Episode 134: [Step 7] Grades Don’t Equal Brilliance — Rewriting Success as an Asian American Mom & Coach
In this episode, Judy Tsuei shares her personal journey of discovering her neurodivergence and how it has shaped her understanding of education, success, and emotional health. She challenges traditional metrics of success, particularly in Asian American culture, and emphasizes the importance of self-compassion, exploration, and redefining success beyond grades.
Judy also discusses the emotional costs of perfectionism and the significance of core family values in personal growth.
Sound Bites
"We are all neurodivergent."
"What will people say?"
"I want to alleviate pain."
"I wish you the very best of holidays."
Takeaways
Judy discovered her neurodivergence later in life, which helped her understand her struggles.
She emphasizes that grades often reflect obedience rather than true intelligence or creativity.
The pressure of perfectionism can lead to emotional distress and hinder enjoyment of achievements.
Success should be redefined beyond traditional metrics like grades and degrees.
Encouraging exploration and self-discovery is crucial for personal growth.
Family dynamics and core values play a significant role in shaping one's identity.
Embracing imperfection is essential for emotional well-being.
Judy's experiences highlight the importance of self-compassion and resilience.
The podcast aims to empower Asian Americans and voices of color.
Judy's upcoming book focuses on reclaiming freedom from societal expectations.
Episode Highlights
00:00 Understanding Neurodiversity and Personal Journey
02:53 Challenging Traditional Education and Success Metrics
05:47 The Emotional Cost of Perfectionism
09:06 Redefining Success Beyond Grades
12:01 Core Values and Family Dynamics
14:52 Embracing Imperfection and Personal Growth
Transcript:
Judy Tsuei (00:02.679)
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today.
Judy Tsuei (00:02.688)
So I didn't realize that I was neurodivergent until this last year. And that means that I was 45 spending my entire life trying to wrangle myself into a shape that didn't fit.
Did I get good grades? Sure. Did I always get the A pluses? Definitely not. Did I have a hard time focusing unless it was specific things and then increasingly so as I got older? Absolutely. So last year a therapist recommended that I do an eval test just to see if maybe I have a bit of ADHD and turns out it wasn't an official diagnosis but I definitely have moderate levels of it and I've learned to work with it.
But had I known these things when I was younger, it would have been really, really helpful for me to not beat myself up, not feel so much guilt and shame, not feel like, does it seem easy for everybody else? And it's really hard for me. My daughter was in a school assembly and they were talking about neurodiversity and just diversity as a whole and physical differences, all of the things. She had a speaker come up who has ADHD and put up a screen, a slide that said,
hear the things that they deal with on a daily basis. And my daughter came home and asked, mom, do I have ADHD? I asked her why she thought that. And she said, well, because I looked at the slide and I pretty much have all of those symptoms. Now, she does go to a child therapist who says that she probably does lean towards those tendencies. If I have it, her dad and her grandmother on her dad's side has ADD, ADHD, then most likely there's that.
So my answer to her was that we are all neurodivergent. We are all on this journey of figuring out how to learn how to best work with ourselves and to work within the context of the environments that we put ourselves in. And I feel like so much of being a child of immigrants coming from Asian culture is to fit in line, to not be the one that stands out. But when I was younger, I loved performing in plays and that was me standing out. And then at some point I realized
Judy Tsuei (02:24.76)
This was not going to be supported and I didn't have anybody helping to guide me along that path. So I fell in line with the dominant momentum and the energy that was around me. Step seven of my book is all about tackling the deeply ingrained belief in Asian-American households that grades are everything and college is the only path to success. When my parents found out that my daughter was in a Waldorf school that didn't give grades and
you know, didn't have the traditional linear path. They're like, what is she going to do? How is she going to survive? They could not have been happier when I decided to put her in public school. And I kept telling them, you've seen the news, right? You've seen how people have cheated to get into schools. You've seen what's happening in higher education. Why is it that you feel like this is the way that this is the path? When in fact, so many people, the founders of the Acton school, they realized that that path towards going to college and getting the degree was not
the only one, and it was probably not going to be the one that was going to make you super successful. In fact, these very wealthy eight figures and beyond earners were telling their own children, hey, go to community college, go get your basic credentials, and then get work life experience, go try out different things, go see what resonates with you and what's interesting to you, and then follow that. Maybe go get a job, go start working and seeing, does this work for me? Does this resonate with me?
