Say Goodbye to Anxiety Forever

I experience anxiety intermittently throughout the day. I have good days and not-so-good days, but a few days ago, I discovered a really effective antidote to anxiety. Drum roll please~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The cure for anxiety is: gratitude! Before you roll your eyes and say, “Oh, I’ve heard that before. Gratitude doesn’t really work for me,” hear me out, because I used to be one of those people who thought gratitude was overrated.

I was listening to the Hay House radio on Saturday and learned of a Harvard-trained, medical scientist named Joan Borysenko. She spoke about how we can create a neural circuit of gratitude in our brain by practicing the feeling of gratitude everyday. I am sure we all have done something like keeping a gratitude journal or listing on Facebook the three things we were grateful for that day. I kept a gratitude list using an app on my phone and wrote down 3-4 things everyday for about a couple of months.

The result? Nothing. I didn’t feel any more grateful than I was two months ago.

Then, Dr. Borysenko said something that made a light bulb go off in my head. She said in order to create and strengthen the neural circuit of gratitude, we have to infuse it with the true feeling of gratitude—not just with thoughts about what weshould be grateful for—and strengthen it with daily practice. That’s when I realized why the gratitude app didn’t work for me; the practice was just a chore, something I needed to check off before the end of the day.

After listening to her on the radio, I immediately sat down and thought of one thing I was deeply, truly grateful for. I had attended an event to commemorate Korean War veterans earlier that day, and as I watched the footage of the war, I felt a heartfelt thanks to those who had sacrificed their lives while fighting in the war. So, I said to my self, “I am deeply grateful for the veterans,” and repeated for several minutes while feeling the feeling of gratitude.

Amazingly, when I awoke the next morning, instead of anxiety rising up with the thought of what I needed to do that day, I felt grateful. I was grateful that I was given another day, another chance to be better. So, I took advantage of that feeling and stayed with it for a few minutes, creating a momentum and strengthening my neural circuit. It’s only been a few days, but I already feel better. Whenever anxiety rises, I look for something to be deeply grateful for and give my thanks.

I realized that in order to weaken my habitual feeling of anxiety (or whatever negative emotion ails you), I needed to let its neural circuit wither by not reinforcing it. And to do that, I needed to divert my energy to something else—in this case, to gratitude—before it gains momentum. By deliberately choosing gratitude over anxiety, I can choose my daily reality. This will take time and commitment, but I think it will be a worthwhile investment.

So, I will let you know how this goes. Better yet, you can try it with me, and tell me how it went for you! I will keep you posted!

Announcing Hannah and Friends: Virtual Recital Series

I had this idea swimming in my head about using the Hangouts feature on Google+ to share music with a greater number of audience. The Google Hangouts feature is a video chat that allows up to 10 people to chat together. Google recently came out with a "studio mode" for musicians to share music online. Even though only a limited number of people can be in this chat, the performances can be streamed live to Youtube and is automatically recorded for later view.

So I am in the process of launching a project called Hannah and Friends: Virtual Recital Series. Every Saturday, I will be singing and inviting my performing artist friends from all over the US and other parts of the world to come to this cyber space to share their talents with you. The genres will include (but not limited to) western and eastern classical, crossovers, jazz, pop, indie, comedy, theater, folk, and other types of world music. We will be sharing the Youtube video on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media sites to reach as many viewers as possible. Audiences and communities have become very insular to their niche and I wanted to create a platform where people can discover something new. It is my hope that this project will also provide opportunities for different types of artists to come together to create an online and offline community that unites all races, cultures, and people of various socio-economic backgrounds.

The launch date for this project is Saturday, April 4 at 3pm pst. I have some amazingly talented friends who will be performing so you don't want to miss out! The website for this project is almost complete and I will be posting it on here and everywhere when it's done. You can preview the profiles of the artists there.

More than anything, I am really excited to share the talents of my ridiculously gifted friends. I think you will really enjoy watching! Stay tuned!

