narcissistic friend? The only reason that kept me in that friendship for so long was that: I was a people pleaser.
Oh wait, I still am.
Back then, I was always a very “helpful” person. When my foreign friends are in town, I always make it a thing to take them out, show them around, spent 1, even 2 days with them.
Same with my colleagues — if they came from a different country, I will send them (without them asking) all the local recommendations, and of course, take them out for dinner.
There are good things about it — I have made amazing friends, many are just as good to me as I am to them.
Thing is, caring so much about other also meant I almost always forgot about myself.
I thought about what they might need even before they thought of it themselves. Little did I ever take a step back and think about what I needed: rest, less drama, …
Do I know what I need now? A little bit more than before, but I still have difficulty asserting it.
Some people do it so well — saying no. One of my bosses has that ability, and I learned a lot from him on pushing back.
Now, I know what I need and can say it, but the process is no less difficult.
I think a lot before making a decision, not just about what I truly need but also about how to communicate that to people.
I don’t want to upset anyone. I still do, obviously, but it takes conscious effort to remind myself:
It’s okay to go for what is best for me, after all that I’ve done.
They might be upset, but I should have trust that people are all adults, and they will manage their emotions and understand.
So HAA! I am still me. I have NOT changed that significantly over the last few years — and maybe that’s a relief.
Having gone through the sh*t that I went through in my early adulthood, I couldn’t help but sometimes feel like I lost the old me — the good and the bad. And that doesn’t seem true:
Just as much as I am still energetic and passionate about work, I am still young, resilient, and ambitious — knowing that I can grow and achieve more than what I already have.
Just as much as I am still caring about how people feel, a whole whole lot, I am still kind, sweet, honest. The things that have given me the great network of friends in the past might continue to attract just as many of the great people to my life in the future.
Now you guys see it — this is the 53th self-therapy session that I’ve conducted on this blog. Hope you are not repulsed by this idea, cuz I’m pretty sure this won’t be the last one :P
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