Volkskrant newspaper interview December 7 2020

“Experiences don’t coincidentally come your way”

Interview with entrepreneur Wing Yan Man

“Last year I asked my mother: “Is it right that you never said anything positive about me?” She confirmed this and said: “Only family members are being honest. Do we have to act like friends then? They lie to you when they say that you look good”. After that she said for the first time: “But I want you to know that we love you”. This came out with much pain and effort. In the Chinese culture it is unusual to say this. I am convinced that my parents had the best intentions with me, but unfortunately they couldn’t express any affection”. 

Entrepreneur Wing Yan Man was raised in the Dutch Veluwse Beekbergen, where her parents were running a Chinese Indonesian restaurant - seven days a week. Due to the pressure at work she barely sees them: “I saw my father only on the weekend by staying up very late. My mother cooked us dinner in the afternoon and then went to the restaurant. We never had dinner together.” Her parents didn’t take any holidays - customers would potentially stay away then: “There was a lot of financial stress. Therefore they often had a short temper.”

During the Summer holidays, when many tourists came to town, little Wing was sent to her family in Hong Kong: “I wasn’t allowed to be a burden. Therefore I did my very best.” She doesn’t always succeed - she is extroverted, different from her brothers, who are eight and six years older. In her family she often felt like an outsider. In Beekbergen, “as Chinese girl with a white village”, she is the outsider, just like in high school in Apeldoorn (gymnasium), “where there was only one other Asian girl in my year.” She gets good grades, plays the piano and tennis. But at her matches and her performances her parents are missed, the restaurant is priority: “I understood that, but it felt like I was not worth the effort.”

When she studies Civil Engineering at the University of Twente, she joins a class of 75 men and five women, “so there I was again an outsider. It felt like I was constantly in a football locker room, with lots of bad jokes. As Asian woman I was an easy target.” An internship in Japan gives her a confidence boost: “Although I was alone, I was also proud that I survived.” A good job follows at IBM. As a consultant she works at Shell, Rijkswaterstaat and universities, where IBM collaborates. It went wrong in 2015, when she was 28 - she got a burnout. This led to a drastic career switch - in 2017 she founded “3310 - School for Millennials”. With this, she wants to help people from her generation who bump into similar problems: “I have found it downright disappointing, how little professional the corporate world is often operating; how important egos and personal agendas are. I want to teach people to become less dependent on the opinions of others.”

What does a purposeful life mean to you?

“At home I was taught that life revolves around money. This has never been said explicitly, but my parents lived this way. It was about wealth, not well being. For example, I shouldn’t have the plan to study French - only a technical study sufficed. You have to know that they have been very poor when they were young - they originate from Chinese farmer families. In their childhood, there were no toys, it was a completely different society than in what I was raised in. When I got that job at IBM, I had a feeling: now I have made it, what they wanted. But meanwhile I don’t live according to their values anymore. To inspire and be inspired drives me now. It is about helping others by being myself.”

What made you decide to follow this path?

“The first seed was sown when I was in Japan, where I was a 21 year old intern at a company. I became friends with an older colleague, a man of 34. He wanted to change jobs, but thought he was too old for that. I motivated him. Back in the Netherlands I got an email from him - he was ecstatic, because he took the courage to switch jobs. This gave me a feeling that I was able to contribute to this world. This memory came back during my burnout.”

What got you stuck?

“What it comes down to, was the insecurity on the question: am I allowed to exist? A job coach let me do an exercise to recognize downward spirals in my thoughts. I had to write down all my thoughts about myself and ask myself how these resulted in my behavior. This became a long list of negative characteristics and commandments such as “never show emotions”, “don’t be a burden” and “don’t be lazy”. The latter was something my mother once told me. Because I barely saw her, it has made a great impact. What also scarred me, was that she always compared me with other daughters in Chinese families. In comparison with them I was never good enough. 