Meaning of Meaning

I must have written 3 or 4 different versions of this post and virtually ripped the pages out of the screen, scrunched them and threw them on the floor. I've been trying to articulate what I have been feeling the last couple of months about life. The problem with that is I think too much in circles and paralyze myself. The perennial questions that tailgate every endeavor I undertake are: What is the meaning of this? How does this enhance the meaning of my life? And eventually, what at first looked like an endeavor that seemed meaning-enhancing turns out to be just another illusion. So, I have been asking myself, what really is meaningful? What am I looking for? What do I want out of life?

The easy answer is happiness. We all want to be happy. But it gets more complicated when we start asking ourselves what brings us lasting happiness. Buddhist philosophy tells us it is non-attachment and finding the quiet constant behind the loud variables of perceived reality are what bring us true happiness. I think that's true: finding joy in being. When I get quiet and feel my heartbeat, I am grateful for the life I have been given. There is a lot to be thankful for. But we are meant to do more than just breathe and let our hearts beat and be grateful for our lives although I think that's a good place to start. Maybe it's because I don't fully understand Buddhist philosophy, but if I am just happy in being, I would be the laziest person on earth. I gotta do something!

My biggest fear is that at the end of my life, I would look back and wonder what my life could have been if I were courageous. I am afraid of not utilizing and cultivating my talents and dying in regret. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so artistically inclined and instead liked blood and guts so I could be a doctor. (At least if I tried hard enough, there would be an end in sight. And a job!) Trying to "make it" in the arts is difficult. It's tempting to sell out for the sake of convenience and comfort. But I know at the end of the day, I would be miserable knowing I am not living the life I want to live. The flip side of doing what I want to do, however, is terrifying. Uncertainty abounds. I have to plow though a labyrinth of obstacles not knowing when it's going to end. Call it a gift or a curse--even with the odds highly stacked against me, I can't back down. I've gotta try.

Maybe it's because of my dedication to developing my talents (and its attachment of purpose and meaning to my existence), many important things take secondary place in my life like marriage and family. Maybe it's because I grew up in a broken home that I don't have this earnest desire to be a wife and mother to someone. But there are many moments when I feel lonely and long for a companion that I could rely on when things get tough. If there is a man with whom I can feel at home and accepted despite my failures, I think I would be open to marrying him. And maybe, I may even feel encouraged to try without the fear of failure and judgement. Then, he would become meaningful to me. He would be congruous with my life's purpose rather than intrusional. The hardest part would be to let go of my pride and let him see all the imperfections. Ah, the useless pride... And kids--I have no idea how they are going to fit into my life's purpose. I like kids. I actually love them. I guess I'll have to have them first to see why they mean so much.

So, all this rambling is really meant to clarify one thing for myself: I want to live a meaningful life. And that means living a happy, satisfactory life that allows me to fulfill the measure of my creation. And my creation is full of stuff to give!

Between Here and There: Navigating in No Man's Land

I have been doing some reading and researching to find/define my truth to be more clear about which set of moral codes and existential compass I want to follow to make better sense of life and the universe. This journey has taken me to conclude that all religious institutions are man-made. But I see the need for humans to create institutions for a collective sense of purpose and meaning. I admit that a lot of good comes out of religion and I personally have benefited from being Mormon. But the perks of being Mormon notwithstanding, I have stopped going to Church.

I think the only time I have ever enjoyed going to Church was when I was a missionary a decade ago. And the only reason I enjoyed it then was because I could sit for 3 hours straight without having to plan, teach, knock on doors, or feel guilty for not being a good enough missionary. The only aspect of Church that I enjoyed before and after my mission was a social one. I went to Church to see my friends when I had them. When I didn't, I would go out of habit, obligation and/or the fear of judgement if I didn't go. But I saw how futile my efforts were. I was there only in body. I always checked out mentally as soon as I sat down in Sacrament Meeting.

