Habits are hard to break, but they can be changed.

There are cultural factors in play that make it much more difficult when there is an overarching social expectation to hold family above all else and for Janet and Brian, it lead to a lot of internalizing when it came to even reflecting on making changes about how they react to certain situations.
Yes, reactions can be looked at like habits.

Janet talks about some recent revelations in her understanding of her own beliefs which lead to her recognizing how to change some long-standing habits.
Brian shares new info that has put an end to the now-old idea that habits take any number of “days” to form.

References:
How long does it take to form a new habit?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/taking-it-easy/202001/how-long-does-it-take-form-new-habit

The wonderful @hangukhapa is our guest in this episode!

She shares her background and inspiration on Korean cuisine on her social media and YouTube channel following our collab.
Hear it here!
Also, take a moment to check out her informative (and tasty!) content!

We experience so many people telling us
how to look, what success is, what to know, etc.

Janet and Brian have a conversation about what they think some of these pressures are, where they think they came from, and what they did to get past the pressure.

Tune in to this week’s episode, “Dealing With Social Pressures”, to hear more!

If you are part of the millennial generation you have probably heard,
“you need to know your purpose,”
or some variation of that statement at some point in your life.

What you probably weren’t told is how.
As many of us have faced adulting with a skewed view and expectations that we eventually realize are not our own. We may have to face much internal struggle to try and figure out what it all means. Some have coped by becoming numb and learning how not to care.

Quarterly, Janet and Brian get together to talk about where they are with their goals and if any of their aspirations have changed.
Sometimes, their conversations are light and easy to get through. Other times, their discussions take them to a place that requires much more in-depth conversation and potentially even healing.

They share openly in this episode a glimpse of some of the discussions that they’ve had.

Tune in to this week’s episode,
“How Cultural Expectations Made it Really Hard For Us to Talk About Our Purpose”, to hear more!

Shame is something we hear about frequently, and often smiling through our pain, in the AAPI community.
Shame is much more intense when related to Eastern values versus Western values as Asians tend to carry the shame with the weight of their families and social expectations on top of them.

It’s regularly looked at in a negative light and for good reason.

In this episode, Janet and Brian define shame and the differences in their cultural contexts as well as sharing their personal experiences with how it had affected them before they had even known how it had affected their beliefs and self-image.

They also talk about how therapy, reflecting, and knowledge all play a part in learning how to live in a world where multiple cultures collide, leaving shaming and the experience of feeling shame commonplace.

Tune in to hear it in this week’s episode “Shame Is Different With Asians and How We Deal With It”

References:
The Difference Between Guilt and Shame
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shame/201305/the-difference-between-guilt-and-shame

How Asian Shame and Stigma Contribute to Suicide
https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/July-2020/How-Asian-Shame-and-Stigma-Contribute-to-Suicide

Eastern Asians that follow more traditional Confucianist values already know that the Hierarchy between age, rank, class, and even gender is a long-held tradition deeply embedded in our social interactions.
These values span for generations regardless of how many degrees of separation we have from our original immigrant ancestors.

Janet and Brian explore the idea of where these ways of living originate as well as how had affected them in their interactions.

If you’ve had trouble getting through to some of your elders, this will be a conversation that you’d want to listen to.
You’re definitely not alone in trying to navigate the rough terrain of opposing cultural values, especially as it relates to social hierarchy.

Tune in to hear more!

There’s always a right and a wrong way to go about doing things, isn’t there?

Well, depending on which culture is dominant in your multicultural life,
the “right” and “wrong” way of doing anything can be vastly different.
It sounds like it should be obvious, but common sense is not really all that common
if you venture to different countries where they’ve had centuries to operate under different versions of social norms.   In this episode, Janet and Brian explore their own multicultural values and how they go about navigating them, especially when there are some values that oppose each other.
For instance, Western individualism vs Eastern collectivism.
When you have to choose, how do they do it?
Tune in to hear more about how they set the context to be able to bounce between (or fall flat in) multiple cultures.

Welcome back in the new year!
Ok, it’s started.

There’s now a book talking about how “nunchi” (aka “noonchi”) which is often conflated or overgeneralized between emotional intelligence, quick wit, social intuition, social awareness, etc. (the list goes on).

Well, we’re talking about the real world picture when it comes down to nunchi and what we think about where it comes from.

It’s definitely not seen as a “good” thing when it comes to its deeply embedded practices in Korean society.
Tune in to hear why!

References:
What Is ‘Nunchi’, the Korean Secret to Happiness?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/11/what-is-nunchi-the-korean-secret-to-happiness

Hearing the word “anxiety” is something way too familiar for 2020, but it was a problem even before the pandemic hit.

It’s been an epidemic brought on by loft expectations from chasing lofty goals expecting to get them sooner than everybody else.
Well, that’s what the majority of us were taught anyway. It’s time to normalize talking about it.

In this episode, Janet and Brian both open up about their experiences with anxiety and explore why it may be that Asian cultures tend to avoid or repress the notion that such issues even exist.

They also share some of the methods they’ve used to address their struggles dealing with anxiety.

Check it out in this episode “vs Anxiety”