You might assume that since I didn’t have babies until after having enjoyed a big career, I’d have been immune to the women’s malady of burnout.  And yet, both times after I gave birth (at ages 39 and 41), I fell into a stupor of overwork. 

The person who woke me up was my mother-in-law Lennie, who saw me one day, tired and haggard, and admonished me to make time for myself.  She pushed me toward tennis.  I now commit to playing several times a week.

This month, I joined an adult team in the USTA tennis league.  I play in the lowest division, 3.0, but I take seriously someone’s advice that no matter my ability, I should dress to intimidate, since tennis is a mental game.  Here’s a photo of me in my favorite black opponent-intimidating dress. Sleek and black, it makes me feel powerful, and I even feel like I should be going out to a cocktail party after the match!

Playing tennis makes me feel fit and strong, and I love that feeling.

Not your average mother-in-law

Lennie plays a special role in my life.  I feel really lucky that, when Dave and I married, his parents embraced me not just as a daughter-in-law but as a woman.  Lennie herself has gracefully combined multiple roles, as civic leader, teacher, intellectual, and mother.  She’s a continuing role model for me on how to live.  Now in her 70s, she exercises every day and she’s a kick-ass tennis player herself.  Someday I’d like to get just one game on her, but I do not think that day will be coming soon!

As you can see, Lennie is not your average mother-in-law.  After all, for many of us married women, the biggest pressure to abandon our dreams comes not from our mothers, but from our mothers-in-law.  Mothers-in-law who demand that we abandon our own selves and devote our lives to serving their sons and grandchildren.

But when we build our lives around sacrificing our own needs to help others we inevitably create lives of exhaustion, frustration, and feelings of failure. It’s truly depressing when you think about how so many women live such broken lives, for the simple reason that all their lives they’ve simply tried to be what society trains us to be: a good woman.

Do you know any woman who doesn’t overgive?

I was struck by this quote from Gloria Steinem’s book Doing Sixty and Seventy:

I have yet to meet a woman who has completely kicked the habit of leading a derived life that depends more on her sense of others than her sense of herself.  Even if we’ve refused to be hyper-responsible for the welfare of a family, we often feel too responsible for what goes on at work.  Even if we’re no longer trying to surgically implant our ego into the body of a husband or children, we still may be overly dependent on being needed – by coworkers and bosses, lovers and friends, even by the very [political] movements that were intended to free us from all that.

When I first read this quote I thought, “Wow!” Even our feminist icons have struggled with giving too much.

Let’s treat ourselves as well as we treat others

As I look back, I see that every time I’ve felt lost or stuck is when I’ve momentarily set myself aside in service to someone else’s expectations – my parents, a boyfriend, a company I worked for.

We can each start to care for ourselves by simply committing to treat ourselves as well as we treat others.

Does that seem like too much to ask?

The great thing about being in my 40s is that finally I’ve given myself permission to ignore all the rules. I’ve stopped trying to please everyone and started focusing on just the ones whom I love.

I work hard for other people. Tennis is me-time.  And me-time is something that we all need.

It’s been such a difficult and emotional week following the murders here in Los Angeles.  In my last blog post, I called for calm in the Chinese-on-Chinese hatred that some people have expressed online.

Today, I want to talk about the only antidote to hatred, which is love.

Not the romantic sort of love, though I do talk a lot on this blog about love between a man and a woman.

Today, I want to talk about a broader definition of love.

After all, as modern women today, we don’t need marriage to survive, but we do need love in the form of true connections with others. I agree with actress Rene Liu when she says, “I believe that the friendship between females is as indispensable as the relationship between male and female; neither the friendship nor the relationship is replaceable; I enjoy them both.”

The plight of those who lack friends

New York Times bestselling author Tom Rath of the worldwide polling company The Gallup Organization once set out to study the roots of long-term homelessness in America.  When he began his research, he assumed that most homeless men and women were homeless as a result of alcohol or drug addictions or mental illness.  But when he and his colleagues interviewed homeless men and women in depth, they discovered that addictions and other problems were more a symptom than a root cause.

The men and women who remained homeless for decades had one thing in common:  a lack of healthy friendships. More than anything else, they were “friendshipless.”  Being without a home was only the most obvious and visible part of their plight.

Rath and his colleagues then turned their attention to those who had emerged from homelessness, to see what enables some people to conquer homelessness.  What they found was just as striking:  those who overcame their homelessness had found someone – a volunteer, a long-lost family member, or someone else – who believed in them.

Rath condensed his homelessness research and his analysis of over eight million interviews from the Gallup organization international databases into the book Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without.

To be healthy and happy, make more friends

Whom we surround ourselves with is very important, since we become like our best friends.  He concludes that friendships are among the most fundamental of human needs: “Without friends, it is very difficult for us to get by, let alone thrive.”

