Your Weirdness Is Your Strength: The You-Shaped Hole

Many of my coaching clients come to me with a secret: they’re trying to figure out how to fit in. They say they want to develop their leadership skills, and they often want to learn strategies for navigating corporate culture. Some confide in me that they must be doing something wrong, and they want to learn what everyone else seems to know. I understand this feeling all too well, because I’ve often felt like a misfit, someone who doesn’t quite belong anywhere.

I was born and raised in Central Illinois in the 80s, a first-generation Korean-American. Like most kids, I just wanted to fit in. But back then, hardly anyone had even heard of Korea—at least not until the Seoul Olympics in 1988. I spent my childhood arguing with kids who insisted I was Chinese or Japanese, and enduring the racist chants of classmates who pulled their eyes into slits. In the land of cows and corn, we were still called “Oriental.”

I didn’t even know the term was “Asian” until I went to California for college. But even in a place with a large population of Asian students, I wasn't comfortable joining the Asian American Student Association; I still felt like a misfit. On top of that, as a barely 17-year-old freshman from a small town, I was acutely aware of my naiveté compared to my worldly classmates. It didn’t help that I was a painfully shy introvert.

Fortunately, I was also fairly adventurous and adept at adapting to different cultures and situations. At age 13, I went to France by myself for a month-long homestay. I majored in International Relations, and spent a semester abroad in Japan, which led me to seek a job there after graduation. I became fluent in Japanese and could blend in enough not to stand out as an obvious gaijin, but I knew I would never truly belong. 

In the corporate world, I observed my colleagues and learned to follow the rules about how to act and dress. I did a pretty good job of conforming and not standing out, and I knew that people generally liked me, but this success felt somewhat hollow because I was playing a part.

It never occurred to me that it would be okay to just be myself, let alone that I would be accepted and appreciated. I actively hid and suppressed parts of myself, like my Koreanness and my sense of humor, which I thought was too sarcastic and silly to be understood or appreciated. As a result, I didn't feel truly seen.

It was only several years into my career, after I started working at Google and participated in career and team development activities where you take assessments like Clifton Strengths and True Colors, that I learned there was room for different personality types and temperaments in the workplace. In fact, each had their respective strengths and weaknesses. These tools gave me a framework and vocabulary to describe myself, and even more importantly, permission to be different.

A few years later, I was introduced to the concept of core values, which are highly individual and independent of the values we are taught by society and our family of origin. While it’s important to know societal norms and follow some of the rules, it’s just as crucial to understand what purpose those standards serve and who you are at your core. The latter is not about pleasing others or fitting a mold, but your identity, as defined by your personal preferences, inclinations, and intuition.

As I went through my first midlife crisis and was no longer satisfied by achievement and advancement alone, it became even more important for me to get clear on my own values and purpose. I got to know myself, and in the second half of my 40s, I also came to understand that I wasn’t going to fundamentally change who I was, and there was no point in trying to fight it. While I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could still learn and master new skills at this ripe age, I would remain the same me I’ve always been. With that understanding came acceptance, deeper trust in my inner wisdom and intuition, and, slowly but surely, the capacity to stop giving a f*ck what other people think about me.

Then this summer, I attended a writing retreat with author and coach Tara Mohr, where she shared “You-Shaped Hole”, her poem that flips the discomfort of feeling like you don’t fit in with the world to a call to express your unique form of purpose and leadership. It ends with the following:

The world was made with a you-shaped hole in it.

In that way you are important.

In that way you are here to make the world.

In that way you are called.

This concept resonated so powerfully for me, a perennial oddball, and I’ve been sharing it with my clients lately. It’s a radical concept: whatever makes you unique, different, and even weird, is filling a space that needs to be filled. Instead of trying to figure out how to fit in, get to really know yourself and then let your true self shine through. Say what needs to be said, call out what is not right, and be part of co-creating a better world. As I reflected on the poem, I wrote, “There is nothing to figure out - it is already present.”

Tara shared this poem on Day Two of the retreat, and it seemed to fit so perfectly with what I wrote just the day before in response to the prompt, “The thing that wants to emerge is…” Here’s an excerpt of my unedited writing: 

Lately I’m feeling like many of us, both men and women around my age, are experiencing that sense of wisdom, enlightenment, and peace that comes with finally being comfortable in your skin, both figuratively and in the physical sense. Not to say that I love everything that I am, but I accept that I have the body and personality and strengths I was born with, and that makes many things possible but not everything. But it allows me to see other people differently as well, as beings who are just trying to figure things out, trying to make their way through life and this very complicated, complex world. Things are exactly as they should be, and even in the moments of pain and suffering, we have our hope to sustain us, and our voices to speak our truth. 

I now understand what it means to be the best version of myself. It’s being true to my nature and innate tendencies, after filtering through all the external messages and influences. In the end I still decide and create my own reality. And when I am fully living in integrity, I am attractive to others, not in terms of physical beauty, but in magnetic pull and resonance. Perhaps that is what presence and gravitas are all about. I have something to say and that makes people pay attention. It makes them curious. For some it will be helpful or relatable. And that is what makes it worthwhile.

So when you’re thinking about your own personal and professional development in the coming year, make sure to consider what parts of yourself you’ve been holding back and can start to reveal. Let your freak flag fly! The world is waiting for you to fill its you-shaped hole.