Unconditional Love: Joanna Zhang

Summary

In this episode, Christian Brim interviews Joanna Zhang, who shares her journey of soul awakening and self-discovery. Joanna discusses the importance of understanding one's true self, the challenges faced in entrepreneurship, and the transformative power of unconditional love. She emphasizes the need for self-love and the significance of aligning spiritual beliefs with business practices. The conversation explores how personal experiences shape our definitions of success and failure, and the role of external help in navigating the entrepreneurial journey.

Takeaways

• Joanna emphasizes the importance of being true to oneself in both personal and professional life.
• Soul awakening can lead to profound changes in perspective and purpose.
• Challenges in entrepreneurship can be reframed as opportunities for growth and learning.
• External help, such as coaching, can provide clarity and support in business.
• Success is not solely defined by financial gain but by personal fulfillment and happiness.
• Self-love is foundational to being able to love others unconditionally.
• The journey of entrepreneurship often reflects deeper personal struggles and motivations.
• Unconditional love involves setting boundaries and protecting oneself.
• Aligning spiritual beliefs with business practices can lead to a more fulfilling career.

Feeling stuck in your business? Book a free call with Christian.

https://calendly.com/cbrim/30min

Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.253)
Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Joanna Zhang of Operations, I've already forgotten, Operations Genius. We're gonna re-record that. Joining me today, Joanna Zhang with Operations Genius. Welcome to the show, Joanna.

Joanna Zhang (00:12.303)
That's okay.

Joanna Zhang (00:24.596)
how lovely to be here. I'm so grateful to actually spend this lovely time together, Chris.

Christian Brim (00:30.693)
So why don't you give the audience your brief CV, like what's your experience, what you do.

Joanna Zhang (00:38.536)
wow, this used to be a very simple question, but now whenever someone asks me, I feel a hard to answer in a way because we used to use certain structure or labels or something to 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 is just being myself.

Christian Brim (00:57.179)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (01:05.87)
and every single moment doing my sole mission, sole 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. My sole mission and sole power, it is around helping teams and their members to grow. And four years ago, I had a sole awakening and very interestingly, I accidentally I find out leadership is one of my sole power, which I didn't realize for many, many years, but I had a many years experience working with VA's, a lot of challenges,

Christian Brim (01:06.031)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (01:16.281)
Okay.

Christian Brim (01:21.295)
Hmm.

Joanna Zhang (01:35.726)
when I started my own business as a financial planner eight 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 just start to share with the other mind like business owners to scale up the business. The whole journey after that cell awakening, I look back, I realized that was exactly what I was experiencing as helping teams and members to grow, including myself with a leadership piece. So yeah, so I think

Christian Brim (02:01.818)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (02:05.59)
What I do now is really just be myself and deliver my solution. Be happy. Yes.

Christian Brim (02:13.029)
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.

Joanna Zhang (02:24.174)
I think it may not be resonant with everyone, but if any of you somehow feel that maybe we have a soul, maybe there is 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 good karmas or bad karmas. Reincarnate it, you can believe it or but it doesn't really matter.

Christian Brim (02:48.933)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (02:53.889)
The main thing is that if you believe there's something outside of our physical body, there is something mystery. Something's guiding us. It is about the plan or seed for this journey, basically. So what happened was that I used to use my brain to operate all the time, 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 since then...

Christian Brim (02:59.771)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (03:17.424)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:22.65)
Yes.

Joanna Zhang (03:23.885)
But I often find that there's some patterns in my life that I couldn't break through, including burnout, know, like all those symptoms as an entrepreneur. I couldn't break through a certain point of my business. By that time I was like, before the solar awakening, was like, the flies in the dark room, you know, without any head.

Christian Brim (03:43.303)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (03:43.789)
just wanted to go out of the room. That's the feeling. I'm just surviving. After the solar wakening, it's like there's a crack on the sky. There's light coming through. 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 the 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.

Christian Brim (03:57.808)
Hmm

Christian Brim (04:05.455)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:13.403)
Okay. So, so what I mean, if you if you don't mind sharing, if you're not comfortable, that's fine. when when you say soul awakening, what what was that? What was that that caused that? was that experience like?

