Seeking Discomfort

A lot of the growing up I did in my 20s I can attribute to challenging my comfort zone™.

I was curious, lost, and insecure. I was figuring out who I was, and one of the best advice I actually took was to just say yes to things I normally wouldn't up until that point.

The result is that it led me to doing a lot of cool things (ex. living in Chile, learning a new language) and learn a TON about myself.

I still cherish and vividly remember these experiences. I hope to continue saying yes to more random things in the future!

Random collection of stories from challenging my comfort zone

1: First day of kindergarten, age 5. I was a Korean kid in Brazil in an American school. I distinctly remember being super confused. At recess, I somehow remember playing with the other Brazilian kids - them speaking in Portuguese, me in Korean. Neither of us had any idea what the other was saying, but somehow we got along.

2: Moving to the US for college. Even though I was fluent in English by then, I didn't realize that language was a very small part of adapting to the culture. I'll never forget the first time hearing a southern accent in the cafeteria. The idea of being fluent in a language, yet not understanding a word out of the southern woman at the counter was super confusing.

3: Arriving in France for an internship and realizing no one actually spoke English (in my defense: the interview was in English). I vividly remember the panic I felt that entire first week. Eventually I picked myself up and studied my ass off. I spent every night that summer reading, thinking, dreaming in French through old French books (thank god for YouTube too). My brain was EXHAUSTED after every day, but you couldn't find a better way to become fluent. I remember being self conscious every time I had to go into town to grab food at the farmer's market, being the only Asian kid in town. To my surprise, everyone remembered me and would give me free samples. Shoutout to the cheese lady in Étampes for always saving me a batch.

4: Moving to Chile for 6 months on a week's notice. Within months of starting my first job post college, my manager goes, "Have you ever been to Santiago? No? Great!". And I was off on the next flight the following week. I barely spoke Spanish. There I was, a baby faced 23 year old, trying to present myself professionally to C-level executives, in a language and culture I was not familiar with. To make it interesting, the project manager from my team didn't speak English. In the early days, because of the language barrier, we would text each other with google translate, even though we were sitting next to each other. I eventually picked up enough Spanish.

5: Traveling alone. I learned that I could be outgoing if I wanted to - I was a super shy and quiet kid. I figured, if I met strangers they wouldn't know that I was shy and I could just act outgoing. I learned to be comfortable being alone and to deal with various moments of loneliness during that trip.

6: That time my roommate and I shared a junior bedroom (basically a studio with wall separation between the kitchen and bedroom) for over 6 months. We moved to a smaller place to save money and motivate ourselves to quickly find a job in Silicon Valley. It took me 1.5 years before I found one. That was one of the most mentally tough things I ever did.

7: Quitting a six figure salary job at a large tech company at 29 years old to reset my career as a software developer. I enrolled in a coding bootcamp, where I was one of the oldest students.

8: After the bootcamp, I applied to over 150 companies and promptly got rejected by 90% of them. At the end of my first ever coding interview, their feedback was, verbatim, "You're really bad at this". I learned to stay humble and deal with imposter syndrome.

9. Writing this blog!

I hope this inspires at least one person out there to seek uncomfortable situations more often. It's intimidating, but if an introvert like myself can do it, so can you!