And then as you gain that wisdom, then you know where to invest your time, energy, and resources to continue to develop yourself. My whole thing has always been that if my daughter can learn how to be resourceful, how to ask the right questions, how to honor herself and advocate for herself, how to take care of her body, how to take care of her finances, how to be in a healthy relationship, any types of relationships, she's doing pretty darn well. And those are not the things that are necessarily going to come with a grade.
They're not the things that are necessarily always going to be reflected in a bank account because the bank account is one measure of energy, one measure of wealth. There are so many other ways to measure wealth. And that's another reason why I talk about money in the book, because you can have an abundance of amazing relationships. You can have an abundance of once in a lifetime activities. I was a travel writer. I have been invited to unbelievable, unparalleled places in the world.
Judy Tsuei (04:47.932)
and experiences that nobody else gets to have. That makes me ultra wealthy, ultra abundant, ultra happy that those are part of my story. And recently I completed a five day HUNA energetic healing experience so that I can bring that into the work that I do with my coaching clients of women of color. It's been so profound. Everyone's already experienced substantial shifts and the kumu, the teacher would also talk about how
the teacher he learned from, he in a monetary sense didn't have as much as many other people, but he had so much respect, so much care from the community, so much of an impact that he made in the world, and that was abundance. So I'm gonna share with you a couple things, my philosophy about why grades don't matter, totally take it or leave it. I fully understand everybody has their own model of the world. And then after that, I'm gonna share with you this
instance of something that happened recently with my daughter and going back to what I think is most important for her to be a healthy human being as she continues to grow in age. This is what I sent out in my weekly heartbeat newsletter and you're welcome to sign up by going to my website judytsui.com and I will add you into the flow. Everyone says that it's one of their favorite things to read all week.
my engagement and open rates are always about 48 to 50%. So I hope that you find value in it too. So my whole thing about why telling my daughter grades don't matter is not a sign of reckless parenting is because I believe that grades in the traditional sense are a reflection of obedience and not brilliance. One of the things that I was never taught growing up in my household is to challenge authority or have any sort of independent thinking.
in terms of being creative, solving problems, questioning things, and thinking critically, ultimately. So grading systems in the traditional sense, your child might go to a different model of education where it's the Socratic method and asking a bunch of questions and really being able to learn how to self-regulate and self-motivate. But in other majority of schools, it's about memorizing information, regurgitating information, using grading systems as
Judy Tsuei (07:12.666)
a way to reward compliance rather than creativity. So as we think about the future, we think about AI, how the trend right now is that pretty much the majority of jobs that our kids will be growing up into haven't even been thought of or created yet. And being able to be adaptive, being able to figure out how to do things that are probably outside the box or that no one's paved the path to do yet, those are not things that can be graded.
The next thing is that this thing about going to college, I paid my own way to pay for my college tests, the SAT tests, the prep courses. I paid my own way. I paid my own way for the test fees. I paid my own way for the college entrance applications. And then I paid my own way through college by working two jobs at a time every semester in addition to getting financial aid and taking a full course load where I was double majoring and I still graduated on time. None of that.
was about the business sense of how much debt I was getting into and whether or not this investment was worth it for me. So the education that I've gotten from becoming a neuro-linguistic programming coach, from being able to do mental emotional release, from who know, all of these things, these have provided infinitely more return on my investment, both in the sense of being able to attract greater clients, attract and cultivate more revenue, and then my own healing and how invaluable that is.
that it far surpasses and far exceeds the college degree that I had. Am I proud that I went to Berkeley? Absolutely. I worked my ass off to get there. Does it create some sort of recognition when I say yes, for sure? Because at the time, getting that degree was important. And we are still kind of bridging that if you have a degree from a certain university, it may mean this or that. But that is not the only way.
to pursue higher education. It is not the only way to be prepared for the life that you want to cultivate and create. And mostly, I think that the reason that I underscore that grades don't matter is because I've seen the emotional cost of perfectionism. I have people in my life, clients, who have gotten unbelievable accolades and achievements and are not able to enjoy them.