This feeling of falling short, I’ve experienced this at IBM too, even though different managers wanted to become my mentor, because I had a fast growing career. People in my team who had the same manager as I, were feeling superior to me, probably because I was young and a woman. Having contact with clients I often felt not being taken seriously, for example when I had to discuss things with Deans and Professors. My mentor gave me the advice to bring “someone with grey hair”, who people would listen to. And indeed: people listened, if he was the greatest expert in the world. While I was the one with the real knowledge. These types of experiences came on top of my insecurity I have built up throughout my childhood.”

How did you overcome this?

“In my therapy I have learned to put the question of “am I allowed to exist?” in perspective. My therapist told me: “You are here, you can’t be erased - not out of this world and not out of the lives of people around you”. This way she taught me: on what do I want to spend my life? The question of being allowed to exist, it still occupies my mind, also because it is linked to: “Am I doing it good enough?”. This doubt comes from very deep. But I have been able to give the experiences from my childhood a place”.

“I don’t see them as coincidences. Experiences come your way to learn something from them - you can choose to do so or not. At home I wasn’t raised religiously - I’ve been taught mostly Chinese superstition, like everything with a four is bad and everything with an eight is good. Until now I still don’t practice a religion, but I do believe that we are connected with something bigger than us”. 

What do you mean with this?

“I call it the universe, you could see it as a force, an energy. The universe helps me to trust my intuition. Often I asked myself the question: what does it want to say to me? I also thank it sometimes for certain experiences. Not in a praying position though, this is all very new to me, I’ve come from far”.

“Sometimes it feels like it is not me that is talking, when I give a workshop. It is like I’m not myself, but a messenger of something else. Then I hear myself talk in a third person and think to myself: wow, that went very smoothly. Where it comes from exactly, I don’t know”. 

What do you want to achieve with your work?

“The focus of being an entrepreneur is not the money for me. I want to let people experience what happens when you dare to cross your own borders. What happens, when you make yourself vulnerable. Myself I have experienced that openness is valued, for example when I start the topic of discrimination. Then I only have to ask others: “Who has ever felt like an outsider before?”. Then the stories flow. In my workshops I have experienced that you can share special experiences and support each other in a very short time. 

The corona crisis came in a bad time for my company, because giving workshops has been made difficult. I thought: now it all goes down. I asked myself: what is the lesson I should learn from this? Taking a step back, I realized, because the previous years were all about running like crazy and that would have been the same. Instead I could take the time now and develop a new concept.”

What did you end up with?

“A new version of the board game Life, but then to be played in life size. Originally this is a very capitalistic game where it all revolves around making money. In my version it is about defining your own terms of success. In the beginning you feel what we have been taught so far: through our parents, mostly material security, but also by people from our own generation, like how many followers you have on social media, beautiful travel trips, many parties. Then the next step follows: throw it all away and ask yourself what is really important to you, when you don’t mind what others think? This makes it clear how silly comparing with each other is. What will also be addressed: how you deal with your fears and can other people help you to overcome these?”

Can you answer this question for yourself?

“Maybe I’ll go find a therapist again, even though I feel mentally healthy now. That person could help me with the fundamental question about “allowing to exist”. This plays a part with something that often runs through my thoughts: do I want a relationship and children? And: do I want to go that way because others expect it from me, or do I listen to my intuition and probably put myself yet again in a box of being an outsider?”

“Wherever it will lead to, it is all good. Recently I thought about my life: it is just a matter of continuing until the end. I don’t mean it in a depressing way, but positive: what bad experiences might happen in the future, I’m glad with what I’m doing now and I don't have that strong pressure to succeed anymore. I have found myself.”

Book tip Playing Big, Tara Mohr

“With this book I have learned how to deal with my negative, inner voice. Tara Mohr also teaches how to put criticism of others in a different perspective. She gives exercises on how to deal with fear and to search for what gives your life meaning - she names it a calling. The book is written for women, but I think men can also learn a lot from it.”