Unconditional Love: Joanna Zhang

This is The Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Joanna Zhang with Operations Genius. Welcome to the show, Joanna.

Oh, lovely to be here. I'm so grateful to actually spend this lovely time together, Chris.

So why don't you give the audience your, your brief CV? Like, what, what's your experience, what you do?

Oh wow, this used to be a very simple question, but now whenever someone asks me, I feel a bit hard to answer in a way, because we used to use a certain structure or labels or something that to, you know, give us a direction, describe what we do. But to be honest, I don't want to confuse everyone. At the moment, what I'm doing day in, day out, every single moment It's just being myself and every single moment doing my soul mission, soul power, and deliver the mission I'm here for this lifetime. I hope that makes sense, but I'll give you a little bit of context.

Okay.

My soul mission, soul power, it is around helping teams and the members to grow. And 4 years ago, I had a soul awakening. And very interestingly, I accidentally, I find out leadership is one of my soul power, which I didn't realize for many, many years. But I had many years experience working with VAs, had a lot of challenges when I started my own business as a financial planner 8 years ago, and I couldn't really find any model on the market to help me at the time with the flexibility, with all the skills. But I somehow kept it through and figured out a model and start to share with other like business owners to scale up the business. The whole journey after that soul awakening, I look back, I realized that was exactly what I was experiencing as helping teams and members to grow, including myself. With the leadership piece. So yeah, so I think what I do now is really just be myself and deliver my solution, be happy. Yes.

I love that. Okay, so you use the term soul awakening. That is a strong, strong word. So talk, talk about that a little more.

Right. I think you may not be resonant with it. Everyone, but if any of you somehow feel that maybe we have a soul, maybe there's a higher wisdom around us, maybe we're not the only creature on this planet, and maybe there's something, we bear consequences for all the things we do, right, make the decision, there's a good karma or bad karma, reincarnation, you can believe it or not, but it doesn't really matter. The main thing is that if we— you believe there's something outside of our physical body, there is something mystery, something's guiding us. It is about the plant or seed for this journey, basically. So what happened was that I used to use my brain to operate all the times based on my experience, based on my knowledge, based on whatever I had learned from the society or school or work. To operate from here, but I often find there's some patterns in my life that I couldn't break through, including burnout, you know, like all those symptoms. As an entrepreneurship, I couldn't break through a certain point of my business. But at that time, I was like, before the Soul Awakening, I was like the flies in the dark room, you know, without any head, trying to go out of the room. That's the feeling. I'm just surviving. After Soul Awakening, it's like there's a crack on the sky, there's light coming through. I I finally see the direction. I finally see the light and the hope, and I know the way out. So that's something in us, like, if we use another word, subconscious, we always talk about it. It's like we used to use conscious to operate, but subconsciously we know something and to direct us to do certain different things. It's a similar concept. Okay.

Yeah. So, so what— I mean, if you, if you don't mind sharing, if you're not comfortable, that's fine. When you say soul awakening, what was that that caused that? What was that experience like?

Okay, I'm more than happy to share. It's just that I'm not sure what is resonant with a lot of people, but if you're curious, of course I can share. So at that time, that was about 4 years ago. At that time, I experienced business blockage, marriage breakdown, and I felt like I'm here for something, but I don't know what it is. I felt I'm doing something towards the direction I was here for, but I'm not 100% sure. I need the clarity. And at the time I come across a spiritual mentor. Interestingly, everybody I come across before they really literally do the Soul Awakening, there's a lot of things happening in their life. Somehow it's like the universe or higher wisdom or God or whomever you call it is giving us a sign, time to wake up. So we may experience all those things in our life, but we just didn't really feel that way. So Because of those questions, I come across this spiritual mentor at the Divine Timing. So I had a 3-day event, 3-day event, and during the event we actually got asked a lot of questions. Basically, if you heard about the judgments when we die, if there's a story you believe in, when we die we go to judgment and then the higher wisdom will, based on what we did this lifetime, to give us guidance for the next lifetime, whatever it is, or maybe teach us something. So the soul awakening event is literally like before we die, we experience now. So what we can do is really reflect whatever happened before, like since we were born until now, to learn the lesson, to literally let our soul awaken without dying as yet, and to carry on our life and become evolved soul. Okay. I hope that make—

yeah. Oh, that makes sense. And You mentioned like there was these, you know, your business blockage, marriage problems. This mentor, did they help you unpack that? Or was that something like you worked on by yourself?

