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Hi Warriors, Welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, Ingrid.
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So far, I have shared a lot of domestic violence stories with accompanying statistics.
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You have also heard fellow Warriors describe how they are transforming their trauma to help others.
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Today, I'm bringing you something a little different, but equally informative and helpful.
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Sheena Yap Chan is an author and fellow podcaster who focuses on improving self-confidence and empowering others.
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Sheena Yap Chan is an author and fellow podcaster who focuses on improving self-confidence and empowering others.
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She has graciously joined me to impart some of that information.
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Here is Sheena Hi Sheena, Thank you so much for joining me today.
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Hey, ingrid, so happy to be here today, looking forward to our chat.
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I'm going to jump right into it.
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So your podcast is called the Tao of Self-Confidence and you have a book with the same beginning title and then it goes on to say a guide to moving beyond trauma and awakening the leader within.
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Could you just give a little bit of your background and what led you to feel the need to start your podcast and author a book?
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Yeah, thanks so much for asking that great question.
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It really started with my upbringing.
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You know, moving from the Philippines to Toronto when I was seven, first off it was a big culture shock, you know, because Toronto is a very multicultural city, which is one of the reasons why I love Toronto minus the winter multicultural city, which is one of the reasons why I love Toronto minus the winter.
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And you know, growing up in Toronto, I never saw anybody in the media that looked like me, so I was always ashamed of who.
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I was ashamed of my own culture.
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I wanted to have blonde hair and blue eyes to feel more accepted, and it wasn't until my 20s, when I dyed my hair back from blonde to my original hair color, where I finally embraced being Asian.
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And you know, for me, coloring my hair back from blonde to my original hair color, where I finally embraced being Asian and you know, for me, coloring my hair back to my original hair color was just more economical.
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So, you know, trying to retouch your roots is not cheap.
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Even back then and in 2015, I was dealing with confidence, with my own confidence issues, and I was trying to find resources that really catered to Asian women.
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But I couldn't find any, and, at the same time, I still wanted to create better representation, especially when Asian women has been seen as quiet, submissive, obedient.
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I wanted to dismantle that and so I started my podcast, the Tao of Self-Confidence, where I interview women about their journey to self-confidence, mostly Asian women.
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To date, I've interviewed over 800 women on this topic, and as much as I love podcasting, um, it's still very small platform compared to other media platforms and I really want to create more visibility.
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And so, um, I decided to tap into different media forum platforms and and books came along.
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You know, I co-created a book called Asian Women who Boss Up, which highlights the stories of 18 Asian women who were able to forge their own path, overcome obstacles and thrive, and to me, that was really important, because creating a book with 16 Asian women on the front cover was something that was rarely seen.
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And then that book led to my first book with my publisher I never thought I would get a traditional book deal, which was Wiley, and they approached me asking if I wanted to write a book about Asian women and international leadership, and I was like I don't even know if I'm that person, Like I don't know what leadership looks like.
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You know, like am I that person?
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And, of course, the imposter syndrome comes because we feel like we're not good enough, and if it wasn't for the support system I have, I wouldn't have said yes.
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So I said yes.
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I had no clue what I was going to write about.
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I didn't have a full manuscript, I had less than three months to write it and it came out in May of 2023.
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Yeah, never written a book, ever, a full-fledged book, just on my own.
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That's crazy.
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Yeah, it hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, you know.
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It hit other bestseller lists as well.
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And I have a new book coming out called Bridging the Confidence Gap how Empowered Women Changed the World, and this is a leadership book for women, especially with what's been going on in the world.
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One of the reasons why I wrote this book was because the World Economic Forum mentioned that it was going to take the earliest 2154 to achieve gender parity, but now they've actually delayed it four more years.
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It's now 2158 at the earliest, so it could be delayed even more and no one wants to wait more than five generations, right?
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So this is why I wrote the book.
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It's a guide, you know, a guide for women who want to take, want to be in leadership, and so we go through the many gaps we face.
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Some of the reasons why women feel less confident than men because, if you look at the confidence gap, men are generally more confident than women.
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It's not that they're any smarter not dissing the men listeners out there you're great, but as women, we're so capable, but it's how we perceive ourselves that really stops us from moving forward.