It’s no wonder that prisoners held in long-term solitary confinement suffer mental-health damage.  As humans, we’re social creatures.  Having a broad social network makes us happy and gives us a sense of community. Our brains control many of the mechanisms responsible for disease, and just as stress can trigger ill health, friendship protects us.

Not only do we need friends, but it matters what roles our friends play in our lives.  In order to feel satisfied and to reach our full potential, says Rath, each of us needs these eight specific types of friends:

Builders motivate and coach us.  Champions stand up for and praise us.  Collaborators share our interests and passions.  Companions are always there for us.  Connectors introduce us to others.  Energizers are our fun friends.  Mind Openers share ideas with us.  Navigators advise and help steer us.

No one person can play all these roles at once, and one mistake people often make in relationships is asking that of one person – often a boss or a spouse.  Having a range of friends helps us to develop different parts of ourselves and to become more complex and autonomous as individuals.  Bottom line, the wider and deeper your friendships, the better.

To become a better you, be a good friend

Given the cold and often brutal world we live in, it can be easy to forget the importance of love.  That leaves a terrible void in our lives.  Because we really need love. We need love in a variety of human relationships.  By deeply understanding others through empathy, we can learn to love them, and by loving others, we can become better, more complete versions of ourselves.

We’ll all live longer, healthier, more productive and successful lives when we experience true friendships every day.  That may sound simple, but in reality, love is essential to us all.

**

Friends!  Join me live online in Chinese for my very first SINA Interview. You can participate from anywhere in the world at 12:00pm-1:00pm China time this Saturday April 21. What fun! Details here.

We will conduct this in Chinese.

The event will occur simultaneously around the world at the following time:

• In China, this Saturday April 21 at 12:00pm to 1:00pm.
• In America West Coast, Friday evening at 9:00pm to 10:00pm.

If you are outside these locations, please calculate the right time for you to join in.

If you are already on Weibo, join us!  If you are not already on Weibo, what are you waiting for?  Sign up for Weibo and join me this weekend!

For all the details, click here.

In yesterday’s blog post,  I wrote about some of the high-profile killings of Chinese by Americans over the past two decades.  In today’s blog post, I want to talk about the online hatred and e-killing of Chinese by our fellow Chinese.

Some  Chinese in China are saying that the USC students deserved to die because, as study-abroad students, they are assumed to be rich and privileged. Some Chinese students in America have been responding with similar vitriol.  This online cacophony has me increasingly worried and disturbed.  Check out this image for an example of these back-and-forth attacks.

I have become friends with many Chinese students in America, and coincidentally, many of my friends are or were students at USC since USC is located here in Los Angeles.  Many of these students are from middle-class and lower-class backgrounds and are here by virtue of their dedication and hard work.  I can tell you that, as a group, they are the sort of thoughtful, serious, interesting, curious, wonderful young people that anyone would want as a friend, and any parent would want as a child.

As a mother myself, I cannot imagine the pain that Wu Ying’s and Qu Ming’s parents are experiencing right now.  Having raised these two beautiful souls from birth to now, sacrificed so much as every parent sacrifices, and having sent them thousands of miles across the ocean in hopes of a better future — and then for these young souls to be extinguished?  Every time I think about this situation, a little part of me dies.

Now, some people are compounding this senseless tragedy a million times over, by using it as a launching pad for a cross-Pacific war of words.

Our world is stuffed full of problems such as poverty and social and economic inequality.  I can understand how many people feel angry about these problems.  But the way to address that anger is to attack those problems directly, through measures such as improving educational and economic opportunities for everyone.  We can urge our governmental leaders to do just that.  And we each can commit to making the world a better place by doing what we each can do to improve our own communities.

But to instead channel our frustration over society’s problems into personal attacks on entire groups of fellow human beings is to descend into tyranny of the worst possible sort.  These attacks have no place in a civilized society.   I know it can seem harmless and perhaps even exciting to be part of a big group lobbing online grenades at other people.   But in the echo chamber that is our social media universe, these attacks are amplifying out of control.  Words can have consequences, and frankly, what I’m seeing online is starting scare me.

If you have posted any sort of hateful attacks prompted by the USC murders, please delete those posts right now.   If you know someone who has posted such hateful attacks, please contact that person to ask that he or she delete those posts.

We are all Chinese.  The deaths of Wu Ying and Qu Ming are a time to focus on coming together as a community worldwide in shared grief and solidarity.  With such a rich history and culture, we have much more in common than we have to divide us.

USC students of all backgrounds gather in mourning

Here in Los Angeles, yesterday, April 11 began with a downpour of rain, and ended with a deluge of tears over the close-range murders of USC graduate students Wu Ying and Qu Ming from China.

