EPISODE 22: MY DAUGHTER TALKS ABOUT FAILING
Takeaways
What’s it like to fail according to a 6 year-old? Recently, my daughter was under the weather and we watched a movie together that taught how failure is good, why the idea “keep moving forward” is important, and how to create a growth mindset for yourself and your children.
We also talk about:
Keep Moving Forward kids movie
I’m Feeling Meh book
Simon & Schuster’s upcoming book, The Little Book of Tibetan Rites & Rituals, by me
Episode 5 Untigering with Iris Chen
Episode 11 Somatic Healing with Rahi Chun
Conscious Parenting with Janet Lansbury
Emily & Amelia Nagoski on Brene Brown’s Podcast, Unlocking Us
Transcript
This is going to be a super fun week up ahead, because on Wednesday I interview Kat Zhang. She's an award winning author of young adult and middle grade books, and I first discovered her when I borrowed the book, Amy Wu and The Perfect Bao from the library. I read it to my daughter who absolutely loved being able to see herself in this picture book and being able to identify these cultural nuances and traditions that she's experienced with her grandfather.
My dad, her Gong Gong, where she's absolutely made bao zhi with him. And she's also made jiao zhi dumplings with him. So to kickstart the week, I have a very special guest with me today: my six-year-old daughter Wilder love.
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast. I'm your host, Judy Tsuei and together we'll explore mental and emotional health for Asian Americans, especially breaking through any taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today.
So today I have a very special guest with me on this podcast episode, my daughter, Wilder Love.
Do you want to say hi?
Hi.
So this upcoming week we will be interviewing Kat Zhang and she's the author of a book that Wilder and I actually read together called, Amy Wu & The Perfect Bao. And when we were reading the book, Wilder was really excited about it because she has made bao zhi with her grandfather, her Gong Gong, and she thought it was such a wonderful experience to be able to see and identify something familiar from her culture in the story.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So today we also went and we went rollerskating. She's getting over a little bit of a cough, but we went roller skating today. And while we were rollerskating, we talked about this movie that we had just seen. I can't actually remember the name. Do you remember the name of the movie? Yeah, but they were talking about, it was a story about a little boy who was given up to an orphanage when he was a baby.
And by the time that you meet his character, he's about 12 years old and he's looking to be adopted, but he's also super into science and super into experiments. But all of the experiments that he's been doing this whole time, haven't really led anywhere. They haven't come to fruition. So he's been frustrated about it.
They haven't worked yet.
Yeah.
So then he decides that he's not going to do them anymore, but then suddenly someone visits him from the future. And so he gets to have a glimpse of what his life is going to look like in the future and how everything seems to work out. Okay. But one of the things that they keep saying in the movie, what's the tagline, this slogan that they keep saying.
Yeah, “keep moving forward.”
And he gets frustrated by that. And then what's the other thing that they say. They say failure is awesome. Good job failing. Right?
You have a party for failing. That's wonderful. And I told Wilder today when she was learning how to roller skate. Cause it's very true. Skating can be tricky.
Failing is good.
Why is failing good?
Because you're trying again and again. And trying helps you practice and you learn when you try, when you fail, it means you've given it a shot. You've given it a try. And what else?
Failure is also good because you know that next time you can.
Yeah, you can try it in a different way.
Yeah. And I told Wilder that I, when I was growing up, they really didn't encourage failing it. It wasn't something that I had learned was okay to do. But now I see that failing is a great thing. That it's something that can be celebrated because it means that you're taking a chance. You're taking a shot, you're giving it a go.
And, what else does it mean?
You can try again. Anytime your parents let you.
Yeah. And it's a good learning opportunity, huh? And you learn things about yourself along the way. You learn how to be patient with yourself. You learn how to be compassionate with yourself. You learn how to celebrate yourself.
Yeah.
Is there something else that you've tried and you failed that maybe you were frustrated at at first? What were you frustrated at? Scootering.
Oh yeah. That was a little bit tricky, huh? Yeah. Yeah. But rollerskating was actually pretty easy, kind of easy because I have a neighbor who roller skates, so she gave me some tips.
Oh, that's great. See, and then you learn and you try, you can also form connections and relationships and community with other people who are also trying. Huh?
Yeah. So are there any tips that you have to share with anybody if they are worried about failing?
You can let yourself fail and failing is good.
That's great. That's a great tip. Anything else that you want to say? Anything else? What did you think of the, Amy Wu & The Perfect Bao?
yeah. And do you like making bao zhi with Gong Gong?
It's so fun.
Yeah. It's a good time to hang out with your grandparents, huh?
