Latest / The Bold Lounge / Lan Phan: Align and Shine- Nurture Your Bold Belief and Conquer Your Fear

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Lan Phan: Align and Shine- Nurture Your Bold Belief and Conquer Your Fear · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Lan Phan, a leading expert on global peak performance.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: She's on a mission to help people live their best lives.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: She's a Harvard and Stanford trained leadership educator and author.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: She has been featured in Harvest Business Review, forbes, money Magazine.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Her book Do this Daily Secrets for Finding Success, happiness and Purpose in Working Life comes out April 2nd and I am so excited for it to come out.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Everyone to have it in their hands.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Thank you, leah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited to be here talking to you, so we're going to start off.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We're going to jump right into being bold, and I would love to hear what your definition of bold is.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I think bold is living unapologetically.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: You living your authentic life, not letting the world beat you down with their definition of what success, happiness and purpose looks like, and living a life that, at the end of your life, you just say wasn't that a good ride?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: It's basically living a life that's full of goodness and joy and all the good things.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, living the life you want to live right, without it being encumbered by other people's judgments or conventions or expectations.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Like you are boldly living you Exactly, and I think we've had this conversation offline about this, but I'm going to be turning 50 this year and I spent a majority of my life living other people's definition of what success and happiness looked like, and I was miserable, and it wasn't until I started to really understand and lean into my values that I started to live the life that I was meant to live.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you?
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: start living.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: You're like why did I take so long?
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly?
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: You know, because it's fear.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: We live in fear, you know, because it's fear you live in fear.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: I think we were afraid of losing everything that we have and we've been ingrained and indoctrinated since we were young, to kind of want these things and we realized that, at the end of the day, the things that really matter to us usually don't have a price tag, doesn't have a title, right?
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Besides, maybe mom and wife or husband or whatnot yeah, those are the titles that really matter, right?
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Not the external titles, where we base who we are and our sense of worth based on what company we work with, what title we have.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Because what I see is that, you know, I work with a lot of executives and when they retire or they get laid off and I was one of the folks who got laid off, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic it was like who am I?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And it becomes this, this crisis of identity, and I think being able to dig deep and realize what your internal purpose, without the noise, is, is so important.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, your internal purpose without the noise.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Definitely listen to that and, as you kind of go through the podcast today, think about what your internal purpose is, defined as if there wasn't any noise around it.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So your bold definition is an excellent one.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: What would you say is a bold defining moment or a moment that you remember living that definition a?
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: bold, defining moment or a moment that you remember living.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: That definition?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I clearly remember.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: It was fifth grade and I was eight months when I came to America with my parents.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: My parents are Vietnamese refugees, but I was practically raised in the US.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I was literally eight months.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: So we ended up in Inglewood, California, Los Angeles, which is an urban area in LA, and I remember going to York Elementary this is kind of right in the edge between Hawthorne and Inglewood and I was an ESL from kindergarten to sixth grade.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: The thing is, English was my first language and I was in English as a second language and I think part of it was just I didn't speak much, I was very quiet and shy, very reserved, and so each year I was just passed on and took the English as a second language class and I was kind of moved up.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And in fifth grade I had a teacher named Miss Wilson and I don't know what, but she saw something in me.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: She realized that I first could speak English and that I was bright but I wasn't being nurtured.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: And so there was this they had in my elementary debates debating team.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: They had in my elementary debates debating team and Ms Wilson encouraged me to join the debate team.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Now, remember I was an ESL the fear I felt I cannot even describe, but I remember, because she believed in me, I started to believe in myself and I ended up winning that whole debate, competition with all the students.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Up winning that whole debate, competition with all the students.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: And I just remember finding my voice, that I had a voice and I could articulate deep emotions and argue things, and that really lit a fire in me and I started to kind of slowly believe in myself and my capabilities, yeah, and so after that I was no longer an ESL because they realized I could speak English.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: That's good, but God they corrected themselves and got it right.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: You said a few things in there, so belief in yourself and finding your voice.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: So I know people our age who are still working on that.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I think I was, honestly, until my late forties.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I mean I was successful, had a career doing wonderful things, making a difference, but I'm not sure I was truly aligned with my purpose and I think I didn't realize how misaligned it was until I actually left that world for a moment in the way that I was working.