Why We Get Defensive—And How To Stop: Khailing Neoh (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of restauranteur Khailing Neoh’s talk titled “Why We Get Defensive—And How To Stop” at TEDxUnity Park 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Acknowledge, accept, continue. Acknowledge, accept, continue. I have a team member, we’ll call her Emily. Emily struggled when another coworker, Becca, quit. And so I took on some of those duties and roles when Becca left.

Emily was fine, but every so often we’d hear little comments here and there about how something was difficult, something was challenging without Becca here. So I took it upon myself to invite Emily to sit down and say, “Hey, let’s talk. Here’s how I’m feeling: I’m feeling kind of small, I’m feeling like I’m failing you. Can we talk about this?”

And Emily said, “You are doing a good job.” And not great job, not fantastic job. She said, “You’re doing a good job.” And then proceeded to say, “Becca was just so smooth and she was so great at her job and everything was so organized when she was here.”

And it was such a struggle for me during that conversation to not just walk away. So as we were talking and she was hyping Becca up and I was feeling smaller and worse about myself, there was a bubbling feeling that started to arise in my throat. And I wanted to stop her and say, “Emily, did you know that Becca tried to get you fired? Did you know that she was not an advocate for you when you were training and when you were struggling?”

Acknowledge, Accept, Continue

And this was a really difficult moment for me when we were conversing because obviously there’s no place in that to mean anything to Emily. There’s no benefit to me saying that.

So I’m really glad to say that none of that, I didn’t speak of any of that, none of that came up. Acknowledge, accept and continue.

I acknowledged that I was feeling small and I was feeling rejected. I accepted the fact that it was a difficult moment and a difficult conversation and I continued on and tried to stay present and congratulated myself for not ruining a relationship that we’ve taken some time to cultivate. Emily’s doing great, I’m doing great. We’re all good.

Personal Background

My name is Khailing. I am the owner of a local restaurant in Greenville called Sum Bar. I’m the, yeah, thank you. I’m the proud manager of about 38 unique, wonderful individuals. I’m the daughter of immigrants, the wife of Mr. Kevin Chow.

I’m the older sister of a younger sister. And although I’m not an expert on this topic or psychology in general, I do believe I’m qualified as a recovering people pleaser with anger issues. So I’m not here to convince you that you need to demolish your ego or get rid of it completely.

But as Abraham Lincoln once said, “Do we destroy our enemies by making them our friends?” And that really rang true to me. I think inviting our ego to the table and listening to what it has to say might just be the ticket for us to overcome some of our insecurities. And in turn, I believe, to potentially build a more authentic lifestyle for yourself.

I also think ultimately, the goal is not only to be a better communicator and a better leader, to have better boundaries for yourself and to protect your energy, but I also think that creating healthier relationships every day should be something that we all focus on, because we hate to have regret by accidentally saying something rude or something mean to your loved ones because you know they’ll return.

Defining the Ego

So before we dive into how to spot your ego or what to do with it, I think we should maybe start with some definitions. So there’s two different ways to define ego in my extensive Googling. One being the psychological term, which is a sense of self and your conscientiousness. So it kind of differentiates us from animals because we have our own thoughts and we can decide for ourselves.

But the definition I want to focus on today is more in line with the definition of pride or hubris. And my personal definition is really that feeling that almost feels uncontrollable when you feel the need to protect yourself in a defensive way, especially when it’s difficult to be vulnerable or accept your flaws and insecurities. So that’s for me personal what ego stands for.

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What I’ve learned is ego comes into our lives way more than we expect. Very common things are going to be trying to be right all the time, not taking blame, difficulty apologizing, even for small things. And then in ways that I didn’t even realize, small and large, that can be challenging is things like jealousy, gossiping, bullying, interrupting someone while they’re speaking.

It’s basically all of these times that you feel that you need to be understood or you need to be represented well, you need to be loved. It’s these innate human feelings that are not crazy at all, but sometimes we react poorly to show that we need more love or more care in those moments.

Personal Struggles with Ego

I’d like to share two stories that have impacted me specifically when it comes to ego. The three other ways that I think personally define me that I’m trying to break free from: perfectionism, self-catastrophizing, and intrusive thoughts and ruminating. So if you can relate to me, I’d love to have a conversation about it later, but perfectionism for me is very difficult because it’s a set of rules and fake bounds that I set for myself.