Yeah. And Wilder’s an amazing storyteller. And so just yesterday, she started something new with me while I was making dinner in the kitchen where she was making up fantastical stories and giving me line by line each line of the imaginative story that she was making.
But then she would say the imaginative version, and then she would say, The boring version, boring version is the normal version actually have what actually happened. And did you say a term you're like you would say something magical and then what would, what would you say. And then I just feel like I get to actually the boring thing.
So she would say something like, like wash and the magical sink, which is actually washed in sap. And then what else? And then climb into my secret lair, which is actually like the treehouse at my grandparent's house.
Yeah. So making up stories are super fun, huh? Yeah, that's what I do. Well, thank you so much for listening and we look forward to epic adventures ahead, more stories to come, more opportunities to try and to fail and to learn.
You want to say anything else?
Failure is good.
Well, there, you have it. That's a conversation with my daughter, as you can tell, I'm honest and open. And I tell her things that I think are appropriate for her age, but I also am not to sugarcoat things too much because I believe in showing her the whole spectrum of emotions to make it okay. To show her that as an adult, you can feel all of your feelings and that you have the resilience and the strength to handle everything as well.
I'm currently working on a book with Simon and Schuster. It's about the Five Tibetan Rites. And in it, I'm exploring a lot about Tibetan Buddhism. So one of the things that I talk about is that there's this belief in Buddhism that the human experience is suffering, but simultaneously it's also this incredible place to be because in Tibetan Buddhism, there's the belief that there are six realms of reincarnation or karma, and there's the three higher realms and the three lower realms.
And right here in the middle is where the human experience is. So it's this somewhat. Combination of all of them. And while it might be nice to think that you could go live with the gods and have all of us, you know, amazing divine, whatever it is that you want at your fingertips, or that it's so much better to not be in the lower realms where you're experiencing all the shadow emotions.
What's actually remarkable is that Buddhists believe the human experience is the most beautiful one that you could have that it's here, that you get to be on this journey on the path toward enlightenment or Nirvana. And that we have this misconception about suffering. That it's always going to be. A challenge to be human.
The human condition is hard, but at the same time, we are given the skills that we need to be resilient and to handle everything that it is that we're going through a long time ago, a friend of mine in my twenties had said, you're never given more than you can handle. And I really taken that with me as I've grown as a person through the hardest of times to remember that I do have the skillset that I do have the capacity and the potential and the bandwidth to continue to expand into my own wisdom and my journey.
In Tibetan Buddhism as well, there's the understanding that there's 80,000 doors to enlightenment or another way to say it is that however many people there are on this planet. That's how many paths to enlightenment that there are, that's how many paths to wisdom that there are. So your journey is your own.
There will never ever be another you from the beginning of time ever after. And there will never be another you who has the same exact experiences or the same interpretation of your experiences. So to keep looking outside of you for guidance and answers, to create that one size fits all kind of notion of if I do this and this and this X, Y, and Z, I will get this result.
I will get this happy life. It's kind of hard because there is nobody else or no other prescription that's going to fit your life. Other than the one that you find in your journey, towards your connection, with your higher self, with spirit, with source, with God, with however you define it. And since this upcoming week, we will be talking to a children's book author.
I recently got this book called I Feel Meh from the library by DJ Corchin. And at the very back, it gave you tips and tools in case you are feeling met. And to read it with your kid, to understand that even meh is a mood. But one of the things that it says is it is always okay and always okay, is in all capital letters to ask someone for help when you are feeling bad.
And I really hope that that's the message that this entire podcast is encouraging you to understand as well. One of the tips that this book gives you is to plan a non-meh day so that you grab a line notebook paper. And on the top, you write a non-meat day and on the left side, you list each hour of the day, the next to each hour, you write down only super fun things to do with someone else.
So you're sure to fill up the entire day from the time you wake up until bedtime. And that you plan a fun activity for meals, and then you share it with your friends, family, or trusted adults to pick a day when you can use your plan, which I thought was absolutely great. Another tip that it gives you is the switcherroo story, which we didn't read this before.
My daughter shared the activity that she was doing, where she was creating a fantastical version of everyday mundane things. But this tip is exactly about that, that you start imagining adventurous versions of the things that you're doing and all the people that are with you. And next to the people in the moments you've listed, you switch up their names and even a type of creature or a person who they are.
And then you write an entire story with that, so that you really use the power of your imagination and that understanding that you are limitless and that there are no boundaries and you can go explore and be who you want to be. For those of you who don't know, I wrote a children's book with my ex husband and our friend, Adam Lang while we were all living on Kauai.
