Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How a Doctor Prescribes Joy to Transform Lives | Tiffany Moon - Anesthesiologist & Author of "Joy Prescriptions"

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Lessons - How a Doctor Prescribes Joy to Transform Lives | Tiffany Moon - Anesthesiologist & Author of "Joy Prescriptions" · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover how cultural expectations shape identity and how breaking
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  free from the good Asian daughter's script can be both painful and liberating.
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  Learn how unspoken family pressures affect career and personal relationships,
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  explore the cost of high achievement without boundaries, and understand how reclaiming joy
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  begins with setting limits and finding balance beyond the checklist.
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  You broke out of this good Asian daughter script.
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  So what is the good Asian daughter script?
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  That's what I was alluding to before.
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  Like I always find it interesting how your parents are such a big impression on you,
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  but then also there's a point where you have to break out of their model of who you are,
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  their version of who you are.
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  So was there a version of who you are, this good Asian daughter?
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  What does that mean and how did you break out of it or why?
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  Oh, I was the perfect Asian daughter.
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  I never talked back to my parents.
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  I made straight A's.
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  I always did the extra credit assignment.
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  I was teacher's pet.
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  I never got into any trouble.
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  I never had a boyfriend.
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  I helped with the dishes at home.
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  I actually swept and vacuumed the floors on the weekends.
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  I just like if you could have a model child that was just one level above robot,
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  that was the kind of child that I was.
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  I just I did everything my parents wanted me to because I felt so
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  beholden to them that they had sacrificed their life in China to bring me to America
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  so that I could have a better life.
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  And they told me this.
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  This was not insinuated.
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  They said to me, if it were not for you, we would have just stayed in China.
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  We came to America so that you could have the opportunity for a better life.
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  And look at us.
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  We don't know the language here.
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  We speak with an accent.
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  People make fun of us.
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  We have lesser jobs here than we do in China.
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  I mean, my dad was the manager of a factory in China
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  that employed over 200 workers.
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  So he was like, you know, head honcho like floor boss.
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  And then here in America, you know, his, his English skills are very poor.
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  He speaks with a heavy accent and he's a computer programmer.
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  He actually came to America to study business management.
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  But because his English was so bad,
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  he changed his major to computer science so that he wouldn't have to talk to people.
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  That's not fair for them to put that on you.
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  But, but I didn't know that that wasn't fair.
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  I internalized, you know, the words that they said.
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  And to me, in my, you know, six-year-old, eight-year-old, 12-year-old mind,
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  I was beholden to them.
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  Wow, look at everything, mommy and daddy sacrifice
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  so that I could have a better life.
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  I should be better.
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  I should not make a B.
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  I should help clean the dishes after dinner.
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  I should vacuum the floor.
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  I should never talk back.
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  Like I just, I, I was in constant fear
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  of disappointing my parents.
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  My dad, especially, he is just very difficult to please
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  would be putting it nicely.
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  Talk to me about sort of early career,
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  separating a little bit from your parents,
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  how that impacted you, how it impacted like life decisions, any of that.
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  Yeah, I think the thing, the next thing that my dad was really upset with
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  was when I brought home a Korean boyfriend.
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  I'm Chinese.
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  So he's very strict.
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  Yes, and Korean, you know, like Asians are the most racist against other Asians.
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  Like Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, like to American people, it's all like,
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  oh yeah, they're the same.
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  They eat lots of rice, have strict parents, right?
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  Like it's all the same.
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  No, like Chinese people don't like Koreans and Japanese.
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  Japanese people don't like anybody, but Japanese.
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  Koreans think they're at the top of the total.
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  Everyone thinks they're at the top.
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  It's crazy.
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  It's crazy.
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  And I don't understand where this comes from.
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  But all I know is that when I brought
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  home a Korean boyfriend to my Chinese dad, he was pissed.
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  What age was this?
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  This was 2324.
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  Okay.
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  It was the year I graduated from medical school that I met my now husband.
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  And I was 23 when I graduated from medical school.
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  So it must have been around that time.
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  And it's not like I'm some like, you know, 16-year-old prom date.
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  Like, daddy, this is, you know, Brad, I'm a freaking doctor.
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  I'm 23 years old.
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  I have an MD behind my name.
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  And I'm like, dad, I want to tell you something.
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  Like, I kind of been seeing this guy.
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  And then they were super pissed because he had been previously married
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  with two kids from that marriage
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  and was a decade older than me.
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  And my dad just lost it.
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  You know.
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  What do you think?
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  Okay.
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  So all these interactions with your family.
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  And I think they cause like all these little traumas.
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  I think they, I think they cause little traumas
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  like carry through your life.
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  And you have to be super careful.
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  If you, if you don't address them,
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  then it can impact everything.
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  It can impact relationship with your husband,
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  with your, with your wife, with your kids.
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  So I, I don't love that he keeps pushing you like,
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  your dad keeps pushing you farther and farther away.
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  But you're not going to change your life.
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  You're going to keep building your life regardless.
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  But what's the point when you sort of reconcile
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  those differences or in the meantime,
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  when your dad pushes you away, how does that impact your relationship?
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  How does that impact your career?
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  Does it at all?
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  Career, not so much because I'm doing exactly what he wanted me to do.
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  You know, he wants to brag to all his friends
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  that I'm a successful anesthesiologist.
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  He's always pimping me out.
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  His friends, kids who want to go into medical school.
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  So now I'm taking phone calls with like 18-year-olds
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  that want to know how to apply to go to medical school.
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  And I'm like, don't you have a guidance counselor?
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  Like, why are you calling me?
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  And then all his friends, like not long ago,
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  his friend got diagnosed with liver cancer.