Judy Tsuei (09:34.62)
to feel like they've done anything special because the way that we were taught is to look at what didn't get done. What was the mistake? What was the missed step? Especially when the ongoing joke is that, you got an A. Well, hey, you didn't get an A plus. So really, you didn't do that well. In NLP, and what I've encouraged my clients to understand is that we believe once you achieve 90 % of your goal, you celebrate. You tell the universe and your unconscious mind, we did it.
then you take that last 10 % and you set it as the starting 10 % of the next level of your goal. That way you are continually growing, celebrating, completing that energy in that cycle instead of what I had done most of my life, which is to move the goalpost once I got there. It didn't occur to me that when I created this Kickstarter and it was successfully funded, that meant anything. It was like, okay, that's nice, but well, I could have reached this number, but then there was someone else.
who I saw, who also launched a Kickstarter, reached out to me for advice. They went and they did it. They weren't able to fulfill their goal. So then they didn't get any of the funding. And it made me take a moment to say, wait a minute. Okay, so my story before was skewed. It wasn't actually easy to raise all of this money. It wasn't actually easy to accomplish this goal. In fact, there are other people who try and who aren't able to do it. So, hey, let's take a moment to celebrate where we are.
to acknowledge the hard work that I put in, to congratulate myself and to feel proud of myself for how I showed up and then let's keep going. Let's keep growing. Let's keep building. So if I tell my daughter that grades don't matter, then what will people say? So this is, if you want to call it the what will people say dilemma, like people in your family, like the elders who your parents know, who their cohort of individuals who have a lot to say about all the things.
Are you performing for that community? Are you telling yourself, they sacrifice so much, these are the expectations they had, so to honor them, their sacrifices, their wishes and their dreams, I'm gonna go do this. There are so many ways in which we are imprinted. In fact, I was just talking to a client about that today. She was asking a question in regards to how someone so young at the age of 10 would be writing in her journal.
Judy Tsuei (12:01.01)
negative self-talk, which is what my journals also revealed. And it's because between the ages of zero to seven, you are being imprinted by the adults and the caretakers around you. The next phase of your life from seven to about 14, you're modeling the world around you. You're seeing what someone else does. You're integrating it and understanding, okay, that's how I'm supposed to behave. Then from 14 to 21 or so, you're socializing. You're finding your social circles as the way that you're adapting input.
This is a normal range of cognitive development, social emotional development that happens. A lot of therapists, you know, have demonstrated in psychology that this is the way that we grow. So those are how we come up with our values. It's one of the reasons that I work on a values elicitation, both before a breakthrough session and immediately right afterwards, because then we get clear on the core values that are most meaningful to you and important to you in a key area of life.
your core values are not necessarily going to be the same in all areas of life because what I want out of the physical aspect of my life, physical health, physical fitness is going to be a bit different than what I'm going to want in a spirituality segment of my life. So they may have overlapping qualities, but they are unlikely to be the same or in the same rank and order. And your unconscious mind only takes action on the top five or six. Everything else below that, it's...
less impactful in driving you and being the key motivator. But whatever is in your unconscious mind is the top five or six values. That's how you're going to live your life. And it's why so many people when they say they want wealth, for example, they're not seeing it in the traditional bank account way. You've got to see if truly in your unconscious mind, you believe that that is one of your core values or was it something performative that you were told is important to demonstrate your status, your value, your worthiness.
So what do I tell my daughter to do instead of pursuing perfect grades? I encourage exploration, the asking of questions, the constant check-in of whether she's doing something because it's a line and right for her, or whether she's doing it because of a certain outcome she's trying to achieve because someone told her that this is something that she wanted because this is what all her friends are doing. I focus on helping her develop skills, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, adaptability, resilience.
Judy Tsuei (14:26.866)
I encourage her to focus on self-compassion. She is wonderfully compassionate to other people, but also self-compassion. She, like me, had had a difficult time making mistakes. And so how do you make mistakes? And how do you learn from those mistakes and have wisdom? And how do we forgive ourselves? How do we forgive others? How do we have healthy boundaries? And how do we define success together? So recently,
My daughter and I, and I'll read this to you, what I sent in the heartbeat about our family core values. It's something that truly was so delightful to do as an exercise with her. This is the latest issue of the heartbeat that I sent out and the title, when you open it up says, the light you find in the dark can be the most beautiful. I recently completed a five day Huna ancient Hawaiian healing training. It's already amplified the coaching I'm doing with clients. These epic women of
color, struggling with everything from experiencing self-love to figuring out how to live their greater purpose. One of the Kumu's teachers shared how a moment of tender emotions after a conflict with her husband led to her son showing her the most beautiful vulnerability. By creating space for the darkness and light to simultaneously exist, she experienced a new depth of connection with her son. At lunch, I remembered how the same happened for me. I was going through a wave of tumbling emotions as the holidays kicked off during Thanksgiving.
So I called my daughter's godmother, a fellow Asian American who I knew would understand. I went into my room so my daughter wouldn't hear my conversation, but she sensed my feelings. She walked into her room beside mine, closed her doors, and then came back a few minutes later, whispering to me, Mom, when you get off the phone with Auntie Lisa, come to my room. Welcome to your therapy session, she said. Please take a seat. I followed instructions and Wilder began to ask things like, please tell me how you're feeling. Where do you think that came from? Do you think it has to do with your family? Tell me more.