Very good questions. At that time, we're always expecting, okay, I have this problem. I'm going to someone, ask question, get a solution, ta-ta-ta, you know, like that's a good a good one. So for me, it was like, actually, if you believe, we're using here to— we call it ego to protect us, and they use a lot of limitation to guide us. However, there is inner truth, or the higher wisdom is guiding us toward the real truth. A lot of time, because here is too busy, we turn off the sound, we can't hear them. But after the Soul Awakening, it's like those noise is getting less and less. Well, it takes a journey. It doesn't mean like, aha, I'm awake. Awakening is a journey, at least. But I started to be aware of different signs. I started to connect with the higher wisdom. I started to listen to their voice instead of listening to the noise. So what happened is that at that time I started to be more conscious and I gradually unpacked, gradually unpacked, we call it slow ascension. So after that I realized certain patterns and then I asked the spiritual mentor, the guidance, because they can connect the source directly, download the higher wisdom, right? So I can learn the lesson faster. And get to the truth, the core quicker. So it somehow saved me some time and energy too. It doesn't mean I don't have challenges, but I look at challenges in a different way now. I used to hate challenges. I feel like, why life treat me like this? You know, like, but I didn't realize there was a shadow or lesson behind it. Whatever I experienced, that was based on my decision, and there was a lesson for me to learn. So after that, whatever I experience now, I treasure whatever happens to me. If I made a mistake, I used to drag with my regrets or guilt, all those kind of feelings, but it was giving me a lot of limitations on thinking, you know, like protecting me. But now I actually learned that I wasn't a victim. I actually let go of the victim mindset. I know that it's happening for me to learn something. I just simply accept whatever has happened and learn the lesson from it. And now I can see there are more challenges, but I'm getting smoother and smoother and faster, faster. And it's more like fun. It's like a playground now. To be honest, business for me is like a playground. We're here just playing a different game. It's like in the game, we wear different costumes with different skills, but we're playing different set of game. It's just in the entrepreneurship journey, the game can be very extraordinary and extreme, dramatic sometimes. Oh, let me put this way.

Yes, yes, yeah. I, I think that mirrors somewhat my own experience. I, I think it's very hard for entrepreneurs to go on this journey and not go on this journey and survive and thrive. There are lots of people by themselves, and, and so like, there are, there are a lot of entrepreneurs that try to go it alone. And it, it doesn't end well. And that's not to say that the business fails, but the marriage may fail, their health may fail, you know, their family relationships may fail. It can look a lot of different ways. But for me, I, I was resistant in a way to that external help. I think it's— for me, it was more of this, uh, the way I was raised as a man, uh, not to ask for help, like being able to, uh, figure things out yourself. Um, I was fortunate that God put a business coach in my life. It's a strange story. I was relaying this to some other entrepreneurs last week. I didn't go hire this business coach. Um, I had hired a marketing agency and to do some market research work, and then I get this call from Jacob, who's my, my coach, and he said, yeah, I, I come along with the package. And I'm like, that's strange. Um, and you know, I worked with him while I was working with the marketing agency. The marketing agency finished this, their. And then I hired Jacob as my coach. And this is 4 years on. But, you know, it was— the reason why I said God sent him is because I wasn't looking for him, right? Like, I had been told by one of my colleagues several years ago, I had come to him and I said, you know, I I want to put together an external board of directors. And he patiently listened to me. And at the end, he said, you know, I think you need a business coach. And I'm like, mm, okay, because I respected him. I didn't dismiss it. But I didn't act on it. Because in my mind, a business coach was someone that was going to come and tell you how to do things in your business, right? Like it was a coaching skills kind of thing, right? But Jacob is definitely not that. It's been more of a self-journey than anything else. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's some tactical advice that may come along from time to time. You know, sharing his, his business experience. But that's not really the value. The value is, for me, you use that word clarity, and I, I think being able to get out of your own head and have, have clarity through a conversation with someone else is very important. And I think it's hard to do yourself. I, I, I really do.

