Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Minnie Yang . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Minnie , so excited to have you with us today and we are really interested in hearing your thoughts about how folks can develop their empathy? In our experience, most folks want to be empathic towards others, but in a world where we are often only surrounded by people who are very similar to us, it can sometimes be a challenge to develop empathy for others who might not be as similar to us. Any thoughts or advice?
As an artist I think I always have this love-hate relationship with my empathy. I grew up in a family where my mom is an independent, open-minded and avant-garde woman and my dad is a quiet, resilient and patient gentleman. With that combination I was born with a hyper-sensitive personality which gifted me creativity, but meanwhile detail-oriented and sometimes too perfectionist, in simple words, now that I think of it – I just FEEL a lot more than others. I think that’s the seed of my empathy.
Growing up with a sensitive personality, I always loved observing people. Like the business friends my parents would interact with, the complicated yet intricate relationship among our relatives; the cultural conflicts at school when I first came to study in Canada, the different types of people out there in a professional setting that led them to make divergent professional decisions…. and so on. My parents, coming from a Chinese background where its culture is rooted in Confucianism, always believed empathy is the key to peace. Slowly I fostered this habit of asking myself: why is something the way it is? or why does someone behave in certain ways? I think eventually this habit endowed me my own way of understanding the world, and it’s the empathy I developed that gifted me with more room for creativity because I constantly hone in my skill of feeling, hearing, and understanding. In my music or designs too, I’d wish to resonate with my audiences and introduce them the way I feel and see the world.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Hi! I’m Minnie, I’m a singer-songwriter, musician, content creator, film photographer. I also currently work at a broadcasting company as full time product designer. Half of the time you find me working with my product teams: doing agile meetings, running usability testings, doing design iterations, or attending design conferences. Another half of the time you find me making music and playing keyboard & guitar. That also includes song covers that I post on my social media (Youtube, Instagram, Little Red Book, Tiktok), or singing-songwriting on my own and other musician friends. My first song was actually released way back in 2019, written by my musician friend Yoshe Li. It’s an Original Sound Track (OST) for the TV drama i acted in (oh btw I also had acting experience) called “Legend of the Horus Eye”. The show is on Chinese platform called iQiYi, and I kind of self-pitched to sing the OST because I always had a passion in music. Lucky that my pitch was successful and that’s the beginning of my journey as a singer.
Couple years down the road I focused mainly on my product design learning and career path and music became more of a hobby thing until last year, my friend Yoshe Li invited me to see her livehouse performance. The show featured about 4 musicians and it was really really exciting to see her shine on stage, as her best friend and sister. It also meant a lot to me because music has always been both of our dreams and it’s just surreal and encouraging to witness her resilience in this journey. It made me reflect on my own dreams and I started to realize how important music is to me, and I actually want to do more than just singing song covers, I’d want the world to hear my music too. So I started writing my own original songs (although I had a couple of them written in the past few years too but never went on to produce them), and after working with my producer friend for the past half a year, I had two original songs released now on all music platforms. It’s been a dream just to think about how far i’ve came.
Lastly, photography has also been something I work with to “decorate” or express my music in different ways. For all the music I do, I would film short videos or photography works to deliver them together to my audience so the experience is not simply acoustic but visual too.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think there’re three things I wanna talk about as someone developing more than one career path:
1. Jump out of your comfort zone
It used to sound cliche to me to even hear about the term “comfort zone” but now as I grow older, it’s actually getting more and more difficult to jump out of a comfort zone because every transition could mean time/financial investments and nothing is as certain as writing exams and getting certificates. So I want to encourage every artist if one day you’re reading my story, to never be afraid of jumping out of your comfort zone, setting on a new journey, exploring a new type of career.
I’m two years into my UX design career path when i decided i want to pick up my music path again. I started learning electric guitar only last year and now I have two original songs released. When you look back, there’s so much progress you would have made. By the end of the day it’s all about experiences of life and I think that’s what make our lives so exciting!
2. But jump back to check your comfort zone sometimes too
What i’m trying to say is… from a realistic point of view, don’t fall behind on something you’re already good at and have yourself a backup. Sometimes risk means opportunities but some other times, risk can be controlled in a manner that protects yourself from losing all the opportunities and hating the consequences. So I think it’s reasonable to “jump back” to your comfort zone at times so that you’re “energized” and ready to tackle any new areas out of the zone. 🙂 This applies to mentalities too!
3. Expand your comfort zone
And the magic trick is!!! Once you explore outside the comfort zone, and once you get familiar with it, start to really fully enjoy it instead of always having high expectations of the outcomes. The joy kicks in only when you relax and enjoy the experiences and that eventually becomes part of your comfort zone too. Sometimes things don’t happen just because you work the ass off, it happens because you’re ready! (Just pretending to be the philosopher in this room but seriously it’s also something I’m telling myself everyday).
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
More than happy to collab with like-minded cool musicians and artists. Also very open to collab with brands. I can sing, write songs, and am also happy to perform. Please feel free to check out my social media pages for more of my works too.
If you’re interested in collaborating, you can connect me through email: [email protected].
Contact Info:
- Website: www.voyouaulait.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voyouaulait/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minnie-yang-804913139/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkzi-iKxTZ6OFpRJcPCbgUg
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/06xyyuDSYXG5vXxDqUnppy?si=hpJ1E-bFT0OZW-uiHwpPuA
Image Credits
Photographer: Lingzhe Zhu (Ryan)