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So as you think about the belief part right, as you saw that kind of like, almost like a spark in fifth grade, how did that kind of feed through for you into the next years of your life, into high school and then to college, because you were a high performer.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: I was a high performer but at the same time it ebbed and flowed.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I think I was a high performer because I had no other options, because we grew up poor.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: I think my parents realized that the opportunities around me there was a lot of gang violence, there was a lot of like kids dropping out of school early kind of.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Where I grew up there wasn't a lot of options out there and I realized at an early age that if I wanted to get out of poverty I had to work harder than everyone else.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: There wasn't really an option.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: But I will tell you a story that I think really kind of helped transform me and the direction I was going.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Ok, so we couldn't afford babysitters or nannies and my mom was a beautician.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: So when we first came to America my dad really couldn't work.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: He had a disability but I think he was also broken because he came here and he couldn't get a job.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: He was Vietnamese, it was the 70s and 80s and you know he couldn't even get a job as a janitor.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: And so my mom got this job, folding laundry, but it wasn't enough money.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: So she ended up getting her cosmetology license and she started working in hair salons and that was more decent pay because then you'd have tips, even though it's like $8 haircuts, yeah, and so I would, just because we didn't have a babysitter.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: From the time I can remember like elementary on till I was probably 13.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I was in my mom's nail shop in Gardena, California, every day and so I would study there, and when I was probably 11, 12, I started sweeping the floor in order to get some money, tips and stuff from the customers, and then one of the nail technicians showed me how to do acrylic nails.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: So I started doing acrylic nails at 12 or 13.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: People are like, oh, isn't that child labor?
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: And I was.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Like it was the 80s, reagan was the president, there was no regulation in LA, so I was literally.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I was literally working and I started making a lot of money.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: I started making probably like $100, which back then for me a lot of money yeah, like $100 a week.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And I remember one day I told my mom I think I want to quit school and become a nail technician.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: And the next day you weren't doing that anymore.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: I was not going to my mom's shop anymore, so I would just go home and I would just study or I'd go to the library.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: And I didn't realize it till a few years later, because we never talked about it.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: We just never.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: We never talked about it at all.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: And a few years ago I watched this documentary with Quincy Jones.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: So he's like a world renowned musician.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: His daughter, rashida Jones, did a documentary on him and he has a quote in that documentary what you see, you want to be.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't until years later that I realized that my mom there's nothing wrong with cosmetology, it's a great profession, but it was also back then.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: She was making $8 a day doing haircuts, right, $30 for a full set for nails.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: But she wanted more for me and she realized that what I was seeing was my only option as a Vietnamese refugee coming into America was to do nail and hair right, because literally everyone we knew who was a female Vietnamese person did nails in LA.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: That was the one profession you could go into, and so my mom, like you're not no longer going to the shop, and so, literally, I would either be dropped off at the library and I would be at the library till closing time, you know five or six, or I would be at home just studying.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: The long story short is I ended up going to Stanford and Harvard, right?
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And you said something effort wasn't an option, and I think that that's very powerful to hear and it's because of what you just described right.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: So you had a path and your mom wanted to put you on that path, so she did it directly of like you need to focus on your studies, and you ended up going to Stanford for your undergrad and Harvard for your graduate.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you think about bold moments, so getting into Stanford, what kind of moment was that for you, your family and then how did you actually feel about it?
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, here's the thing you celebrate when you first get that application.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: But then you get into Stanford and you realize at least for me I was so unprepared.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: So this is kind of where the imposter syndrome comes, Because I was competing against at Stanford kids that went to Exeter, Kids who parents were millionaires and probably billionaires and founders of tech companies and tech titans, right, Silicon Valley, New York.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: I came from Inglewood, California.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: My mom was a hairdresser.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: She supported our family on an income.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Inglewood, California.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: My mom was a hairdresser.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: She supported our family on an income of $15,000.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: She never made more than $15,000 her entire career and she supported our entire family of five.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Right, and so I didn't have tutors, I didn't have SAT prep, I just was worked harder than everyone else and at that time I was good at memorizing things, right.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: And so when I got into Stanford I was like how did I get here?
