Ep 56: The Ripple Effect with Wei Wang

Today I'm chatting with Wei Wang, who shares her experiences in my group coaching program, The Bloom Room. She's been such an inspiration to me and the group, and I wanted to have her on the show to share the inspiring work she's done, as well as her insights, and how she approaches everything she does with authenticity, generosity, and a desire to make the world a better place.

One of the big goals we worked on together was Wei's desire to make an impact, and she knew that in order to do that she needed to heal herself first, so she could become an example of that healing, self-possession and confidence that she truly wants other women to have. She wants to be a leader who faced the obstacles, made her way through, and continued to practice as a woman in the legal field.

Grab those earbuds, and have a listen to our insightful convo.

What you'll learn in this episode:

How Wei's story illustrates the power and value of group coaching
Why the true meaning of authenticity is transparency
The tool that Wei calls her "skeleton" to work through any thought
How through coaching, Wei learned to see obstacles as opportunities for growth

Mentioned in this episode:

Ep 18: The Tool That Changed Everything

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Marie: Well, hello everybody and welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where I have a very special person on today. One of my dear, dear clients that I just cherish so much is on the podcast today.

She and I have been working together for a while through some work I've done in an organization and then also she came into The Bloom Room to be a part of that group coaching program and she is just so inspiring to me and the work that she's done, as well as the insights that she has, the authenticity through which she approaches everything, the generosity of her observations and peer coaching and just her general beautiful brain and desires to make the world a better place are all things that are just really inspiring to me, and I have to say that the reason she's on right now I kind of always thought that I'd have her on eventually because of how inspiring she is as a human being, but Wei was in a coaching session with me in The Bloom Room and everything she said was so wonderful in this session that I kept thinking man, I wish I was recording this for the podcast right now.

And so I reached out to Wei and asked her would you actually be on the podcast with me? And she accepted, so I will let you introduce yourself, Wei.

Wei: Wow, that is the most beautiful introduction I have ever received. Marie, thank you very much. I am really excited to be here. I have been working as a commercial attorney for over 10 years now and you and I started working together I want to say about a year ago. Around this time and I just really appreciated your thought process and the way that I can come to you with a set of circumstances, and we would break it apart, and you give me these very tactical steps to reframe the situation and improve how I approach similar challenges going forward. So I love being in your circle and in your orbit and I have been enjoying myself in your Bloom Room in the past few months. So I'm really stoked to be here. Just love the work you do, real admiration.

Marie: I love it. Well, let's start by telling everyone a little bit about and y'all you know one of the things I was thinking, and I was just actually telling Wei about before recording this episode, is that you know a lot of the concepts that I have broken up, sort of foundational concepts that I've broken up into different episodes on the podcast. Wei is a living example of them in action right now, and so I thought that might be really interesting for y'all to hear, not just the inspiration of her in the world and her ideas and the work she's doing, but also this real, tangible example of what this looks like when you're turning an idea into a real thing and actually implementing some of the practices and tools that we talk about on the podcast. So we're going to start by hearing Wei.

I would love for you to share, if you're comfortable sharing, your purpose that you've articulated for yourself in the world and your life and this is something that we all do in the Bloom Room is, even if we're just trying it on for four months while everybody's in the room. It doesn't have to be high stakes, it doesn't have to be your forever purpose, but trying on what would I be proud of at the end of my life? What would I be proud of aiming my life and the days of my existence towards, if I were to put it in a sentence or two? So let's hear yours, Wei.

Wei: Yeah, and for The Bloom Room itself, I just picked something that was very pertinent to what I'm working on in my personal life. That also affects my professional performance, so my purpose is to heal myself in order to inspire others to become the best versions of themselves. Kind of a big topic and not going to lie, but I do believe that all of us are dealing with wounds and traumas of childhood and preconditioning, social conditioning, and there is healing there so that we can take it apart, look through the closet, so to speak, clean out the skeletons and approach life from a very authentic source. And I want to be able to do that in my personal life, but also in my professional life, so that others can see me doing it and say, hey, she's doing it, she's doing great. I'd love to be able to do my own version of that.

