🔤 I flew across the world to answer ONE question... (Pt. 4)
And I figured out Imposter Syndrome too
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Today, I share with you part 4 of a reflection series I wrote on leadership from a pro-bono consulting engagement with the Cambodian Children’s Fund that I did years ago.
Read the rest here:
The Bigger Picture
During the trip I had a morning of free time and Nicky graciously offered a tour of the Factory in Phnom Penh, an artists collective community with the mission of cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurs, makers, and creative professionals.
An artist space in one of the warehouses of the Factory
As we toured the Factory, I learned that the genocide decimated the artist population in Cambodia.
I then had much better context for why CCF was pushing their staff to train up on Adobe products: to provide their youth with another modality and medium for artistic expression while also building marketable skills for the workforce.
I took a step back.
I saw something I hadn’t seen before.
The Adobe/Workday/CCF engagement was one small stepping stone in a much bigger movement towards reviving the arts in Cambodia.
I was absolutely floored.
Here I was, chugging along, hosting my workshops on organizational effectiveness towards the KPI of minimizing the IT to education staff ratio.
Now I realized that my efforts contributed to a larger movement that spans a nation.
I may not live to see how it all pans out, but with this knowledge I understood the bigger picture.
With this knowledge, I felt more connected to the people I was serving and was able to serve them better.
I saw and empathized with the generational suppression of artistic expression, and its impacts throughout the community.
By being on the ground in Cambodia, I was able to truly understand the extent of the devastation these communities face as a result of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide.
Make It Count
At this point, we had a few days with the CCF IT staff, and I wanted to make them count.
I thought to myself, I haven’t done enough.
To put things in perspective, we had already done what we had set out to do with our workshops. We had met our goals.
And I was still not satisfied.
I worked like a fiend until the very end - trying to tackle every big organizational problem they had, hoping that sheer tenacity would be enough.
I looked at their backlog of issues that we discovered while onsite, and I got to work.
I was trying to fill those aforementioned childhood gaps by throwing myself into the work, trying to serve this community as best I can before I left.
Everyday throughout the trip, the CCF staff members told me how much great work I was doing but I always brushed it off.
They’re being polite - I told myself.
I looked at my accomplishments as checkboxes with no human connection.
Whenever I reached a goal I had in working with CCF, I moved the goalpost for myself a bit further, rinsed, and repeated, with no time to smell the roses, so to speak.
I take the same approach to my work back home: I am generally unsatisfied with the status quo, and strive to be greater simply because good is not enough.
To me, giving a nod to my own accomplishments is time taken away from the path to being better - and why would I do that?
Before this experience in Cambodia, I never thought I had a perfectionist problem.
As I write down how I felt during this trip and what I’ve learned, I laugh at that thought.
I only realized I had a problem when, on the last day of our engagement with CCF, they offered me a job.
They told me, in their own words, that I provided strategic thinking that they hadn’t asked for but desperately needed.
They asked me to stay.
I was already mentally brushing off their compliments as politeness, when it was clarified further: they only asked me to stay, among my cohort.
Now that made me take a step back, and realize that I had done something of value.
And that I had a problem.
My mind was blown. I couldn’t believe it.
I wasn’t letting myself see my perfectionist issue, until it got to this level of differentiation.
I wasn’t letting myself be happy or proud of the work I was doing.
The rest of that day, I was in a haze.
I kept asking myself why, why do I do this to myself?
I realized that I had a deep rooted problem with comparison, stemming from childhood.
While I consciously know that comparing yourself is bad - I can’t help it.
It’s embedded in the core of my being: growing up in an Asian family, you are constantly compared to people who have done “more”.
What you do is never good enough.
Ever.
If you got an A+, well who cares because your mom’s sister’s brother in law’s nephew got into Stanford.
Big whoop that you got that A+.
My mind was racing, trying to reconcile all of these feelings in an internal conflict: sadness from leaving this community I grew to admire and love, bottled up pride and validation in the work I did, confusion in who I was and where my drive comes from, and last of all - a decades repressed anger.
Anger that my parents never let me feel good enough for them.
Anger that I never felt like I belonged.
Anger that fueled itself, in realizing that their actions and my subsequent repressed emotions have evolved into a huge mental barrier for myself.
This was the root of my confidence and imposter syndrome issues.
That night, I was vulnerable.
I needed to hear others’ perspectives, and talked to a few of my teammates about the problem.
I heard many points of view, and I thank my teammates for allowing me to see things a different way.
I got back to my room.
I took a cold shower.
While standing under the water, I “talked” to my parents, and put myself in their shoes to answer the questions I had.
I really tried to empathize with their position to better understand if this anger I left unacknowledged was fair.
I asked my parents why they compared me:
Me: “Why did you compare me to other kids?”
Parents: “That’s what we know and how we were raised. Our parents compared us to other kids. That’s a part of the culture we grew up in, before we immigrated over due to the Vietnam War.”
Me: “Was I not good enough?”
Parents: “That didn’t cross our mind that you weren’t good enough - only that you could be better. We wanted you to do well. We also see you as an extension of our own self worth. You are a reflection of us. We receive validation by comparing your accomplishments to those of our friends’ kids’.
We wanted you to be tough enough to survive,”
Me: “Did you not care about how I felt?”
Parents: “We didn’t think to ask. How did you feel?”
Me: “I felt angry. I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like no matter what I did, I would never be enough for you.”
Parents: “We didn’t know you felt that way, and we didn’t know how to cope with our own feelings. We’re sorry, Robert.”
After “conversing” with my parents, I really took a deep look at my repressed anger.
This anger had manifested into resentment that was blocking me from feeling confident and happy with my work.
Most importantly, this resentment was blocking me from truly connecting with my parents.
Before this trip, I had been struggling to get past some family issues, and this was at the heart of it all.
I let go of my anger, because my parents never had any bad intentions - they were just a product of the environment and culture they grew up in.
Their Eastern perspectives clashed with the Western ones I experienced growing up in America.
They were trying their best to do right by their kids with what they had.
We were wearing different lenses - that was all.
Looking back, when I made the conscious choice to let go of those feelings, I also let go of my confidence and imposter syndrome issues.
Con thương Mẹ.
Con thương Bố.
Cảm ơn.
I love you mom.
I love you dad.
Thank you.
Tradeoffs
You would think that would be enough of a breakthrough for one trip. But there was more for me to learn.
Before the trip ended, we received a presentation from James McCabe - executive director of the Child Protection Unit (CPU).
It really brought everything into perspective. CPU is under the CCF umbrella - their charter is to bring child abusers to justice and protect those who cannot protect themselves.
They tackle yet another problem that could take a child away from the education system.
James shared with us a story of a Cambodian father and his daughter…
Tune in next week to find out what happened next…
Thank you for reading!
This transformative experience (among others) directly drives my fire for Epistemic Me, to help others shed limiting beliefs with my passion in technology & AI. To do that, one must understand the self.
If you have feedback or anything to share around this story—please reach out!
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