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And, of course, there's other factors as well.
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If you look at current events in the world I mean in 2025, we're still dealing with a lot of issues that affect women.
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And so how do we tackle all these?
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How do we bridge it together?
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And bridging means everybody, right, men, women can bridge this gap together, because there's been reports where, if there's more women in leadership, everybody benefits.
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Everyone benefits.
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So, of course, why wouldn't we have more women in leadership?
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Right, having the right kind of leadership to, you know, prosper, to live harmoniously, to create more positive changes in the world.
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So I'm super excited about that.
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It's coming out later this year, it's available for pre-order and I didn't even think I was going to write a second book.
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When the publisher asked me if I wanted to write another book, I was like I don't know, I don't know if I had another book in me.
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I mean, I just wrote the other one.
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I've literally written two books in two years for Wiley, which is like something I never thought I would tell anybody because I just didn't think it was.
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Not that I didn't think it was possible, but the chances of especially being an Asian woman in the traditional publishing industry is rare, right?
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If you look at the numbers, it's still 75% Caucasian, you know, in the industry, and that goes from writers to agents to the big wigs I mean.
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So I just, you know, for me it was like it wasn't what I didn't think it would be in my cards, because the chances were so slim.
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And that's why we created our first book, asian Women who Boss Up, because that was a self-published book and I had the you know the this book to utilize to build my brand and story.
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So that's a little bit about me.
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I also do talks and workshops for companies and organizations on leadership and confidence as well.
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Did you have aspirations to be an author?
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I just didn't think it was for me.
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I mean, I took ESL classes when I started school in Canada.
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I couldn't put sentences together when I spoke English and people would always say, like you didn't make any sense, like that doesn't make any sense.
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So I had to learn English to speak properly.
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And, of course, coming to the, to North America from Asia, you know, we've always been taught to work a nine to five job and work till you retire, which there's nothing wrong with that right.
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But there's so many other ways of living and work till you retire which there's nothing wrong with that right.
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But there's so many other ways of living your life and, you know, creating better opportunities.
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One of the reasons why my parents migrated from the Philippines to Canada was to have better opportunities for us.
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But, you know, better opportunities doesn't only mean a job.
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It can mean setting your own path, becoming an entrepreneur, becoming, you know, sky's the limit right, like you can really pick and choose what you wanted to do.
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And so for me, at that time, I just thought I'll just do what my parents have told me to do, which is go to school, get a job, never rock the boat.
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And I did that and I hated it, you know, because I just knew it wasn't for me.
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But at the same time I was scared to put myself out there because, being an Asian culture, you're afraid to embrace the unknown.
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Right, you're just told to fear it, not realizing so much.
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There's so much out there.
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Once you embrace unknown, there's just so many things that could just come to you.
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Right the blessings.
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So yeah, so I did not expect it wasn't in my cards.
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So obviously, with your background, you speak a lot about the Asian culture.
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You go into detail throughout your book and do you mind just sharing right now what kind of influence Asian cultures and belief have on, what kind of impact it has on especially women and self-confidence and self-worth?
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Yeah, for sure.
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I mean, in most Asian cultures, you know, the men have always been number one over women, right?
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If you're in a family and they had to choose between a son and a daughter to go to school back in the day, the son would go and the daughter would have to quit school and help the family out.
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It happened to my grandmother.
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I mean, the highest level she had was like grade six and she had to stop school and started taking care of her brothers, started taking care of her father.
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Um, you know, just, you know, going to the market and buying fruits, doing laundry, all at the like age of 12.
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Right, and to think about that nowadays is like it's like wild, right, but that's how it was back then.
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And then also just being treated as a number sometimes, right, you look at, like China back in the day, men can have multiple wives, they can have concubines, and one of the reasons why they did that was because there was more chances of them having sons to carry the family name.
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So they don't realize how much trauma that actually brings Asian women up, right, feeling that they're just no more than like a baby maker, or they're only good for a certain thing or their worth has just been brought down.
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Even in South Asia, you know, child marriages is still prevalent, widowhood is also still prevalent, even though it's not, it's not allowed.