I stopped going to Church for many reasons. I questioned the truthfulness of the Church. I always had a problem with the Church claiming sole proprietorship of Truth. (This church is the one and only true Church on the face of the earth!) I lost my testimony of the Book of Mormon, Restoration, and Joseph Smith. I didn't feel spiritually fed or nourished in Church meetings. I was annoyed by the teachings in the Church that just regurgitated the simple-minded rhetoric of keep-the-commandments-and-you-will-be-blessed-and-will-prosper-and-be-happy without regarding the complexities and paradox of life's events. I never cared about hearing the testimonies of others about food storage, what they did over the weekend, how much someone loved somebody in fast and testimony meetings. But I cared about how mind-numbingly boring all the meetings were. Eventually, Church ceased to be meaningful to me.

Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, I am still emotionally attached to the Mormon Church and being a Mormon. I was born and raised in the Church. Even though I was inactive for many years in my youth, Mormonism was my first religious language that articulated my metaphysical cosmos. It gave me a God that I relied on when life got sad and painful. It told me there was hope when misery abounded. It taught me how to pray. It taught me to be kind. It became my culture, my family's culture. It became my identity.

So, even though I left the Church physically and intellectually, I still have a soft spot for Mormonism. And if I find a good ward, I might even return but on my own terms: without a testimony of the Restoration but with respect for an institution that promotes good things.

In Search for Truth...

I have always been fascinated by the universe and how it operates. I think about Truth and what that might look like if I ever got a glimpse of it. I also try to fathom the eternal scheme of things from the perspective of an omniscient being. The imagination is, of course, based on perhaps the arrogant premise that my mind could conceive something so grandiose as omniscience. But my "omniscience" is tamed by a dose of compassion and grace for those who see Truth differently--after all, knowing everything perfectly would incite the most proper emotions for those who disagree. Whether people are defending their own truths, their pride, or identity, they feel fully justified in asserting their beliefs and opinions as the right ones. Perhaps, I am not so arrogant in asserting this imagined omniscience. Maybe we all operate within our own cosmos of omniscience however hallucinatory it is.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. What is true and what is not? And how does my construction of the cosmos affect the belief system I adhere to? How does this affect my integrity and happiness? I have been grappling with these thoughts a lot. I may have something more insightful to say in a couple of weeks or so after some more thinking and reading. Life is a never-ending enigma...

My Dream

"What do you really want to do with your life?" was the question I would often get when I expressed my confusion and frustration in graduate school studying classical voice. But I always hesitated to give them a full account of what I had in mind in fear of getting a response like, "Who do you think you are?" or "That would be such a waste of time. Give it up and start doing something more practical." But since about a year ago, I started to make more tangible connections between my dream and ways to accomplish it. And even though I still get raised-eyebrows of disapproval or skepticism from my relatives, I stand immovable in believing that I will achieve my dream. You may even call it destiny.

I have always known that I would lead an artistic life. But it took long, and tortuous detours for my amorphous wishes to finally crystallize into something definite and tangible. There were lots of disappointment, discouragement, tears, resentment, and doubt that accompanied this process and I am pretty sure they will come back to haunt me in the future. Regardless, I feel a sense of surety that this is my destiny, my offering to the alter of that Being whom I call God.

And this is my dream.

I will create, produce and perform works that give breath and life to forgotten history, especially the unrecognized and silenced voice of Korean women. To do that, I am going back to school to study ethnomusicology. I feel indebted to the Korean women of the past, especially my grandmothers, and I want to pay homage to those who paid the price for the privileges and freedom I enjoy today. I want to tell the stories of their quiet resilience and courage of their human spirit. In so doing, I want all of us to dig deep into the roots of our humanity to discover our common vulnerability and understand that with courage and love we can overcome our personal and national tragedies. I want people to feel that we are all the same, that we belong to the same human family however brief the thought may last.

I know this sounds lofty and idealistic but somewhere deep inside my core, I know I will do this. I just know I will.