Joanna Zhang (04:13.48)
It's a similar concept. Yeah.

Joanna Zhang (04:32.205)
Okay, I'm more than happy to share. It's just that I'm not sure whether it's resonant with a lot of people, but if you're curious, of course I can share. So at that time, that was about four years ago. At that time, I experienced a business blockage, marriage break down, 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. need clarity. And at that time, I come across a spiritual mentor.

Christian Brim (04:48.975)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:52.879)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:59.493)
Hmm.

Joanna Zhang (05:03.012)
Interestingly, everybody I come across before they really literally do this level of awakening, there's a lot of things happening in our lives. Somehow it's like the universe or higher race 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 lives, 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 three day event.

Christian Brim (05:10.491)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (05:18.499)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (05:31.838)
And during the event, actually got asked a lot of questions. Basically, if you heard about the judgment, when we die, if there's a story you believe in, when we die, we go to judgments and then we, the higher risk, then we'll 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 Solar Awakening event is little like before we die, we experience now.

Christian Brim (05:36.165)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (05:49.123)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (05:53.337)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (05:58.761)
So what we can do is really reflect whatever happened before, like since we were born until now, to learn a lesson. To literally let our soul awaken without dying as yet, and to carry on our life and become evolved souls. I hope that makes sense.

Christian Brim (05:59.28)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (06:05.957)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (06:10.095)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay. No, I mean that makes sense and What what you mentioned like there there was these you know your your business blockage marriage problems This mentor Did they help you unpack that? Or was that something like you you worked on by yourself?

Joanna Zhang (06:40.201)
Very good questions. At that time, we always expect him, okay, I have this problem. I'm going to someone, ask question, I got a solution, ta ta ta. You know, like, that's 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 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's too busy, we turn off the sound.

Christian Brim (06:49.711)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (07:10.127)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (07:10.279)
We will come here then. But after cell awakening is like those noise is getting less and less. Well, it take 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 listen 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 so ascension. So after that,

Christian Brim (07:29.509)
Mm-hmm

Joanna Zhang (07:38.005)
I realize certain patterns and then I ask the spiritual mentor to guide us 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's somehow saving some time and energy to, it doesn't mean I don't have a challenge, but I look at challenges in a different way now. I used to hate challenges. feel like why life treat me like this? You know, like,

Christian Brim (07:52.538)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (08:00.912)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (08:04.824)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (08:05.0)
but I didn't realize there was a treasure or lesson behind it. Whatever I experienced, that wasn't based on my decision and there was a lesson for me to learn. So after that, whatever I experienced now, I treasure whatever happens to me. If I made a mistake, I used to jack with my regrets, or guilt, all those kind of feelings, but it was giving me a lot of limitations on the thinking, know, like protecting me. But now I actually learned that I wasn't a victim.

I actually go the victim mindset. know that it's happening for me to learn something. I just simply accept whatever has happened. I learned a lesson from it. And now I can see there are more challenges, but I'm getting smoother and smoother and faster and faster. And it, it's more like a 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 where we're wearing different costumes with different skills, but we're playing different set of games.

Christian Brim (08:51.451)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Joanna Zhang (09:01.615)
It's just the inter-entrepreneurship journey, the game can be very extraordinary and like extreme dramatic sometimes. I'll end it for this way. Yeah.

Christian Brim (09:08.379)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think that mirrors somewhat my own experience. 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 so like 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. 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, the way I was raised as a man, not to ask for help, like being able to figure things out yourself. 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. 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 come along with the package and I'm like that's strange And you know, I worked with him while I was working with the marketing agency the marketing agency finished this their work and then I Hired Jacob as my coach and this is four years on

Joanna Zhang (10:52.076)
Bye.

Christian Brim (11:06.891)
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,

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 there's some Tactical advice that may come along from time to time, know sharing his ex his business experience but that's not really the value the value is for me you use that word clarity and 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 really do.

