E297 Alfreda Adote

Hello. My name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother. She is really my superhero. That's why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities, perspectives, and emotions about this world. In these difficult times in human history, we need to bring the people of the world together. And when we hear the voices of women, when we listen to real lives of women from other countries, we connect our cultures without differences or stereotypes, and we get inspired by their stories to live a better life. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Alfreda Adote. Alfreda is the first girl from Benin Togo in this podcast. Alfreda finished her bachelor's degree in international economics and she is currently pursuing her master's degree in analytics in Philadelphia, the United States. Alfreda loves to read, to bake, and to binge watch historical shows on Netflix. In her free time, she also loves to work on her personal blog that focuses on life hacks and advice for people who struggle with overthinking and anxiety. Alfreda, how are you today? I'm great, thanks, and you? I'm happy, I'm honored. I'm very, very lucky to have you here and very curious about you as a person. So I'll begin with this nice first question. Alfreda, if your friends could describe your personality, what would they say about you? Okay, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me here as well. I'm so excited. And how my friends would describe me, I think they'd say that I'm a very sweet person. I really like to help others any way I can and do things for people. Sometimes a little bit, I can go a bit overboard with that a bit to my detriment. But that's something that's another story. And I think that also say, I'm very loyal, very loyal, very kind, a bit, a bit of a weirdo, like who gets excited at the most random little things. But I think that's part of what makes me interesting. I think that's what they'd say. So yeah. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing this. And it makes me wonder because all of the things you describe require that a person does not have too much anxiety and overthinking, but you're someone promoting healing those. So did you struggle with anxiety and overthinking? How do you without it, like how does it relate to who you are as a person? Yes. So it's interesting that you say that because anxiety and overthinking, it's definitely something I struggled with my whole life. People close to me, it's it's I mean, they know about it. They know that it's something that I struggle with. And to an extent, sometimes I like to look at it like, oh, kind of a good thing because it really helps me be well prepared in many situations because I'm always planning and analyzing things but then sometimes it does get to a point where it's like I'm always worried about things that haven't happened yet or if something happened in the past I'm just gonna keep ruminating over the same thing over the same mistakes asking myself oh, how could I have done this better, even though it's past and there's nothing I can do about it. And for the most parts, my friends who struggle with it as well, we usually like to make jokes about it, like, oh, we overthink this funny thing, but then, you know, it can get really, really dark sometimes where you can't really function well because you're so preoccupied. And there are times when honestly, even like just getting out of bed and doing regular stuff is really difficult. But as much as I've become aware of it in the recent years, I've been making really like, I've been very intentional about how I want to manage it because I don't want that to rule my life in a way. So I've really started doing a lot more journaling and really being open about it because it's something I used to not want to share with people. I used to really like keep the extent of it to myself. So I really started journaling and even going to see a therapist a few times as well. And that has really helped me a lot. Thank you for that and for sharing that. And I imagine that the big change of going from Africa to Philadelphia in the U.S. was like a huge thing. How did you handle it when it comes to your own anxiety, overthinking, expecting the worst? And is it an act of defiance away for you that you're like, I'm done with being limited, let me go far away so that I face all my fears and break free? Or what's the story behind that? I've moved around quite a few times since my childhood. And so I was born in Benin and my mom is from Benin and my dad is from Togo. And when I was 10, I actually moved to Tanzania for a few years. I was there for about five years and then I moved to the US. And in all those cases, it's not like I chose to move. It's more like my mom got a job in Tanzania, so we moved there and we stayed. and then for the US, I had my sister who was here for school and my parents thought it would be a good idea to send me here to be with her and also to take advantage of the opportunities here. So it's not like I wanted to move per se, but then with all these experiences, the first time I moved, I was pretty young so I wasn't really aware of too much. I just had no choice but to adapt, and for the US as well, in a way. But I remember I was quite excited about the US. I definitely didn't feel too anxious, a little bit, because it was a new place, obviously. But I was excited because from what I've seen about the US on TV at the time, it place, a really diverse place with lots of different things to do and celebrities and all of that. And at the time, I felt like, oh, okay, this could be interesting. So that's I was, I would say I was, I was even excited and a little bit anxious, but more excited, I would say. So it's only later on that I got to experience, well not got to, but I experienced more feelings of anxiety as I settled in, in my life in the U.S. and I started to learn different things about the culture and the people and the way of life here. Thank you. And as a woman who struggled with her anxiety and a big, big principle and drive for this podcast is to inspire women's confidence and to break free from all the limitations that keep them in their comfort zone. I'm sure you have thought about it a lot. What's your thought about anxiety and about overthinking? What causes it? Is it