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Um, you know, um also like acid throwing, like there's so many things that we still deal with.
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And even in Japan, there was a report that, like, if you look at the number, the percentage of like female CEOs in Japan, for, like big companies, it's like either 1% or less than it's like a very small number.
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Like big companies, it's like either 1% or less than it's like a very small number.
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Um, and that that was based on last year's last year's report.
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So we still go through a lot, unfortunately, um, there's still a lot, a lot of things that we have to work through.
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Uh, and trauma is something that we don't we we rarely talk about in Asian culture, and one of the reasons why I also wrote the book was because, um, there was a report in 2021.
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If you look look at the um, uh, the numbers of you know, women of color and high position CEO roles or high position, high corporate roles Asian women was 2.7%, while, like, um, latino women, black women, um, and so on, were about a little over 4%.
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All those numbers suck, but, like, we had one of the lowest, and so I figured, so I.
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So then I was like why do we have one of the lowest right?
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What do we need to do to bring those numbers up?
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And I also constantly get the question of how do you build confidence?
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How do you build confidence?
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How do I boost my confidence?
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And I can show you every single strategy under the sun, but if you don't work through the root cause as to why you're feeling that way, it's not going to matter, and so it's really important to talk about our traumas, to be aware of it, to learn to heal through it, so that we can move forward as our best self.
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Absolutely, and the Asian culture is typically a quiet culture, so that's not something that we normally do, right, and you discuss that a little bit in your book as well.
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Yeah, I mean mental health is something that is is a taboo in Asian culture, and I know it's not only Asian culture that's seen as a taboo, there's many other cultures that go through similar things as well.
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But I mean, you know, I've had, I have elders who tell me like mental health isn't real.
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You know, if you don't talk about it, it never happened.
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Um, and that's why so many of our elderly, especially the females, they'll never, they'll never share anything.
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They will never tell a soul about the traumas they've been through, because to them they've been taught if you don't talk about it, it never happened.
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But we know it happened because they're still feeling it.
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You know, if you like, you know, if you see like your elderly just cry out of nowhere, be triggered with something, that means they're still.
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You know that trauma is still there and that trauma can also get passed on to us.
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Right?
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Intergenerational trauma is really prevalent.
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That's another thing we don't talk about, and so it's really important to as much as we can ask them what happened and hopefully they will share what they've been through.
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I understand not everyone will I get it.
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My own grandma doesn't do it.
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You know, we know something traumatic has happened.
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She'll never tell a soul.
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But if you can get a little bit by little bit, it just, then it's just like, okay, how can I work through this, how can I heal from this?
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Um, and so we need to normalize mental health, saying that there's nothing wrong with it.
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You know, back then if you were to seek a therapist, you were called crazy or something was wrong with you.
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But that's just maintaining right.
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Just, it's kind of like working out right.
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You want to be fit, you work out every day.
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So if you want, you know, better mental health, you work on it every single day, right, Whether it's talking to a therapist, journaling, listening to podcasts like this, something that can help you with your mental wellbeing, because it's really important.
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Because when it comes to, uh, confidence, you know it's like 80% mindset and like 20% action.
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So, um, we have to work on our mindset every single day.
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And then I'm not saying you have to be like positive all the time, because that's just unattainable, but you have the tools and resources to help you pick yourself back up when times are down and you name a few exercises in your book that I thought were really great at giving somebody some insight into how they feel about themselves.
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One of my favorites is when you asked your best friend to name what some of her favorite things were about you or what her life would be like without you, and I think that one was so important because it's really easy to hear it from someone else than to look in the mirror and say, okay, all these really positive things about you.
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But when somebody else says it, then it's like, okay, hold on a second, so maybe these things are true.
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Yeah, that was my favorite exercises.
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I never expected my best friend to share all those things, especially when you constantly put yourself down and you become your worst enemy.
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Having those exercises is really important because this is coming from somebody else's eyes and they see the magic you possess, the capabilities, what you can accomplish, and all you need is just one person sometimes to tell you how amazing you are.
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And not that it's out of validation, it's just more like proof that you are capable of going out there and making things happen.
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And so I was really grateful that she said yes to doing it and then just sharing all that, and I remember reading it for the first time and I was like bawling my eyes out because I didn't expect the answers.