The moment I heard the news, I grieved, for these two students, so full of hope and courage, coming to America to further their education. I grieved for their parents, suffering through every parents’ worst nightmare.  I grieved for all the other Chinese students studying here in the America thinking “that could have been me.”

Then, my mind could not help racing to some high-profile murders of other Chinese:

• I thought of Vincent Chin, who in 1982 in Detroit was beaten to death by two white men who, while killing him screamed, “It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work!” in reference to U.S. auto manufacturing jobs being lost to Japan, despite the fact that Chin was not Japanese.  Vincent Chin’s killers at first received no jail time, outraging and galvanizing Asian-Americans for the first time that we needed to become politically active.

• I thought of 24-year-old Jim Loo, who in 1989 in North Carolina was murdered by two white men who, while killing him screamed “gook” and “chink” and blamed him for American deaths in the Vietnam war.   At the time, I was a marine biology major, and driving regularly back and forth alone across North Carolina between Duke and the coastline where the Duke Marine Lab was located.  Stopping in restaurants to go to the restroom on my long drives, I always felt alone and exposed as all the white (they were always only white) people would put down their utensils and swivel their heads to silently watch me walk between the entrance and the restroom.

• I thought of the shocking deaths in the past year of Private Danny Chen and Lance Corporal Harry Lew, two Chinese-American soldiers in the American military who committed suicides following extended campaigns of racial harassment and physical assaults by their fellow American soldiers.

Vincent Chin, Jim Loo, Harry Lew and Danny Chen all died because they were Chinese.  There has been no evidence the murders of Wu Ying and Qu Ming were based on racial hatred.  But I do wonder.  Did their being Chinese play any factor in their deaths?  What went through the mind of their killer when he picked them to rob?  Would he have picked them if they were white?  Would he have picked them if they were black?  Did the killer assume that since they were Chinese, they were rich?  Did he assume that since they were Chinese they would meekly hand over their possessions and not fight back?

In other words, if they were not Chinese, would Wu Ying and Qu Ming still be alive today?

Then again, did their being Chinese have anything at all to do with their murders?  Did the killer even see their faces before he struck?

Here is one of the continuing facts of life of being Chinese in America.  No matter how “insider” you become, from time to time, things happen to remind you that there always will be Americans who see you as “other” than fully American, even if you are American, like I am.  Remember Alexandra Wallace, the UCLA student who made that anti-Asian video?

In my experience, the vast majority of Americans do not condone hatred of any sort, and become just as angry and you and I do over any kind of race-based harassment or violence.  Yesterday’s deaths of Wu Ying and Qu Ming were big news everywhere, and yesterday wherever I went, my American friends expressed outrage and sorrow over the killings.  Americans everywhere want the killer brought to justice.  To that end, I sincerely hope that any witnesses to the killings will step forward to help the LAPD identify and arrest the killer.

But events like this serve as a reminder that America is a democracy, and democracies are built through participation.  It is important for us as Chinese to become just as politically active as any other group in this country.  The Chinese here always have had a reputation of being silent and therefore powerless.  We can empower our selves by coming together and projecting our own voices.

In the past 30 years since the murder of Vincent Chin galvanized our community, Asian-Americans have increased our share of power in the United States.  CAUSE, the organization founded and led by my mentor Charlie Woo, has been at the forefront in spearheading the empowerment of Asian-Americans.  One of the really important roles that CAUSE plays in our community is by creating direct access for Asian-Americans to those in all power in local, state and federal government throughout America.

In the same way as did Vincent Chin’s murder, perhaps the murders of Wu Ying and Qu Ming will galvanize Chinese students in America.

So far, USC’s CSSA has taken a leadership role in gathering Chinese students to memorialize Wu Ying and Qu Ming, and in contacting the media to rectify the mistakes they’ve made in reporting on the case.  These are excellent steps, and I look forward to hearing about and supporting any actions that Chinese students at USC take to call upon LAPD and USC to better ensure safety and security on- and off-campus.

In the past day, I’ve been hearing from USC Chinese students about the regular Safety Alerts that the School emails out, listing the many robberies and other violent crimes that students suffer, and yet listing very few actual cases solved.  Given how much the School spends to build palatial  new academic buildings, it’s ironic how little housing the school provides its students, and how ineffective are the School’s safety measures at helping its students feel safe when every night they are forced off-campus to go home.

USC and LAPD should work together to better protect the safety of all their constituents, no matter who they are or where they come from.  Every student should feel safe attending school and going home at night.  No other family should have to suffer the grief that Wu Ying’s and Qu Ming’s families are now suffering.

When we look back on this moment in another 30 years, perhaps we will see this as when Chinese students tasted their own power, and established direct access to the highest levels of the LAPD and USC administration.  And perhaps in 20 years, we’ll look back to see how this incident caused Chinese students throughout the United States to discover their power to address the issues that need addressing at their own campuses.