something like bullying when someone is young? Is it more genetic? I don't know. Is it more social media and society? is it inexperienced? What do you think causes it and what do you believe is the path to break free from it even though you're on it? Like what do you think is the right way to go about it so there is a solution or not just saying oh there is a problem there is a problem and then we're freaking out like the news but without ever saying any solution. Yes that's a great question. You know I think it's a little bit of everything because okay let's take social media, for example, seeing people in their perfect lives every day. And then if maybe you're not going through, you're going through some things in your life, but then you only see the best version of somebody else's life, that could give you anxiety, that could make you feel anxious and worried about your life. Or if during your childhood you were bullied because of how you look, for example, when you get older, that can stay with you as well. And honestly, obviously, I'm not a professional or anything, but like, I think there also is an aspect of, you know, if there's a history of people having anxiety in your life as well, that could make you a bit more prone to it. I know for me, my parents have anxiety to some extent and also the environment where you're raised and you know, so it can definitely affect like for example for me and I can kind of relate to your story a little bit because my parents are not together and growing up that was definitely a very complicated situation that at the time, as a young girl, I definitely like, I didn't understand things. I didn't know a lot of things that were happening. So I was just absorbing things. And then the older I got, I started to understand, oh, you act this way because of what happened back then. And therapy has really helped me understand these things. That's why therapy so much. I always recommend to people go to therapy if you can and if you want. And yeah, so there's a lot of things that can contribute to anxiety and overthinking. And I think one really good way to kind of tackle the problem, I don't think it's possible to fully get over completely. I mean, I don't know, maybe some people have, I haven't yet, but really to learn to manage it and learn to live with it. Like I said, going to a therapist has been very helpful for me, talking to someone. And I'm the kind of person, especially coming from where I come from, the way I was raised. I used to think, oh, therapy is nice, but I don't need it. I can do this on my own. And I'm the kind of person who I don't like asking for help. I like to do everything myself. And that was very difficult for me to admit that, okay, I need some help. And then once I went, I was so happy. It was one of the best things that happened to me. And I think if people can become a bit more open-minded about that because I know for some people it's not really easy. So that's one way. Another thing is just talking, doing your best to open up to people close to you that you trust and sharing it with them because sometimes when you feel anxious and depending on the type of personality that you might have, you feel like it's just you dealing with that, and nobody will ever understand, and you have to do it all on your own. But that's not true. You know, there are people who love you and care for you, and they want to help you. So that's one thing. And another thing is really to get out of your head, really doing things to bring you back to the present and really doing fun things. At least that's what works for me. So I really, really try to prioritize having fun these days because it gets me out of my head and it brings me back into the present. So I love to dance as well. So sometimes I'll take... I recently really got into Spanish music, so I love to take salsa classes as well. I love to... Even baking actually and cooking, that's something that really helps me get out of my head. It's actually oddly therapeutic for me. So that's why I like to do it. And, you know, anything that gets me moving during the pandemic in 2020, I started exercising a lot more consistently. And before that, I'm not a very athletic person. But before that, I used to not do the one but I had no choice during the pandemic because I needed to like, I needed to stay healthy. And then the more I did it, I realized that it really helped me feel calmer and it really helped me come back to the now, the here and now. And I was thinking, why didn't I start this earlier? So that's that's another thing. Yeah. Thank you. I love that advice and those insights. They're very, very valuable. And it makes me wonder because you seem to be someone who's connected to your inner world who probably enjoys new emotions and your emotional side, not in a way like a Latino drama queen and soap opera. Would I mean that you love your emotions? Why did you choose economics and analytics, which is very, very rational, logical, and is like the opposite of enriching emotions? and how do you deal with having to work for hours within that side of you, which is more logical? I chose economics because at the time when I was looking at my different options for my major, I knew I wanted something that would help me to be able to pursue a career in international development. You know, since I was a child, even though I didn't fully understand every part it, I knew that I really wanted to do something along those lines. Because both of my parents worked in that field as well. And especially living in Tanzania, I got to really see a lot of international organizations and get a little glimpse of what they did. And that really resonated with me. And so I chose economics without knowing too much about it. But I, but the little bit that I knew, it sounded interesting. So I went with it. And to be honest, it was a lot more challenging than I expected. And I learned, but I learned a lot of things. And after I took economics, I didn't realize how analytical it was going to be as a major, but then it got me interested in the data, in the research side as well because I was able to ask any question basically and as long as I could do the research and find the data and do the right analysis I could answer it and for me that was perfect because I'm a very curious person like anyone