- Episode AI notes
- Amidst a period of career success and numerous opportunities, the speaker and their partner are challenged to embrace rest and wait for God’s direction, despite their proactive planning and ambition.
- The intense pressure and stress surrounding high-stakes exams, with a 77% failure rate, has long-lasting effects on individuals, leading to nightmares and anxiety even years later.
- The speaker’s upbringing ingrained a strong drive to work hard and succeed, influenced by their parents’ sacrifices and the culture of high-stakes competition.
- Feeling ashamed and pressured to prove others wrong, the speaker navigates friction with their spouse’s parents and relies on their hospitality.
The speaker reflects on their own hero’s journey, comparing it to a period of growth and learning on Rest Island, where God teaches important lessons and helps overcome fears. Time 0:00:00
Embracing Rest in the Midst of Possibility and Strategy Summary: Amidst a period of career success and numerous opportunities, the speaker and their partner feel the need to strategize for the future. However, a recurring message from God prompts them to wait and rest, despite their proactive planning and ambition. This reminder aligns with previous prophetic messages about stepping stones and smooth transitions, challenging the couple to embrace rest during a time of immense possibility.
Speaker 1
We even take a day trip to Venice to meet up with the Amundsons. Driving through the fog drenched mountain passes of Slovenia, asked Valley after lush valley watered by impossibly blue rivers. We strategize. At this exact moment in our lives, our careers are in an upward trajectory. We’ve gone from Harvard to well-paying custom-made jobs. We’ve become friends with billionaire philanthropists. We’ve introduced us to all kinds of influential people. And we’ve just published a book. The future is rife with possibility, and we want to be ready. So we strategize. We make lists of people to reach out to new project ideas, ideas for getting our book distributed. There’s only one problem. Whenever either of us pray about the future, we both hear the same thing from God. Wait. It’s time to rest. That’s when we remember the prophetic words we’ve gotten over the past year, about stepping stones and smooth transitions.Impact of High-Stakes Exams on Mental Health Summary: High-stakes exams in the past created immense pressure with a 77% failure rate, leading some individuals to commit suicide. The long-lasting impact is evident with people still experiencing nightmares decades after the exam. The stress is so palpable that individuals continue to have nightmares about failing exams even after several years.
Speaker 1
If you failed the exam, you had to wait until the next year to take it again. And in my parents day, most people failed. The year my dad took the test, the failure rate was 77%. Everyone was under lots and lots of pressure. Some even committed suicide. Because your life, your future is totally dependent on that one exam. Even to, to, you know, 20, 30 years later after, even 40 years later after that exam, people are still having nightmares. Do you guys ever have any of those nightmares or those just stories that you’ve heard of? No, I do. I do. Maybe she doesn’t, but I, I would have nine merit. That, you know, I would go into an exam and all of a sudden I realized, man, I haven’t studied, you know, or I would find, you know, try to find a classroom. I can’t find the classroom. I don’t know which building is going to be in. And I would be running around and ask people, at the end, I wouldn’t be able to find my classroom.The pressure to succeed and the drive to work hard Summary: The speaker’s upbringing instilled a strong drive to work hard and succeed, inherited from their parents who achieved success through hard work. The pressure to excel was ingrained in their upbringing, with their parents making significant sacrifices and pushing them to excel academically. The intense focus on success was not just advice but a mandate, deeply ingrained from their Chinese refugee grandparents and the culture of high-stakes competition. Despite not growing up in the same environment, the pressure to not waste time and the fear of falling behind remained a driving force in the speaker’s life.
Speaker 1
I’m not going to be able to find my classroom. I’m not going to be able to find my classroom. I’m not going to be able to find my classroom. But we all know how to face it, Jin. Don’t waste your time. Work hard. Be successful. Do better than your parents and your peers. It’s what got my parents into graduate school in America, into the types of jobs that allowed them to buy a home in California and pay for piano and tennis lessons. For me and my sister, it’s why my mother pushed so hard to get me into gifted and talented programs. Why they drove the extra 10 miles to a charter school in 7th and 8th grade. Why they made me stay home and study for the SAT all summer instead of hanging out with my friends. Don’t waste your time. It wasn’t a word of advice. It was a mandate. Handed down to my parents from their Chinese refugee parents, inscribed into their psyches by growing up at a culture of extreme high stakes competition. And it wasn’t until I stopped working that I realized how deeply it was inscribed into mine. I didn’t grow up in the same environment my parents did. I never had to take that college entrance exam. With the fear of falling behind, I’m never amounting to anythingFeeling of Shame and Pressure to Prove Wrong Summary: The speaker felt that their current situation was the opposite of what they would want, largely due to the friction with their spouse’s parents in the past. They were determined to prove the parents wrong, feeling the shame of depending on their hospitality and worried about being judged by people around them.
Speaker 1
I guess like to me it was all the things that I would least want to be doing. And because of the kind of friction that I had with your parents, like, when we first were like getting married and they thought that I was too wild and crazy and maybe he’s going to drop Out of Harvard too because he dropped out of Yale. I think that made me very… I wanted to prove them wrong. And so… And so… That’s what made it, like, shameful. It’s like now I’m in a place where I’m eating their food and living off of their hospitality. And… Of people who judge you? Yeah, people that judge me and like, I’m now proving them right.The Hero’s Journey and the Lesson of Rest Island Summary: The insight of this snip is about the parallels between real-life experiences and the hero’s journey, where individuals get knocked down, forced to reevaluate, and eventually emerge stronger. The speaker reflects on their own experience, likening it to a period of learning and growth on Rest Island, realizing their deep insecurities and the need to learn how to rest.
Speaker 1
Pathetic, right? And also too long to be headline. But you know what? I’d click on it. Because it sounds like the setup for a hero’s journey. Isn’t that how so many self-help books and Spider-Man sequels start out? One day you’re making Boku bucks on Wall Street, the next you’re checking in to rehab for a cocaine addiction. One minute you’re saving the world with the Avengers, and the next, all your enemies from every alternate universe come crashing in at once. There’s a formula to these stories. The heroes get knocked down, almost crushed. They’re forced to reevaluate everything, to learn new ways of being, maybe even take on new identities. All so they can eventually emerge from the darkness and despair stronger than ever. Six months into doing nothing, I was starting to see our story this way. Like, maybe God hadn’t abandoned us. Maybe he’d wanted to strand us on Rest Island to show us how deeply insecure we still were. How scared we still were of proving our doubters right. Rest Island was where we learned we actually had no idea how to rest, but it was where God would teach us. And afterwards, surely, he would send us back into