Nothing now can be done to bring back these two beautiful young students whose lives were extinguished so early.  But if these horrible events serve to galvanize and empower Chinese students in this country, then Wu Ying and Qu Ming will not have died in vain.

Thank you to all those Los Angeles friends who came to our event last Friday!

Just before the event, I published the blog post “Do not settle for Mr. Wrong,” and so we had a good discussion about how to distinguish Mr. Right from Mr. Wrong. Then someone asked:  “But the biggest problem facing many Chinese women is not how to find Mr. Right, but that after several years of dating, he still doesn’t propose.  How do you get a man to commit?”

That elicited what people tell me was the best quote of the afternoon, “Doubt means no.”  So I thought I’d take today’s blog post to fill you all in on what that means.

Men instinctively know that they’re headhunters. They naturally afraid of being trapped with the wrong partner.  But since we women bear most of the risks of marriage and parenthood, we should be at least as cautious.  When you meet someone special, observe closely his interactions with his friends and family, and expose him to your close friends and family and listen closely to their feedback.

No “The Talk,” no Ultimatums, no “accidental” pregnancies

Do not ever put a man in charge of your relationship.  Do not repeatedly initiate The Talk.  The Talk is any conversation related to the status of your relationship.  Don’t ask “Why haven’t you called?” or “When will I see you again?”  Tell him how much you enjoyed being with him, then turn around and walk out the door.  Don’t ask: “Where do I stand?” or “Where is this going?”  or ask to meet his kids.  Don’t sigh, beg, or plead with him to move forward more quickly.  Don’t overanalyze your relationship.

After a time of exclusively dating without a marriage proposal, some women will start to plot The Ultimatum.  It goes like this:  “Hi honey.  Propose to me within x amount of time (such as three months), or I will leave you!”

Other women choose to take matters into their own hands by secretly “forgetting” to take their birth-control pills in order to intentionally-accidentally get pregnant and force a shotgun wedding.

Do not resort to The Ultimatum and absolutely under no circumstances should you ever secretly get pregnant.  It is immoral and unfair to trick a man into life’s biggest commitment.  He may love the baby but he will resent you forever.

Know when it’s time to leave

Say you’ve been dating a guy for a while, and you think things are going great, but there’s been zero discussion about a deeper commitment, whether it’s exclusively dating or marriage.  Is he completely clueless?  Waiting for someone better to come along?  Not a good sign.

Initiate The Talk.  Once.  Like this:  “Hi honey.  I have adored our time together, but I’m starting to sense that you and I might be looking for different things.  I’m hoping for a longer-term commitment such as marriage and perhaps children as well.  Are you interested in that?  Because if not, I think it might be better for us to part ways so that we each can go out and find what we’re looking for.”

Perhaps this talk will prompt him to wake up and realize that he loves you and can’t live without you.  But if you’ve let him know you’re ready to discuss marriage and he’s not, initiate a separation.  If he doesn’t come running after you with a proposal, then you’ll have stopped wasting your time.

A soulmate relationship will be completely obvious to you both

Know your own limits and leave when it’s time to leave.  Don’t spend time with any man who keeps you wondering.  When you’re with your soulmate, it will be completely obvious to you both.

When a man truly commits himself, you’ll know.  You’ll never have to wonder where he is or whom he’s talking with.  He’ll call you every day; he’ll constantly try to please you, because he wants you all to himself, all the time.  He’ll want to meet your friends.  He’ll want you to meet his family.  He’ll open up and share his entire life with you.

He’ll be grateful for every day he has with you.  Wild horses could not keep him from running after you and making absolutely certain that you are his forever.  And he will commit to spending the rest of his days caring for you and any children that you have together someday.

Doubts are a sign that he’s Mr. Wrong

If on the other hand you ever find yourself in a situation where you are considering deploying The Ultimatum or an intentional-accidental pregnancy, take it as a sign that in fact, he is not Mr. Right.  We need to get beyond the notion that it is a woman’s job to entrap a man.  The only way that we as women can be free to make our own choices is to encourage men to be free as well.

Oprah says it best:  “Doubt means no.”  If either he or you has any doubts at all about your relationship, do not proceed with life’s ultimate commitment.  Your goal must be not just to start a marriage, but to do your best to ensure that when you do marry, your marriage is one that thrives.  When I look around at my friends who have either divorced or are suffering through troubled marriages, in too many cases they recall sadly how even before their wedding day they had doubts, but did not act upon those doubts.

In troubled marriages, children are the truest victims

We women often suffer greatly during divorce, but at least we can take charge of our lives and move on.  Our children, on the other hand, cannot.  When divorce occurs, they are victims in the truest sense.  Vulnerable and defenseless, they often suffer from an enormous sense of rejection and guilt that they may have caused the split.