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I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't think she thought of this about me and you know that kind of gave me the confidence to to move forward regardless of the circumstances.
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So these little exercises make a huge, huge um difference, right, and you know I've done these exercises myself, like I wouldn't share it if I didn't do it.
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So, um, yeah, I do share some some practical um exercises that anyone can use in through that book through the Tao of Self-Confidence book.
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You talk about mindset shift and how and I think that can really apply to some of my listeners because they're kind of encompassing this whole array of abusive relationships.
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You know they're still either a victim in the relationship or they're out, and or they could have been out yesterday or 10 years ago.
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But there are so many things that they need to do to heal and I think mindset shift is really key to properly healing.
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Sure, I mean domestic violence is prevalent all over the world Um being in the Philippines, you know that it's also very prevalent here.
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There's still, you know, child trafficking, uh, mail order brides um prostitution.
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You know there's so many different things and um not being able to work through it can really hold them back or they make they feel like this is the best situation they can be in.
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Right, and I'm not an expert in in in this right it's through research, through writing my book, um, but you know I I've, I've seen, you know what women have gone through and sometimes they feel like they're this is all they can have, like this is the best they could do, so they're not going to go out there and do it, not realizing that there's so much more opportunities out there.
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There's someone out there who will love them for who they are and not be, you know, punched in the face or like thrown against the wall.
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Because that happens right Um more often than you realize, and sometimes it's it's it's it's wild, because sometimes you see certain people on social media who have this like picture perfect life and then, tweeters on the road, they tell me that you know they were abused by their husband um for for years and never mentioned anything.
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And it's just wild to see that, right, or to even hear that.
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And so sometimes what you see in social media isn't, you know, isn't the truth.
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You don't know what goes behind closed doors.
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And so it's really important to have support, to give women space, to help them, to help them realize what they're going through.
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It's not going to be overnight, that's for sure.
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Especially when you've been ingrained, you know this type of mindset for so long.
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It's kind of like, um, when someone's kidnapped, they go through I forget the term, but they're just, they're so comfortable with their captor that they don't even want to go out.
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Right, I forget the term, the term is like in the tip of my tongue Is it Stockholm syndrome?
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Yeah, stockholm syndrome.
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So they kind of go through that as well, right, because that's all they know, that's what they're comfortable with and they don't see there's another way out there.
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So, um, you know it's unfortunate that still happens, still today, and it's more.
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You know women deal with it more than men.
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Um, but it's important to bring these issues so that we can help them find, you know, the, the signs that, hey, this isn't right.
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Let's figure out how we can help you move forward and take it step by step and not take a big leap, because sometimes when you take as much as we want to take a big leap, sometimes that backfires because they're like whoa, whoa, whoa, this is too much.
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But if we go little bit by little bit, they can start seeing you know, oh yeah, you know this isn't right, oh, you're right Kind of just planting the seed a little bit.
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Every situation is different, of course, right, Um, there's, there's times where you just need to get that person out of there, or else it it's like life or death situation.
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So I mean it's it's really heartbreaking, especially being in the Philippines, just seeing that sometimes out in the open and you can't really do anything about it, it just really breaks my heart.
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I mean, at one point the age of consent in the Philippines was 12.
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12.
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I don't think that is so gross.
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Has the right to consent to that?
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There's still a child, right?
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And so they've raised the age limit.
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I think it's now, I think it's 16, but I mean it's still too young, I think.
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But I mean it's still too young, I think but at of a Filipina dating site on Facebook and he was like are you aware that this existed?
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And I said well, I know that there's different dating sites to farmers or I always think of the farmers one but to find like-minded individuals.
00:20:45.273 --> 00:20:59.459
But I think a lot of times you also mentioned that there's like a sexualization of Asian women and I think all of those, all of that put together, just precludes somebody to potentially end up in a dangerous relationship.
00:20:59.644 --> 00:21:02.352
Yeah, especially, especially like mail order bride sites.
00:21:02.352 --> 00:21:04.986
Those are very, very dangerous, right.