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: They must have made a mistake and what am I going to do?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: And I almost dropped out, probably three, four times.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: So there wasn't a celebration while I was there.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: It was just like I am so unprepared.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And I remember there was this one pivotal moment my friend Raul, we kind of had similar backgrounds and I was like I'm going to quit, I can't do this, I don't belong here, I'm stupid.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know how I got into Stanford and he just gave me a hug.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: The next day when I woke up, underneath my dorm room door was a note from him and it just had a quote from Toni Morrison If you want to fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: And that was so powerful for me because I realized I had been telling all of these stories in my head that I wasn't good enough, that I didn't deserve this, that I was just this poor refugee kid, that there's no way I could graduate.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: So that was like my first year.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: And then there was this other pivotal moment that was the game changer for me, like at least in terms of making me believe that I could kind of go on.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And that was.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: I took a psychology class and in that psychology class we read Viktor Frankl's book A Man's Search for Meaning.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: And you know, Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor and he was observing people and he wondered why do some people survive and why do some people just give up?
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: And so he basically spent his whole life studying this.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: You know what drives men and women to not just survive but thrive.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: And then he founded this branch of psychology called logotherapy, which is really man's search for meaning, which is my passion at an early age, right?
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: So you see the kind of the narrative, and there was this one quote in the book that I remember highlighting and reading over and over again, and it was this in between the stimulus being what happens to us and our response, lies a space.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: In that space lies our freedom and power, our power of response.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: In our power of response is our growth and our happiness.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And I realized I wasn't a victim of my circumstances growing up poor, growing up a refugee, growing up you know X, Y, Z that I had power, and that power was in my decision, in terms of how I acted, how I interpreted situations, and that meant the difference, because I was feeling like I was a victim.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: And when you are a victim it's much harder to climb out of difficulty and adversity because you feel like you have no power.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: But when you take that back and you reframe things, things aren't happening to me, they are happening for me, and these are all lessons that I am supposed to learn and grow from, and that was a game changer and I think from then on I just really focused on studying.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I ended up actually graduating credit-wise within three years, but then I ended up staying an extra year to do my honors thesis on Southeast Asian gangs, ended up staying an extra year to do my honors thesis on Southeast Asian gangs, and it was that time where I switched from wanting to go to law school to going into education because I was working with these Southeast Asian gangs in East Oakland and I was just like there's so much power in in teaching, inspiring people, having them be able to connect the dots in terms of life, and I saw my younger self in these kids.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: And so from that one deciding to stay extra year and do my honors thesis, I ended up going to Harvard Graduate School of Education to get my master's in teaching and curriculum.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it sounds like you took a turn in there, like when you're junior, senior time of understanding your own power within, taking ownership and understanding the power of your agency yeah, with that, most likely connected to that normally is a confidence awareness or a level of confidence of more.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: So like I'm in control, and I'll just put that in air quotes.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: But I, I own my steps, I own the sense that I need to learn from things that don't work and I own how I can go to the next thing, in the sense of your goals or whether you want to graduate or change your major.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Like changing your major is a big deal too, right?
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: So your parents or people expect you.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: The convention is you're going to be a lawyer.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: You know you're going to be successful.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And then you got into education, which, of course, you can be successful in education.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Was there any like disappointment or anyone thinking like, oh, I can't believe, you're not going to be a lawyer?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Maybe initially at that time my father had already passed away.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: He passed away my sophomore year in college.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: My mother, I think, just wanted us to be happy, so there wasn't, I think, that whole drive for success.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: I won't say it died with my father, but I think at that time we were just trying to survive.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she just wanted you to be happy.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she just wanted to be happy.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: So you get into Harvard and you really start working there and kind of getting your next degree.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Any sense of you know, am I on the right path?
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Because one of the things you talk about in your book is finding success, happiness and purpose.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Were you finding more of your purpose at that time?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: I think I was, but then I also and I think this is the whole thing with life is that we never fully just get it.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: It's just you get it for that phase.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: It's learning these ideas of finding your purpose and living your purpose changes with time.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So what I wanted in my purpose when I was in my twenties is much different now.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: If you were to ask me what my values was and what was important to me in my twenties, it was one thing, and that was to make money, because I didn't want to be poor.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: And when I I ended up making a lot of money in real estate long story in my 20s and I started various companies at that time.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: While you were at.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Harvard, after Harvard, like my 20s, okay.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: And I realized that once I got the money, it wasn't about money, it was being able to support my mother, because my mother was still working at that time as a hairdresser in her 60s and 70s.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: So I wanted her not to have to work and I wanted to be able to buy the house where she could live in.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Once I was able to do that, money was no longer important and so I was aimless for a little bit.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: And so I think your values and your purpose changes as you get older.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Where you are at in your 20s, I always say that life isn't comes in four stages, right?