Marie: I love that so much. And you know, one thing that's sort of intrinsic to what you said is the gift of self-work to the world. So I think sometimes we accidentally or we perceive working on ourselves and investing in our own growth and evolution as a selfish act, and I see it as quite the opposite. The more we heal ourselves because, however we're hard on ourselves or hard on other people, however we are judgmental about ourselves, we project that outwards. So I love that intrinsic in your purposes. Healing myself allows me to become an example of that healing and that wellness and that sort of self-possession and confidence that you want other women to have. I love that.

So we articulated this purpose into an actual goal to work on and I'm going to read that. The goal was to have identified three to five obstacles that you face as a woman in the legal field, and your goal was to heal yourself so that you could help others see an example of a leader that faced the obstacles, made her way through, and continued to practice as a woman in the legal field. I remember you saying that and just feeling like, ah, that is so awesome, just loving that so much. So maybe you can share a little bit with everybody. Why? Why you wanted to set that as your goal and to pursue it and achieve it.

Wei: Yeah, I mean, I think it. You know the goal combines a lot of things that are really important to me.

I am very driven by self-improvement and leading and working from a place of authenticity, but often I feel like in the legal field, especially as a minority I am both a female and a racial minority that I don't often bring my full self to my work. I feel like I have to hide behind what is expected of me in a certain circumstance, or I find myself holding myself back in certain circumstances because of my own self-critical narrative and it's starting to get into the way of me becoming who I feel like is my full potential, you know, as a leader and as a professional. So, yeah, to me it was super important to get this right and get this right foundationally so that when I do lead a team of multiple people one day, I'm not coming from a place of fear or anxiety or dealing with my own insecurities that I then project to other people who are affected by that and then lead their careers with this shadow so beautiful, and you know what's so interesting about what you just said.

Marie: I know when we were first talking about it, you were talking about this word, authenticity, and I wonder what you think about the difference between real authenticity and sort of what is the difference between that word and how you define it and seeing yourself criticism, to use your words in a moment and managing that right, because we could interpret authenticity as, like everyone, I'm feeling really hard on myself right now and I'm feeling like I shouldn't be speaking out loud, right, but there's a difference between saying exactly all the things that are coming up in your subconscious mind and all the self-doubt, right, like what's the different? How would you mean by authenticity? And maybe you can kind of we tease that out a little bit.

Wei: Great, great question. I differentiate my version of authenticity from what you just mentioned, which is transparency. To me, yeah, can be transparent and not authentic, or you can be not authentic but not 100% transparent. To me there is a fine line there and for me, authenticity is kind of who I am on the outside is a true reflection of who I am factually on the inside. So if I am a kind person on the inside, then my acts are kind, which is also to be differentiated from being nice.

Right, sometimes you can be fine but not nice, yes. So I think in our society we often conflate the two and we say, well, if you're a nice person, you know, then you're kind, but if being nice is, I don't know, I think that's kind of an enabler to somebody who has a sugar addiction, let's say around the holidays. I don't know if that's necessarily kindness, so for me it's the same. It's like being authentic is being true to what your principles and your pillars are and acting from those sources of truth. But you don't always have to be super transparent about how you're feeling that day.

Marie: Yeah, yeah, so beautiful. I love that. And another example of that like the sugar example is like being nice is also people-pleasing, which is very confusing because you're saying what you think somebody needs to hear in order to manipulate their emotions to be happy instead of just maybe kindness, is directly speaking with kindness and compassion about what's real for you.

I love that differentiation between that outside action being resonant and aligned and in sync with your pillars and your purpose and for everybody listening, by pillars were meaning something that you might be more used to hearing called values.