Joanna Zhang (12:45.633)
Wow, thank you so much for sharing it. Actually, I used to be in that stage too that I think for the external help, it's a couple of things, maybe a company with us. One thing he 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. But a lot of times certainly that

Christian Brim (13:01.605)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (13:11.162)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (13:15.304)
And that caused me either that I did a lot of things, but I didn't have a fulfillment achievement, you because I didn't really even value myself. Regardless how much I do, it's lacking of the other fulfillments, even though I have the size of success. So, but after this little 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

Christian Brim (13:21.123)
Mm-hmm, sure.

Christian Brim (13:25.999)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Christian Brim (13:39.535)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (13:44.083)
put everything responsibility on myself. And based on that, because you're talking about a failure, right? Success or failure. I was really struggled with, you know, bury everything. And I'm so serious about the results. It was because I was attaching to fail or success too much. I'm looking at a reward as too important. And a lot of times while we actually think about what exactly is the definition of success and failure. If I get divorced.

Christian Brim (13:46.895)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (14:12.155)
Mmm.

Joanna Zhang (14:13.791)
doesn't mean I failed. Even if my business didn't go well, didn't earn that much money, feel like doesn't mean I failed. I mean, even if I earn a lot of money, get a lot of recognition, inside I'm not happy, doesn't mean I'm a success. So this caused me to think of what exactly means success or failure. But anyway, after Solo Awakening, I come across my own definition of who success can be, just be truly happy, be who I am.

Christian Brim (14:15.931)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (14:42.521)
no matter what I do. It's everyone's decision. Everyone has different decision. Anyway, based on that, I started to realize, okay, there are higher wisdom out there or business coach who never, I believe, who never 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 extent, regardless is it good or bad, or it's not even good or bad.

Christian Brim (14:44.537)
Right.

Christian Brim (14:58.907)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (15:10.143)
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 that 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 attachment of results. Things just naturally happen, evolved. Once I let go of the expectation, I'll be more happy too.

Christian Brim (15:35.887)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (15:39.47)
Yeah, the colleague I referenced, actually had a successful business exit and then went back and got his doctorate in psychology. And he and I have had some very interesting conversations around his doctoral thesis and his actual research. But I think what you describe is

Joanna Zhang (15:54.683)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (16:09.755)
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 colleagues, he was a child of immigrants and they didn't speak English at home.

Joanna Zhang (16:19.997)
you

Christian Brim (16:39.399)
his dad, I think I remember his dad would not buy him books like to read at home. Right. And, and so like, 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? And so we all come to this journey with different...

Joanna Zhang (17:28.444)
yeah.

Christian Brim (17:34.99)
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 own terms, right? Like I'm going to do this and prove and it may be like they grew up poor and they didn't ever want to have to worry about money again or whatever it is.

Joanna Zhang (17:46.266)
Bye!

Christian Brim (18:03.451)
What you said about not being satisfied with yourself really resonated with me because I'd been an entrepreneur for 20 years before I realized that my primary motivation was to prove that I was worth, I was worthy, right? And I will say that

The real problem with entrepreneurship is we keep score with money. And 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 am enough. You never get there.

Joanna Zhang (18:59.755)
Yeah, wow. I'm totally with you because when you said, I think maybe everyone started entrepreneurship with different reasons, but for me, certainly at the time was like, I need a freedom. For myself, it's like everyone may have a different reason, but the part of approving ourselves and controlling the process can be one of the features as entrepreneurship because I was totally like that.

Christian Brim (19:12.859)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (19:22.915)
True, true.

Joanna Zhang (19:23.66)
I was controlling break, I needed certainty and that's why I got myself burnouts and a lot of stress, 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 needed to get out of the workforce, you know, I needed 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 a business, I was a financial planner, but at the time I needed lot of help for the VAs. know, like I needed different skills, I needed flexibility, but I didn't really find anyone in the model, you know, full-time, part-time. 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 the flexibility to support my business to start with.

Christian Brim (20:15.844)
Right.

Christian Brim (20:21.861)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (20:21.94)
And then I thought, why don't I share this model with others? You many people were experiencing similar thing. That could be another reason we started business. Like what you're saying, we figure out a solution and we solve our own problem. Then we started to help others. So a lot of entrepreneurs think I can be for that reason as well. But the blockade was a stair before my solo awakening, as mentioned. There's another stage now for entrepreneurship was about intention because my spiritual mentor actually wants to ask me, she said,

Christian Brim (20:33.328)
Yes.