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: The average person lives 77 years, so if you break that down, that's about 19 and a half years of each life.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: So the first half is you really learning how to be human of each life.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: So the first half is you really learning how to be human walking, talking, verbalizing.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: The second half is creating your you know, making money, surviving, going to college.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: The third half that I think we're in Gen X is really about finding your meaning and your purpose.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: The last phase is really about what's your legacy, so this kind of period where you're in your late 30s, early 40s to your 60s is really this period of finding why was I put on this earth and digging deep into that, and I think I wouldn't have been ready for this phase of my life in my 20s 30s.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: So whenever I talk to you or anyone else who are like I wish I had learned this earlier.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: We probably wouldn't have been because we wouldn't have been ready.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we wouldn't have had the experiences, right.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: You know, people say, would you go back?
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: And I'm like no, because I actually learned from that moment or and the pain and the suffering and sometimes the contacts.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: like a lot of the current clients or contacts I have now, I met 20 years ago and we're still friends.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I became clients later on.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: So it's you know there's full cycle, right?
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: So sometimes you regret certain things that happened in the past, but they're what really shaped you to who you are today.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: So fast forward.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I was in teaching and curriculum.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: I was going to get my PhD because I really wanted to get into education, reform in urban public schools etc.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: And while I was teaching because you need to kind of have that practical experience of teaching before you get your PhD I completed my master's at Harvard.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: I realized the system is broken.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Teachers were getting paid $20,000, $30,000, could barely survive and they were not getting where I was at, where I was teaching.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: You weren't getting support from the administration, parents and I quit teaching and I realized I needed to pivot and I ended up the next decade.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: I ended up creating a music agency.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I was a booking agent and we booked a lot of artists in events like the first Coachella, bonnaroo, etc.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And I was in the music industry for several years.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Got into real estate investment.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Then I ended up getting into marketing, which I was in, probably for the next two decades.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: So you explored a little bit there, right, you had curiosity.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: I explored a lot.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, had some curiosity.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: But here's a funny thing While I was in this thing of pivoting a lot, I was like what am I doing?
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Because, especially when I was in marketing, I was like if I had done the traditional route graduated from Stanford, got my MBA, you know, went to P&G, went to Unilever, all this other stuff, climbed the corporate ladder, I would be a CMO of a Fortune 10 company right now.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: And so I was just kicking myself and then I realized later on or today, that wasn't my path, that wasn't what I meant to do.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't be happy, yes, and so it's funny because I had regretted at that time why did I go into ed school?
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Why did I teach?
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Why did I go into I'm doing today?
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: I do leadership, development and training.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: So I'm back in my teaching day In the world of education, in education, and I love it and it's my passion.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: And like when I go into a company and I'm training 160, 300 people virtually and I see those eyes light up, oh my God, it's such a blast Like it is such a high.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Actually, right after the bowl dinner the day after, I did a keynote for MCC.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: It's like this Omnicom agency and they had like 160 of their employees and it's like that feeling you get when you start seeing people get it and just like get inspired.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I had not and yeah, I believe it or I can do that.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't realize that was my thing until it became my thing.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: And I think you have to make a lot of mistakes, you have to kiss some frogs and, you know, try different things in life.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: And I think sometimes when we take one path if I had just, let's say, went to law school and did that route and you don't exit because you've invested so much Right, and then you realize at a later age I'm not happy and law, there's nothing wrong with law, it's just it wasn't for me, right, right, for other people it is.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I think you have to find what that purpose.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: What gets your eyes glittering?
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: What gets you excited?
