Meet Allison Ly

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Allison Ly a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Allison , we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

Having and being confident looks different to me than what most people think of immediately.

I don’t need to be the loudest or most outspoken person in the room (I can be, but I don’t need to be). I also don’t need everyone to agree with me (it would be nice, but not necessary). Having the internal confidence of knowing myself, knowing my values and my goals at any given moment in time is the key to confidence and having a good self-esteem which happens through two things: having clarity and practice.

#1 Clarity:
When you know your needs, your goals and purpose for any decision you need to make, the decision becomes clearer.

Your confidence is high when you have that clarity and that vision of the end goal for a specific thing or for yourself generally. This helped my confidence become unshaken.

I had to get clear and gain that clarity on my values, what characteristics were important to me, and decide how I wanted to show up for myself and others. When I did that, I was able to feel confident in my decisions even if no one else understood why.

This is possible for you too; when you have unshaken confidence, even if others don’t agree with you, or if they think you should be doing something else – you can still confidently stand firm in your reasons for your decisions at that moment in time, respectfully.

My confidence and clarity developed through a lot of experimenting, and trying on new thoughts, ideas, to see what fits with my core values, and how I want to show up in the world.

I truly believe everything we do and try, gives us more information and more clarity to what we want and what we need. So there is no right way to do it – we just need to continuously check in with how things fit with our goals and our values, for our confidence to be unshaken.

#2: Practice
Along with that clarity, I really had to practice. Yes, I had to practice the new activity, new hobby and practice being in new situations, etc. And still – I’d say that the most important thing I practice and that I recommend to everyone is practicing self compassion.

Why is that you ask?

We tend to be the hardest on ourselves. You probably tell yourself things that you would not actually tell someone you love and care about. This leads us to feel bad about ourselves and feel like we are not good enough. Then we think people around us think negatively of us too – when they may not be.

This happens because we as humans generally think we should be great at things immediately, even when we are new or still learning about it. It’s as if I just picked up learning how to play basketball today and I expect myself to be great at it. Self compassion sounds like: “This is something I am still learning and improving upon, it makes sense that this would still be challenging for me. I am doing my best.”

I developed my confidence through constantly checking in with myself to have that clarity on my end goals and my values, and through practicing self compassion. I believe it’s possible for everyone to gain confidence through these two things and that’s why I teach these skills to my clients as well.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I help adults with immigrant parents, get unstuck and gain confidence in themselves and strengthen their relationships without continuously sacrificing their needs. After helping so many adults with immigrant parents for over 6 years as a LCSW, I realized that this solution needed to be made accessible to MORE people. (Because my therapy practice caseload is exclusively for those residing in California).

That’s why I founded Unshaken Gens™ and created The Unshaken Confidence™ Program to help adults with immigrant parents as a coach. My mission is to help as many adults with immigrant parents live more of their life, WHILE still taking care of the ones they love by reprogramming and recreating new internal beliefs and thoughts that fit with who they are today (not only what they learned as a child/young adult), so that they can have the relationships they’ve been dreaming of with themselves, and with their loved ones.

I also have immigrant parents, that’s why I am so passionate about this work and helping as many adults with immigrant parents as possible learn alternative ways they can incorporate these skills to fit their lives, their current values and start to live more of the life they want, on their terms.

I understand the experience of being an adult with immigrant parents and in Unshaken Confidence™, we walk clients through how to decide for themselves what they want and how to best achieve their goals in a way that works for them.

As a member of our program, you will re-decide how you want to show up in your relationships, and create new internal beliefs and thoughts that help you confidently live the life you’ve been dreaming of, while holding onto your values. You will have support as you start strengthening your relationships with even stronger communication and boundary setting skills, and have less negative self talk. You can start to have the relationships you’ve been wanting, sooner.

I am excited for the transformation clients will have in their relationships with others, and most importantly with themselves. This is important to me because this work helped me enjoy and deepened my relationships so much more than I ever dreamed possible.

You can sign up at: https://www.heyallisonly.com/course and get on the priority list to join when we open up the program for our next cohort. We open up four times a year to ensure that you get the best support when you join us in the program.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

As an adult with immigrant parents myself, there were so many things that impacted the ways I viewed the world and how I operated in the world. I spoke two languages (Vietnamese) and had to balance at minimum two cultures and two different expectations, ideas and experiences. It was a process to learn what my needs and what my values are (to obtain the clarity I mentioned before) and feel confident in myself and my decisions with less guilt and fear. With all the work I’ve done on this personally and professionally, I’ve simplified this process for myself and my clients in my Unshaken Confidence™ program.

