How My "Strict" Asian Parents Made My Adult Life More Difficult

I’m not here to shit-talk my parents. We are actually pretty close now.

But yes, I did grow up without unconditional love and I was made to feel not good enough ALL THE TIME as a kid.

I’m sure this experience is very common among us Asian guys. You know how it goes.

I was always being compared to other kids, being threatened with abandonment constantly, and always made to feel like I needed to get good grades to win my parents’ love and acceptance.

The way I was brought up gave me unhealthy perfectionism, I had low self-esteem and I struggled with true self-love.

I acted without self-confidence, I didn’t truly believe I deserved the things I wanted out of life, and I never had the balls to stand up for myself.

Of course, this made dating and relationships very difficult for me as well.

Even to this day, I’m still working on cleaning up the burdens I carry with me since my childhood.

But for the most part, I can honestly look into the mirror and feel so much love, compassion, and respect for the person looking back at me.

But this took me at least 10 years of self-development to get here.

And I’m not saying all this to be a self-hating Asian person, I just know a lot of Asian people grew up in an environment like this.

The most difficult photoshoot clients I get are often East Asian and brown dudes. They are often the tensest and most self-conscious people I work with.

I don’t say that as a judgment, and I’m almost certain all that shit is rooted in their upbringings, too.

But we don’t have to let our parents' mistakes get in the way of us living a happy and fulfilling life.

And I used to be so angry at my parents for messing me up.

But as I got older I realized they were just repeating the generational trauma and they did have good intentions.

You need to understand this, and maybe even do your own research on this topic.

We humans all have a conscious and subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is programable. And as kids, we were naive, trusting, and vulnerable to external programming.

If you grew up with parents who always made you feel not good enough, guess what ideas and beliefs were being imprinted into your subconscious mind?

And your quality of the life is directly related to your subconscious beliefs about yourself.

If you deep down don’t believe that you are worthy,

You will always act from that place.

This is not your fault, but unless you do something about it, you will get in your own way in everything you do.

If you don’t actually believe that you can be successful at something (you may think otherwise on a conscious mind level), you will subconsciously act in a way to manifest that reality to confirm your own belief.

You will self-sabotage your own success and progress.

If you believe that you are not good enough.

You will see the world in that way and distort your own perception so you can gather more evidence to prove to yourself why you are not good enough

Even if you achieve some external success, you will still not feel good about yourself.

Then you are just perpetually chasing the next achievement, next milestone, next validation to finally feel whole and complete.

That day will never come because it’s not how it works.

The thing you may not realize is, you are already good enough!

Being good enough and worthy is already the DEFAULT mode.

Being good enough and happy is not conditional, it’s your own choice.

You don’t need to have a fancy job, a cute girlfriend, or other people's validation to feel enough and whole.

You don’t need to become someone you think you should be to be liked and accepted. Your authentic self is already perfect.

You can love yourself even if you have “undesirable” qualities.

NO ONE is perfect. Perfection is just a myth, it doesn’t exist in the real, imperfect world.

You can love yourself just as you are, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Love yourself as the whole package.

You don’t need to reject the bad parts of yourself. They are also part of you and those “bad” parts need acceptance, compassion, and love too.

If you love yourself truly, then you will naturally want to do things that are good for you.

You don’t need to bully yourself into working hard. It’s not sustainable and only leads to burnout.

And as long as you tried your best, even if your best effort was 20% perfect. Then it’s good enough.

Maybe next time you will be 25% perfect, then 30%, 35%, just keep trying.

You don’t need to compare yourself to others. I struggled with this for so long.

You only need to out-compete your old self.

I made a lot of progress with self-acceptance and self-love when I started doing CBT therapy. My old mentor helped me a ton with this as well.

But I don’t think it can happen overnight for you.

And I’m going to think about how to teach this better in the near future and help more people like me. But I’m just a guy and I’m still figuring this shit out myself.

I just want to plant the seed in your mind today.

A better and more peaceful way of living with yourself is possible. You just need to be open-minded enough to take a leap of faith.