Entrepreneur and Mediator, Sisi Maw Takaki, completed the Hoffman Process in February 2019. As a child of parents who immigrated to the US for a better life, Sisi shares with Sharon how the sacrifice her parents made for her affected her and the patterns it created in her. As Sisi shares, we can both adopt and rebel against our parents' patterns. For Sisi,  rebellion was how she reacted to her parents' expectations of her and her future. What really stands out from this conversation, though, is how deep a transformation Sisi made in how she relates to others and to what now brings her happiness. What used to be a more transactional way of relating transformed into relationships that are based upon mutual dignity and equality. When meeting new people, Sisi now consciously listens and wonders what larger force has brought them together. When she meets people, she now wonders, "How can we help each other?" In the spirit of Love's Everyday Radius, the name of our podcast, Sisi became a mediator as a way to bring this new relational way of being into her work and her life. She no longer defines success in the same way. Rather than trying to find happiness through material things and financial success, she now finds it through serving others and relating to fellow human beings through her heart. Sisi speaks so beautifully of her experience of work through this new way of human-to-human relationship. More about Sisi Takaki: Sisi Maw Takaki is an Entrepreneur with a few businesses. She is a Residential Real Estate Broker in Hawaii, a Real Estate Investor in Hawaii and on the Mainland, and a Mediator and Founder of Mindful Mediation Matters (M3). Everyone has a story and here's Sisi's in her words: "Sisi was born in Myanmar and immigrated to the East Coast in the late 70s and grew up in a household with two parents who were both Physicians. They worked long hours and Sisi was an only child so she stayed at after-school care or was a latchkey kid when she got older. Their family moved from Staten Island, Virginia, to Washington DC, Maryland, and back to NYC where she lived in all the Boroughs except the Bronx. Sisi finally found stability at the United Nations International School in Manhattan. She only applied to one school for college, the State University of NY in Binghamton. She went there after her parents realized Harvard might be a reach for her. Sisi moved to Hawaii one year after she graduated college and met her "wasband" to whom she was married for 17 years. In February 2019, she decided to go to Hoffman because she felt completely empty even though professionally and materially things were better than ever. It was the emptiest existence she had felt and from the outside things were amazing. Her journey to and through Hoffman was really when she felt she started connecting to who she truly is. Sisi wonders how she survived those years of unconsciousness for so long." You can follow Sisi on Instagram at Mindful Mediation Matters. https://media.blubrry.com/the_hoffman_podcast/content.blubrry.com/the_hoffman_podcast/Sharon_and_Sisi_Takaki_Podcast_Final.mp3 As mentioned in this episode: Hoffman's definition of a Surrogate Parent: •   A surrogate parent is somebody who provided significant parental responsibility for you prior to the age of 13. These responsibilities may have included: Providing emotional or physical care Disciplining Providing safety, supervision, or control Being a role model These responsibilities may have been in addition to or in place of the care provided by your birth parent(s). Examples of surrogates can include stepparent, grandparent, relative, nanny, boarding school, significantly older sibling, full-time daycare, live-in partner of parent, etc.