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll only find that if you allow yourself to fail and make mistakes and maybe every now and then, feel like you're lost.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Exactly, you know, and sometimes you're not on track, or it might feel like you're not successful, but you just keep moving.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly Because I think we have such a fear of failure.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And you know, I know I've talked with you about this before.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a book by the founder of Girls who Code, and it's brave, not perfect, and she talks about how boys are taught to be brave and girls are taught to be perfect.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: And you know, you can see this in the play, any playground, where you see these boys just kind of jumping off of you know two story structures and their parents not batting an eye, but a girl, you know, it's like no, be careful, gonna fall, right.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: And you also think about the types of sports that girls usually gravitate towards.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: It's changing now with women's soccer, yes, but when you look at, like ballet gymnastics, it's about individual competition against each other, right, and it's about perfection.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: It's about looking a certain way, acting a certain way.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: And you wonder why, when we get into the adult world or become entrepreneurs, you know men are taught to take risks and to be an entrepreneur, you have to take a lot of risk, be ready to fail be ready to be judged.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Be ready for someone to tell you you're lost.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, and it's in the failures that we find ourselves Like.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I think about Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and she told this story about how she was kind of not afraid to fail because at an early age her father would literally get the entire family around the dinner table and would have each of the children go around and talk about their failures for the day and they would cheer them on.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: So there wasn't this fear of failure, right, it was understood that failure was a teacher necessary to propel them to where they wanted to go.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: And I think we as a society do a disservice to our kids, and especially our girls, when we expect them to be perfect and beautiful and all these other things.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: And I don't think social media helps because you have, you know.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Pinterest.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: It doesn't help adults either, like kids or adults.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, home, and I know sometimes I watch like these short videos and Instagram and stuff about parents doing these bento boxes and these perfectly curated lunches with cucumbers cut out and I'm like I'm putting, like you know, cup of noodles sometimes in my daughter's pbj, exactly, and it's like there's this just notion to just be perfect, the perfect parent, the perfect wife, the perfect hiring it's really funny.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: It's interesting because you and I talked, uh, when we, before we, started taping about sports, I played, and I played soccer.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I had tried ballet right before and I didn't do it well and I hated it like I.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Just it wasn't me and my mom's like, okay, well, you need to, you know, play a sport or do something or play an instrument.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I ended up both.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: But we went to soccer and I told you that I had signed up for it was, all you know, boys league, cause there wasn't a girls league.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: But it was interesting that I tried ballet before and it was too.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: It's almost like a recipe.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: It's hard for me to follow a recipe, like I'm always miffing and adding this and then it turns out either really good and I can't repeat it, or it just does not the same.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: So it's like sometimes I I'm definitely very, very imperfect and that is the beautiful thing, because, I mean, I think that's what I love, and most female CEOs and senior executives have played in team sports, like soccer, you know, like hockey or like softball that was my other ball Right Because you learn to have each other's back.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: You learn leadership skills.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: It's not about being perfect, it's about getting better.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Right being part of a team.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Someone said the other day which I thought was a great analogy of like how many touches it takes to get to a goal.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: It's not just the person that shoots the goal, it's everyone that's touched that ball before, and that's to me what leadership is, too Exactly.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And it's making your teammates better.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not about you.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Team sports is about the team passing the ball, like knowing when to be brave enough to take to try to get the goal when you need to.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, also knowing when to pass because you might not be the best person to do what you're doing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So I love this because it really leads to the origin of where the book came from.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: So in do this, daily secrets to finding success, happiness and purpose and work in life, when you think about the four secrets, there's four primary secrets that you share in this book.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I'd love for you to kind of go through those and share a little bit of how we can apply those secrets to our lives.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Definitely so.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Number one is what matters most.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Number two is and I'll just say it kind of in order and then I'll go back and do a deeper dive.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Number two is your mindset creates your destiny.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Or dive.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Number two is your mindset creates your destiny.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Number three is change requires consistency.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: And number four is change requires changing who we are.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: So the origins of this book was it was the height of the pandemic I was working at Fortune magazine and what I thought was my dream job, and you know, I was reporting into Alan Murray, the CEO.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: I literally the first week we were ringing the New York Stock Exchange bell.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: I remember a week before I got laid off, I was like I can see myself retiring here, right, yeah, so I had basically been given a multimillion dollar budget to build a team of 100 and create a startup from nuts to bolts in six months, which is very ambitious, right From ideation to staffing, all this other stuff and I was at hire number five.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: And then the pandemic happened and I found out that I got laid off.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: What's worse, I had to lay off my entire team and so some of them had just left their jobs a week prior to me having to lay them off, right, that's terrible.