We call them pillars because we're speaking of those set of three to five real strong values that you're, you're choosing to hold up all of your decisions that you make in life. And we call them our pillars because they're strong and they hold up our decision making, and they support our purpose in life. So I love the idea that your authentic behavior is really just a resonance in your actions and those pillars and purpose. But there might be a lot of layers of the onion some people call it right that are in between that you don't need to talk about or express. That's not true authenticity. I love how you define that as full transparency, which isn't always appropriate or necessary. What do you think was in the way like? Why don't you already have this goal that you're setting? What was in the way before? What has been in the way?

Wei: I was in my own way. In a lot of ways. I had imposter syndrome. I suffered from perfectionism people-pleasing, as you just mentioned, and I didn't believe in a lot of what I wanted to be was already a part of my competency. I just thought, you know, if I'm in a room full of really highly skilled, high credentialed men, that there is no way I'm also as good as them, which is a really limiting belief. That, I think, is more of a reflection of my own fault and my own thinking, and I have recently just started to peel back the onion layers and really trying to figure out. You know, why do I believe this like? Is this even a real belief of mine? It's an authentic to what I am really on the inside. Or is this a cape or a mask that my parents and society has put around me so that I can succeed? So, and so I can succeed right.

Marie: In The Bloom Room we always say we notice a belief of ours and then we say says, who taught me that? I love that and for y'all listening also, Wei is such a badass, she is like such a leader. So I just want to call out what she's saying. She also is an incredible athlete and very courageous in her adventure, her choices of adventure on the world. So just normalizing that she just said she has imposter syndrome and people you know, sometimes we look at the most successful, amazing people out there and we think that they must feel confident all the time, and it's just not true. We've all got these doubts. What is it going to mean for you in your life way, if you are able to achieve this goal?

Wei: While this dream comes true, my grandmother will be dancing in her grave. I think, it will be a very big feat, because it goes against so many things, I was taught growing up… Don't take up space, don't speak up too loud, or don't speak if you don't have the right answer. Don't do it if you're not ready. I mean all these things that I think now we're, as a society, normalizing to not be true, which is a great direction for all of us to be leaning towards.

But I didn't grow up like that, and so for me to succeed in this goal really is to set the stage for the next generation. Not only is it helpful for me to be able to lead from a place where I feel embodied and, you know, confident and not getting in my own way. This race, I feel like it's not a marathon, it's a relay, and so I feel like I have the baton right now and I have the power to run this to the next stage so that, you know, hopefully future women in the legal field, or even any field, start a little bit closer to where I ended than maybe from the very beginning where I started, and that's really kind of the goal that is driving me to do this. It's beyond just a selfish goal to be better, but hopefully you know there are movements out there that have really gotten speed and gotten a lot of movement in the past few years, even though the problem has persisted for decades or even centuries.

The Women's movement, the Me Too movement. I mean it took a few courageous women at the right time, with the right, you know, outlet to really start the fire. So I'm really here to light a match.

Marie: And I also love this idea right like everything starts with one person, as we've talked about, and you never know if you're good work in just doing one positive thing in the world, if it's going to just impact you and your career or your life or your people or whatever, or confidence and positive momentum and wellness, it can all be contagious, right?

It can all be a domino effect, and I love how you've described your grandma like dancing in her grave because she's so proud of what you've accomplished and also this baton passed to people after you're gone, and so we know that we have this band of influence that you are living this life, making this choice to be overcome the things that are hard for you do that work and you know that it's impacting almost in both directions right to some degree. How do you feel when you think about having achieved it? Like just really, in whatever timeline that is, maybe it's like a couple months from now, or maybe it's a couple years from now, but just really feeling like you have become an example of overcoming the obstacles that you see women face in the legal, and how does it feel.

Wei: I have this visual of me being able to stretch all of my limbs and just relax and take up space. I think that that's the first image that came to my head. I have this very Zen and self-possessed kind of foundational stability and this generosity of being able to give this power to other people. That's how I feel. It's just very much a warm light kind of nurturing, stable feeling.

