| I am a chinese from Hong Kong. I used to run my own business in Hong Kong since I was 19 years old. I always feel lucky and be blessed by God for all these achievements. God has given me a lot of strengths and trust in myself. However, I was kind of living up to other people's expectations. Might be, I was affected greatly by these Chinese family influences, showing off my family's name to other people. Shallow, indeed. A lot of people were competitive in the business, if y failed in examinations, y would be nobody. If y failed to be a top dog, y would be left behind. The feeling of being rejected was even harder to be dealt with. Parents put a lot of pressure on us to help us to be aware of these consequences in reality. I am not saying that parents did it on purpose to undermine us, in reality, they did not know any better how to have a better life. They themselves worked vy hard to keep the family going. They just wanted the best for us to have. They did not mean to hurt our self-esteem. Now, at 40, being successful and happy would be two different things, it is down to us to figure the balance out. I bet that a lot of chinese would not know why they work so hard in the first place, e.g. low self esteem, or just some expectation from family, or truly, there was an opportunity waiting for y to explore!!! |