I was interviewed by my publisher Moody for their author series Green Room.
They asked me about my chaplain work, childhood, faith, my writing process, and my book The Voices We Carry, which is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.
With my publisher’s permission, here is the entire interview below.
Anonymous asked a question:
Do you get angry with yourself when you seem to miss obvious things? Like I’m trying for years to be good at work and I feel that I can’t obtain what I’m trying to work towards. I look to make sure things are quality and somehow it seems missed. At least sometimes when I work for certain people. I feel conflicted on compliments and then comments for revisions. Maybe it’s the way it’s said. Maybe I want to be more. I don’t know what to think of myself, how to better myself. I try to do a good job.
Hey dear friend, yes. I think you’ve described the human experience.
We each live with a “phantom pain” of regret, of choices not taken, of missed opportunities, of always seeing what could’ve been. It’s hard to hear criticism not always because they’re wrong about us, but by the possibility that they’re right and that we could’ve done better.
A recent study of almost 42,000 college students shows that our sense of perfectionism has increased drastically. There are three measured types: self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed. The last one increased the most, by 32% in a span of almost the last three decades. Why? Because more than ever, we are constantly witnessing social prescriptions of “who you should be” through social media, phones, and modern narratives.
It’s impossible to avoid the narratives, “Better than yesterday” or “I am enough” or “You can do what you set your mind to.” When the truth is, sometimes we’re not better today, we are not enough, and our brains can trick us into impossible goals.
Continue reading “The Burden of Perfectionism: Handling Mistakes and Always Coming Up Short”
Happy day, friends! My book The Voices We Carry is officially released.
The Voices We Carry is about wrestling with our voices, such as self-doubt, people-pleasing, trauma, grief, and family dynamics, and finding our own voice in world of mixed messages. I talk about my hospital chaplaincy, what I learned from patients at the edge of life and death, and giving a voice to those who have been silenced—those like you and me.
The month of May is also Mental Health Awareness Month and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. My book talks about the challenges of both. I believe that the more we can share our stories and make room for our many voices, the better we become.
God bless and much love to you, friends. Thank you for allowing me to speak into your life, faith, and journey.
— J.S.
The Voices We Carry is published by Northfield of Moody Publishers.
#MentalHealthAwarenessMonth
#AsianPacificAmericanHeritageMonth
I often pass myself off as more put-together than I really am, but most nights I sit down after a long social gathering and I beat myself up for all the dumb cheesy things I said, and things I wish I had said differently or didn’t say at all, and how off-balance and weird and twitchy I must look, and how I’m not really making progress on becoming this whole acceptable well-adjusted cool approachable guy that everyone else seems to be already without even trying.
I end up thinking I’ve failed something, or lost at life somehow. I replay that joke I told which completely bombed and derailed the banter. I sometimes think everyone else has this secret ingredient to being blended in so smoothly to the inner-circle, like there’s this key or password that no one has told me about, and maybe one day I’ll achieve that code and I can go home in peace without this stomach full of remorseful anxiety over my lack of tact and style, and it’ll be as easy as those wrinkle-free people in fast-talking movies.
Does this happen to you too? The late night regret twitch? Social hangover? The crazy replay loop?
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain 