Finding Yourself On Sabbatical: Navigating a Quarter Life Crisis ft. Tong Zhang | Real You Mandarin Podcast EP21

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Many of us were raised to believe that climbing the corporate ladder is the most important thing we can do with our time. We chase the next promotion, the next title, the next milestone, and we keep going. Until one day we stop and ask ourselves, wait, am I actually happy right now? Is this really what I want to be doing with my life?

That's the conversation we're having on this episode with Tong Zhang, one of Angela's former coworkers from her time in tech. After about five years climbing the ladder at a major tech company, Tong made the decision to 走出職場 / 走出职场 / zǒu chū zhí chǎng / leave the workplace and take a two-year 空窗期 / kōng chuāng qī (CH) / kōng chuāng qí (TW) / sabbatical to figure out what she actually wanted out of life.

Why Taking A Break Felt So Terrifying

This is the part of the conversation that hits home for so many of us. Whether you grew up here as an American-Born Chinese (ABC) or American-Born Taiwanese (ABT), or you grew up in Asia like Tong did, most of us were raised with the same mindset that career success is the most important measure of who we are. Our values get tied to our work, our self-worth gets tied to our job performance, and stopping to question any of it can feel almost impossible when everyone around you is still climbing.

Tong walks through what finally made her hit pause anyway. She had been climbing for over a decade and slowly realized she didn't actually know what she was climbing toward. The hardest part wasn't even the decision to leave, it was confronting the cultural patterns underneath it.

A Two-Year Reset in Nature and With Family

What followed was a couple of years of solo backpacking through some of the most remote landscapes on earth, paired with long stretches back home with family in mainland China. Tong shares how someone who grew up in a city without much interest in the outdoors ended up tackling Patagonia on her own, and what it actually felt like to spend that much uninterrupted time in nature.

She also talks about why the family piece turned out to matter just as much as the mountains. After so many years working in the US, the chance to just be present at home with the people who raised her became its own kind of reset, one she hadn't realized she needed.

What She Found When She Stopped

The biggest realization came once she actually slowed down. Without the next promotion goal lined up, Tong had to sit with the bigger 人生課題 / 人生课题 / rén shēng kè tí / life questions she had been outrunning the whole time. Things like, who am I when I'm not chasing the next title? What kind of life do I actually want? And what does enough really look like?

In the episode, Tong and Angela go deep on the difference between living for external validation and living for yourself, why having a quarter life reset is better than dealing with all that in a midlife one, and how Tong now feels far more capable of facing uncertainty than she ever was during her career.

Key Vocab From This Episode

走出職場 / 走出职场 | zǒu chū zhí chǎng (to leave the workplace / exit corporate life)

空窗期 | kōng chuāng qī (CH) / kōng chuāng qí (TW) (gap year / sabbatical / gap period)

人生課題 / 人生课题 | rén shēng kè tí (personal challenges / life lessons in self-growth)

Ready to Express Your Own Self-Growth Journey?

The final module of Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression is dedicated entirely to Self-Growth, covering everything from facing your inner critic and breaking generational patterns to defining your own values outside of what was passed down to you. If this conversation with Tong resonated with you, you'll find the vocabulary and frameworks to share your own reflections with the people you love most.

Not sure if the course is for you yet? Try a free lesson first and see what it feels like to learn Mandarin through content that actually matters.

Get the Full Transcript

Want the full transcript of this episode in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with key vocab highlighted? Download the EP1 transcript for free here. If you find it useful, check out our Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all episode transcripts.

Tong is still setting up her Substack, but if you want to follow what she's working on next, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.

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