She was modeling questions her child therapist has asked her. I stopped midway through our conversation to say, you know you don't have to take care of me, right? I'm an adult and I can handle my own stuff. She rolled her eyes. Of course, mom, I know that. I just want to be here for you. So we kept talking. I was honest, age appropriate. She nodded, took notes on a legal pad. By the end of our quote unquote session, she handed me what she had been jotting down. A picture of a horse, our shared Chinese zodiac symbol.
Judy Tsuei (16:45.453)
This is to remind you of how strong and beautiful you are. I took the piece of paper from her and now has a home on the nightstand beside my bed. Now, when do want to schedule your next session? We can't do next week because I'm at dad's, but if you want to do the week after that, we can do that. I started laughing. This moment of connection with my nine year old, of being wowed by the human in front of me, of experiencing her heart wouldn't have happened if I hadn't allowed myself to feel my sadness, hurt, frustration, and stress. I get to keep this unforgettable moment with my daughter.
because of my willingness to hold both. This week, I kicked off a call with my new coaching client, and during the first part of our breakthrough session, she mentioned her family's core values. Their words form a special acronym. I love the idea, and when Wilder got home from school, I asked if she'd like to create an acronym for us. I took her through a quick version of the values exercise I do with clients during breakthrough sessions, and the words we came up with together are unconditional love, trust, adventure, magic, respect, learning.
I wrote down the first letters of these words and couldn't come up with a fun acronym at first until Wadler pointed out, it spells ultra, ultra FM. That's when I decided to add abundance. Now I can spell ultra fam, I told her. It's what I feel like she and I are, our very own ultra fam. Are you able to simultaneously hold the light and the dark? What gifts can you find in each? Love, Judy.
And then it continues to go on in the newsletter with a couple of other elements that I usually feature something from the podcast, something about a client. And recently I opened up a shop on my website, judytsui.com and you can get really quick meditations. You can find things to help you calm down when you're angry or move through it.
to reset when you start going into the spinning thoughts and to find clarity, as well as to find some marketing and personal branding tips for you to set up your 2025 in a way that's going to be the most resonant with what it is that you'd like to cultivate and create. So in closing, as an Asian American, I've spent a lot of years untangling this knot of good grades equals good person or perfection equals worthiness. And I have continued to reparent my inner child.
Judy Tsuei (19:01.781)
I've learned how to be more messy. I've learned that it's okay to disappoint other people. I've learned that it's okay to be disappointed by people. And my book, How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps, which I'm very excited to announce, I just signed a contract with a hybrid publisher. We have some quick turnaround goals and the goal is to get a first draft ready, reviewed, edited by March, 2025. So everybody who backed the Kickstarter doesn't have to wait super long. And it enables me to...
get into some awesome book festivals and to see where that adventure takes me. So this book isn't about rebellion, it's about reclaiming our freedom and seeing ourselves as whole, even when we are imperfect because that is what makes us human. So if you are also ready to break these cycles and free yourself from basing your success and your value on metrics external to you,
then thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I hope it was helpful. You can still go to Kickstarter and order an early copy of the book at bit.ly, B-I-T dot L-Y forward slash shameless book. And just send me a message if you feel inspired. I am here to help you. I want to alleviate pain and all of my busy.
Women of color clients say that the work that they've done with me has absolutely short-cutted decades, years that they would have spent in therapy and have achieved such remarkable results that they are telling everybody about it, that they can't help but tell people about it, how free they feel, how whole they feel, and how relieved they feel. They immediately, even before the releasing of negative emotions, just after the first day of the breakthrough session,
people already start to feel so much better and they're like, wow, I'm walking around the world differently. I'm seeing things differently, things that were in front of me that I just didn't even see before. so hearing that feedback just propels me and lights me up to continue to do this work more and more. I wish you the very best of holidays and the start of your year. And I look forward to staying in touch. Aloha.
Judy Tsuei (21:16.333)
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support me and this show, please go to iTunes and leave your review. It means so much to me and it'll help others find this podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode. And if you'd like to stay in touch between now and then, please visit wildheartedwords.com and sign up for my weekly newsletter. I've had people share with me that it's the best thing to arrive in their inbox all week. Aloha.
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Keywords: Asian American, mental health, emotional health, neurodiversity, ADHD, education, perfectionism, success, emotional health, family values, personal growth, self-compassion