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: And I never got laid off before.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: And I just remember this feeling of who am I without this job and my husband because it was the pandemic had also gotten laid off from his job.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: So there was just so much fear because not only am I supporting you know, we're supporting my, my, our household, I'm supporting my mother and another mortgage right and my mother's wellbeing who's across country in Los Angeles.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: My daughter and I just fell into a depression and I have a history of social anxiety and depression.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: So I just fell into a depression.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: I just remember crying uncontrollably and one day my daughter was just like Mommy, I love you, even without a job.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: And that was the voice I needed to hear to pull me out of it, because I was realizing I was playing the victim role right and my bigger purpose.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: How can I help this being that's in front of role right and my bigger purpose, how can I help this being that's in front of me who needs her mother right now, and my husband?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: And so I just slowly, kind of slowly, step-by-step, climbed out of that hole.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: And then I remember meeting with the five girls who were on my team that I laid off and I was like we're gonna move, transition from trying to build a startup to finding you your next job, or I'm going to build my company and hire you back.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: So we just met every week and I would just kind of feed them leads.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: We would be the emotional support for each other.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: And it was such a dark period.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Everyone was isolating in their apartments in New York.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: All of them were like in their 20s or early 30s and so, you know, it was this period where I was like, okay, I started to really ask these important questions that I didn't ask before.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: What mattered most to me, what was important to me?
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: And I realized that what mattered most to me was my family, my friends who are my chosen family, my faith, my, my chosen family, my faith, my belief in God, being of service to others, and freedom.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: And at that moment I realized that none of the jobs I had in the past fulfilled any of that.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: So, even though I thought fortune was my dream job, I was getting home at nine, 10 o'clock at night.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: I was barely seeing my daughter and husband.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'd see them on the weekend, but I was so tired and exhausted.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: You had a cell phone, probably, and were still doing things.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and jobs I had in the past.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: I was traveling 85% of the time.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: So if I said my family was the most important thing to me, but I wasn't present, there was a disconnect, and I realized at that time that I had to change my life.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Because in the past I would find careers that had a fancy title corner office, high pay, great executive assistant and then I would be miserable.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Miserable, right, because I would try to fit my life around my work, but then the work would always kind of push everything else off the board, right.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: And so I started to do something different, which was I created the life I wanted to live based on my values, and then I created my work based on that.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you reprioritize and would you say, you found your voice again.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, was like another moment of finding your voice and your why.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, because, remember I said, it's not like you get aha moment, it's not like college happened.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: I got an aha moment and everything was up from there, because I also went into corporate culture and got knocked down a few times and had toxic bosses that told me, lan, you're not a leader, lan, you're not a good speaker, lan, you're not a good writer.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what I write on leadership, development and training.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: I have a book coming out.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I do public speaking for a living.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: So, no, you know, but those are the stories that were told by other people.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Right, you start defining who you are based on these stories and these narratives, and the whole purpose of this whole exercise with Do this Daily is to rewrite that story and a lot of that.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: So, going back to the four secrets, life is like a GPS and you need to be intentional.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: You need to have that address, your intentionality in terms of answering that what matters most to you, your core values, becomes that address that guides every decision you make in your life.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: But once you do that and you're able to figure out that, why it's important that you actually live it.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: It's not enough to just know it, you need to live it.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: And so the next part is really your mindset.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: There's a quote by Henry Ford if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right, right.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: So your mindset is really just betting on yourself doing things, even when you're afraid, knowing that you can do hard things and you've done it, knowing that you can do hard things and you've done it before and you can still keep on doing a journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: Just keep on taking those small little steps.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: So the whole notion of like having a growth mindset, really kind of leaning in to the inner part of you, the inner sage that believes that you're able to accomplish things through your beliefs and through your actions, it takes both.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly, it takes both.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: You can't just have.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: You know, and this is the, I think, the fly I see with like the secret and the whole law of abundance If you don't do, you're never going to be able to just attract things in your life just by thinking and dreaming.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Right, I wish that was the way to get in and it won't go through.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I'm really hard right now.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, manifestation takes action.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Exactly so I think.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: But putting it out there, the possibility, I think, is what's hardest for some people Like, oh, I could never be that.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, someday when I can, when I will, when I'm a you know, insert the whatever it is.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when I do this and that there's always like a moment or reason to put it off, and I think that's what I try to do is help people understand, like, why not now?