Yes.

Joanna Zhang (20:51.669)
Joe, why do you need to your business? Well, my first answer from my superficial logical answer is, wow, it's a good business model. And it's, Yeah. And then she said, think again, why do you do your business? I consider it helpful to people. I believe so because it helped me. I thought that's the answer. And she asked me again. Think again. Why do you do your business? Exactly.

Christian Brim (21:01.433)
Ryan? Ryan?

Joanna Zhang (21:21.0)
Well, at the time I was running out of that answer, to be honest, because my brain doesn't work and I don't know what I said, but there's one sentence just split out of my mouth, then my tear dropped. And guess what I said? 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.

Christian Brim (21:44.528)
Hmm.

Joanna Zhang (21:50.74)
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 address my intention doing the business. I used to do business as transactional. I'm at clients as a dollar sign because, know, a pipeline, whatever it is.

Christian Brim (22:19.21)
Mm-hmm, right.

Joanna Zhang (22:19.763)
But since then I've addressed my approach. I look at every single client as a soul. Every soul has their pain point. Every soul has their challenges on their journey. I care about them as individual soul now. I let go of the expectation of doing any business and the magic just happened. Surprisingly, when I let go of the expectation, business just come now. So yeah.

Christian Brim (22:43.066)
I love that awareness. Now this is a different stream in my experience. Like I knew very early on why I was doing what I was doing, 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?

Joanna Zhang (22:52.69)
Wow.

Joanna Zhang (23:11.346)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (23:11.862)
I, entrepreneurs reach one of my colleagues. calls them, entrepreneurial inflection points. And it's essentially any time the business caps because the owner has quit growing. Right. And it, it's, you know, it happens multiple times, but at my point, I was stuck. The business was, was not going any further. And I thought.

Joanna Zhang (23:15.58)
So thank

Christian Brim (23:41.595)
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? But what I realized is that I absolutely was the common problem, right?

Joanna Zhang (23:57.264)
Yes. Yes.

Christian Brim (24:10.619)
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. I thought that it was some other problem to solve. 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.

Joanna Zhang (24:41.049)
Totally. Wow. You know, like it's just a 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 original, I'm not good enough. It's like we're already good enough, but we can be better. It depends on our decision, of course. So why are we 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 carry forward, that what kind of business we carry. So I realize it as well. But I also realized one thing that I used to, we talk about a body, emotion and soul, Like body, emotion and soul. I used to do a lot of things on the physical rock.

Christian Brim (25:09.051)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, yes.

Joanna Zhang (25:37.973)
I have to say I'm an action doer. You know, I can take action execution perfectly and in a very quick and then I can get things done. but I've learned a lot of strategies too. started to make them realize that the strategy is important, but, that blockade, as I mentioned before, I was trying so hard. couldn't break through because there was spiritual reason over there to block me, you know, like, because I wasn't aligned my stove on this, the log, but my, my, my physical self on what desire.

Christian Brim (26:00.112)
Mm.

Joanna Zhang (26:06.794)
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 Ram is trying to teach us? Then checking tapping with our emotions to see, exactly the lesson. And then we physically ram it grounded in the practice and to make it happen. It will be...

Christian Brim (26:08.013)
Mmm.

Joanna Zhang (26:31.915)
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 with attractions or you know like but if we go back to the true self from love and the wholeness where we're from and then everything else flow through it'll be just really smooth and aligned with a meaningful practice I would say

Christian Brim (26:58.295)
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.

Joanna Zhang (27:16.683)
Mm.

Joanna Zhang (27:26.857)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (27:26.875)
because Yeshua, Messiaen, 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 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. And so, I, I, but, know, and I know you're in business.

That's not the way the world works for the most part, right? I mean it it's not the way it's wired and so that that can come into conflict a lot, but I I love the fact that you're you're you're saying starting with what your your spiritual belief is and Line the rest of it up with that. I think that's spot-on

Joanna Zhang (29:19.186)
Thank you. Thank you. And actually, when we're talking about unconditional love, you so like almost felt we all feel like we wanted to seeking that love, right? Like we wanted to feel that way. No matter what we do with love, the way we're seen, we're known. And we actually forgot about one truth. I mean, you believe in or not everybody maybe have a different feeling because we get so many experience with our family or society, whatever external noise or treatments.