Marie: I love that. Oh, I love how tangible that feels. So when you think about that sort of like taking up space in that way, that warmth, that light, that being able to just fully be you, how are you already doing that right now?

Wei: So, in a way, I would say a daily practice is, you know, I meditate in the morning. I am actively working in the Bloom Room on a lot of activities and exercises that help ground how I think about the day and how I go about my day, and I think that's what I do when I run up against challenges. So, yeah, I think it's taking a little bit of work, for sure, but over time I am feeling that ability to be able to look at something that would normally cause me stress or even distress or irritation, and take a step back and just pause, and that, in and of itself, kind of gives me that grounding, that kind of foundation I'm looking for, and then I can choose how I react to the situation. And that is the, the lightness, the confidence that I'm trying to exude more of and more of my, my daily occurrences.

Marie: I've never sort of tried to articulate this before, but it's really coming up for me as you say that you talk about the pause, which we talked about in our this week right in the in the Bloom Room together with the whole group, and we talked about how that is the most simple concept to pause our subconscious reaction to things and bring in our conscious mind and recognize the moments when we're about to react out of pain or shame or old programming or whatever, and pause.

So that could be 101, the simplest concept to understand the pause right. And also, we have all these tools and resources that we learn over time and the end goal of all of them is really the pause. So you can go so advanced in the work and you're still going for that 101 moment where it's really all about more conscious behavior, not letting your lizard brain, your subconscious thinking, just drive all your feelings and thoughts and actions and create the results in your life, but really bring the light of consciousness to the small moments and get better and better and better at it.

Wei: Beautiful.

Marie: What do you think will be different for you then? The life experience you're having right now, when you're farther along, when you've achieved this goal. So we just kind of talked about what might be the same and how are you already living it. What'll be different for you?

Wei: I would imagine that I would have you know, volunteer more and put myself out there more for opportunities that currently I would stand in my own way and say, no, you're not ready, don't do it, don't be visible, don't, don't take up space, you are not perfect, they're going to judge you. I mean, that's kind of the inner dialogue that happens with me sometimes right now that I'm hoping to eliminate when this is all, hopefully further along.

Marie: I think that is such a resonant expression for a lot of us; don't take up space. Don't take up space, don't say it, don't put yourself out there. Do you have any advice, given the work that you've done over the past year, for anybody else that is experiencing that in themselves?

Wei: The biggest lesson I learned from you, Marie, is acknowledging that voice is coming from a place of childhood, wherever it was protecting us at some point, and I think ignoring it or saying that voice is horrible, doesn't really do it the service that it deserves, which is that it was there to protect us, and it served a purpose. I am learning to recognize that voice and use the visual of dialing that volume on that voice down just a little bit. It's still there, but I acknowledge it and I just dial it very, very much low volume so that I can focus on a newer, brighter, more encouraging voice, which is, what do you got to lose? What is the worst that could happen?

Marie: Yeah, so good, so good, so good. I always talk about how oftentimes the worst that could happen is some version of what's happening right now.

What I love about that radio dial is it's not just like you said, it's acknowledging that. It's not that the voice shouldn't be there. It's there for a reason. It's there to support us in some way and we don't have to let it steer the ship. We could just turn down the volume on that dial like a radio station. It can still be there. It's a part of us, but we can turn it down. We don't have to listen to it on blast.

How do you envision maybe, what's going to have to change as you continue this work? You've been in the middle of sort of moving this goal forward and we've talked a little bit about how you need to think and feel in order to pull this off. Do you have any reflections on that right now, or what's worked for you and how you need to think and feel to get a step closer towards this each week?