The impacts on children of divorce can last a lifetime.  In America, divorce became widespread in the 1970s, so my generation is the first to have grown up as the children of divorce.  I continue to see the impact on my friends of their parents’ divorces.  Many have grown up afraid to love and fearful of life’s possibilities.

Children can suffer such impacts even when their parents don’t divorce but stay together in unhappy marriages.  Yelling and screaming and other forms of emotional abuse are warning signs that your Mr. Wrong lacks the basic emotional skills necessary to be a competent adult and parent.   Such behavior has cascading effects on future generations, since children who grow up witnessing abuse become perpetrators and victims of abuse as adults.  And children are wise to our marital mistakes:  in one study, fully half of young adults today whose parents stayed together said they may have been better off if their parents had divorced.

You are worthy of being deeply loved.  Your future children deserve to grow up in a home built on mature love, happiness, security and stability.  For your sake, for the sake of your future children, do not settle for Mr. Wrong.    Doubt means no.

Dear readers, thank you for all the lovely 加油s for my forthcoming book!  Here’s an update:

This week, I’m happy to be submitting final translation comments to my publisher, CITIC Press. Since the book is so full of English slang, the translating process has included many fun discussions with my wonderful translator, Ivy Wang.

As to the title of the book, I personally like “Do not marry before age 30,” but some of the higher-up publishing executives feel this may be a little too controversial, so we shall see where we end up on this….

The publisher plans to get the books into bookstores across China in late May of this year.  Dave and I plan to be in China with our babies from late May to late July, and during that time, I plan to have lots of events and parties with fabulous 新锐women like you to discuss the big issues of our lives.  I can’t wait!

Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from the-book-with-no-name…

Do not settle for Mr. Wrong

My friends and I all have stayed in relationships longer – months, even years – longer than we know is good for us.  We try to change him, we try to change ourselves, we struggle to make a fit where there is not a real fit, and in the process of trying to make things work, we make everything worse.

We stay because we don’t want to hurt his feelings.  We stay because we lack the courage to listen to our hearts.  We stay because change is scary, the prospect of being alone is scary, and we feel safer in a bad situation than in venturing out into the unknown.  We stay because it feels too hard to climb out, and we’re tired, and we don’t want to start all over again.  The dull ache of being in an unsatisfying relationship seems less sharp than the shattering of a relationship.

And so we stay too long, reliving the good times, reminding ourselves that we can’t expect to have everything.  We rationalize it to our friends, saying, “This is what it means to be grown up.”  We tell ourselves that a bad relationship is better than nothing.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The biggest mistake that women make in relationships is not saying no.  This is a deadly mistake, because the biggest obstacle to finding Mr. Right is being stuck with Mr. Wrong.

No relationship is far better than a better-than-nothing relationship.  Being in a better-than-nothing relationship ensures that you’ll never be in a good relationship, because being with Mr. Wrong takes you off the market.  Mr. Right will never be able to find you if night after night, you’re curled up in front of the TV with Mr. Wrong.  Simple inertia can keep you from experiencing real love for months, for years, or for a lifetime.

Moreover, more insidiously, being with Mr. Wrong is a huge drain on your essence as a human being.  If your primary life relationship is with someone who doesn’t fully appreciate and love you, if he criticizes you or doesn’t cooperate with you, then being with him inevitably will chip away at your soul.

Our society conditions us women to expect so little that we’re always staying too long in bad relationships.  We find a boyfriend – any boyfriend – and we think it’s love, when it’s really just that longing for attachment. Each day that we stay is new evidence that we lack power and control over our lives.  We let our spirits wither away just so we can have a relationship.  In this way, we allow our essential selves – our souls – to be submerged forever.

Don’t throw yourself away like this.  Don’t stay with him because you like his parents.  Or because the two of you already share an apartment, a checking account, and friends.  A relationship must be more than a lifestyle.

Don’t stay with him because you feel a sense of obligation to him.  You have no obligation to date anyone you are not completely drawn to.  It’s kinder to be honest than to be fake.

Be honest with yourself on how a relationship adds or detracts from your life. Deep inside, you know when a relationship is not right for you.  Don’t just live to survive.  Do not view yourself as someone who should settle.

Any relationship in which you don’t feel truly happy and secure and honored is not a good enough relationship for you. You are worthy of love and you are worthy of great love.  Being in a great relationship is far better than being in a better-than-nothing relationship.

Growing up does not equal giving up.  Growing up means finding yourself and becoming independent and learning to take care of yourself.  Once you’ve grown up, then you can find a partnership where your spirit can soar. Saying no sets you free.

How to say no to a man

When we fall in love, it’s easy to confuse “love” with “forever.”  We feel that if we love someone, we should want to be together forever.  If someone breaks up with us, we assume that he didn’t really love us, and feel rejected and betrayed.  “How can you just end this relationship?  I thought you loved me!  Why aren’t you giving us a chance?”

