You are stuck between two worlds.
Maybe it is between your work and professional life. Maybe it is between two cultural identities. Maybe it is between what you really want to do and what you do to pay the bills. Maybe it is between what your parents want you to be and who you really are.
Regardless of the scenario, you have one foot in one world and the other foot in the other world and it is tearing you apart. You feel anxious, lost, and confused because you don’t truly belong to World A or World B so you pretend or code switch.
You get on the bus in World A and shut up as things chug along, get off the bus, then get on the bus in World B, and repeat the same process.
But it feels really unsatisfying, like you’re playing different parts instead of being who you are.
The parts may be the loving husband/wife, dutiful daughter/son, competent worker, tireless parent, brave leader or quiet follower. Regardless, it feels inauthentic – like wearing a jacket that is 2 sizes too small and you don’t know how to get out of the bind.
Let me share with you an aha moment for me that allowed me to start slipping out of this restrictive way of being.
I am Chinese American – my parents are from China and I was born and raised in the United States. However I am told that I am not “American enough” by elementary school classmates who pulled up their eyelids and said “ching, chong, wong” to mimic speaking Chinese (which I really had no idea why they did since I neither look nor sound like that). I am also not “Chinese enough” because when I walk into a shop in Hong Kong, without any fluent Cantonese leaving my mouth the shopkeeper knows that I am not from China.
This is the dilemma: I was simultaneously not “American enough” or “Chinese enough” and it felt lonely to be something that is not accepted.
Until one day in my 20s my older and more senior co-worker, who happened to be born and raised in China, was sharing that his wife is pregnant. As I congratulated him on his growing family, he said something to that effect that he wants his child to be like me.
I was so confused: be like me? What do you mean? He answered: “You are Chinese and you are American, you get to choose the best of both worlds.”
I was floored!
Here I was seeing my non belonging as a severe limitation and here he was seeing me and my ability to choose the best components that work for me.
From that moment, my perspective started to shift. Instead of saying “oh it’s terrible how neither Worlds accepts me for who I am,” I can say “I appreciate XYZ about World A and ABC about World B. I wonder what happens when I combine XYZ with ABC – do I get XA or YB or something else?”
I can appreciate the communal and orderly nature of Chinese culture and the liberal and creative nature of American culture. Then I can even mix up different parts and see what happens!
I started sourcing combinations and creativity in a way that is not possible if it weren’t from living on the cusp of two worlds.
This is what I help clients see: them being torn between two different worlds is a source of power for them to get to really know what works and doesn’t work in each world and then combine it in a way that works for them.