Wei: I think I'm a very tactical person, so for me I like to write things down in a step one, step two, step three. So that's worked out great in the Bloom Room, because your book that guides me through is exactly breaking out like that. I love using the thought model, the model that you have. I think you talk about it in episode 18. It has been a savior for me. I use that as if you would imagine a skeleton of a person. The model is my skeleton and then as we work through the different parts of the model, those are the other tools that you bring in, like future tripping, failure goals. You know talking about your pillars and your emotional like whys and I think those are you know the tools become the flesh that then stick to the bones of the skeleton. So over time that's how I map my progress and success. I really try to use that model to almost anticipate kind of what could go wrong in my head, right like, and then future trip myself out of it.

Marie: Yeah, so good, so good. I love I didn't even expect you to say that I love that you're using it to anticipate, because the model that you're describing you can use to reflect on something that went down a long time ago, something that's happening right now, something you anticipate. You can use it to plan your sort of like conscious action, how you want to show up to a situation or just to understand what's going on inside yourself right now.

And then the last one we also talked about how you can start to even see other people's models, a little bit like oh, I see, you're not a terrible person, your brain's just doing some wacky stuff right here and I can kind of almost see what it's doing. That's creating the projection that you're doing right now. The model has been really helpful to me in bringing more compassion inside me to when other people seem to be acting in a way that to me, feels unreasonable or something.

Wei: Yeah, I love the model.

Marie: Okay, another thing that is a concept I talk about and that you literally have been doing with this goal is this whole obstacles and strategies piece right that when we have a goal that is important to us, we know things are going to get in the way. You've talked a couple times about the thought but I don't know how right as an obstacle that might come up and get in the way, and we work a lot on them the Bloom Room around reframing that as human beings, we've been taught that we have to know how before we do something and really it's quite the opposite in the creative process you need a plan and you can't really know how until you try something.

So you anticipated some other obstacles that might get in your way as you're moving towards this goal, and the whole concept is if we can anticipate what those are in advance and create a strategy for them. We're ready for them when they get here. We're ready for those obstacles. We already have a plan, we're not blindsided by them, and the strategies themselves are sort of a roadmap to get to where we want to go.

I don't know about if there's anything you want to say about what it's like to use that tool in general, or just to talk about what you saw as the obstacles and what you see as the obstacles that might get in your way.

Wei: Yeah, I did map out some obstacles. I will talk about the ones that are outside of myself, because I think we spent some time talking about the internal getting in your own way already. But yeah, external things happen. There's the whole framework of, I would say, the legal system, and the legal industry right now is still pretty male-dominated. It's changing a little bit, but it's not very much. I wouldn't even say 50-50. I would say maybe 70, 30, maybe 60-40, depending on where you work. I've been very lucky in that I work in-house, but even so there are going to be obstacles that are going to be external to me. So I've identified a few.

That something happens it seems unfair, it's out of my control. I tried my best and I still didn't make it. How do I face that? A lot of it is kind of going back to my why. It's like why am I here?

The thing that has gotten me through so many times of hardship in my career just prior to this is anchoring on why am I here, and it's because I'm here to learn, I'm here to improve. So even when there are obstacles that come my way, kind of facing the obstacles not as a place of oh, this is really irritating me and I am super angry and jaded with this industry. To hell with it. I'm leaving and going to live on the beach, which also sounds not so bad right now, but I will say I am looking at it more from a place of, this is an opportunity for me to learn something either about myself, about other people, about working with other people and if I come through this then I will be better for it and it's contributing to the goal, ultimately, of being that leader that I want to be, the leader that has gone through the hardship to understand what the struggles are, to get to where they end up one day.

Marie: So good. I love how that normalizes that there will be struggles and that is you not failing or being weak or not leading. It is you becoming the leader that you see that future tripping right there. This is the part where I learn the thing I have to learn in order to get to who she is my future self. And I also love, and what you just said, that that is like a soulful problem and a tactical problem all in one, and it's like what you might experience in the day to day and also that self-doubt that might permeate all kinds of things. And just what a simple solution to have your why? Your reason for why it matters, right in front of you all the time. It could be a sentence what is my reason for? I know the hard times are going to come and all I need to do is remind myself why is it worth it.