And we ran this incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign raising over $10,000 for our book, which was called Corinne Wants to Grow Up. And it was named after Adam's niece. I was pregnant at the time. And in the Kickstarter video, you can see me heaving as I try to breathe with Wilder Love in my belly.
After she was born, I dove into conscious parenting books. I read Janet Lansbury and listened to her podcast. Well, before my daughter was a toddler, I wanted to make sure that I was going to do things differently than the way that I was raised. Now, one of the early episodes of the fuck's saving face podcast is an interview with Iris Chen.
She's the author of Untiring. And I already thought I knew so much about the topic given how much I had already studied to do the opposite of what my parents did for me. But I learned even more when talking with her and reading her book about the difference between authoritative and authoritarian parenting.
And if you want to dive into that a bit more, you can give episode five a listen. Then when I interviewed Rahi Chun and episode 11, that was another moment where we discussed, how if Asian parents really wanted their children to get ahead, they would nurture their social, emotional skills. They would soothe their parasympathetic rest and digest system rather than aggravating the fight or flight response.
We cannot learn things when we are stressed. And it's why in all the time that I taught yoga, my first endeavor was to create a safe and sacred space for people to finally arrive within themselves for them to have the opportunity to process through what they were going through once. Like they felt it was secure enough to do so.
Over the last few years, I've learned about the term growth mindset. And even though I've learned about it for my daughter, I actually really try to apply that for myself. A lot of the time, this term growth mindset was developed by professor Carol Dweck. And it was about how we learn to face challenges and setbacks.
So people with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can improve over time. People with a fixed mindset. On the other hand, think their abilities are set in stone or can change no matter how hard they try. So Dweck and her colleagues found that kids who push through challenges believed that they could improve.
If your kid is having a hard time reading, for example, And then they're thinking they're just quote unquote bad at it. And that no amount of work will change that. Then that's a fixed mindset, which means that they'll probably stop trying so hard, but if they keep working at it and believe that things can change, then they have the opportunity to improve.
And we all have a mix of fixed and growth mindsets that change based on our experiences and the feedback we get. I actually have a piece of paper printed out with different sentence stems that a parent can use with their child to encourage this idea of the growth mindset. So this plays into how you praise your children, how you reprimand them, the things that you can say.
For example, instead of saying you're really good at math, which can promote a fixed mindset, thinking that this is just an ability someone has, you can instead support your child's effort saying, wow, you worked really hard on that. And then that can help build your child's self-esteem. You can reflect upon how they, or, you know, in the case of, if you're applying this growth mindset, learning to yourself, how you approach the challenge, not how hard they tried or the results.
And I think one of the things that I've been learning a lot lately is to have that kind of Buddhist belief of detaching from the outcome of remembering that the journey is the purpose and the path. One of my new favorite sayings is the rainbow is the gold. So it's not the gold at the end of the rainbow, but this came from an interview with Brene Brown and Emily and Amelia Nagoski, where they were talking about how to handle overwhelm and how to manage your stress, reminding yourself that this entire journey. Is the rainbow. And that this rainbow is the gold. When I was in my monies and I left the intensive outpatient eating disorder program, I still continued with my one-on-one therapy.
My therapist was named Dr. Jill Kohn. And one day we were talking about how I was saying, how much of a failure. I felt like I was comparing myself to other friends who are at different points in their career. They were further along than I was. And she said, Well, it's not because you can't do it. It's because you haven't done it yet, or you didn't want to do it.
And here's where I started learning about the power of the word yet that I haven't learned this yet, but I can, and I will, if I wanted to. Usually because of the way that I was raised with my traditional Chinese Taiwanese parents, they would compare me to all of these other kids who are my age saying so-and-so played piano better than you, or so-and-so got better grades than you.
And so I always felt like I was coming up short and I perpetuated that into my adulthood. And sometimes I still do that. I tend to have a competitive nature. I tend to be a recovering perfectionist or recovering type a personality. And I'm not quite sure if those are things that are nature versus nurture.
Although I will tell you that when I was living in LA in my mid twenties, I was going out and. Being invited to different events. And one of these events, there was someone who is reading palms at this club and Hollywood. And so I sat down and when I showed her my poems, she said, huh, that's interesting.
Your left palm, which for me is my non-dominant hand demonstrates that I had a very freewheeling, Bohemian nature that I kind of just went with the flow and everything was easy and great and whimsical and creative. But my right hand, my dominant hand is how I actually live my life, which was very rigid, very structured, very.
Needing to be that kind of perfectionist. Everything has to look okay. Be okay, it's got to hit a certain marker. It's got to be a certain standard. Jill told me, “You could have become a lawyer if you wanted to, but you didn't, you chose a different path. It's not that you can't, it's just that you haven't.”
