01: Why Grow Through It and Get to Know Me – Phi
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Episode Summary of The Grow Through It Podcast with Phi Dang, 01: Why Grow Through It and Get to Kno Me - Phi
Grow Through It honours life and life’s experiences. Life is happening for you, not to you. Learn all about what the Grow Through It Podcast is about including the four pillars of mindset, self love, energy and purpose. Get to know me, your host, Phi Dang – A clarity and confidence life coach based in Sydney Australia known as The Positivity Queen.
What you'll learn from this episode
(01:42) Why Grow Through It?
(04:30) The 4 Key Pillars of the Grow Through It Podcast and Phi’s Coaching
(09:59) My Story, My Journey
(12:26) The turning point in my journey
(19:46) Why Coaching
(20:16) My old Instagram: In Her Vitality, how I got 10,000 followers in 3 months
(22:17) Benefits of Coaching
(23:37) Why Clarity and Confidence as a Life Coach
(25:34) My clients
Key Quotes from this Episode
You plant seeds every single day, in your community, in your circle, in the world and in others, through every thought you think, every word you speak and every action you take. Are you growing flowers or weeds? The seeds you plant today are the ones you reap tomorrow.
You have 60,000 thoughts a day. What’s going on in your head? Your mind is so powerful but it doesn’t come with a manual.
Your intuition is your soul’s tuition.
Featured Resources on the episode
Show Transcript
[Introduction to the Grow Through It Podcast With Phi Dang plays – Background Music: upbeat, confident, rising beat]:
Don’t just go through life, grow through it. Don’t just go through life, grow through it.
Hi and Welcome to the Grow Through It Podcast with Phi Dang.
My name is Phi and I am a Clarity and Confidence Life Coach known as the “The Positivity Queen.”
My passion is to help you go from stuck and self critical to courageous and empowered so you can conquer anything.
Join me, every Tuesday, as I discuss all things mindset, self love, energy and purpose.
This podcast won’t just inspire and motivate you, it will also provide practical tips and strategies you can implement in your daily life.
Ready to grow? Let’s grow!
[Grow Through It Podcast With Phi Dang End of Intro]
[Episode 01 – Why Grow Through It and Get to Know Me – Phi: Begins]
Hello, hello beautiful soul – I am so glad you are here! Welcome to the first ever Grow Through It Podcast with Phi Dang episode. It’s been a long time coming and I’m glad the moment is here.
For those who don’t already know me, Hi! I’m Phi and I am a clarity and confidence life coach known at the Positivity Queen. I help you go from stuck and self critical to courageous and empowered by overcoming your negative self talk so you can conquer anything.
Yes my name is spelt P, h, i and you say it like fee. I have a Vietnamese background. You know how at times you may met people with ethnic names and they adopt an ‘english’ name? Well my parents decided none of that. I was going to be Phi in Vietnamese and in English. My name Phi means flying high.
So why grow through it? As in the opening of my podcast intro, don’t just go through life, grow through it.
The name grow through it symbolises so much to me as I hope it does to you.
It has so much meaning that I would love to share with you.
Grow Through It honours life and life’s experiences. Your experiences. I truly believe everything that happens in your life is for a reason. That life isn’t just happening to you, life is happening for you.
Grow Through It honours the shadow side of life: the pain we go through, the sadness we go through, the despair we go through, the heartache we go through, the frustration we go through, the anger we go through, the disappointment we go through, the failure we go through, the pain we go through… all of these experiences help us grow. There is a purpose to it. There is a meaning to it. You are not just going through life, trudging along, you are growing.
You plant seeds every single day, in your community, in your circle, in the world and in others, through every thought you think, every word you speak and every action you take. Are you growing flowers or weeds? The seeds you plant today are the ones you reap tomorrow. You are worthy, you are loved and you have have influence. You are making an impact in this world, this universe and you matter in every single way.
Your life is like a garden. Just like a garden, it needs sunlight, rain, pruning, fertilising, care, space maintenance, weeding – you are the gardener, you cultivate it, you water it. In the garden of your life it doesn’t matter what crops you start with or the conditions, your garden can grow with the right conditions.
There are different types of gardens, flowers, variety, vegetable, fruit. All unique, special and beautiful in their own way.
Just as people enter your garden, you also enter the garden of others. Do you enjoy the garden you visit? Are you learning new things in the garden? Does the garden enrich your life? Does the garden make your life better?
As you’ll notice throughout my podcast I love analogies. I find you just get it – the aha moment – the lightbulb moment. So I will share many analogies to articulate concepts to you and I use them a lot in my coaching to which my clients can vouch for.
So here is to taking it one day at a time.
Here is to every single experience we go through life.
Here is to growing every single day.
Here is to not just going through life, lets grow through it.