Are there other obstacles you want to share?

Wei: I think the model that you have provided to guide us through thinking about obstacles is really helpful. It's like so when things don't go your way, you're not surprised, you're prepared, because sometimes the surprise, the initial emotional reaction, kind of takes us off track and then it's hard to come back. So I think just the grounding aspect of the model and the goal and obstacles and future tripping, all that together has been really helpful for me, because I don't know that there's going to be a way for me to list every obstacle that will come into the way of me becoming the leader that I want to become. But I do feel confident and maybe that's all I need. It's that just knowing that whatever does come is going to be part of my iterative process to get closer to where I want to go, because I have the right tools.

Marie: So beautiful. Confidence maybe comes from having done something before, but self-confidence, or the thing that gets us through pursuing new things that we haven't done before, is really based in what you described trusting yourself to be able to handle the emotions, process the emotions and manage your thoughts, to be able to handle it, to know you have the tools, know you're ready. And someone else in the Bloom Room this week we had this beautiful discussion about how we don't have to be having an easy time to be okay, to know we're on the right track.

The human experience has all kinds of ups and downs, good feelings, bad feelings. Within the very hardest moment, we can know that is us being okay, we're in the journey, we're in the ups and downs. Even on the downs, we're okay. We're in the work, we're doing the work, we're becoming who we are becoming so good. What else? Anything else that you want to call out as like tools that are really helpful or things that are really helpful? I know you've mentioned a few, so you may have kind of already hit on them.

Wei: I think one big thing that I am learning as I go along the process is and I listed this as one of my obstacles is the lack of patience. Why am I still in the work? Why is it still so hard? When am I going to get there? That I'm learning is part of the fun. It really is just being patient and having fun with it, being playful with the process. I think it's easy to get mired into it.

Self-work is so hard because I have to dig into all these scars, and I don't want to do it anymore. I'm reminding myself that there's fun in this and it's a work in progress. It's not going to happen overnight, but over time I am starting to see changes and that is the snowball effect on itself. The positivity kind of invites more positivity and then you put yourself out there more, you get more recognition. I mean it's fantastic. So I really appreciate all the work that you do, Marie. It's been really helpful for me.

Marie: So glad. I love that idea that it's almost like any kind of physical practice, that it's like you never stop exercising your body. So the self-work. It's like you never arrive. You're always going to be a human with a brain, right? Buddhists and some others believe something differently, but let's just say like, in the day to day of life, you're going to have a human brain that does all kinds of wonky stuff. It's just that you get better and better at not freaking out when it does it’s a shorter and shorter time period to get yourself back on track. It's just like exercise. It gets easier and easier to know exactly what to do to keep yourself in the state that's highly functional and fit. I love it so good.

Wei, I'm so glad you were on today. I just so appreciate you. As I've said, it's such an honor to support you and hold space for you. You are such an incredible human being and woman and leader. It's such an honor to have you on the podcast too. Is there anything else that you want folks to know before we wrap up?

Wei: I'm honored to be here. I am so glad that I got to be on your show, and I would highly recommend the Bloom Room for anybody who is even a little bit curious. I didn't know much about it, and I am learning so much from it, so it's just great work that you're doing here.

Marie: Thank you. You too, my friend, and we will all be cheering you on. All these people who you'll never meet, who are going to listen to this episode, will be in your corner cheering you on as part of your Bloom Team and just thank you. Thank you for being a part of the solution in the world. Your vision, just your tenacity in envisioning this change in the legal system and in women's comfort to self-express and be big and take up space is so impactful and you're taking action on it every day and it matters. It matters. Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right everybody that's what we've got for you today and I will see you next week.

Thanks for hanging out with me, friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.

Bloom Your Mind

Ep 56: The Ripple Effect with Wei Wang

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