But love is not enough to sustain a relationship.  A good marriage requires much more – shared vision, shared values, among other things.   Understanding this frees us to end relationships without feeling guilty or betrayed.  We can say, “We loved each other, but we weren’t right together.  Now we each can move on to find the right person.  I feel sad, but I wish you well.”

Hard as it is for us women to say no in our daily lives, the hardest no is the one we sometimes need to say to the man in our lives.  And so we lose track of no as an option.  This is the reason for many of the troubled relationships in the world.

Headhunting taught me to say no, since rejecting candidates is a routine part of headhunting.   On a given search, my team and I typically evaluate hundreds of candidates.  As a matter of professional courtesy, we personally say no to all unsuccessful candidates, to advise them of the outcome of the search and to wish them the best.  To candidates with whom we had only minimal phone or email contact, we send an email.  Candidates with whom we’ve had more extensive contact, we call.  That’s given me a lot of practice in saying no.

Saying no to a boyfriend can be really hard.  It requires trusting yourself, trusting your own wisdom, and trusting in a better future.  The only way to overcome the difficulty of saying no is to just do it.

Don’t waste your time or his. The best time to say no is the first moment you realize that someone is not going to meet your needs, even if he’s a wonderful person, and even if you’ve shared some wonderful moments. That moment when you know may occur on your first date, in six months, or years later.

Here’s how:  be clear and simple.  Mention the things you like about him.  Do not blame him.  There is no need to review past events, analyze the relationship, or give critical feedback.  If you want to dissect all that, call your girlfriends.

If he’s sad, be understanding: “I’m really sorry this is painful for you.”   But know that you are not responsible for explaining things to his satisfaction, and it’s not your job to fix his pain.   If he blames you, don’t accept the blame.

After you break up, don’t look back.  Don’t feel like a failure, or feel like you’ve wasted two years of your life.  A relationship is not a failure if you learn something from it.

When you say no to Mr. Wrong, good things will happen.  You’ll feel better about yourself than you have in a long time.  You’ll gain the self-confidence that comes from truly taking care of yourself, and that comes from the knowledge that you’re not a slave to whatever people or events just happen to come your way.  You’re taking your life into your own hands and making things happen in your life.

Because having designed your career and your life so beautifully up until now, the last thing you want to do is to wreck everything by being bound for life to a man who’s not right for you.  Each time you say no, you’ll be closer to saying yes when Mr. Right does come along.

** To stay updated on my book and blog and fun upcoming events in China and the USA, sign up your email address in the upper right corner of the Global Rencai blog here.

** L.A. area friends, don’t forget to join me this Friday March 30 for a very special discussion about the choices facing us in life, career and love.  This event will be held in Chinese and will be especially directed at modern Chinese women.  Brave men interested in eavesdropping are welcome too. Friday March 30 from 1:30-3:30p on USC Campus. Details here.

In the romantic movie “I Do” now playing in Chinese theaters, the actress Li Bingbing (love her!) plays a successful 38-year-old businesswoman unlucky in love.  Disregarding pressure from her peers and society that she escape her leftover status, she insists on finding true love.

In real life, Li Bingbing, also 38 and single and facing many of the questions facing her character in the movie, suggests that we change the term “leftover women” (剩女) to “flower blossom women” (盛女).  I love it! “Blossoming” is such a great concept because it evokes a flower who is beautiful in herself.

But, as her character finds in the movie, when you’re a woman, having a successful career is both good and bad for your love life.  It’s good because good men like independent women, and women like us know how to be independent.  But it can be bad because the behaviors we develop for a successful career can be the wrong behaviors for success in the love department.

Seems more than a little unfair, doesn’t it?  For men, a successful career and successful love life go together.  For us women, it’s a bit more complicated.

For a woman, does a successful career lead to an unsuccessful love life?

This is a question I’ve wrestled with in my own life.

As women who achieve, we’re used to proving ourselves constantly.  No matter how successful we become, people see us first as women, and so it becomes second nature to demonstrate to everyone exactly how outstanding we are.  Those of us who climbed our way up the corporate ladder did so by climbing over the men and besting them at their own aggressive male behaviors.

But when a man likes you he’s not looking for a partner in business – he’s looking for a partner in life.  If you confuse this and behave on a date the way you act in everyday life – impressive – you may impress him with your intelligence and capability, and he may want to hire you or do business with you, but that doesn’t mean he’ll want to date you.

So, when you’re on a date don’t be the Boss Lady.  Don’t talk business, and don’t try to attract him with your business acumen.  Don’t display your debating powers; don’t try to trump his comments.  You might see yourself as capable, modern, persuasive and confident, having a fun intellectual exchange.  But to him you may be coming across as competitive and argumentative.  He’s not looking for a lawyer; he’s looking for a girlfriend.