00:21:04.986 --> 00:21:23.306
Uh, in the book I mentioned how I I, you know, I saw a mail order bride site that was being um, published and and promoted on like mainstream media and I just was, I just couldn't believe that happened, right, and you know, it was wild because people were like, well, he paid, they paid for it, so it should be okay.
00:21:23.306 --> 00:21:35.990
It's like, no, it's not okay, because you don't know what these women go through, right, first of all, they're being bought, right, so then whoever bought them thinks it's prop, it's their property to do whatever they want.
00:21:35.990 --> 00:21:46.248
And so some of these women get pimped out Um, they, they're, they live in very bad conditions because they feel like they need to pay that person back for buying them.
00:21:46.248 --> 00:21:56.071
Um, they get, uh, you know, abused physically and verbally, like it's not a pretty, um, a pretty pretty situation.
00:21:56.132 --> 00:22:12.467
And in factbc almost greenlit a tv show about a comedian's life, about how her dad bought a mail-order bride, and I'm glad that they decided to cancel it because it would just, it would have been a slap in the face to the women who are dealing in that situation.
00:22:12.988 --> 00:22:27.031
I just remember watching a documentary about this woman who was a mail-order bride and she thought she was going to have a better life, um, but the person actually lived in a farm and they didn't really have enough money and he spent all his money buying this bride.
00:22:27.031 --> 00:22:34.914
So he had to make his bride um prostitute, you know, to his friends and stuff, to make that money.
00:22:34.914 --> 00:22:45.392
And then on top of that, to make that money and then on top of that, the person, the, the, the mother-in-law was also very mean to her, like abusive.
00:22:45.392 --> 00:22:51.878
So these situations are not fun and this is why, like you know, mail-order bride sites like need to be abolished because it it hurt.
00:22:51.878 --> 00:22:56.809
There's no like it hurts so many women like way too many women, and it's just unfortunate.
00:22:56.809 --> 00:23:06.390
And it's not just Asian women, like you know, there's in Romania and Europe, africa, like, they're everywhere right, and it's unfortunate it still happens today.
00:23:06.529 --> 00:23:08.615
And that kind of actually brings me to my next topic.
00:23:08.615 --> 00:23:10.689
So obviously your podcast is very successful.
00:23:10.689 --> 00:23:15.747
It's ranked in the top 0.5% of most popular shows globally.
00:23:15.747 --> 00:23:29.185
You mentioned your book was a Wall Street and Publishers Weekly bestseller and named in the top 20 for best self-confidence books of all times by book authority.
00:23:29.185 --> 00:23:39.134
So it has a predominantly Asian theme running through it, but I think it is quite relatable to the general public as well.
00:23:39.153 --> 00:23:51.575
Like you were mentioning that some of these things are in other countries, yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes, even though we talk about our own cultures, it doesn't mean not everybody can relate to it, Right, one you can always relate to something.
00:23:51.575 --> 00:24:05.035
And if you look at like K dramas, like K dramas are big globally, like the amount of diverse, like diverse fans and audience that K drama has is unreal.
00:24:05.035 --> 00:24:20.932
And so when people always because back then people constantly asked me if my book, the Tao of Self-Confidence, can relate to people who aren't Asian, and I'm like, yeah, of course, right, and then when I constantly got that question, it actually I actually started getting a little bit angry because I was like why did?
00:24:20.932 --> 00:24:24.407
Why does this question keep coming up, right, I mean?
00:24:24.407 --> 00:24:42.647
And then I think about K dramas they don't speak in English, it's in full Korean, and yet they have audiences from Chile, africa, like Europe, that will go and purposely learn Korean so they can watch it and under fully understand it.
00:24:42.647 --> 00:24:48.809
Same thing with Kpop, right, like you look at BTS and like Blackpink, worldwide domination.
00:24:48.809 --> 00:24:50.596
They sing and dance in Korean.
00:24:50.596 --> 00:25:03.974
Some of them do speak English, but they started out singing and dancing in Korean and they've created a huge audience because they just put themselves out there and um been able to create that impact.
00:25:04.075 --> 00:25:09.675
So for me it was important to highlight Asian women, because we hardly get any media.
00:25:09.675 --> 00:25:13.440
You know we're again, we're seen as a quiet, submissive and obedient person.
