← Home | 1:1 Coaching | Appreciation | Writing | Contact
This is my life story, told in as much detail and honesty as I can offer. If you're here to evaluate me as a coach, you should have everything you need in my 1:1 Coaching page. But I'm sharing my story because I believe one person's honest account of their life could give permission to others to take what they are also experiencing seriously. This is my invitation to take a glimpse into both what I was thinking and feeling at the time, and what I see now looking back. I hope something in my story lights up something in yours.
I think of my life in two chapters. The first one was built on a straight road — excel, prove, achieve. I sprinted on it with conviction because I genuinely believed it was the right path. The second one began when I looked up from the road and realized there was more of me that hadn't had room yet. For me, that eventually meant leaving my career and the life I’d built around it. But leaving isn’t the point of this story, and it’s not the path for everyone. The real shift started before I left, when I began paying attention to my own life instead of just racing through it.
Some people call this being "twice-born" — the moment you stop living on autopilot and begin building from the inside out instead of the outside in. I don't think the first life was wasted. I carry everything from it. But the second life is where I started choosing consciously.
Below is a table of contents (~17 minute read)
I was born in Ningbo, a coastal city close to Shanghai in China. Growing up, I was a good student with my eyes set on the best universities in China. Then at 15, a school experience that felt deeply unjust unexpectedly changed my whole trajectory. What came from it turned out to be the first serendipity of my life: it set in motion my move to the US a year later.
I continued my high school education at Cranbrook, a boarding school in Michigan. School work or even language wasn't the problem — I was getting straight A's including English even in the first semester. What was hard was the sudden loss of structure. I was single-mindedly focused on getting into a top US university as a means to prove myself. Back in China I could excel by simply getting the highest grade possible, but the US college application had so many moving pieces that I found myself second-guessing all the time whether I was working hard and smart enough.