who knows me knows I ask a million questions and so being able to apply that to social justice issues or anything related to economic development. That was really fun for me. And even now to this day with my masters that I'm doing, I like to use some of the tools that I learned about to answer like everyday questions that might pop into my head about like life or people, because that's another thing I'm very interested in, like just the way people work and why they do the things they do. Maybe I should have also added a major in psychology, but yeah, but it's interesting because as much as I have that analytical side to me, I'm also, I consider myself a very creative person as well, like you mentioned about the emotions and the inner world. And I just have to find ways to really tap into that side of myself as well. So, like I said, so I'm also a very, I love to write things and like I said, I work on my blog, but then I also write stories and I love to read and just creating things in that way. And it's not like I set out to do to do that because I have friends who from a but that wasn't me. For me, from a young age, I've always loved to read, even from the time I could read. I've always been reading. I'm always reading something. But then the older I got, I realized that writing things was a better way for me to express myself because sometimes In conversation with people, it's a bit difficult for me because I sometimes I'll overthink my words or I'll I won't really know how to fully express something. But when I'm writing, I have the time to really craft what I'm saying and really tell a story more effectively sometimes. Honestly, it just came out of nowhere. But yeah, that's that's for the emotional and creative side. Thank you for answering that and I'm curious as well about two things. I interviewed a girl as well who was from West Africa who lived in Tanzania and she said in West Africa we party a lot more than people in East Africa were like more crazy like that. Do you find that to be true compared also to Philadelphia? How is it that our people the same party mode as in Benin and or is it, or even Tanzania, what's the difference in the three places in two different areas? One, the food. Some say that the food, let's say in Tanzania, is some of the best and most tasty in the world. And maybe you can't find the same in the US. And so the food and the way that people are interested in partying and having fun. So I think every place has its positive aspects when it comes to the culture and and having fun. But definitely, I haven't been to every West African country, but I can say that there's definitely something unique about West Africa and just the overall vibe there. There's just something, I don't even know how to describe it, honestly. But, and I've seen it, not so much in Tanzania, no, like, like they have their own thing as well over there. But being in the US, I've definitely seen a lot of like, you know, whether you're talking about the music, and it's so much, it's not uncommon, obviously, to hear a lot of like West African music when you go out or when you're at gatherings with people or when you go to parties or out at night and not just West African music obviously every you know music from all over the continent but then West African music you know is most likely going be there. And also the food as well, and the people and at my, not so much at my first university, but the one that I'm at right now, I've gotten to meet a lot of West Africans. And they really bring the culture with them wherever they go. So even the length, So some of my Nigerian and Ghanaian friends, you see them, you hear them talking in their language and in their own lingo and there's the music and there's the food and when we meet sometimes, you know that people are gonna bring something from back home and it feels like home basically. So it's like home away from home. And I think that's good, just being able to really, to take our culture with us wherever we go and really preserving that. So I think that's an interesting thing that we're able to do, you know, as West Africans. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure it's wonderful. And to finish this, what is your advice for women who might not have yet found their confidence and They're not living up to their potential so that they will dare to go for the big dreams no matter who judges, who hates. First of all, be kind to yourself because being kinder to myself is something that it's not, it sounds very, very basic but it's not very easy to do. And the more I started doing that, the more I started seeing a lot of really positive changes in my life. And it really does start with yourself, because for a long time, I used to really beat myself up and tell myself, Oh, you can't, why should you try and do that? Too many people are doing that. or people are going to think who do you think you are and all those things. And honestly, and that's something I still have to constantly remind myself, but it really doesn't matter what people think around you. If you feel like there's something that you want to do or there's a certain way that you want to live your life for you, it doesn't matter. Just focus on you and be kind to yourself, validate yourself, because you don't need validation from anybody besides you. So if something feels right for you and that's what you wanna do, just do it, you know? And at the end of the day, always keep checking on yourself and if you have a bad day, or if whatever the case may be, you didn't do something right or something didn't go as planned just just tell yourself you know it's okay it's okay I'm a human being it's fine I'll be fine I'll figure it out and as long as my intentions stay pure and I continue to work hard and make small incremental progress towards the things that I wanna do, I'm gonna be fine. Even though it might not look like it, you might not see the light at the end of the tunnel. Whatever the case may be, just be kind to yourself and keep going forward. It's gonna be okay. I agree 100%. Thank you, Alfreda, for your time, for sharing your voice, for participating in this project. It was my honor and my privilege to have you here and I wish you all the success in the world. Thank you so much. I was really happy to be here. Thank you for having me.