During our camper van adventures when we first arrived in Austin, Texas, we stayed at my friend's Deirdre and Emmy's house. Deirdre is this top level executive at a tech company, and she was often working late and feeling pretty stressed. One night. She excitedly made it home for dinner in time to hang out with Wilder who, because she was around two years old at the time, went to bed pretty early and she saw me tell Wilder in a moment of my daughter's frustration.
Okay, babe, take a deep breath. Deirdre looked at me. I wish someone had taught me how to do that when I was young, that would have gone such a long way for me since then she's taught her nieces and nephews that very skill about just taking a breath, a deep breath. And she shared with me recently during a visit, it's really been remarkable.
What a difference it's made in them. Having a growth mindset is about taking feedback, learning from that experience and coming up with strategies for improving. It's understanding that if you fail at something, you can still succeed. That failing is actually essential and the key to learning and growing.
As you heard in my conversation with my daughter, the way that I grew up, we were not encouraged to fail. We were definitely not encouraged to make any mistakes and. Even though I am now 42, I'm still working on untangling, some elements of that, so that I can remind myself that the rainbow is the gold.
That me tripping and falling in pursuit of my dreams is actually me demonstrating that I'm trying and I'm doing it. I'm going after things in a bold and brave way, even if I make mistakes and that I can try to practice that self-compassion so that I can demonstrate it for my daughter. A while back when we first moved back from Taiwan, I noticed that my daughter was tending to be pretty hard on herself and she was only four and a half under five at the time.
So it was a big awareness for me to see how I was modeling my own behavior and that she was picking up on whether it was overtly or subtly. She was somehow picking up on this idea of being hard on yourself if you're making mistakes. And it was a wonderful opportunity for me to both coach her and to internalize that coaching for myself.
I think that it's super valuable to learn that setbacks can actually provide a way forward, that we can all become advocates for ourselves. And that it's great to reflect upon how things could be done differently in the future. It's also the understanding that sometimes we won't understand how all the dots connect until the very end.
That I won't be until the last chapter of our book, where we will be able to see the story of our lives and understand, Oh, this led to that led to that led to this moment right here right now. And if we can, in those moments of mindfulness to step back to not be so entrenched in the story, And the arc of the narrative or this conflict, this tough point right now, maybe we can start to unravel some of the attachments and see how much wisdom we're gaining along the journey.
How much insight. We get to have and how that life is an upward moving spiral. So we may continually come back to certain experiences again and again, in familiar ways, but because it's upward moving, we're bringing an elevated consciousness to it each and every time. And we continue to refine our own journeys toward that enlightenment.
I'm also realizing now that it's such a core value of mine to help people understand that hurt people, hurt people. And when we help ourselves heal and when we help others heal, we truly do heal the world. I've been at the receiving end of so much of that hurt. And if you've listened to my Monday essays thus far, then you'll know.
You'll hear a glimpse of the things that I've gone through and you'll hear what it's like to be on the receiving end of this truth that hurt people, hurt people. It's not easy to take this route of learning and then applying it into your daily life of raising kids who will become great adults who can learn to speak up for themselves and challenge authority and determine what's right for themselves.
Because it means that they're doing that with you as a practice. If you are a safe space as an adult, they will practice with you. They will, as I've heard before that kids were like tiny little Buddhas, they just know every button to press to get you to grow and find that wisdom. And I'm very, very close with my neighbors and because their kids are 16 and 19, that they always try to raise people who would become healthy adults, which doesn't actually mean that it's very easy when they're kids, it is easy to be authoritative or authoritarian.
It's not easy to encourage the development of that skill. And it's something that I'm experiencing right now with my daughter. Who's six years old and starting to push back and really tell me no she's finding that autonomy. She's finding that self-will and that self-direction, which I think are wonderful qualities too.
Have as she grows into an adult, but it means that in the moment I've really got to catch myself and I have to take a deep breath and I have to remember I'm the adult in the situation. I have to make sure that I'm responding rather than reacting to the situation. Let yourself be that safe space for your kids.
Let them get their feedback from you. The editor and publisher of mothering magazine. Peggy O'Mara says the way we talk to children becomes their inner voice at 42, I'm still working on rewriting. Many of the stories, my parents and the adults in my childhood shared with me. And that's why I believe that the stories we tell ourselves become our truth.
The stories we share with others becomes our lived experiences and reality. And then the stories we tell about our work becomes our brand. So I hope that you will tell better stories, tell the ones from your heart and make your story beautiful today. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
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