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Why not start thinking about, why not start planning it?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Why, why not start talking about it?
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And here's the thing Two hundred and fifty thousand people did not wake up today.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: In the world, tomorrow is not guaranteed, and just you know and I think that is especially relevant after the pandemic Time is limited.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: You need to make sure that you use each of those seconds to just live your life fully.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the third secret is really about creating systems and habits, because really, really, we become what we do daily, and that's why this book is called Do this Daily.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: We can't just want change, we can't just have the right mindset.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: We need to do right and we become what we do daily.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: And I really talk about optimization, habits and systems.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: And the last part is really the art of becoming.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: And I always say that change is simple, but it's not easy.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: There's really only two ways to change it's what you add into your life and what you take away.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: What you add and what you take away.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: And remember my quote earlier on with Toni Morrison if you want to fly, you need to give up the shit that weighs you down.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: So what are the things that you need to take away?
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: The self-doubt, the toxic culture, maybe a bad relationship in your life, maybe drug use, maybe alcohol use, maybe medicating with food or drugs or whatnot.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: You basically strip away the things that you are no longer and you start adding the things that are authentically you, and then you have your core values of what matters most as your guiding star.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: I'm saying family is most important to me.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: That means after I do a speaking engagement, I don't stay and hang out, I go home because I need to pick up my daughter at the bus stop.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like these little daily decisions that we make, because we understand what our core values and that influences everything that we do.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: And so you know the last part is really the art of becoming is tackled in four different main components.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of different ways you can change in terms of adding and taking away.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It's usually we talked about the habits and systems.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Those are number two.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Number three is really your environment and number four is your community and your connections.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: They did a study in terms of drug users and the ones that relapsed went back to their original environment and their friends and connections right, so they were going back home, to this environment.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: That led them to the path that they were going right, and the ones that succeeded are the ones that leaned into Alcoholics Anonymous or a new community.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Some people just picked up and moved, but they created these new.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: You add back things into your life, of the things that you wanna be, and you start taking away.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you might need a new space, exactly, might need new connections, and you might need just a new way of how you want to live your life, once you start aligning with what your core values are right Exactly Because not everyone in your relationship circle now may be supportive of what you want to achieve or understand what you want to achieve or be willing to support you or challenge you, because I think there's a balance right.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: No, yes, you don't want to be surrounded by yes men or women.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: No, but be nice when you're giving that growth evoking feedback.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: That's all I say.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I think that telling sign is when you're around someone and you feel drained after that conversation.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: That's usually a sign yeah.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Or you know, I always say there's givers and takers in the world.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: And my life changed when I was in the music industry.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: It's an industry full of takers and I apologize for the folks who are in the music industry, but you know, it's true, and I had to leave that industry because changed directions, because the environment wasn't suited for the person I wanted to be yeah, which is a bold move.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: And so when I started surrounding myself with givers, that's when my life changed really, and that's why, whenever I see a giver like the first time I met you, lee, I was like she's a giver, a giver.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Like the first time I met you, lee, I was like she's a giver.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: It's like I surround myself with givers, because two givers, when you bring that energy together, it's just like fireworks, right?
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't stop it.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: When you have a taker and a giver, that taker will suck all of the energy and goodness in the giver.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Where are you at?
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: You can either have two takers, two givers, yeah, and if you have a giver and a taker, it's never going to be equitable.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to really sustain that.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone in my life, I would say, is a giver.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you've chosen that You've intentionally chosen to surround yourself with those types of individuals.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Well, what I love about the book is that you can take these steps every day, is that you can take these steps every day and if something doesn't go right, start again, start over, analyze what happened that didn't work and move forward.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: So all the information around Do this Daily is in the episode notes.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Definitely pick up.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: This book Deserves to be on your shelf for your role, your career and your personal life really to find your success, happiness and purpose.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Thanks Leigh.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with.