01: Why Grow Through It and Get to Know Me – Phi

So how did I get into coaching? How did I become a clarity and confidence life coach known as the Positivity Queen?

My journey? Like yours, it isn’t straightforward, perfect or always positive. In fact, I am just like you. I proud myself on being a very down to earth person despite my looks people see an asian girl with dyed blonde hair, eyelash extensions and assume a variety of things.

My journey in no way has been all positive and even as the positivity queen I am not always positive (shock secret, no but really, it would be impossible – you would have to be a robot but I, I am human). Life will throw lemons and I make lemonade. Perhaps the alcoholic kind too…

Through rewiring my mind, I learnt how to turn setbacks into solutions, struggles into strength and turn every experience into knowledge and growth.

At times I felt so alone wishing that I had someone there who had been what I had been through to teach me what to do, to support me, to help me find my way… and that is why I Clarity and Confidence Life Coach. I’ll speak more about how I actually got into coaching and why coaching later but first I thought you would like to get to know more about me.

My journey, my story.

I’ve always been known to be positive from a very young age. People around me would always say I was so happy, bubbly and smiley. They are right. I am so positive in fact I am known as the positivity queen but that doesn’t mean my journey has always been positive and happy.

I’m the only child of migrants who fled Vietnam to Australia on boats (in fact my parents met on the boat to Australia). They sacrificed everything they had to live a better life and worked hard to raise me in a comfortable and sheltered life. I was on track to continue that life. I mapped it all out based on what I was told, the people around me and what I knew from the movies and TV.

Be the dux at my high school, go to law school, become a lawyer for a top tier firm, meet the love of my life, get married to this said love, buy a house, have a family and live happily ever after… well so I thought! (As many of us do)

Everything I knew and thought about life came crumbling down when my dad passed away to bowel cancer when I was 20.

All my life I had been shielded from death and in a turn of events, the first funeral I would ever attend and the first funeral I would ever plan was for my Dad.

I questioned everything about life especially this supposed map of life. Why do all of it and suddenly I could die? What was the point of life? How can life be so cruel to me, to take away my dad when I was so young?

In this dark point of my life, I turned to the largest unassuming danger in life: being busy and avoiding emotions. I studying two degrees law and marketing full time, working 4 days a week, side hustling as an english and economics tutor, partying on weekends, working on a huge conference at my university, being an executive on the marketing society, dating unemotionally available men.

On a side note honestly I would need a whole other podcast to explain my dating life. I was single for 8 years until recently and gone through a whole spectrum of dating and relationship experiences. 

My first love, my primary school sweetheart cheated on me in university. I used to date men that you would consider successful and high achievers from the outside, men in powerful positions from doctors, bankers, start up creators and so forth. Just because it looks like they have their stuff together on the outside doesn’t mean they did internally, trust me. 

I’ve been ghosted and I’ve ghosted people. I’ve had my heart broken and I broke people’s hearts. I’ve dated commitment phobes and I was a commitment phobe. I’ve chased men and been chased by men. Predominantly most of my dating took place through apps like tinder, bumble and hinge because for most of my life my friends have had partners except me. I make note of this because dating and relationships are a lot of what I discuss with my clients given my experience but it is not the only thing.

Back to my story – so I completely avoided feeling the pain and grief of my Dad unconsciously. I thought this was what I was meant to do, accept what happened, get on with life and move forward.

Life has a funny way of throwing lemons at you. In In this instance it catapulted thousands of them my way in the form of my feelings. I was in such despair and depression. In an ironic twist, the feelings did quickly fade away but I was left feeling numb.

I thought my life ended when I lost my dad and on top of this I had to cancel my backpacking trip to Europe (losing $10K) and take a semester off of university (this truly did feel like the end of the world according to my map of life).

Whilst dealing with this all, I felt so ashamed and embarrassed. I remember not leaving the house for weeks and weeks avoiding phone calls from anyone and everyone. Not only that for the first time in my life I struggled to sleep everyday for a month. It was horrible, I went from sleeping 8-10 hours a night to maybe 1 or 2 a night. I felt like a living zombie.

Then I had the light bulb moment. A-ha!

I remember lying on the floor of my living room curled up in a ball for the twentieth day in a row.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Dad wouldn’t want you to be doing this, he wanted you to go on with your life and thrive”

“Continuing to do this, isn’t going to change anything”…

From there I decided enough was enough.

Enough feeling sorry for myself.

Enough stewing in my sadness.

Enough being the victim of life.

I chose right then and there to build my life back up from the ground up. I chose to be courageous, to continue living my life, inspired by all that my Dad had taught me.

+ I learnt to master my mind, my thoughts didn’t control me anymore, I controlled them.

+ I learnt to support myself and self soothe instead of turning to external validation.

+ I processed the deep pain, sadness and anger that I was avoiding and ignoring. 

+ I grew through the discomfort of confronting myself, questioning myself.

+ I transformed the way I thought. I stopped beating myself up. I stopped self sabotaging myself.

+ I stopped thinking everything was happening to me and realised I had power, I could change my life.

+ I started truly loving myself, accepting who I was, knowing my worth.

+ I dropped out of law school and went on to travel to 20 cities across the US and Europe for 3 months.

+ I began to live life on my terms. No more living to what society deemed as a perfect life and timeline.

+ I listened to my soul instead of caring what people thought about me and taking on their opinions.

+ I woke up to what really mattered to me in this amazing life I get to live.

I transformed through a spiritual reawakening. I became conscious of my ego and shadow.

The darkest moment of my life turned out to be the greatest teacher in my life.

Life would go on to give me lemons in the form of dealing with anxiety, being bullied, burning out and don’t get me started on being single for 8 years after being cheated on and going on the dating merry-go-round (round and round).

But I didn’t just go through that all, I grew through that all. And now? I know that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what lemons life throws at me, I can handle it. I can conquer it.

I make lemonade.

+ I ended up graduating University with several merit awards, deans awards and honours.

+ I scaled the corporate ladder, getting nominated for an industry award 6 months into my career and quickly became a strategy manager at 25.

+ I called in a deep love and met my amazing partner who I live by the beach with.

+ I participated in the World’s First Women’s Only Wim Hof Retreat. If you haven’t heard of Wim Hof he is known as the ice man. In this retreat run by the dear Leah Scott, in the middle of winter I plunged, immersed and swam in ice cold water 0 degrees. In fact she had a hammer to smash through the ice! Not only that I hiked Mount Kosciuszko whilst it was snowing in the middle of winter wearing a sports bra and shorts.

+ I have over 25 countries and 40 cities around the world, mostly solo since I was 19. My favouritie places you ask? Bali, Madrid and New Orleans.

+ I consider myself a Phi-oodie. I am obsessed with food. Whilst other kids watched cartoons, I watched Rick Stein and Delia Smith.