Wow, thank you so much for sharing it. Actually, I used to be in that stage too, that, um, I think for the external help, there's a couple of things maybe accompany with this. One thing you said, because I used to seek a lot of external validation because at the time I didn't believe my self-value. So a lot of times actually I wanted to prove to myself, it was my pattern that I wanted to do things to prove myself, right? I have the ability to do it. A lot of times, certainly that, and that caused me either that I did a lot of things but I didn't have a fulfillment, achievement, you know, because I didn't really even value myself. Regardless how much I do, it's lacking of the other fulfillments. Yeah, even though I have the signs of success. So, but after this, so look, as mentioned, because it made me realize that I'm not alone. Actually, I'm here doing something that I don't have to really always just put everything responsibility on myself. And based on that, because you're talking about a failure, right? Success or failure. I was really struggle with, you know, bury everything and I'm so serious about the result. It was because I was attaching to fail or success too much. I'm looking at a result as too important. And a lot of times when we actually think about what exactly is the definition of success and failure. If I get divorced, does it mean I failed? If my business didn't go well, didn't earn that much money, I feel like, does it mean I failed? I mean, even if I earn a lot of money, get a lot of social recognition, but inside I'm not happy, does it mean I'm a success? So this caused me to think of what exactly means success or failure. But anyway, after Soul Awakening, I come across my own definition of true success can be just be truly happy who I am no matter what I do. It's everyone's decision, everyone has different decision. But anyway, based on that, I started to realize, okay, there are higher wisdom out there, or business coach, whomever. I believe whomever turns out in our life, like what you mentioned, it's been plugged into our system, right, or to help with our journey for certain to an extent, regardless is it good or bad, there's no even good or bad, it's mainly about the experience. So during this experience, no matter how long this person or this soul be on our journey, what can we learn from it? And I realized the, the main part now is how much we can learn from what we can learn from the journey. The result is no longer important. And I realized I want to actually let go of the attachment of results Things just naturally happen, evolved. Uh, once I let it go, I'll be more happy too.

Yeah, I, I— the, the, the colleague I referenced, he actually had a, uh, successful business exit and then, uh, went back and got his doctorate in psychology. And, and he, he and I have had some very interesting conversations around his doctoral thesis and his actual research. But I think what you describe is the universal problem entrepreneurs have, which is that entrepreneurs start a business to solve a problem with themselves, whether they understand that or not. So, for instance, my colleague, he was a child of immigrants, and they didn't speak English at home. And his dad, I think I remember his dad would not buy him books, like to read at home, right? And so, like, it was like second or third grade. And the teachers called his parents into the classroom. And said, "Well, we think Pish might be learning disabled, and we need to hold him back." You know, because he's not at reading level, he's not learning. And that moment in time really affected him to the point where, even though he didn't realize it at the time, when he started his company, in the back of his mind, that was a driving force of like, I'm going to prove them wrong. Right? Like, and yeah, and, and, and so we all come to this journey with different experiences and different wounds. But I think the universal one I see is entrepreneurs want to be entrepreneurs so they can control the variables and succeed on their, their own terms, right? Like, I'm going to do this and prove. And it may, it may be like they grew up poor and they didn't ever want to have to worry about money again, or, you know, whatever, whatever it is. But it's— and, and that, that what you said about, uh, not, not being satisfied with your, yourself really resonated with me because I, I'd been an entrepreneur for 20 years before I realized that my primary motivation was to prove that I was worth— I, I was worthy, right? Like, and, and I will say that the, the, the real problem with entrepreneurship is we keep score with money. And it's— you're always going to find somebody else that makes more money. And has more, quote, success, end quote. So if that's your standard, you're never going to say, I've done enough, I've— I am enough. You, you never get there.