Yep, I’ve made all those mistakes myself

All this took me many years and a lot of wasted dates to figure out.  Because I am the Boss Lady.  For years, that was me, treating first dates like business dinners, showing off my independence, demonstrating that I am just fine without a man.  But just because you don’t need a man does not mean that that’s the right attitude to lead with on a date.  The bigger your job, the harder it is – and more impressive it is to him – for you to not talk about work, and just be a woman and a human being.

What should you talk about? Personal things. Your family.  Movies you’ve seen.  Where you’ve traveled. What you like to do for fun.  Something other than work, anything other than work.  Rather than go into performing mode, reach out and ask about him.

Right about now, some of you may be getting irritated.  You might be saying, “But Joy, this is just how I am!  My work is who I am!  I love competition!  I love talking shop.  Are you trying to push us women back to the Dark Ages?”

I know how you feel.  We behave in ways for which we’re rewarded.  In the workplace, we’re rewarded for being capable and, that’s right, for being “male.”  Is it unfair for the world to demand that after work we switch sides and become “female”?

Depends on how you look at it.  It’s not unfair, if being “female” is being nice, and gracious, and reaching out to really connect with another human being.  That’s just good behavior for any relationship.

Stop impressing, and start receiving the love of a good man

A man may not want someone simple, dumb and uncomplicated, but that doesn’t mean he’s looking for a work colleague in his home.  He’s not taking his female work colleague off on a glamorous vacation or making passionate love to her.  He’s debating company strategy with her.  He does respect her, but he doesn’t want to come home to her after a long day of work.

He’s looking for the woman of his dreams, the woman whom he’ll love and be successful for.  So don’t try to persuade him that you are deserving.  You are deserving!  You’re a queen!  He wants to deserve you!  One reason that love is hardest for successful women is that we need to learn to stop impressing, and start receiving the love of a good man.

Anytime you worry too much about someone else’s approval, that person will lose respect for you.  Let him earn your love.

Let there be a 9:00am you and a 9:00pm you

You’re a successful woman, which means that you are highly capable at modifying your behavior for success.  Just as you’ve learned how to modify your behavior to make it in a man’s world at work, now modify your behaviors to relate to those same men after work.

Let there be a 9:00 a.m. you, and a 9:00 p.m. you.  Think of how you’ll be someday with your own children, or how you are now with your niece or nephew.  You don’t give them a speech in your rockin’ high heels and Prada suit.  No, you kick off your heels and you smother them in love.  You reveal different sides of yourself with different people.  When you’re with him, let the gorgeous self shine.

Don’t get mad at the unfairness of it all.  There are worse things in life.  If you let him treat you like the queen that you are, then you’ll never feel like you need to choose between a great career and a great man.  You’ll be able to enjoy both.  Besides, after working so hard at the office, just sitting back and being beautiful like a flower blossom, and letting a good man take care of you can be –really nice.

** L.A. area friends, please join me for a very special interactive discussion about the choices facing us in life, career and love.  I’ve spent the past year thinking about these issues for my book, and will share with you some real-life experiences, lessons and regrets from my own career and love life. This event will be held in Chinese and will be especially directed at modern Chinese women.  Men interested in eavesdropping on the discussion are welcome to attend as well. Friday March 30 from 1:30-3:30p on USC Campus. Details here.

Last Friday, I went back to Los Angeles City Hall to help celebrate the 10-year anniversary of “Cash for College,” a program which connects students and their parents with the public funds to help them go to college.

Shown in this photo are some of the friends who have sustained the project over the years. I’m near the holding the certificate, and to my left in the red tie is my good friend, Los Angeles Councilman Eric Garcetti. (Shown at right are my husband Dave and baby daughter Pip who came to City Hall to celebrate with us.)

Los Angeles is famous as a city of “beautiful people” – rich, good-looking people who live perfect lives in sunny weather — but the reality is that ours is a city of rich and poor.  As Deputy Mayor, I was very much troubled by the intergenerational nature of the education gap in our city. Children of well-educated people have a strong chance of going to college and graduate school, while children whose parents have little education have a very low rate of college-going.

I started the Cash for College program to address this disparity. It grew from an idea into a statewide program signed into law by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  By now it’s helped over 100,000 Angelenos and nearly 200,000 Californians gain access to college.  Many are the first in their families to go to college, so the legacy of our project will be felt by their siblings and their children and their communities.  I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel.

To have meaning in life, change the world

A Global Rencai reader once asked me:  Should we be successful, or should we change the world?

This is a false dichotomy.  We become successful through changing the world.

As human beings, we’re programmed to pursue meaning.  Meaning does not come from money.  Says London Business School professor Gary Hamel, “As an emotional catalyst, wealth maximization lacks the power to fully mobilize human energies.”

