Tanyee Cheung

The Pursuit of Unconditional Wellbeing

My interest in positive psychology stemmed from my own personal journey toward happiness and fulfillment. While I wish I could say my journey began when I was young, it really only began a little more than eleven years ago. In theory, it would seem that we would be educated in this arena at an early age as everyone strives for happiness and fulfillment. In reality, most of us are not taught these important lessons and instead are trained to focus on different aspirations. We often meander through life, doing our day to day tasks, striving for the next expected goal. I was no different. Raised by immigrants, I was driven to obtain the “American Dream”. Go to school, work hard, get good grades, go to college, go to graduate school, find a job, get married, buy a home, have kids, climb the corporate ladder, make partner and accumulate financial wealth. I dutifully followed the path my parents envisioned for me and led the life many would call a success.

In truth, I was anxious, overworked, fighting with my spouse, yelling at my children, impatient with my parents and overall burnt out. It was not something that I admitted to or even recognized at the time. Growing up in the legal profession where it was a badge of honor to have blankets and pillows in my office because of how often I was “pulling all-nighters”, I didn’t have time to contemplate what I wanted for lunch, much less whether or not I was happy. Throughout my twenties and thirties and into my forties, I continued along this road without much thought. As is often the case, it unfortunately took tragedy for me to make time, take a breath and examine my path.

For me, that tragedy was the death of my colleague David in the winter of 2008. Death of a friend, family or co-worker often wakes one up to the fact that “life is short” and makes one question their life choices. David’s death, however, didn’t lead me down this typical path of questioning my life choices because David wasn’t typical. He was, in fact, eternally positive. Instead of wondering whether I had made the right choices in my life, I began to question whether I had the right attitude towards life. While it took his death to make me examine myself, it was how David lived that inspired me to change. Yes, David’s death did remind me that life is short but it was the realization that while death isn’t a choice, happiness is, that lead me to change. David’s death was tragic enough but I felt that it would be even more tragic if I didn’t learn from my interactions with him.

It’s hard to explain the impact David had on my life. I doubt his mother (whom he called daily) or wife even knew who I was. We weren’t friends per se. I did not know much of his life outside of work. What little I knew was because we carpooled to work the year he died. During our daily commute, we shared pieces of our lives. In the many hours on the road, I came to see that no matter what circumstances presented themselves, David remained continually optimistic and genuinely happy. On one drive, David casually mentioned that he would not be able to carpool the next day as he was intending to meet his father for dinner. I responded with a customary, “oh, that should be fun”. David told me that he was in fact estranged from his father and that his father was not even invited to his wedding. David, however, wasn’t dreading the dinner. He saw it as a possibly opportunity, telling me it would be interesting and lightly said, “maybe he has changed”. The next morning when I asked how dinner was, David, without any negativity, replied, “nope he hadn’t changed”.

That was classic David, hope for the best but when the best doesn’t happen, just accept and move on. I saw this in David over and over again. There was the time when I questioned his timing to start a family. We knew layoffs were around the corner and that all of us were in jeopardy of losing our jobs. David gracefully replied, “if you think about it too much, it is never the right time, you just have to do it and it will figure itself out”. I remember how on another ride David casually mentioned he had a doctor’s appointment. Without much thought, I said “hope nothing serious”. David elaborated by telling me he had a heart condition and would one day need to get open heart surgery but that this visit was just a regularly scheduled check-up. He put no more weight on his heart condition than one would have put on a common cold. He accepted, understood and moved on. David never seemed to have a complaint and embraced life for all of its possibilities. He died a few months after we started carpooling together from that heart condition, leaving behind his mother, wife and unborn child. Listening to his wife at his funeral, she told us David would not want us to be in pain over his death and affirmed what I already knew, David would want us to accept his death and embrace our lives. I vowed to be a happier person after his death, in a sense to try and fill the shoes that he had left.

With no more than the desire to be happy and memories of David’s attitude to guide me, I set out on my happiness journey. I didn’t know it at the time but the road was going to be anything but smooth. One month after my pledge, I was working from home due to a large snow storm. I received a phone call from my boss who politely informed me that I was RIFFed (reduction in work force) and would be let go the following month. I was the sole bread winner in my family and my layoff came on the heels of the collapse of Lehman and the economy. I slowly hung up the phone, had a good, long cry and mumbled to myself, “I am so lucky, I am happy, I WILL be happy” and started planning my job search. Life disaster number one put in its place. Thank you David.

Two months later, at home, without a job, I opened the mail to find that, without my knowledge, my husband had taken a sizable loan for his failing business. This was the second time he had done this and with the added stress of neither of us working, our marriage, which had already been strained, crumbled. Deep breaths, I was lucky, better to know now, I WILL be happy. We started marriage counseling and started working on life disaster number two. As the saying goes, misfortune comes in threes.

A month later, still with no job and trying to put back together a shattered marriage, my father was diagnosed with stomach cancer. My father was never a patient man and he was a worse patient. He told me he had scheduled surgery and wanted to “get it over with”. I went with him to the surgeon and in those discussions learned that no one had thought to seek the opinion of an oncologist. The surgeon told me that he would get my father an oncologist after the surgery. After?!?!? I noted that my father had cancer and thought it would be prudent to get a cancer doctor to treat him. The surgeon and my father did not hide their displeasure. The surgeon wanted to do the surgery (I found out it would be his first one) and my father wanted the ordeal over. A year earlier, the old me would have been frustrated and angry that my father was not more appreciative of my help. I likely would have walked away thinking “if you don’t want my help, fine I won’t give it” but the new me, took a deep breath, reminded myself to be patient, and gently began discussing options with my dad. We went to an oncologist, came up with a treatment plan and for a diagnosis that sees a five percent survival rate, we were lucky enough to have my father for another seven years. Notwithstanding his early anger and frustration with me, my father was ultimately grateful for the treatment plan, loved his doctors and knew that we had taken the right course. He later apologized for his behavior and thanked me for my persistence and patience. He should have thanked David.