Yeah, wow, I'm totally with you because when you said, um, I think maybe everyone started entrepreneurship with different reasons, but for me, certainly at the time was like, I need the freedom, Well, not myself. Everyone may have a different reason, but the part of approving ourselves and controlling the process can be one of the features of entrepreneurship because I was totally like that. I was controlling freak. I need certainty. And then that's why I got myself burnout and a lot of stress, carry everything on my own shoulder. All those symptoms I experienced through. But at the time, I think I went through a few different stages of entrepreneurship as well, probably Like at the very beginning, I need to get out of the workforce, I need freedom. So I started to do something. Probably that's one of the reasons that people break through certain patterns to go out of the other environments, break through the comfort zone. Another journey of myself, when I actually started business, I was a financial planner, but at the time I needed a lot of help for the VAs. I needed different skills, I needed flexibility, but I didn't really find anyone in my model need all full-time, part-time. I don't have money, enough money to hire a group of full-time, part-time. I'm not startup with funds. So I somehow figured out a way to structure the team with flexibility to support my business to start with. And then I thought, why don't I share this model with others? Many people were experiencing similar thing. That could be another reason we start a business. Like what you're saying, we figure out a solution and we solve our own problem and we started to help others. So a lot of entrepreneurs think I can be for that reason as well. But the blockage was there before my soul awakening, as mentioned. There's another stage now for the entrepreneurship was about the intention, because my spiritual mentor actually once asked me, she said, Jo, why do you need to do your business? Well, my first answer from my superficial logical out is, wow, it's a good business model, right? Why? Yeah, and then she said, think again, why do you do your business? So I am like, I can certainly help a lot of people, I believe so because he helped me. I thought that's the answer and she asked me again, think again, why do you do your business exactly? Well, at that time I was running out of answer to be honest because my brain doesn't work and I don't know what I say but this one sentence just spew out of my mouth then my tear drops. And guess what I said? What? Because at the time there was just one word out of my mouth. I said, because of unconditional love. I was surprised I was saying that word, and then my tears just dropped. And she said, there you go, your soul knows the answer. Since then, I realized that a lot of time when we have emotions, something that we don't have a reason feel like touched or moved. Those are the signs of our body that our soul is trying to deliver something to us. They are trying to deliver something to us. Since then, I started to adjust my intention doing the business. I used to do business as transactional. I'm looking at every client as a dollar sign because, you know, pipeline, whatever it is. Since then, I adjust my approach. I look at every single client as a soul. Every soul have their pain point. Every soul have their challenges on a journey. I care about them as individual soul. I let go of the expectation of doing any business. The magic just happened. Surprisingly, when I let go of the expectation, business just come now.

So yeah, I, I, I love that awareness. Now this is a difference between my experience. Like, I knew very early on why I was doing what I was doing. Wow. But I didn't understand. I understood my motivation, my intent, you use the word, but I didn't understand the problem that was keeping me from progressing, right? Entrepreneurs reach— one of my colleagues, he calls them entrepreneurial inflection points. And it's essentially anytime the business caps because the owner has quit growing, right? And it happens multiple times. But at my point, I was stuck. The business was not going any further, and I thought that the solution was out there. I thought it was, you know, something around employees or the market or the customers or the vendors, like everywhere but me. Like, I didn't look at me as being the limiting factor, right?

Yes.

But what I realized is that I absolutely was the common problem, right? And being able to unpack that and figure out what beliefs, what behavior, what I was doing that was keeping the business moving forward, because I couldn't see that. Like, I thought that it was some other problem to solve, right? Like, there's some problem out there that I'm not seeing the solution to. But it wasn't outside of me, it was inside of me.

Totally. Wow. You know, like, it's just spot on because I think not just business owner now, every single human being on this earth, at the end of the day, the journey is about ourselves becoming the true self or become a better version of ourselves. Let's say it's not coming from the version of I'm not good enough. It's like we're already good enough, but we can be better. Depends on our decision, of course. So when we're talking about the bottleneck thing, normally, often the bottleneck can be ourselves as the leader of the business. Whatever our vision and what we understand, what is our dimension we're carrying forward, is that what kind of business we carry. So I realize that as well. But I also realize one thing that I used to We talk about body, emotion, and soul, right? Like body, emotion, and soul. I used to do a lot of things on the physical realm. I have to say I'm an action doer, you know, I can take action, execution perfectly, and then very quick, and then I can get things done. But I've learned a lot of strategies too. I started to make them realize the strategy is important. But that blockage, as I mentioned before, I was trying so hard, I couldn't break through because there was spiritual reason. Over there to block me, you know, like because I wasn't aligned. My soul want this, the love, but my physical self all want desire. So they are not aligned. That's why my spiritual mentor always reminded us, we always talk about physical, emotional, spiritual, actually it should be the other way around. If we check in what is experience from spiritual realm is trying to teach us, then checking, tapping with our emotions to see, oh, exactly the lesson. And then we physically run and ground it in the practice and to make it happen. It will be much easier because if we actually go from the physical realm, it can actually navigate us to a lot of different directions with a lot of traps or little attractions or, you know, like, but if we go back to the true self from love and the wholeness, where are we from, and then everything else flows through, it will be just really smooth and aligned. With meaningful practice, I would say.