The Grow Through It Podcast is also based on four concepts which are the four key pillars of my coaching: mindset, self love, energy and purpose. I came to these four key pillars through my own self growth journey and working with my clients.
Mindset
You have 60,000 thoughts a day. What’s going on in your head? Your mind is so powerful but it doesn’t come with a manual.
Learn to master your mind for your benefit instead of becoming a slave to your thoughts.
As you’ll learn from this podcast and if you ever work with me through coaching, your mindset dictates everything you do.
How you think and what you think influences how you feel. Based on how you feel, you’ll either take action or none at all which lead to a result.
Learn to master your mind for your benefit instead of becoming a slave to your thoughts. Fine tune your internal monologue instead of just living on auto pilot and accepting thoughts as reality.
The Grow Through It Podcast is all about having a growth mindset. A mindset that is committed to growth. It’s all about embracing progress. A growth mindset is being open minded to learning from feedback, experiences and embracing challenges. A growth mindset is being determined, having resilience and grit.
Throughout this podcast I will talk about how your brain and mind work. I will share different perspectives with you and I will question your current ways of thinking to help you grow. Learn how to overcome your limiting beliefs and roadblocks that your mind create. The Grow Through It Podcast focuses not only on your conscious mind but your subconscious mind too. Mind your mindset and expand your mind.
Self Love
You can’t hate yourself into a version of yourself that you can love. Self love ultimately is being kind to yourself and appreciating who you are.
When you love yourself, you make all your decisions out of love and not fear, stress, worry or anxiety.
Self love means making the best decisions for yourself and always choosing yourself first.
Self love is all about trusting, respecting, honouring and supporting yourself. It’s taming your inner critic and believing how amazing you are. It’s embracing all of who you are right now. It’s loving yourself as you are right now, unconditionally.
Most of us love the things we own and the people around us but we forget to love ourselves too.
The Grow Through It Podcast is all about helping you ditch your self doubt and dialling up your self acceptance, self care, self esteem, self trust, self respect, self worth and self confidence. It all starts with the self, it all starts with you.
Energy
You are made up of matter and energy. Your thoughts and feelings create energy.
I take the woo and confusion out of energetic principles such as the law of attraction, the universal rules, vibrations, frequencies, manifestation, flow and intuition. I make them practical and easy to understand.
The Grow Through It Podcast will cover energetic tools that range from healing yourself to making all that you wish a reality. Get back in touch with your soul and spirit. Become more connected to who you are within, your inner guidance. Your intuition is your soul’s tuition.
Purpose
Purpose is who you are. It is the compass, GPS, North Star to your life.
Live up to your full potential. Take ownership of your life. No more auto pilot. Create and live the life of your dreams. Live in alignment with your soul. Understand why you do the things you do (and why you don’t).
The Grow Through It Podcast is all about living your life deliberately with meaning. It’s about knowing what matters to you. It is about embodying your true intention with everything that you do. It is about finding the beauty in everything that happens in your life and to fully embrace all that has happened and will happen.
You only live one life, make the most of it.
Stop playing small and start playing BIG.
Before I dive into my journey I want to flag that this episode will be longer then my regular episodes. Grow Through It Podcast episodes will be usually around 20 minutes long give or take. I like being concise and sharing snappy episodes that you can listen to on the train, at the gym, getting ready – The Grow Through it Podcast fits into your life.
This episode goes into a deep dive so lets grow!
Phi's Journey and Story
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.
How I got into Coaching and the benefits of Coaching
So why coaching?
Coaching is a life changing experience.
I have had coaches myself throughout the years that have helped and supported me in becoming the best version of myself before I actually became a coach.
What prompted me to become a coach was actually the Corona virus a silver lining in it all. When it hit, for the first time in my life in a very long time since I started working when I was 15 I had a solid break. After hustling and grinding up the corporate ladder, I had time! Wow!
So I kicked into gear and did something I always wanted to do. Help other people especially by normalising and talking about mental health.
I started an Instagram page called in her vitality (punny I know!) and to my shock within 3 months I had a following of 10,000+ followers. What really kickstarted my growth was not being afraid to voice my opinions. At the beginning of men’s mental health week in June 2020 the 15th to the 21st, I made a post which changed my life.
I remember hearing about mens mental health week through Sarah Davidson (she has an amazing podcast Seize the Yay) and I was shocked no one else influential or anyone really was talking about it. At the time I was a female orientated page but I knew I had to say something to do my part in mens mental health. So i made this post which you can find on my instagram @thephidang.
On the post it said Men Cry. Men Get anxiety. Men have emotions. Men feel insecure. Men get anxious. Men get bullied. Men have suicidal thoughts. Let’s support Men. You are not alone. This was accompanied by alarming statistics from Beyond Blue such as 1 in 8 men experience depression, 6 out of 8 suicides everyday in Australia. The post went viral with over half a million people reached, it was shared over 150,00 times in the DMs alone, it was just insane.