Footsteps Behind My Shadow: A Story of My Grandmother

My dad’s house was burglarized a earlier this year—the entire house was ransacked. When I came home to California in the summer, I checked my room to see what had been taken. I first checked my jewelry box. I didn’t have much in there and the only thing that was of any worth was the diamond ring that my grandma had given me before she passed away in 2004. And it was gone. Disheartened, I consoled myself that it was just a ring.

A few days ago, I was looking through my jewelry box in my room in Salt Lake City (a different one than the one at home). Among the tangled necklaces and earrings, I saw a thick ring with seven studded diamonds in the shape of a flower. I had found my grandma’s ring! I must have brought it to Salt Lake with me sometime last year. I put it on my right ring finger and stared at it for awhile as my thoughts spiraled to what she might have been like not as a grandma but as a woman.

My grandma or halmuni as her grandchildren used to call her, was born in 1910 as the last bits of monarchial rule of Korea was being swallowed up by Imperial Japan. She grew up in a milieu of national oppression and gender bigotry in an extremely patriarchal society. She received a formal education up to maybe the third grade. She barely knew how to read and write. At age fifteen, she was married off to a man she had never seen before her wedding day. Since that day, she was responsible for drawing and carrying water from a well a mile away every morning at five, making fire to cook rice for her husband, parents-in-law and the field workers. It was her job to deliver lunch on a large pan that she carried on her head to the workers in the rice field. Sometimes she faltered and spilled at which point she ran back to the house to prepare the meal again. She washed, mended and made clothes for the members of her household until the wee hours before she finally went to bed. She labored diligently all of her life as a wife and mother of six children even as she faced pain and humiliation of her husband’s infidelity and domestic violence.

When I was younger, I just assumed this was the stuff of life for Korean women in her days. Only recently, as I looked at her diamond ring she had purchased herself, I realized that she must have had a desire to be seen, heard and be beautiful. Her wedding day was the only day that she wore makeup. Her teenage years were spent working and serving. But she must have had a desire to be educated, to discover and develop her talents, to fall in love, and be loved, to have nice clothes, to be praised for her intelligence and beauty. I wonder what she would have done with her life if she were given the same opportunities as her grand-daughters--what kind of career path she would have taken and what kind of man she would have married. I wish I could get to know her again as a woman to woman.

When she was alive, I remember her sometimes fanning herself furiously saying there was a fire in her chest. I imagine that that was perhaps the fire of anger she was never allowed to voice or channel for the injustices she suffered. She didn’t do anything great in the eyes of the world—she was never allowed to. She may have dismissed her life as a failure especially during her last years as she became increasingly invisible. And yet, she is my hero. She practically raised me and my siblings when my parents divorced. She was the source of warmth and comfort when life got cold and sad. She loved with great love.

I marvel at her story and how she didn’t let a trace of bitterness cloud her love for her children and grandchildren. Her circle of influence may have been small, but she touched everyone she met with kindness and compassion. When I don’t feel loved, I could always think of my halmuni and find an ember of warmth in my heart that she left me while she was alive. Even though she may not know, in my eye, she lived her life humbly, yet magnificently.

As I ponder on my own life, I become acutely aware of the rich blessings of this generation. I have freedom, rights, and opportunities because of the sacrifice of my halmuni and the countless women of yesteryear. They walked the road history allotted them so that I could start much more ahead. As I stand on the threshold of uncertainty, I am infused with a sense of responsibility to live a life much bigger than what I allowed myself to believe in. After all, my life doesn’t stand on its own but as a culmination of history of great, heroic women whose stories will never be told.

Hunger for Love

My friend Maureen shared this link with me after reading my post on "The Lady and the Subway." This is a great lesson for all of us.