No, I think that's wisdom. Because here's the place where I get hung up. As you know, I'm a Christian. I have been for a long time. I've been on the journey of follower, you know, the ancient Christians called themselves the follower of the way. Because Yeshua Messiah, he used the term, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And so a lot of his early followers identified as I'm a follower of the way. And what's been difficult for me, which is I think the same thing you're saying is that a lot of times, those teachings are in conflict with the world. Like you said, your mind, the things that we do in business, not being aligned, right? But I think that that, you know, what you said about unconditional love, that strongly resonates with me, because that is, I think that's what we all seek as humans is to be fully known and fully loved. And if the natural outcome of that is if you are fully known and still fully loved, is to love others that way. Yeah. And so, but you know, and I know you're in business, that's not the way the world works, for the most part, right? I mean, it's not the way it's wired. And so that can come into conflict a lot. But I love the fact that you're saying starting with what your spiritual belief is and line the rest of it up with that. I think that's spot on.

Thank you. Thank you. And actually, when we're talking about unconditional love, you're so, like, on the spot. You said we all feel like we wanted to seeking that love, right? Like, we wanted to feel that we, no matter what we do, we loved, we are seen, we are known. And we actually forgot about one truth. I mean, you believe it or not, everybody maybe have a different feeling because we get so many experience with our family or society, whatever external noise or treatments. We are actually always loved by God, by—

Yes.

By Divine. We always love no matter what we did, even though I made a mistake or whatever it is, you know, they see us as imperfectly perfect. So, and when we're talking about, when you're saying that we actually trying to give a lot of others, I have all those symptoms of people pleasing, whatever, and trying to validate and improve, it's because I didn't even love myself. They love us like that, and we were trying to practice unconditional love and become self-sacrifice because I feel like I need to give to others. But the most important thing we forgot, person we forgot to look after was ourselves. And during this Soul Awakening, Soul Ascension journey, after I realized that we are already loved anyway, that the only person is that we haven't been abandoned, the only person abandoned ourselves was always ourselves. So I started to look within, really go back to the true self. Like what you asked me, what I do now, it's like I'm going back to the true inner self to be my true loving self from Divine, where I originally from, and then feel the love all the time. And then to understand that whatever I give others, I got to give myself first, like my own cup. I need to fill up my own cup first. Otherwise, previously, all my— what I did was like my cup was empty, I was still trying to give in, I was drained, burnout. That's one of the reasons of burnout as well as entrepreneur. And when we talk about self-love, it's like my spiritual mentor always mentioned to us that if something we wanted to give others but we don't have ourselves, We can't give something we don't have, like a patient's respect, you know, whatever you need.

I would agree with that, and I would go one step further. I don't think you can give to others what you would not give to yourself. Yes, you can't give something you don't have, but I think that if if you're trying to love somebody unconditionally, but you don't allow yourself to be loved unconditionally, like you're still judging yourself, you're still condemning yourself. Yeah, you can't accept that behavior with others. Yeah, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. I think that The highest calling anybody can have is to love others. And that, if you go around and say that in business circles, they kind of look at you like you've got a third eye, like, what do you mean? But I mean, yeah, and that could be employees, that could be customers, that could be vendors. I mean, it's You know, that applies in all situations.

Oh yeah, sure. Well, we can't do too much about people around us because the society and the setup is like this. Well, I believe that what we can do now is to start with our single self, and then that's how the ripple effect can start, right? So if we really realize that we are the core, we are the reason, we are the foundation, when we change, everything around us change. Well, I started to focus on myself now because I used to put too much attention on others, which caused me a lot of burnout, exhaustion. Yeah, and when we talk about self, I used to confuse about self-love and selfish. I said, oh, if I don't give others, would that be selfish? And then my spiritual mentor actually, that was— I just remember that it's really unique in the way that we think about checking the win-win-win. So first thing is always myself, because I used to do some business with someone or in a certain environment, I wasn't even happy. Why was— why did I do that? Because I need external validation, because I need the business. Well, totally not making sense. The first thing, I didn't check in, and I was totally just immerging myself in the environment that which is not nourishing my soul. So now whatever I do, now I first check in myself whether I'm happy to do this. And then I will check whether this will be good for this person and then whether it will be good for this world. It's always win-win from inner to outer now because previously I was from outer to inner. I forgot myself. Yeah, so self-love.