While I was going through some of life’s most difficult events, I found that I was more content than I had been at any point previously in my life. It wasn’t that I enjoyed visiting cancer doctors with my father more than I enjoyed graduating from law school but I appreciated life more. Instead of being anxious over my lack of a job, I appreciated the unexpected free time to go with my father to his doctor appointments. Instead of bemoaning the breakdown of my marriage, I appreciated moving toward a more honest and healthier relationship with my husband (even if it meant divorce). Most of all, I appreciated the realization that events in my life were not the cause of my happiness or unhappiness. I learned that power resided solely within me and I learned that the events in my life did not define me or my life. The year after David passed, I channeled David’s positivity to help me find a job during a tough recession, to come out of a divorce where my kids, my ex-husband and his girlfriend spend Christmas together, and to help my father survive and thrive through a horrible disease. The following years would bring new challenges, my cousin (who is more akin to a sister) would lose both her legs in a freak train accident, my father would die from a heart attack, and I would develop Meniere’s, a chronic and at times debilitating disease. Positive psychology was and remains pivotal in my ability to not only overcome life’s challenges but to thrive in the face of them.

David was the catalyst for my interest in positive psychology even though at the time, I didn’t know what it was called. While I have only recently become familiar with it on a formal level, I have been learning and living positive psychology for years. My passion for the practice grew over these years as I delved into Taoism, meditation, quantum cognition and other positive teachings. In time, I would stumble across Dr. Seligman’s Ted Talks and his online course at Coursera. As I listened to one of the leading founders of the positive psychology movement, I knew that I wanted to continue my personal journey by formalizing my education through the MAPP program.

With the MAPP program, I seek to take my passion for positive thinking to the next level and become a stronger advocate for lawyers and legal wellbeing. I have both great love and respect for my chosen profession but I have felt and seen the damage that this demanding profession can cause. In 2018, one of my partners at work succumbed to these pressures, became a victim of substance abuse and died tragically. His struggles were and are not unique. While I have been fortunate to find balance and personal happiness and security, I remember a time in my life when I did not find it shocking that someone would rather quit life than quit their job, a time when I was drowning under the pressures of day to day life in a profession that often demands your all.

I believe that the formal education of the MAPP program will give me a deeper understanding of the science behind positive psychology and provide guidance on how to tap into the strengths and virtues that aid us in producing affirming experiences to elicit the positivity within all of us. Understanding the foundations, research, and the methodology and evaluation of this research in the field will allow me to better articulate the science behind what I have discovered on a personal level. Education on application of positive interventions on an institution basis will facilitate my ability to drive change on an organizational level. Combining a more formal and scientific education with my own personal education will provide a concrete platform for me to share the important insights of positive psychology to the legal and business professions at large. I believe that the course work I will engage in as a candidate for MAPP will allow me to arm my colleagues with tools necessary to bring about changes vital to our professions.

The momentum is already here. A movement spearheaded by the ABA and its recently created National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being seeks to bring attention to, and improve, the well-being of the legal profession at large. As a member of the Connecticut Chapter of the Lawyers Assistance Program, I am excited to be part of this movement and believe that the MAPP program will greatly enrich my ability to make an impact. I am confident that sharing my MAPP experiences will aid us in developing dynamic initiatives and creating enlightening and engaging panel discussions, as we bring awareness of the importance of wellbeing in the legal and business professions.

Beyond my current profession, I believe the MAPP program will fuel my desire to spread positivity and extend its reach. As I look forward to the next stages of my life, I can see myself more fully immersed in the field of positive psychology. Whether through coaching, education, or speaking engagements, I am excited about the prospects of bringing awareness of these profound philosophies to those outside my immediate profession. I strongly believe that the world benefits as society learns and embraces the teachings of positive psychology. I am certain that the MAPP program will cement these beliefs and allow me to further the education of these teachings.

I find it heartening when my son shares with me positive thinking Ted Talk videos he is exposed to in his Public Health class at UMass. The UPenn, NYU and Yale classes on happiness (and the astounding popularity of these classes) exemplifies the hunger that society has for this knowledge and shows that public education should go beyond traditional academics. I was not exposed to these teachings growing up but I was fortunate to meet someone who inspired me to live my best life and take the happiness road. As a society, we need to ensure that neither privilege nor chance will dictate whether one is exposed to the knowledge, tools and motivation to live our best lives. Courses that teach happiness and wellness across all dimensions, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, environmental, financial, occupational and social, should be available and encouraged earlier in the education process. We should expose the importance of wellness and positive psychology to our youth at the secondary school level and perhaps as early as elementary school.

When we teach our children the words of our constitution, we should also embrace the meaning of those words. As our youth learn the adage “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men [and women]….derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we should equip them with the tools to aid them in that pursuit. In a recent report convened by the World Health Organization, the United States came in at 39 on the child flourishing index. As one of the most prosperous nations in the world, we can and should do better. The public education system could be a powerful tool to lay the foundation for societal happiness by providing the knowledge and skills that everyone should possess to optimize happiness and wellness. I believe the MAPP program will be a catalyst for me to seek ways to make a greater impact beyond the influence in the legal and business professions. If I were fortunate enough to be accepted into the MAPP program, one of my goals would be to build upon the work done by CASEL (The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning), Character Lab, The Shipley School and others and design a Capstone Project which would explore and seek to implement utilization of public education to promote wellness and positive psychology. I hope you will afford me that opportunity.