Breaking Free from Self-Doubt: Reflections from My Mini Sabbatical

My work at Adyen has been an anchor. Throughout this six-year relationship, the company and its people have supported me through every phase of my life. When I needed to rebuild my confidence after a personal loss and career pivot in 2018, they hired me. They recognized my contributions with an award when I doubted my own abilities in the field. When I wanted to make a difference in the payments industry, they encouraged me. Through the isolating grasps of COVID, Adyen provided a Zoom community, care packages, and lots of laughs.

Having experienced the negative effects of putting all my eggs in one basket before my career pivot, I tried hard to diversify my “life” portfolio. Adyen gave me the space to fall in love and to weather its breakup. They provided the financial stability for me to build a home and the freedom to leave it when I realized that my housing decision was not for me. In the past year, I felt like my life diversification projects were failures and that I had made a string of poor decisions. I blamed myself heavily for this, but also resented my well-intentioned, but ill-equipped (deceased) Tiger Mom for instilling unrelenting standards in me. Without Adyen explicitly demanding it, I leaned heavily on work as a crutch. Work felt like it was the only “working” component of my life. I stopped attending artsy events and posting on my AltSingapore channel. My curiosity and joie de vivre shrank to the point where I would hunch my shoulders in the office, not make a sound, and hope to disappear into the floor. Old colleagues noticed the laughter and jokes were gone. New colleagues thought I had always been quiet and severe. I had lost faith in myself.

Yet, if you scrolled through my personal IG posts overflowing with travel photos and some of my recent LinkedIn “achievements,” it looked like things were more than fine and dandy. The incongruent extremes reflect a manic state that, unfortunately, is not unique to me. We sometimes mask our unhappiness with distractions. Throwing ourselves into work, travel, or partying to excess. We plaster brave, fake smiles on our faces that convince everyone around us that we are FANTASTIC - when the person we most want to convince is ourselves. These behaviors are not inherently wrong or inauthentic. They are genuine. They are genuinely powered by denial. Denial is a potent coping mechanism when acceptance feels ungraspable and enigmatic. Denial helps keep you alive, especially when your brain is screaming existential doubts at you and yelling at your perceived inability to navigate reality. I could feel my machinery overheating from an internal battle of extremes. My mental energies were ping-ponging between regulating my denial and forcing an acceptance. I was in pain and promptly burned out.

In late April, I hit the pause button. Adyen again stepped in to support me with an in-company policy called "Normal Course of Life". I was so relieved. During my two-month sabbatical, I pursued activities to soothe the fried neural pathways between my mind and body. First, I spent time at Yoga Barn, taking 4-5 classes a day. The Yin Yoga classes immediately calmed my wired nervous system. I cried with relief in breathwork therapy and renewed my Vipassana techniques in meditation sessions. Next, I accompanied my aunt to the hot summer slopes of the Himalayas to study Tibetan Buddhism. I had always been perplexed by the religion’s use of prayer and object worship. On one hand, Buddhist philosophy had so clearly distilled life’s essence into its basic denominator: how it is filled (yes, filled) with Emptiness. It is our attachment to this Emptiness that drives us into suffering. On the other hand, Buddhism (or any religion for that matter) seemed to encourage individuals to cling harder. The ceremonial component felt like a theatrical performance, with players throwing themselves into acts of rapture and devotion. In my helpless state, I wondered if I had too easily dismissed the existence of a supernatural force that could dictate my life's outcome. If, because of my previous pride and stubbornness, I had held no trait of devotion to be able to decode its message and have suffered as a result. I met with the Rinpoche, a recognized reincarnated guru, who saw through my confusion and directed me to study the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Middle Way discourses. He also emphasized the importance of having rituals, as our monkey mind needs guardrails to avoid overthinking. But it was not necessary for everyone to adopt Tibetan rituals with its deity worship and mythological fantasies, as these tools might not resonate with our own lived experiences. It was more important to find modern rituals that served the same stabilizing function to our minds.

As I studied the text and ruminated over Rinpoche's teachings, it dawned on me. The three main methods within Buddhism - academic discourse, meditation, and ceremonial rites - are all forms of Mind Training. Tools designed for humans who needed support to “distract” and then “reprogram” their spiraling thoughts. The ceremonies and dress-up had a function. They were programmed as a healthy distraction for a certain type of audience. I responded better to intellectual dialectics, but I also needed habitual routines in the form of meditation to avoid getting trapped in pretzeled knots with unnecessary mental gymnastics. Devotion is not blind; it is a form of discipline.

I had left no stone unturned and had just flipped over a big boulder. It revealed a larger treasure trove of stone-turning work that extended back 2600 years. Buddhism’s main conclusion is that life has no meaning beyond the meaning we give it. It is therefore “Empty.” Yet, in its emptiness, it is also full of possibilities. From my interpretation, I found that there is no larger supernatural force. Our Mind is endowed with all the abilities to see what it wants to see, and it is our Minds that play the central role in conceiving and imagining a reality. Though consistent with themes I had encountered in modern psychology, Buddhism’s long history and collective knowledge gave the conclusion robustness and credibility. I no longer felt the need to dig further to find a satisfactory answer to life's "meaning".

Stunned, I sat there for a moment and then chuckled. So… might as well get on with life then? As anti-climactic as that sounds, I felt a sense of relief and a strong feeling of agency. The message was loud and clear: I must practice faith in myself and nurture my own confidence through discipline.

With my software update complete, I decided to head home to Penang for a hardware update. I underwent surgery for a recurring ankle injury and was mostly bedbound for the rest of my sabbatical. I spent time with family. My helper, a nurturing mother figure, fed me home-cooked food. I spent afternoons drinking tea with my philosopher-activist aunt, who is my nurturing mother of the mind and heart. I watched the TV show Shogun with my brother, whose main livelihood indirectly contributes to Japanese pop culture and I took Masterclasses on writing to encourage my papa to start his memoirs. I also drew up a list of things I had always wanted to do but never had the time or mental energy to explore. I methodically worked through them and crossed them out. I read books on Malaysia, researched further education courses, employed ChatGPT for various personal projects, played around with MidJourney, took singing classes, and pruned my cloud drive. In my drive, I realized with some sadness that young Jun was ACTUALLY very talented and perfect the way she was. However, due to her own insecurity, she could not recognize and appreciate herself. She doubted her own worth and was thus distrustful of connections. I promised to devote myself to changing young Jun's mind.

I reported back for duty at Adyen a month ago, feeling genuinely refreshed and purposeful. Seven months after living nomadically and unconsciously punishing myself for making the wrong decision on purchasing a house I did not warm to, I have since found permanent lodgings. I am learning to express myself again by joining an improv comedy class and listening to music. I am rediscovering my world around me and posting more on AltSingapore. To keep my mind engaged, I have also enrolled in a course at Harvard Extension School where I hope to begin my graduate degree in management part-time.

I’m learning to appreciate my own routines, my own rituals, and my own devotion to the world. To tune into the artistry of life’s processes without the crippling need to constantly question “why” and “so what?”. I am learning to approach life’s journey with lightness. My mind is largely calm and easeful.

Though I hesitated publishing this piece on a social platform like LinkedIn, it's important for me to share my experience to normalize these feelings. I know that not everyone is as lucky as I am to have an option to care for my mental health the way I did; for that, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity. I am so thankful to everyone who has supported me along the way. You have championed for me, housed me when I had no home to go back to, and provided critical emotional support when I could not lift my eyes from the veil of sadness. I have always been a very lucky gal. Through your support, I have not only regained sight of it but the ability to feel it again, once more.