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  So then he text me asking for a same day appointment
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  with an oncologist that I know, the week of Christmas.
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  And I'm like, this is an unreasonable request, father.
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  And he's like, well, he's got cancer.
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  And you know, liver cancer grows quickly.
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  And I was like, oh, it does, I didn't know that.
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  Thank you for educating me about cancer, father.
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  I didn't learn that in medical school.
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  And he's like, you better call and get him an appointment.
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  And I'm like, it's not, I don't even know this,
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  this your friend.
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  Why don't you call and get an appointment?
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  So he always like leverages my relationships
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  and expertise to help his friends,
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  which I'm happy to do.
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  But it comes with a side of like, you better do this for me.
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  It's not what he's asking necessarily,
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  but the way in which he does it, like, I owe him something.
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  So does that still go on to this day?
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  Yeah, you know, I've done a lot.
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  I keep asking you if you fix the relationship,
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  but it still sounds like it's not fixed.
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  It's not fixed.
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  And I just had lunch recently with my mother.
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  And I kind of told her, I said, you know,
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  I went on a women's retreat not too long ago.
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  And we did a lot of work on boundary setting.
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  Like boundaries is like a very, you know, in thing right now.
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  And I was like, you know, why I have no boundaries?
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  Because they were never modeled to me as a child.
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  My parents, they have no boundaries.
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  They work all the time and they don't have boundaries with each other.
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  They don't have social boundaries.
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  And I'm like, I'm really going to work this year
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  on on setting some boundaries.
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  And one of them is distancing myself from him a little bit.
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  Because every time we interact,
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  I leave the interaction feeling not good enough,
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  pissed off, emotionally drained.
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  And all those childhood traumas just flood me again.
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  In spite of that, how do you find joy?
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  How did you find joy?
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  How did you overcome these traumas?
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  How did you not let it impact your relationship
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  with your husband, your relationship with people in your life?
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  You know, I think I'm good at compartmentalizing.
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  You know, I'm able to put things in salads,
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  which is also great for work.
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  Because I work at a level one trauma hospital.
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  I see people shooting stab each other all the time.
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  And you know, if I wasn't able to compartmentalize
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  that I would probably come home a sobbing mess every day.
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  So I think I've compartmentalized my relationship
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  with my father and put it here so that it doesn't affect my relationship
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  with my husband or with my mother even.
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  Because she's still with him.
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  And I have a close relationship with her.
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  And I'll tell her things like, you know,
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  it hurts my feelings when he says this or he's constantly comparing my twins.
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  And I don't like it when he compares them in front of them
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  that, you know, one runs faster than the other.
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  And my mom will be like, oh, you know how daddy is.
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  And, you know, she makes excuses for him or whatever.
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  So I've decided to just put that relationship
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  in a little bucket over here so that the fumes from it
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  don't, you know, see through like carbon monoxide
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  and poison everything else.
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  You know, it's interesting, though,
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  because so I think that that relationship,
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  it turns you into like a high performance individual
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  in everything in your life.
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  Because that's sort of what was that was model.
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  It was like work, work, work, work, work.
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  So throughout sort of your life, you've realized
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  the certain points that even high performance
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  is always the best path forward.
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  I think that now you have more balance in your life.
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  I mean, there was one point where you were sleeping in your car
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  between your shifts and you realized things like that
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  weren't sustainable.
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  So talk to me about sort of your attitude towards work
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  about high performance, about accomplishment
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  because you were, you know, you're going to,
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  you graduated med school at 24,
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  mostly for only finishing their undergrad.
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  So obviously like you keep pushing yourself,
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  but there's a time when that doesn't serve you anymore.
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  Yeah, that, that was a hard pill to swallow.
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  So I moved to America when I was six years old.
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  I learned English, I went to the early college entrance program
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  when I was 15, graduated from Cornell.
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  When I was 19, graduated from medical school
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  at the top of my class at the age of 23
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  and then proceeded on to the best anesthesia residency program
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  in the country at UCSF.
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  Then got married and had twins by the time I was 30.
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  And so I just felt like my whole life.
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  It's like these boxes had been, like a to-do list.
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  And I was like, check, go to college early, check.
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  Ivy League check, you know, and my mom was like,
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  there's no way you're going to be able to get married
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  and have kids by the time you're 30 and for whatever reason,
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  you know, in the Chinese anti folklore.
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  If you're not, that's the expiration date.
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  You know, if you're not married by 30,
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  it's like, oh, what's wrong with her.
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  And then I got married and had twins.
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  And so I was like, clocked in right at 30.
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  So I felt like I completed the checklist.
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  Yeah.
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  And then I sat down one day and I was like,
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  shit, I'm tired.
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  Also, what am I doing?
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  Like I've done everything the people told me to.
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  But why do I feel unfulfilled?
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  I have no creativity in my life.
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  All I do is work.
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  I have very little laughter in my life.
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  And very little joy.
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  And at that time, I was like, what is joy?
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  You know, there's happiness, there's joy.
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  I'm like, I like shopping, that brings me joy.
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  You know, but does it?
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  Do your material possessions bring me joy?
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  You know, does this Birken keep me warm at night?
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  No, it does not.
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  So that's when I had my midlife crisis
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  as my husband likes to call it.
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  And I started going to therapy,
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  listen to so many self-help podcasts.
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  I have a Kindle Library full of self-help books.
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  Like if you name a top self-help happiness book,
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  I have it in my Kindle Library.
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  And what I kind of figured out is that like,
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  you can't live life by a checklist.
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  And then joy is not like a destination.
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  It's not like something you're gonna get to.
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  Like the joy is in the journey,
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  but my stupid ass was running so fast
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  that I didn't get to enjoy the journey.
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  Thanks for tuning in.
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  See you in the next one.