I will continue to vouch for mental health for everyone and especially for men given the huge stigma around men and emotions. Emotions are seen as a feminine thing which it is its from a place of feminine energy (feeling) however as humans we all have masculine and feminine energies.
When I realised the impact I could make, I wanted to do the thing that I had put off, becoming a coach. It made sense really – I’m that go to friend – people ask me for advice when it comes to their life hence a life coach whether it be about their career, dating, getting over heartbreak, family, friendships and so forth.
— Coaching unlocks your full potential and be fully supported along the way. Life coaching unlocks what the gym does for the body, a coach for an athlete’s performance. You go to the gym to keep fit, to feel good and love your body. Why wouldn’t you do the same for your mind?
— Your brain does not come with a manual. Learn how to rewire your brain to serve you best. Overcome limiting beliefs and negative self-talk.
— Breakthrough your fears, self hatred, insecurities, self sabotaging patterns, perfectionism and procrastination.
— Get unstuck and out of a rut. Wake up energised every morning and live with purpose.
— Give yourself the best gift of all: investing in yourself. With coaching you have a dedicated hour all about you. Talk about whatever is on your mind. You can talk about anything you like – I got you. I will hold space for you and listen.
Why am I a Clarity and Confidence Life Coach?
When you are clear and confident, you can handle anything that happens in your life, in fact you can conquer anything. It won’t matter if proverbial shit hits the fan. You’ll handle it. Simple.
Clarity
To understand the importance of clarity is knowing what life is like without it.
– You aren’t happy with your life but you don’t know why exactly. You feel as if there is more to life than the life you are currently living.
– If you know why you aren’t happy it still doesn’t do much for you. You’ve tried everything but nothing is working. You feel fed up and you don’t know what to do, hoping someone out there can help.
– Life feels overwhelming, there is so much happening and you don’t know where to start.
– You feel as if you are missing answers.
That is why clarity is important.
+ It’s knowing what to do with what you have right now. You are making your dreams and goals happen.
+ It’s waking up every day excited with purpose. Your values are at the heart of everything you do.
It’s feeling fulfilled, happy and ready to conquer anything, no matter what happens in your life.
Confidence
At the core of it, confidence is truly loving yourself.
+ You like who you are.
+ You respect who you are.
+ You think positively about yourself.
+ You recognise how amazing you are.
+ You can handle your mind.
+ You can handle your thoughts.
+ You know you can figure things out.
+ You know you can experience any emotion and you will be okay whether that’s heartbreak, pain, humiliation, fear, disappointment, discomfort – whatever it is, you can handle it.
+ You know that if something wrong happens, if you fall down, you know you can get back up. You are capable of doing hard things.
+ You have a strong sense of self. People will have opinions but they don’t define who you are or change what you do.
You show up and be the best version of you. Every. Single. Day.
Coaching and my clients
My heart and soul are so happy and appreciative to be a coach. As a coach I guide, teach and support my clients but they are the true heroes. They do they hard work to work on themselves and make their dreams a reality.
A huge shout out to my clients you inspire me and I am in awe of you. I’ve helped clients move on from past relationships and their past, enter new relationships with self love and confidence, kick start businesses that sell products before they even officially open, make new friends, sleep better at night – the possibilities are endless with coaching.
If you would like to work with me, Yes I am currently open and available to supporting more people through 1:1 coaching. If you are interested, I would love to connect and speak with you. I can help you. You can find out more information on my website phidang.com or connect with me on Instagram @thephidang.
Episode closing 01: Why Grow Through It and All About Me - Phi
So this was episode 1. Why Grow Through It and Get to Know Me (Phi). I can’t wait for you to join me on this journey as you learn practical tips and strategies on how to develop and grow. To learn more about mindset, self love, energy and purpose. For the most part I foresee the podcast being solo episodes but I will have special guests on from time to time.
I’ve actually pre recorded so much goodness for you with juicy insights so it doesn’t just end here on episode 1 until next Tuesday when I release new episodes weekly.
You can also listen to Episode 2, Life is like a book and you are the author, Episode 3, Beyond the law of attraction, the 12 universal laws and Episode 4, Mental Fitness – Take your Brain to the gym.
Happy listening. Speak soon and chat to you next Tuesday.
[Episode 01 – Why Grow Through It and Get to Know Me – Phi: Ends]
Are you wanting to find out more about 1:1 Coaching or working with me? Maybe perhaps you want to know more about me. I’d love to connect with you. You can visit my website phidang.com or connect with me on Instagram @thephidang. Speak to you soon.