Meaning comes from doing work that matters.  We need, as Steve Jobs urges, to “make a ding in the universe.”  Truly successful people allocate their resources in service of something bigger than themselves.

To have fun and be happy, change the world

And changing the world is incredibly fun.  It’s the most fun thing to do.  As the Singaporean-Chinese-American Google engineer Chade-Meng (“Meng”) Tan said in his wonderful TED talk at the United Nations, “Compassion is not a chore.  Compassion is something that creates happiness. Compassion is fun!”

In his talk, Meng tells us about the world’s happiest man, Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk and the son of a renown French philosopher.  When neurologists measure happiness through brain activity, Matthieu Ricard scores by far as the happiest man in the world.  Which leads one to wonder:  what was he thinking about when he was being measured?  Something naughty, perhaps?  No, actually, he was thinking about compassion.  It turns out that compassion is the happiest thing ever.

To grow your leadership skills and make lots of friends, change the world

What’s more, compassion creates highly effective business leaders.  Compassion reduces our natural tendencies toward self-obsession because, in Meng’s words, “the cognitive and affective components of compassion are understanding people and empathizing with people.”  Compassion builds our capacity for the number one leadership skill, empathy.

And changing the world will bring you the best of friends. Friends who share your values.  Friends who believe in the same things you do.

They say that Americans always want to change the world while Chinese are only out for themselves.  But I look around and see staggering evidence to the contrary.  I am constantly moved by the beautiful voices of the writers and artists and others out there envisioning a better China.  I see the disaster-relief, child-location, and other volunteer efforts popping up everywhere around China.  I see how people naturally strain toward finding ways to leave their communities a little better than before.

To make the world a better place you don’t have to become poor.  And you don’t have to wait until you first get rich and powerful.

When you approach life from a standpoint of abundance and of connection to others, you will have more success in all that you do.  When you share of yourself with the world, you always will get back more.

Crazy English founder Li Yang and wife Kim Lee

As I write this, the ongoing drama of Crazy English founder Li Yang’s divorce from Kim Lee continues to reverberate in a remarkable public discussion of domestic violence and whether and how it’s tied to culture.

People’s Daily reports that 35% of Chinese families have experienced domestic violence, which is comparable with other societies worldwide.

But even more prevalent than physical abuse is emotional abuse. And emotional abuse is an issue that’s even more hidden.

Emotional abuse is also abuse

We can’t examine something we can’t define, and often the hardest part of confronting abuse is knowing when it’s happening.  That’s why I appreciate that the New York Times bestselling author and psychologist Terrence Real in his book The New Rules of Marriage offers a definition of abuse:

• Yelling and screaming
• Name-calling:  Any sentence that begins with “You are a …”
• Shaming or humiliating:  Communicating that someone is a bad or worthless person.  Ridiculing someone, mocking, being sarcastic, humoring or being patronizing.
• Telling another adult what she should do, or how she should think or feel.
• Making promises and breaking them
• Lying or manipulating:  Deliberately falsifying information or dishonestly changing your behavior in an attempt to control your partner, for example: “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine out here in the rain.  You go have a good time.”

As Dr. Real explains, having a list of abusive behaviors is useful, because if a particular behavior does not appear on the list, it isn’t abusive. Both men and women can be abusers, so beware abuse in all your relationships.

When abuse is ignored, our children – and their children – will suffer

What makes abuse so confusing is that most abusers are not like the evil bad guys that we see in the movies.  Abusers are human too, which means that at times, they show kindness and generosity.  Usually they don’t even know they’re being abusive.  In their minds, they’re the victims, misunderstood and under attack, and their abusive behavior is only a response to a provocation. Many abusers lack the basic emotional skills necessary to be competent adults with functional relationships.

But just because abusers don’t recognize their abusive behavior does not make their abusive behavior any less dangerous to those who try to love them.  When we ignore or cover up abuse, it doesn’t go away. It escalates.  And when children are present, abuse has cascading effects on future generations, since children who grow up witnessing abuse become perpetrators and victims of abuse as adults.

Let’s stop the legacy of abuse right now

There is absolutely no reason that abuse should be a part of your life.  There are plenty of good men and women in this world who do not perpetrate or condone abuse.  Do not date or marry someone who abuses you.  If you are married to someone who abuses you, seek help right away for yourself and your family. You can and must demand that your family be healthy.

And because we choose not to live in a society governed by abuse, let’s not tolerate abuse when it’s directed at our sisters, brothers, friends or colleagues.  For us all to say no to abuse would be for us to step out of women’s traditionally passive role and stop the legacy of abuse in Chinese society.

Because we’re making culture now, too.  And the culture we create will be based on dignity and mutual respect.  If together we link arms to say no to abuse, then in a generation’s time, no one will be able to say that abuse is a normal part of Chinese culture anymore.