So for instance, I shouldn’t wear these shoes because it’ll make me seem unprofessional, or I shouldn’t make that joke because it might be in bad taste, I don’t want to seem shallow. All these different fake rules that I make for myself, it makes it difficult to breathe and live an authentic life and truly be yourself.

When it comes to self-catastrophizing, you might be able to relate. Sometimes when I go into a social situation and my social anxiety is rising, during or after I’ll think, “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that, that sounded petty,” or “What a ridiculous comment I made,” or “Maybe my breath smells,” and I’ll think, “What if they don’t like me?” And then I’ll switch to, “You know what, I don’t need new friends, I have enough friends. I didn’t even like them, they were rude to the waiter, I didn’t like their shirt, I don’t even need them in my life.”

And that can come up with dating, with making friends, with your own partners, and your certain specific sense of rejection can end up becoming outwardly sense of judgment.

And then the last one being intrusive thoughts and ruminating, where you could probably relate, where you make it, or sorry, catastrophizing, self-catastrophizing, you make it about you. Where if after this TED Talk, I head straight to the bathroom and I don’t say hi to you, you might think, “Did my breath smell? Or is she mad at me?” Or kind of making it about you, when in reality, it’s just the reality of me needing to go to the bathroom. So those are all examples of how ego can insert itself in your life without you even knowing it.

Lighthearted Story

So the two stories I wanted to tell, one is a little bit lighthearted, and maybe you can relate. Basically, at the end of the day, my lovely husband will come home and he’ll say something like, “Hey, you didn’t unload the dishwasher.” And old me, I would like to think old me, would say something like, “You think I just sit at home all day waiting to unload the dishwasher, like I don’t have better things to do? Why didn’t you come home during your lunch break and unload the dishwasher? Why is it my responsibility to unload the dishwasher?”

Knowing what I know now, all of that said, most of it comes from a sense of fear, that he thinks I’m lazy, or an insecurity that I’m not a good enough partner, that I’m not contributing to the household enough, because lo and behold, he does unload the dishwasher more than I do.

Now, I feel the more responsible, or maybe the kinder thing to say is more like, “I’m sorry, I honestly didn’t even know it needed unloading,” or “I didn’t even think about it, I was too busy with whatever I was doing.” Or an even softer response could be, “I had a really rough day, it was hard for me even to open up my laptop, I’m sorry about that, I don’t know if I let you down.”

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But the nice thing about me leading authentically with my response is that now it’s his job to be a good partner and to respond with enough grace and kindness for myself. He didn’t come in saying, “You’re a bad partner, you don’t contribute,” all those things, that was me self-catastrophizing and defending my insecurities of those items on their own.

Deeper Story

Okay, second example, it’s a little bit deeper. So it actually has to do with my father and how he put his ego ahead of himself and ahead of myself. So I had a pair of Toms in high school, and I don’t know if you know what Toms are, but they’re basically canvas slip-on shoes, kind of like the material for a paint board.

And I have a best friend who’s an artist, and at the time she was an aspiring artist. So what she did was for my birthday is painted all of our favorite cartoons and movies and inside jokes on these pair of Toms shoes. So basically our entire friendship symbolized in a physical form.

One day I couldn’t find these shoes, and I was looking, and a couple weeks later I found them in the garage underneath a shelf. And it was so alarming because they were ripped to shreds. And I was in such shock because it was like the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. It looked like a wildebeest or some kind of animal that was looking for a ribeye in my shoes.

And honestly, I was more in shock than upset because I thought there was an animal in the garage or something. So I went to my dad and I said, “Do you know what happened to these shoes?” And you can imagine it’s not the best response, but he said, he yelled, he said, “You are so careless with all of your things. You just leave them everywhere. And how can you expect anything good to happen if you just leave your stuff everywhere?”

Lessons Learned

Turns out he had run over my shoes at the lawnmower when I left them in the grass, which albeit, they were, it was like a thick, tall grass. So I understand it was an honest mistake. So I don’t think the point of the story is not to share that he responded poorly or he had a moment of weakness.

