Mandy Tang, Mother and Entrepreneur

Mandy Tang is an entrepreneur, wife, and mother. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Columbia School of Business. In this interview she discusses her breaking point and how gratitude, mindfulness, and self-compassion helped her piece it all back together.

Grateful People: It was nice to discover that we have a mutual appreciation for the work of gratitude in our lives. I enjoyed hearing your story and was hoping you would share some of that today.

Mandy Tang: Sure. I started a gratitude practice along with meditation a year ago. I was at a crossroads then, where I was really burned out from trying to balance working as a cofounder of a tech startup in New York City with the very early stages of motherhood and just having given birth. This was a huge shock to me because I always just thought I could push through things and just be the strongest woman in the room. That was kind of the persona I had built over many years of working hard and being in male-dominated environments and just trying to be a badass chick. I thought I could keep going and going. The business was at a point where it needed my full attention. When you're running a startup and you're in the middle of raising your next round of funding and you have a team that you're accountable to and you're trying to prove yourself to the world… I mean, there's a reason why people say running a startup is like your baby. But I think the point of internal conflict for me was when I actually had a baby.

What was that point of conflict?

My real baby, his name is Wolf. I was pregnant with him when I was running the business. I was pregnant when I was fundraising and closed the deal. I gave birth a couple of months after we had raised our funding and then I went straight back to work. It was all self-imposed. No one said “Hey Mandy, you don't get to have a maternity leave.” I did that to myself. That was the kind of pressure I was putting on myself to succeed at everything at all costs. The price I paid was literally my health. I was getting sick all the time. I gained over 30 pounds, which on an Asian person's frame is a lot! [Laughs]. I was in a fog, exhausted and not fully recovered from the physical stuff that happens to your body when you have a baby.

Was there a specific moment that was your wakeup call?

There definitely was a moment. I remember being in the apartment, crying so hard that I fell to the floor. My family was genuinely worried about me, because I felt so much guilt about not giving one-hundred percent to anything. I felt I was screwing the business up because I wasn’t doing a great job, and I knew I wasn't giving my baby the attention he needed. I would get up early, go to work, come back… at that point he was usually already sleeping, and then I’d have a quick dinner and get back to work. The idea of balance and having any kind of groundedness or mindfulness did not exist for me.

Did you want balance?

I was trying, but... did you ever play that handheld Mickey Mouse videogame when you were kid? The one where he's trying to catch all the eggs that were falling from the different baskets? The eggs would fall faster and faster. When you're in that moment in the game, you're not thinking of anything but catching the eggs. You're not thinking "Oh, maybe I should go sit down and meditate." You're thinking how do I go faster, faster, faster. In my mind, I was like how do I run faster and just be stronger and “better” as opposed to anything in the mindfulness track.

What happened after the breakdown?

I think a part of my intuition took over. I remember saying to myself, what if we just try something else? Up to that point I had been so exclusively using one part of myself, which was just the achievement self, and really ignoring all the other wonderfully juicy, complicated, fun parts of myself. I also listened to my body. I think the body is so closely connected and such a part of everything. My body was telling me to stop. So what I did on a tangible level was I made the difficult decision to leave the startup and chill out for a minute. That was hard because I was a cofounder and so I felt incredibly responsible and incredibly guilty. But I knew there was something bigger for me waiting. That there was more to life than running around New York City and exhausting myself. So when I said to myself, let's try something else, I meant let’s be the gentler, kinder version of me.

Did that entail practical steps? How did you do it?

It was baby steps every day. The best thing I started to do was I listened to this podcast on something called Miracle Morning. It talks about the importance of establishing a morning routine. For me what that did was it established a consistent methodology. Something I could keep coming back to, to rebuild. At that time I was pretty broken and physically still exhausted. I knew I had to rebuild so I started that morning practice and it made a huge difference.

What things did you do in the morning?

I would sit in the same spot everyday and go through the routine. My first step was to meditate. At first I couldn't meditate for more than 30 seconds. My mind was so full of voices and negative thoughts. Over time, I started to be able to meditate for 2 minutes, then 5, then 10 minutes, then longer and longer. So the first step is silence and getting yourself to a place where your mind is quiet. I found that during the first couple weeks of doing this there was so much noise in my head. They call it the monkey mind, so much shit going on in your own brain.

Absolutely. It was a surprising experience for me when I first meditated to see how many different places my mind would go and how much chatter there is.

So much chatter! My mind kept going to the same negative places.

Do you mind sharing what some of those were?