Well, you use the word selfish and I think that is a common misconception that to love yourself is selfish. It is not a selfish act. And it's foundational to be able to see yourself as loved to love others. I will die on that hill. I don't think you can unconditionally love someone else, unless you feel and understand and know that you are unconditionally loved.

Like ourselves.

Yeah, yeah. Yes. The, the world— I mean, and, you know, I'm a parent. I, I have 3 adult children. I, I understand, you know, even our parents' love, which is probably the most perfect love any of us experience, um, is, is still somewhat conditional, right? And even, even though our parents and I tried very hard because it's tied to behavior in some way, right? So like, if you behave badly as a child, you're going to— if your parents love you, they're going to punish you. But it doesn't feel like love, right?

It— boo!

To a child, right? And so there's— all of us grow up with those wounds and scars from what we perceive as conditional love without really understanding that, you know, sometimes love hurts. Like, that's, you know, I think a common misconception that love is just universal agreement. Like, you know, everybody— absence of conflict, right? That's not— that to me is not love, right? Like, just because in that scenario, where there's the absence of conflict equals love, then what do you do with injustice? What do you do with someone that is hurting someone that's innocent, right? That requires an intervention, right? And so love is not always this, you know, touchy-feely. Sometimes love hurts. And that's something that I think gets lost, is that love is just not the absence of conflict. Well, what do you say?

Well, that's me. I think for this two-word unconditional love, There's a few things about it. The first one is a misconception about this word. Like what you described, that's exactly probably majority of people think about what unconditional love is, is that no matter what, I love you and you do it, you know, I still like this. What? Yeah, from this truth point of view, if we think about Divine or God, they look at us like that. However, think this way, Whenever we make some decisions, do we bear some consequences? We believe good karma, bad karma. That's their way to love us. They actually teach us in a way that let us bear our own consequences to learn the lessons. However, I used to, like, give example, I used to spoil my son and I was very angry at him. I was like, ah, but I was spoiling him. By doing that, if he doesn't bear his own consequences, he can't learn his own lessons. And I used to think unconditional love is that you do whatever you do, I love you, I support. Yeah, I used to think that, but then I learned from the Divine, from the Source, from God, it's not. Unconditional love is based on the foundation of first layer is protection, not let ourselves get hurt. It's not like someone step on us and say, come on, I'm going to love you, step on me again. It's not that. Because if we do that, we don't even self-unconditional love ourselves. As we mentioned, if we don't have that for ourselves, how can we give it to others? So very first layer is protection for ourselves, make sure we are unconditional love by ourselves. And then second layer is no matter what happens, whether— I used to have that hatred feeling if someone hurts me, right? Like, um, but this is a hard layer because when we have that hatred feeling the darkness can get to us because we can do something harmful for others. That was another life lesson I've learned, let go of hatred. Forgiveness doesn't mean that, anyway, forgiveness means that if this person has a sign to change, I'll forgive, but I let go of the hatred feeling because those hatred feelings, that navigate me to another direction, the darkness, the bad behavior, whatever. So if I protect myself, and I respect this person's decision to do whatever they do. The third layer is let them bear their own consequences, not looking back to support whatever they do. Let them learn the lesson because that's the true way for them to grow, and that's a true way of love. Like what you're talking about, tough love. You know, like when our parents actually have some conditions to do something to us, we feel like we were punished, but that depends on the intention from another person.

Correct.