00:25:13.440 --> 00:25:14.846
I really want to take that away.
00:25:14.846 --> 00:25:23.986
And in order for me to get the representation that I wanted, it really had to start with myself, even if I didn't know what I was doing, even if I had no influence.
00:25:23.986 --> 00:25:28.657
I had to start somewhere, because if I didn't do anything now I was just a hypocrite.
00:25:28.657 --> 00:25:32.984
I was just as bad as everybody else complaining about representation and not doing anything about it.
00:25:32.984 --> 00:25:45.653
So, um, you know, I'm just really grateful that the book and the podcast has been able to create such a huge impact for a lot of Asian women.
00:25:46.154 --> 00:26:07.625
You know, getting messages from them saying how it's helped them have difficult conversations, be more confident, be able to see, like, the traumas that they have in their own life, it really, it really, it really like makes my day right, even like, yes, those, those, those um bestseller lists and stuff.
00:26:07.625 --> 00:26:16.593
That's all great, I love it, but nothing's more, more meaningful than those messages, because I know how much um they put in the work.
00:26:16.593 --> 00:26:20.327
I know it's not always easy to send someone a message because you can get ghosted.
00:26:20.327 --> 00:26:21.570
I get it.
00:26:21.570 --> 00:26:24.656
I get ghosted all the time.
00:26:24.656 --> 00:26:32.567
So for me I always reply back saying thank you and how you know their support means the world, because without them then none of this would have ever existed.
00:26:35.351 --> 00:26:52.358
And without them, and if this didn't exist, you wouldn't be reaching so many people with this important idea and mindset and everything you mentioned that self-care, self-love, like they're different, but you can't have self-love without self-care.
00:26:52.358 --> 00:26:57.537
Do you have a personal favorite self-care practice that you regularly do?
00:26:57.664 --> 00:27:00.992
I mean, I like to work out, so that helps me out a lot of self-care.
00:27:00.992 --> 00:27:15.855
Sometimes I just like watching like senseless YouTube videos or like my guilty pleasure 90 day fiance, to kind of like have a self-care routine, even if it's just 20 minutes, right?
00:27:15.855 --> 00:27:19.345
I think self-care and self-love is important.
00:27:19.345 --> 00:27:33.227
Being able to love yourself unconditionally is really important and then taking care of yourself is really important because, especially in Asian culture, you know, asian women have been taught to take care of everybody else and they forget to take care of the most important person, which is ourself.
00:27:33.708 --> 00:27:52.261
And because we don't take care of ourself, we go through so much, right, like feeling exhausted, feeling like we always have to do something to feel accepted, the people pleasing, like all of that, um, you know, builds, builds you low self-confidence.
00:27:52.261 --> 00:27:55.169
So we have to start doing things to build our self confidence up.
00:27:55.169 --> 00:28:11.178
So, having like self-love practice, learning to say like affirmations, and then self-care, that can mean just five minutes of you not doing anything, like it's like you can, you can, you can set five minutes of your time, no matter how busy you are.
00:28:11.178 --> 00:28:23.670
If it means going into the bathroom and just screaming, then just do it Like do whatever works for you right, because it's really important in your everyday life.
00:28:23.670 --> 00:28:29.609
Like self-care is necessary, it needs to be done daily, even if it means setting five minutes.
00:28:29.609 --> 00:28:31.375
Five minutes won't kill you, right?
00:28:31.375 --> 00:28:33.730
And then, if you have more time, you can slowly increase that.
00:28:34.171 --> 00:28:35.233
Well, sheena, thank you so much.
00:28:35.233 --> 00:28:42.576
Do you mind just telling us a few of the links so if anyone wants to get your book, or pre-order your next book or follow you?
00:28:43.484 --> 00:28:44.667
Yeah, thanks so much.
00:28:44.667 --> 00:28:47.817
First off, you can connect with me on my website, sheenayapchancom.
00:28:47.817 --> 00:28:53.656
I have a free self-confidence personality quiz that you can take and get the results right away.
00:28:53.656 --> 00:28:56.971
You can also head on over to SheenaYapchancom.
00:28:56.971 --> 00:28:58.055
Forward slash links.