Since I helped my parents a lot when I was younger, since I knew more English, had more technology skills or what not, I learned to be very responsible and to be a helpful person generally to a lot of people. As I got older, I had to relearn how to do these things in a way where my needs, what I wanted were also taken care of instead of just trying to be helpful to others at my own expense.

The three most impactful things I learned were:

1) Don’t try to do it all alone. It’s hard to see the label when you’re inside the bottle. When we’re in it, it can be difficult to get an objective perspective. Whether it’s getting support from your friends, family members, a coach, a therapist or learning through books and podcasts – there are ways to feel less alone and try to get more perspective on your challenges and alternative ways to approach the problems.

For me, it helped me so much more to go beyond learning on my own. My personal and professional growth expedited when I reached out for support from people who were able to teach me skills, tips and tools that I was struggling with, or unable to master on my own. Just because as an adult with immigrant parents there were a lot of things we had to learn to do alone, doesn’t mean we need to keep going on the same solo path when there’s a quicker, efficient way to get the same result for you.

2) Be mindful of your thoughts. Your thoughts are the most powerful things you can pay attention to, to have more control and help you through any situation. Our thoughts play a big role in how we think about things, how we feel and what we think about ourselves. And what we think impacts how we act, how we behave and perform. I truly believe that our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are all connected. So when we are mindful of our thoughts, and practice new thoughts – that helps us with increasing our confidence tremendously.

That’s why I created Unshaken Confidence™ and teach powerful tools to help with managing our thoughts in a way that is most beneficial for us. Because our thoughts are powerful and influential, let’s make sure they’re helping you feel more confident and prepared for any challenges.

3) In order to be more understood, you have to share more. A misconception I had, and one that many of my clients had is that people should just understand or try to understand me. While that is true, being understood is a two way street and we have to do our role in helping others understand us.

I had some self limiting beliefs (e.g. highlight point #2) that kept me from connecting with people more because I thought people didn’t care or that what I wanted to say wasn’t “important”. In my personal relationships, that hindered me from having the depth and connection that I desired most. So for anyone wanting these deeper connections, share more. Share a little more, just a little bit more than you’re comfortable with and see how it feels. Of course you can be selective with who you share more with and test the waters. But there are people who want to know what you’re thinking and get to know you, more than you think.

And if you’re struggling with managing these thoughts or knowing where to start, join us in Unshaken Confidence™, we’ve got the support and tools you need.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

If you’re an adult with immigrant parents, a second generation adult, who is looking to have more of the relationships that you want with yourself and your loved ones even with all the cultural and language differences…

If you’re looking to strengthen your relationships and feel more connected, more supported, and more understood with your parents, your family and loved ones but don’t know where to start …

If you’re wanting to have stronger and deeper connections with your loved ones, WITHOUT the self sacrificing patterns you’ve been used to doing …

If you want to obtain the condensed version of all the knowledge and tools I’ve gathered as a professional and as a second generation adult myself, to potentially help you reach your relationship goals sooner …

If you’re tired of getting irrelevant tips and advice on how to make this work for you, when people don’t truly understand what it means to be an adult with immigrant parents navigating this path…

THEN

Let’s work together!

With my 6+ years as a licensed professional and lived experiences as an adult with immigrant parents myself, being aware, and recreating and reprogramming your internal thoughts and beliefs is the only way to have more of the relationships you’ve always dreamt of with yourself and your loved ones.

It is possible.

I’ve done it and I truly believe that it’s possible for everyone to do the same.

It may look different for everyone (as it should) and that is ok. The tools I teach will be helpful in figuring out what works for you, so that you can recreate and re-decide how you want your relationships with yourself and others to be like.

I’m here to support you when you’re ready to start this journey and have more of the relationships you enjoy without ALL of the feelings of self sacrifice, burnout, resentment or guilt.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heyallisonly.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heyallisonly/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heyitsallisonly
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heyallisonly

Image Credits

The two speaking photos (red shirt): Courtesy of Jennifer Yao, Minority Health Conference Speaker Chair, (USC + UCLA)

Other photos credit aren’t needed