A lot of it was me beating myself up over something I had done or said, or maybe I didn't handle that relationship correctly, or maybe I could've navigated the business better. They teach you to identify those thoughts just as thoughts. You might literally say to yourself when you're having them, “This is a thought.” It puts some distance between you and your thinking.

So you don't identify yourself with the thought completely.

Right. The thought can’t consume you. It just exists with you. Over time, the chatter in your mind quiets. Now when I meditate it's pretty quiet… at least, there isn’t as much stuff. So that was the first step. In my journal I also would do affirmations. Like I write affirmations to myself. Just positive things that were happening. At first it was very close to me, like I am a wonderful person [laughs]. Over time I found out that I didn't need to do it as much and I could write positive things outside of myself. It wasn't so self-centered. I found that therapeutic.

Did you believe those affirmations at the time?

Good question. Yeah, I think I did. Even if it was the smallest thing, like “I am alive.” That's an affirmation. It could be the tiny things I could believe in.

Seems like a way to offer some self-kindness.

Yeah, I think that was part of it. Part of what helped me, too, to get out of the hole was to laugh at it a little, too. I’d say to myself “Boohoo, Mandy. You had a great baby, you got to run this amazing business, now you’re in a holding pattern: first world problems.” It’s not like I was starving. You had to put it in perspective.

How did gratitude play a role during this period?

It's a funny thing because when the podcast said write about gratitude, I didn't even know what that meant. At first I was like okay I'll write about things I'm grateful for. Things. But ultimately what it became was a list of people. When I think of gratitude now, I think about love and kindness and wanting to reciprocate and respect those who are caring for you and vice versa. For me it was always the same 5 or 6 people in my life that I felt such warmth towards. People who really inspired me or provided an ear.

Who were some of those people?

One was my husband Brendan who is such a warm, loving rock of a person. He was there for me the whole time, encouraging and supporting me. I also have a couple of very close friends. One whose name is Wanday, who became a soul sister to me. We would read the same books at the same time and talk about them. We just have deep respect for each other. My good friend Jenny who I've known for ages. We went to the same high school in Beijing and she has a real sweetness to her. So it was kind of the same people over and over.

What did that gratitude practice change for you?

I think that when you're going through a difficult time, a lot of it can often be very centered on the self. I think what gratitude does is help you to see the world beyond and how everything is connected, and how there is beauty and grace and love and kindness. Those things, those connections, those conversations, are the thing that can heal you. That's the real medicine that's out there.

Where have your gratitude and meditation and self-kindness practices brought you now?

After a few very intense weeks of being by myself and healing I ended up taking another job in the city, which was great. It helped me get back on my feet and establish a kind of rhythm. But I think the biggest change I've made in the past year is that I got more in touch with my deeper needs: really the idea that I want to help people. I want to be a part of a mission bigger than just me.

Something that stuck a couple of weeks ago is exactly that challenge I had faced. The idea that I want to help powerful, intelligent women, like myself, navigate that balance between work, health, family and love.

What will that look like?

You know that quote, “If you don't build your dream, someone else will hire you to build theirs”? I've always felt like I have the capability to build something great. So I am trying to marry my business skills with this newfound passion, which is helping women to find balance in their lives. I was on the other side, that person who really needed help. I'm basically creating what I wish I had back when I was in a darker place. But I'm letting it breathe a little bit. I think that something like this is more of passion project which needs to breathe and grow organically.

How are you beginning?

The first thing I'm starting with is just talking to other women. There is no answer. It's not like you're going to read a book on how to be more mindful and grateful and centered in your life, and in the end you have a simple, one-sentence solution to everything. What I'm realizing is it's actually just a conversation, with other women, with other successful people, and with yourself. To start that conversation, I'm going to start talking to women whom I love and admire about their struggles and how they balance life and how they prioritize being a working woman, being a business owner, having a family, having it all. That quintessential myth of having it all. Is it real? Is that even something we want to aspire to? How do you decide what to prioritize at different stages in your life? I'm still figuring it out every day. Part of my mission is just connecting with others in the same boat and also looking for answers.  

I’d like to close by asking you, what is something, from today, that you're grateful for?

I would say today I'm grateful for the time I have with my son, Wolf. He's almost two and we spent about an hour outside this morning just running across the yard together. I taught him this game where I would run and he would run after me and give me a hug. It was called the run-hug game. He's so cute! I just feel it's such a privilege to be his mom because he's just amazing. I’m grateful for this time with him. That we can spend it together playing this silly game.

Thank you for sharing and taking the time to speak with me.

Thank you!