Infinite Mindset

We often do our best to keep personal life personal and focus on our work, but the two are inextricably linked when you are dedicated to both your family and your team. It takes strength from both sides to persevere when times get tough, especially as a CEO and a new parent. Below is my chapter, published in Jennifer Bardot's anthology Tenacity: The Deconstructing GRIT Collection, and shared to hopefully help anyone else going through something similar know they aren't alone.

It started as a trickle.

Eight months, two weeks, and one day pregnant with my first child.? When I imagined my water breaking, I envisioned it like a balloon popping, a gush of fluid as a clear indicator my baby was ready to make her grand entrance into the world.? What I got instead was a tiny nudge – nothing that made me realize in all my unpreparedness that the time was now.

I brushed aside any notion of being in labor and prepared to go into the office as if it were any other day.? I didn’t mention anything to my husband, Chris.? What was the point?? As managing partner at rapidly growing technology consulting firms, Anderson Technologies and Anderson Archival, I had too many other important issues on my mind to pay attention to something so insignificant.? I was racing to ensure my team had everything they needed to keep running when the baby arrived. ?I anticipated being out of the office for two weeks at most.? This is how little I knew about newborns.

Instead, the months that followed took me to the brink of pain and exhaustion while simultaneously manifesting love and strength beyond what I thought possible. ?As many already know, becoming a parent transforms you, and when that path starts with uncertainty, it forces you to recognize new truths. The motivators that compel tenacity kick into overdrive when a new life depends on how well you react to adversity.

When I finally got around to calling the doctor’s office to let them know about my trickle, they suggested going to the Labor and Delivery wing just in case. ?Chris and I took our time.? I was sure I should be feeling more pain. ?My pregnancy had been blissfully absent of morning sickness, cramps, or much discomfort.? We joked they would turn us around immediately with a false alarm. ?Instead, the nurse took one look at me and said, “Oh, your water’s broken all right,” and that’s when the wheels started spinning.? Soon, the heart rate monitor around my belly began to alarm, and suddenly my doctor calmly informed us I needed an emergency C-section. ?Less than 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital, I was in shock, awake on an operating room table, and no longer able to feel the lower half of my body.? With my husband by my side, our daughter, Kaia, was pulled into the world with a loud, healthy cry.

While they stitched me back up, Chris cut her umbilical cord, and the nurses measured and bundled her.? They gave her to me for sweet skin-on-skin time while the operating room team completed their tasks. ?The three of us wrapped each other in loving embrace thinking the worst was over.? Little did we know it was just beginning.

As soon as we returned to our room, the nurses began taking blood samples from Kaia.? They flagged her blood sugar as dangerously low and wheeled her off to the NICU before we could get a word in.? At the same time, they took my blood pressure and said it was dangerously high, something that can happen postpartum, though I’m sure having my daughter immediately transferred away had some effect as well. ?

They hooked me to a drip of magnesium sulfate fed directly through my IV.? It felt like fire coursing through my veins. ?The solution’s intended purpose to lower my blood pressure and prevent seizures felt inconsequential. ?The list of additional side effects is long and terrible.? Kaia also had an IV in her tiny arm for a steady intake of sugar solution.? Numbers trapped both of us. ?Hers came in the form of blood pricks to her heels every three hours – measuring her sugar – each time determining her fate for the ensuing three hours. This included inserting a nasogastric tube down her throat for feeding to maintain her levels.? Mine came from the blood pressure cuff – setting the bar for when I could be released from the hospital.? We went on like this for days. My concern for Kaia, searing pain, and fatigue feeding my heightened numbers.

Subconsciously, I knew the hospital team sought our well-being. ?At the time, however, I felt captive – unable to free myself and my daughter to start our new family life at home without passing arbitrary tests. The treatments attempting to lower my blood pressure affected me worse than the issue, and every time Chris wheelchaired me to see Kaia hooked up to so many monitors with the tube taped up her nose and her poor feet pricked to oblivion, I cried tears of frustration and exhaustion. Things seemed hopeless.

As the first-born daughter of parents who immigrated to Missouri from Hong Kong with nothing, I have spent my whole life pushing myself to work hard and improve upon yesterday. Before Kaia, my job was my life.? I loved it and still do.? Starting as a part-time contractor in 2008 and becoming managing partner in 2018, I regularly devoted seventy to eighty hours per week to achieving goals and trying to create the best possible environment for my team. In the weeks leading up to Kaia’s birth, I continued – even working all night until 3:00 a.m. to solve an unexpected problem with a client’s cloud email migration. There is always an answer even if you sometimes must press your limits to find it.

Our company is guided by our core values.? We live them every day, and hire, fire, and reward our team based on them.? As the days began to turn to weeks in the hospital, I reflected on one of my favorites – Infinite Mindset:

We believe in the limitless supply of ideas. Each of us possess the innate ability to be immeasurably great. We believe there is a solution for every challenge no matter how daunting it may first seem. With a sense of infinity and love for all, our lives serve as shining lights to defeat frustration and doubt.

This is what ultimately freed and prepared me for the challenges we faced in the ensuing months.? After cycles upon three-hour cycles of measurements, I found a way to release the trapped hopelessness coursing through me since the day Kaia arrived. ?Giving in to the situation was not an option. ?I knew I needed to push past the negativity plaguing me since the whirlwind of her unexpected arrival and focus on the good. ?Once I did, a weight lifted, replaced by the calm certainty I needed to pass the tests that confined me to the hospital bed.

The months following our release were far from easy. ?After knowing life a certain way in the NICU, adjusting to the daily surprises that come with a special newborn became another rollercoaster of emotions.? It was the ultimate test of tenacity for me – balancing feeding Kaia, pumping milk, caring for her, cleaning up a seemingly endless stream of baby vomit, taking her to numerous appointments, and continuing to work, to put on a strong, brave leader face despite everything.? Even at the hospital hours after her birth, I kept working.? Although I had recently welcomed a baby under extraordinary circumstances, it never crossed my mind to step back from my critical duties as a managing partner. ?Leading a business means wearing many hats.? The success of our rapidly expanding firm depended on me, and I continually feel an enormous responsibility for my colleagues and our clients. ?I was determined not to let my daughter or my business down. ?I stretched myself to my limits, giving Kaia all the loving care I could. While she slept, I worked to lead my firm to its most successful year ever.? The first nine months of Kaia’s life are a blur of exhaustion wrapped in layers of dedication to my daughter, my family, my team, and my company.

What makes us tenacious?? What gives us the willpower to get through difficult times?? When we are tested, we become the ultimate examples of mind over matter, of grit powered by love to see the opportunities within seemingly impossible situations.? Love is the driver of all that is pure.? It fuels our ability to overcome and persist. ?In the times I feel “less than” or like an utter failure at balancing motherhood and business leadership, I reflect on the love that pushed me to where I am today.? I remind myself of our innate ability to be infinite, to look past the uncertainty and see the light.? I share my vulnerabilities, and instead of drowning, I’m buoyed by the support of my husband, my family, and my team.? They rally to fill in the gaps I can’t manage as I juggle my time and my capacity.

Now, over a year since Kaia’s birth, she is a perfect, healthy child intent on pushing her boundaries like any other toddler.? As she explores this gift of a world, she reflects infinite mindset and tenacity in their purest forms; she’s my reminder for why we do what we do to prevail over hardship. For me, no other life lesson has been harder fought or harder won.