Christian Brim (29:28.954)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (29:33.956)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (29:46.092)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (29:49.753)
We are actually always loved by God, by them, by divine. We're always loved no matter what we did, even though I made a mistake or whatever it is, know, they see us as imperfectly perfect. So, and when we're talking about what 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 is because I didn't even love myself.

Christian Brim (29:53.999)
Yes.

Christian Brim (30:12.922)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (30:17.518)
They love us like that and we're 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, the person we forgot to look after was ourselves. And during this soul awakening, soul ascension journey, I realized that we are already loved anyway. The only person is that we haven't been abandoned. The only person abandoned ourselves was always ourselves.

Christian Brim (30:17.935)
Yes.

Christian Brim (30:23.535)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (30:43.888)
So I started to look within, really go back to the true self, like what you asked me, what I do now is like I going back to the true inner self, to be my true loving self from divine, where I originally from and I 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 it, I was drink.

burnout. That's one of the reasons burnout as well as an 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 patience, a support, a respect, you know, whatever you do. I didn't even have that for myself.

Christian Brim (31:28.037)
That's that's correct.

Well, 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 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. 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.

Joanna Zhang (32:03.034)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joanna Zhang (32:09.912)
Mmm. Yeah, 500 %! Yeah.

Christian Brim (32:29.827)
If you go around and say that in business circles that kind of look at you like you're you've got a third eye like I why what do you mean? But I mean, yeah, and that could be employees that could be customers that could be vendors. mean, it's you know that that applies in all situations.

Joanna Zhang (32:38.893)
Thank

Joanna Zhang (32:50.56)
yeah, sure. Well, we can't do too much about people around us because the society and the setup is like this. I believe that what we can do now is to start with our single self and then that's how the RIP effect can start. So if we really realize that we are the core, we are the reason, we are the foundation, in one way 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.

Christian Brim (33:17.435)
Sure.

Joanna Zhang (33:19.429)
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? then my spiritual mind actually, I thought to 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 do I do that?

Christian Brim (33:45.146)
Mmm.

Joanna Zhang (33:46.873)
because I need external validation, because I need a business. Well, totally not making sense. The first thing I didn't check in and I was totally just immerse 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 is always win-win from inner to outer now because

Christian Brim (34:00.443)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (34:08.836)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (34:14.543)
Previously I was from outer to inner. At the end I forgot myself. Yeah, so self love, definitely.

Christian Brim (34:17.474)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (34:21.454)
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.

Joanna Zhang (34:32.772)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (34:51.126)
unless you feel and understand and know that you are unconditionally loved. Like yes, the world I mean and you know I'm a parent I have three adult children I understand

Joanna Zhang (34:58.442)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christian Brim (35:09.862)
You know, even our parents love, which is probably the most perfect love any of us experience, 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, if you behave badly as a child, you're, you're going to, if your parents love you, they're going to punish you, but it doesn't

feel like love, right? 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. that's, know, I think a common misconception that love is just

Joanna Zhang (35:41.589)
Christian Brim (36:09.774)
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 that that requires an intervention

Joanna Zhang (36:15.459)
Mm.

Christian Brim (36:39.222)
Right? And so love is not always, this, 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. What, what, what, what are you saying?

Joanna Zhang (37:04.01)
Wow, think there's a... Wow, that's... I think for this two-word unconditional love, there's a few things about it. The first word is a misconception about these words. Like, what you describe, 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...

True's point of view, 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? If we believe good karma, bad karma, that's their way to love us. They actually teach us in a way that let us our own consequences to learn the lessons. However, I used to, like, give example, used to spoil my son.

Christian Brim (37:43.706)
Hmm?

Joanna Zhang (37:58.209)
and I was very angry at him. was like, but I was spoiling him. But 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. You're like, yeah, I used to think that, but then I learned from the divine, from the source, God. It's not. Unconditional love is based on the foundation of first layer is protection.