The Lady and the Subway

Riding the subway everyday gives me the opportunity to watch and observe people. And I have mastered the art of "nonchalance analysis" of various personalities. Not to appear as a psychotic creep, I do a sweeping glance of the people who sit in front of me and quickly take in the visual data scanned by my eyeballs. Then my left brain goes into this analyzing mode that tells the story of each person. "This person looks like she has the worry-bug. She probably nags on her husband all the time. His sex life must suck." Or "She is very pretty but she should have done her makeup more naturally. And what the heck? It's -15 degrees outside and she's wearing a mini-skirt, tights and high-heels! It looks like the price tag of her self-worth is attached somewhere in the depth of her Louis Vuitton purse." etc, etc.

There are also a number peddlers who go around begging for money, selling packets of gum, or little household items. My heart does truly ache for those who have disabilities and can only work selling things to commuters on the subway. One woman especially stands out in my mind.

This woman was severely crippled to a point where she couldn't walk without grabbing onto the built-in pole in the subway car. Her face was grotesquely countenanced and the lines of her face seemed to map out the tragedies of her life. She was selling packets of gum and because of her inability to walk up to each person, (and probably her anger at life) she came across as rude and obnoxious in her silent "marketing" strategy. She just threw a packet of gum onto the lap of each person and went around to collect money. Some people buy them out of pity, but this woman invoked no such sympathy. Then she came up to me and I was able to look at her face more closely. In her miserable face, I saw a faint hint at her desire to be loved. Her eyebrows were drawn in by permanent makeup.

I suppose some would say if she has enough money to get her permanent makeup done, she should have enough money to feed herself. But I think differently. I think our desire to be beautiful stems from our desire to be loved. And I think being loved is essential to our survival as much as food is. She desperately wanted to be accepted. Her behavior and the look on her face ostensibly condemned her life and the numerous people who have made her life a living hell. But I believe that deep down, she wanted a second chance at life and wished the world would look upon her with kinder eyes.

In realizing this, my heart broke but all I could do was hand her a thousand won bill ($1) in exchange of a gum packet.

The mentality of a savior.

A few years ago I attended a conference sponsored by National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum in Los Angeles. One of the workshops I attended addressed the issues of sex slavery, human trafficking,and domestic violence occurring in Asia and to Asian women in the States and what we could do to detect and help these abused women. As we exchanged and discussed different ideas, the leader of the group said something profound that stayed with me ever since: We should not take on the mentality of a savior when we are helping these people.

Whenever we are faced with the sordid reality of abuse, poverty, or injustice, we automatically get on the pedestal of self-righteousness and take on the attitude of a savior. When we see dying children in Africa, or sexually abused women in Asia, or homeless children in Chicago, we say to ourselves 'Here are the victims and I must save them!' Our eyes tear up, we feel genuine compassion, and our hearts reach out to them. We congratulate ourselves for being so sensitive.

I believe that in the process of registering all these emotions we lose a part of ourselves to narcissism. There is a part of us that wants to do good because it makes us feel good and superior. We establish a currency with which we subjugate the victims with our high morality. If good will is used as a surrogate for Prozac, not only do we need less fortunate people to exist, we also lose the opportunity to see these people as our equals. We may unconsciously continue to debilitate them by taking on the role of a savior and reinforcing their sense of helplessness and vulnerability. We are not superior because we had better luck. We are only their partners helping them rebuild themselves. We acknowledge their inner worth and respect them as our equals--as our brothers and sisters in humanity so when they become whole, they can do the same for others.

What really disturbs me is the naivete of some people who visit foreign countries, especially Third World Countries, hand out some money, come back and tell their heroic tales and the unfortunate fate of those whom they helped. Behind these philanthropic stories I hear, "Look what I did for these poor people. Look what a good person I am." To me, helping these people were nothing but glorified camping trips that earned them a pat on the shoulder. Their compassion may have been genuine but the attitude of subtle arrogance and lack of respect and reverence for those who suffer perpetrate ignorance and a false sense of heroism. We are not heroes. We are only fellow travelers of life that were dealt a better hand.