For example, a lot of parents, when we did that, when we did that, like what I did for my son, I wasn't happy about myself. I was angry. I was actually angry at him, but I was angry at myself. I wasn't even fully love myself yet. How can I give that love out? A lot of us experience that love from our society. It is like that because people hurting us because they are hurt. However, the Divine Love is different. Source God, they love themselves, they know how to love themselves, they don't need any external validation, but what they gave us as consequences is the intention from love for us to learn and grow, become a better version of ourselves, become happier. So I think that's the deeper intention. So I've now learned about the true essence of unconditional love, I started to practice on myself as well, And then start to really respect. Actually give you a quick example. I used to— that actually affect my leadership journey because when I started business, I was title leader totally. I was controlling freak. I was the title is a director, founder, whatever. You got to listen to me, that kind of controlling freak, straight at the time. And then when I realized I had all those challenging hurdles, I need to provide some support to others. Then when I go into serving leader, stage. I started to provide space and stage for the people to give them support. But at the same time, as I mentioned, I have had the spoiling feature. I didn't really love myself enough. I didn't have enough boundary. People stepped on my boundary, those sort of things. I got hurt, including my previous marriage. Of course, I have my lesson. Then I realized I need to make some changes too, but I didn't know what. I thought I was loving others by just supporting without protection of my own boundary. Then after the Soul Awakening and the Soul Ascension, I realized, okay, oh, that's true unconditional. That means I need to balance the compassion and the boundary. So now I'm transitioning into a spiritual leader stage of I truly practice balancing compassion, understanding, supporting with the boundary now. Once I practice self-love, unconditional on myself. These two words sound very easy, but truly people can do it is so hard. So hard. At the moment, what I can feel is probably only Source or God. They have an ability to do that. That's what they call God, Source. It's like a graduated soul. Like when we talk about this, our spiritual mentor, it's more like we're in the playground and different souls have different lessons. We're all here to learn, like a playground or school, school. And then some souls during different journey, they graduated from this life school. Then they come back to teach us how to get over of this gate. That's how we look at this now. Life designed this way, and we on Earth here is a school, the way we're looking at it.

That's an interesting idea. Not one that I— I mean, that presupposes I'm assuming reincarnation, which is kind of interesting. My business coach is a practicing Orthodox Jew. He used to be a rabbi. And he and I have a lot of spiritual conversations. Right. And he told me that he, as a Jew, believes in reincarnation. And I'm like, huh, that's kind of interesting. I never knew that was a common belief. I'm not— I mean, I don't— yeah, I mean, I don't think it really matters whether there is or isn't reincarnation. I think the idea of that we are here to learn how to be better, is true, whether or not reincarnation is true. I mean, you know, but, you know, I've had— would you consider yourself to be a Zen Buddhist? Is that the spirituality that you associate with?

I'm not religious, but—

Right.

I know different religion has different belief somehow, but if we look at all religions, we'll find out there's something very common behind all the concept of all the religions. Even though different religion had different rules and beliefs, but the concept behind it as a truth are all the same. Yes. It is unconditional love. Yes. It is from love.

Well, I think that reflects the Creator. I think that the creation reflects the Creator and the Creator, one of the attributes, the compelling attributes of God is that he is love. So how can the creation not reflect it? So, yeah, I agree. I think that there's I think, this is me, I mean, and I think only the fool says that there is no God. You know, I've listened to a lot of atheists and agnostics and basically saying, you know, show me proof. And they're trying to do that in the intellectual mind. And I'm like, it's not a problem to be solved by the mind. It is a matter of the heart, like you You can't approach God on an intellectual level. That's like, you're not God, you're not going to be able to understand the mind of God. But you can, in your heart, understand that he is love. Like, that's an affair of the heart, not of the mind. Not that I don't think that the mind is involved, I do. But like, If you're trying to prove the existence of God with your brain like a science experiment, you're gonna be disappointed.

I remember one example. We had a person, we actually feel like he's really struggled with his life. He always wanted to look for answers, but he doesn't believe there's a God, like exactly what you were mentioning. And then Our spiritual mentor just example, he said, okay, you wanted to see the picture in the TV, but you don't want to turn on the TV. Let's say the TV is like a heart, you know, right? And you just want to pat on the TV and where is the picture? Yeah, it doesn't work like that.

Oh dear. Yeah, that's a good analogy. Joanna, how do people, uh, find out more about what you do and and how they can work with you?

Oh, okay. I think the easiest way is to find me on LinkedIn. Just put my name Joanna Jiang. If there are multiple Joanna Jiang, just put Operations or Genius beside me, I believe. Yeah. And then I love to connect with anyone of, you know, we can just collaborate and go from there.

Listeners, I'll have those links in the show notes. If you've liked what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.