It was really that me being an adolescent, I learned that you could talk to your loved ones like that. And that I had mentioned my anger issues, that leading with anger instead of fear and vulnerability was an acceptable response. And as a growing child into adulthood, I don’t have regrets, but I definitely have sadness thinking about some of the responses I’ve had for others, leading with that fear rather than love and owning up to my mistakes.

When in reality, it was a very honest mistake that he ran over the shoes. But rather than nurturing me and comforting me, and although it was my fault for leaving them in the grass, it ended up being about him and about his feelings of guilt and shame. And he wants to be a good father.

So I’m not a parent, but I can understand that as a parent, it can be difficult trying to do right by you and trying to do right by your child. And that seems very complex every day in and out because you’re battling your own demons while also making sure that they’re protected with theirs. So I don’t blame my father, but I do think that I have a responsibility to figure out my anger issues and my issues with shame and guilt before passing it on to my children, or even my sister, or my husband, or my team members.

And just understanding that even though I didn’t intend to hurt you, that there is guilt and regret for doing so, even if it was unintentionally.

Moving Forward

So what do we do? What do we do now that we have talked about ego and how it comes up and how do we move forward? So back to the original statement of acknowledge, accept, and continue.

I think that’s a really good framework for where we should go from this. Jay Shetty is a modern author and podcaster, former monk type person, but he has a good quote that I like that was, “Your ego will die a thousand deaths, but it will still return tomorrow.” And I love that quote because it just reminds you that you’re human and no matter how many wins you have with the struggle against yourself, you’ll have a moment of weakness or you’ll have a place where it does slip. But you should trust that your loved ones and the people around you can really give you grace and continue to support you regardless of that moment.

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So acknowledge being, recognize when you feel guilty, when you feel shame, when you’re correcting someone or trying to not take the blame or ownership, just recognize that. Acknowledging that is a wonderful first step. Accepting can be difficult also. It’s accepting the fact that you felt any sort of negative feeling and just head on saying, “I feel like I’m not enough. I feel like I haven’t been a good partner. I feel like I’m not a good manager.”

Whatever that is, recognize that I’m telling myself these negative thoughts and acknowledging that that’s not my definition and I’m trying to do better. Accepting also means reflecting. So what did I do right and how could I improve are really good ways of how you can speak softly to yourself rather than, “Well, I should have done differently. I should have said this. I didn’t mean to do that.”

So it’s a really good way to say, “Here’s what I did right and here’s where I can improve.” And then the last, arguably the most important part is the continuing piece. And the continuing piece is just so beautiful because there’s so many ways to continue. There’s forgiveness for yourself or flipping up. There’s forgiveness for my father.

There’s also congratulating. So congratulating yourself for the little wins. That’s continuing and patting yourself on the shoulder for even doing the work and recognizing that your ego has a place in your life. And then there’s also bringing it to the table and continuing every day being better and trying again and just choosing to wake up the next day and be better because we all know how difficult it can be even just to get to the next day.

Bonus: Gifting

There’s a bonus in there. It’s acknowledge, accept, and continue. And the bonus one is gifting.

So again, from our friend Jay Shetty, he has this concept of when someone gives you a compliment where you find an insecurity, if someone says, “Oh, Sum Bar is so beautiful. I just love how it looks.” I’m very insecure because I know that the tiles chipped and I know this isn’t clean and I know I didn’t design it.

But rather than just pushing the gift to the side, I should take it, acknowledge it, and thank the person and say, “Thank you for your compliment. I really appreciate that, especially because it’s an insecurity of mine.” And then the fourth piece of gifting it is beautiful to say that I actually had two designers that volunteered their time and helped us with the color scheme. And my landlord, David Stone, did a great job with helping us pick out cabinetry and marble.

So gifting that compliment to someone who you can give credit to also is a beautiful way to show gratitude and to compliment yourself as well as spreading it to the community.

Conclusion

So to recap, acknowledge, accept, continue, potentially gift, which is a great bonus. I have a few extra statements to leave you with. One is you are not your worst moments and it does not define you.

Two, vulnerability is 100% a strength and not a weakness. Three, if you care about something, don’t put it in my parents’ backyard. But actually, the third one is acknowledge, accept, continue, and if you focus on the continue piece, I know you’ll be in a great place.

Thank you very much.