Christian Brim (38:08.174)
Yes.

Christian Brim (38:12.41)
That's right.

Joanna Zhang (38:26.478)
not let ourselves get hurt. It's not like someone step on us and say, come on, I'm going to love you, step me again. It's not like 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 ourselves. And then second layer is no matter what happens, whether I used to have that

Christian Brim (38:39.758)
Yes?

Joanna Zhang (38:53.799)
hatred feeling, if someone hurts me, right? But this is 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, leg of hatred. Forgiveness doesn't mean that... Anyway, forgiveness means that if this person has a sign to change, I'll forgive, but I leg of the hatred feeling.

Because those hatred feelings 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 to let them better own consequences. Not taking back this support, whatever it is, let them learn the lesson because that's the true way for them to grow and that's the true way of love. Like what you're talking about, tough love.

Christian Brim (39:36.452)
Yes.

Joanna Zhang (39:48.41)
You know, when our parents, if our parents actually have some conditions to do something to us, we felt like we were punished. But that depends on the intention for another person. 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?

Christian Brim (39:48.505)
Yes.

Joanna Zhang (40:14.082)
A lot of us experience that love from our society. 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 different intention. So I've now learned about

Christian Brim (40:14.457)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (40:44.14)
true essence of unconditional love. started to practice from 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 a business, I was tied to leader totally. was controlling Frank. was the title is the director, founder, whatever. You got to listen to me that kind of controlling Frank straight at the time.

Christian Brim (41:06.787)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna Zhang (41:08.378)
And then when I realized I had all those challenging hurdles, I needed 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. By the same time, as I mentioned, I have had the spoiling feature. I didn't really love myself enough. didn't have enough boundary. People stepped on my boundary, those sort of things. I got hurt, including my previous marriage. Of course, I had my lesson. Then I realized that 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, that's true unconditional. That means I need to balance the compassion on the boundary. Then 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, I'm conditional on myself.

These two words sound very easy, but truly people can do it so hard. At the moment, what I can feel is probably only Source or God. They have the ability to do that. That's why they call God a Source. It's like a graduated soul. We talk about this, our spiritual mentor. It's more like we're the playground and different souls have different lessons. We're all here to learn like a playground or 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 game. 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.

Christian Brim (42:56.59)
That's an interesting idea. Not one that I, I mean that, that, that presupposes I'm assuming reincarnation, which, which is kind of interesting. My, my, my business coach, is, is a practicing Orthodox Jew. He used to be a rabbi and, I, he and I have a lot of spiritual conversations. and,

Joanna Zhang (42:58.745)
You

Joanna Zhang (43:22.025)
Right.

Christian Brim (43:24.466)
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. don't think it really matters whether there is or isn't reincarnation. I think the idea 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?

Joanna Zhang (44:04.383)
Okay.

Joanna Zhang (44:20.053)
I'm not religious, but I know different religions have different beliefs. But if we look at all religions, we'll find out there's something very common behind all the concepts of all religions. Even though different religions have different rules and beliefs, the concepts behind it as a truth are all the same. It is unconditional love. Isn't it? It is from love.

Christian Brim (44:23.129)
Right.

Christian Brim (44:27.673)
Yes.

Christian Brim (44:43.896)
Yes.

Yes. 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?

Joanna Zhang (45:08.284)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (45:13.112)
Yeah, I agree. think that there's, I think this is me. 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. 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. 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.

Joanna Zhang (46:20.274)
Thank

Joanna Zhang (46:25.202)
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 signal, right?

Christian Brim (46:50.936)
Yeah, yeah.

Joanna Zhang (46:53.177)
and you just wanna pat on the TV and where is the picture?

Christian Brim (46:57.496)
Yeah.

Joanna Zhang (47:00.089)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (47:00.184)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good analogy. Joanna, how do people find out more about what you do and how they can work with you?

Joanna Zhang (47:11.651)
Okay, I think the easiest way is to find me on LinkedIn. Just put my name, Joanna Jiang. 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.

Christian Brim (47:28.6)
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.

Joanna Zhang (47:32.091)
Thank you.