Let’s talk about owning yourself. How well do you know yourself? Would you like to be the best version of yourself?
Cary Hokama is a certified executive coach, certified holistic personal trainer and nutritionist, best-selling author, and motivational speaker who teaches entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and executives how to become crystal clear about their life’s mission and how to reach their fullest potential. Cary also serves as a global ambassador for the National College of Exercise Professionals and the Center for Advanced Coaching. A graduate from Cal State Long Beach, Cary majored in speech communications with an emphasis in public speaking and interpersonal relationships.
Find out more about Cary Hokama:
Purchase Cary Hokama’s Own Your Self: Master Your Character, Rise To Any Challenge, Find True Inner Peace on Amazon
Below is our edited transcript of Cary Hokama’s talk, “Owning Your Self,” at the Imagine Talks Annual Symposium.
Fireside chat with Cary Hokama
Francis Kong: Always good to have you here and thanks for coming out all the way from L.A. So many questions I want to ask you but tell us a bit about yourself, I know that you are an author and also a life coach. Tell us a bit about the book you wrote—actually before that even occurred, tell us a bit about yourself, where you came from and what actually led you up to the writing of the book—Own Your Self?
Cary Hokama: OK, what I love about you, Francis, is that you go directly into the cool questions and the hard questions, so I love it. I’ve spent the last 10 years really prepping people to live their best life— to fitness, to nutrition. And instead of saying a life coach is more just a personal coach and it’s been a fascination of mine to really tap into people’s fullest potentials, starting from their pains and then allowing them to navigate through a transformational phase in their lives, where no matter what happens, regardless of the circumstances, that you can still be the best potential and that’s the greatest gift they can give to the world.
Francis Kong: So what inspired you? Was it something from childhood or some milestone or some event that happened in your life that made you realize this is an important thing people need to come to grasp with?
Insatiable desire to know oneself better
Cary Hokama: Yeah, no— milestone, I think as a kid, when your father all of a sudden moves to Japan and you’re 10, you’re trying to figure out what life’s about. You become very curious about everything and so I started questioning a lot of what’s been going on, why my life is the way it is, why I’m feeling these certain ways and so it’s the curiosity that allowed me to keep asking the questions like why, how, who, what, when, where.
And it just— I guess what I can say is that I have— I just begin this obsessive hunger and this desire to know myself the best way so I can reach the highest potential myself.
Francis Kong: OK, so you move to Japan when you’re 10. So assuming that you’re living stateside prior to that.
Cary Hokama: No, I was born in Japan, came here, and then when I was 10, my dad moved to Japan.
Francis Kong: And you stayed here?
Cary Hokama: And we stayed—my whole family stayed.
Francis Kong: Wow, OK, so you’re born in Japan and then you came here, so you have a very unique perspective, then it would actually means you’re Asian-American?
Cary Hokama: Totally.
Francis Kong: What do you think your perspective is on being Asian-American versus what you think the general consensus, people who are born in America as Asians and trying to learn what that cultural background means? What do you see— that kind of differences between you engage with people?
Finding out who you really are
Cary Hokama: Yeah, yeah—totally different, it’s pretty cool because my mom is first generation Japanese, she’s from Japan. My dad is third generation, our family is sort of the family came in the 1800s. And so growing up, growing up in the south of L.A. , there’s a lot of like fobby Japanese people.
Francis Kong: Yeah.
Cary Hokama: And I have friends then because I went to Japanese school and then you go to regular school and I’m Japanese American but it’s weird because like you have friends who would think that I’m too Japanese and then I hang out with my Japanese friends and they’re like, “You’re too American.”
But when you’re out of school like, “Hey, you’re just another Oriental kid,” you know, from anyone who’s not Asian. So it was just a weird, fun time to grow up and just be like, you know, “What is this is about? Who am I? Why are we here?” It’s pretty cool.
Francis Kong: Did you find—when you came here at the age of 10, did you experience racism at all?
Not being exposed to racism
Cary Hokama: No, no, no. So I’ve been here since I was like two months. My mom went there, had my dad moved to Japan when I was 10. I didn’t experience really any racism, I encountered situations where people call me like a “nip” or a “jap” or whatever. And I didn’t understand the brunt of that type of behavior then, it was just like someone calling me names, something like that. But it didn’t hit me at the core, like, “Oh, it’s because of this I’m being hurled insults at a systemic level or anything like that.” It was just a—just name-calling. And I didn’t take it too personally then.
So luckily, fortunately, I haven’t been encountered so many of these crazy situations that we see now happen.
Francis Kong: So you have to share with me some of the things that you’re seeing online. I think that’s been going on especially around 2020, right?
Cary Hokama: Yeah.
Francis Kong: What is your take on this? Is this something that has always been there now brought to the surface more or is it something that wasn’t there before and now [it] is generated because of the animosity from this year?
Is it possible to control racist conversations?
Cary Hokama: So good, part of it is just like everyone’s capacity to hold phones and cameras and stuff at all times. I’m sure there’s a lot of events that occur that no one is able to track. But I think that what you see now is just the manifestation of people’s inner voices and their fears and anxieties that’s being perpetuated by all the events that’s been going on. But then there’s different levels, we have the— talking about blacks, the Black Lives Matter and we have xenophobia, there’s different elements of that. And I’ve found that there is no —it exists, it’s not going to go away any time soon.
Francis Kong: Yeah.
Cary Hokama: And it’s such a hard conversation because you see a lot of people say, like, “Well, education is the answer.” And yeah, it’s education but I mean, what do you— where do you go? Are you going to go and teach university on racism like—it’s not, you can’t do that. So it’s also almost irresponsible for people to just start saying, “Education is the answer.” And they just go on and live their life, right?
And so part of like you asked me about my book, Own Your Self, it really means that no matter what you’re going through, no matter what conversations are out there, you can only control the conversations that you have here. I can only control my side of the conversation. It’s not up to my responsibility to go teach everybody that racism is wrong. It’s not going to do any good, I can’t go here and if everyone’s racist here my IG post or anything is not going to persuade them to not be racist or anything like that, right?
Get the most out of yourself
So it’s a hard predicament and so I say, “Own your self,” because at the end of the day, our current self is still ignorant. My current self is still—have still hate in me. And where do we go from here is to tap into your fullest potential because your future self is going to dictate how much we can improve where we are right now.
If we all just tapped into our inner greatness, I truly feel that there’s going to be less racism because we’re all going to be much better to understand that the power of potential in people is through collaboration is through love, right? And it’s the power of love, one that supersedes the love of power, which we’re seeing right now. I truly think that we can all change from it —inward and out.
Francis Kong: So when you think, “Own your self,” does that actually mean like to —does it mean to get to know who you are and then to take control of what you do? Or that even deeper, say like, find what your own personal mission is like? When you say, “Own your self,” what genesis is that?
Cary Hokama: Yes, I love that question. To “Own Your Self” is to — for example, if I have a sick, dope Lamborghini outside, I can own that Lamborghini but the problem is, if that Lamborghini owns me.
Francis Kong: Oh, I see what you’re saying.
You know what I mean? I can own this beautiful house here in Millbrae overlooking SFO. But if this house owns me and I become [a] subject and a slave to everything that perpetuates from owning that, then it’s got me.
How do you begin self-love?
So whatever your story is, whatever your pains are, whatever your journey is, once you own it, then you can reveal all the things, whatever is necessary for you to experience a powerful breakthrough and transformation. So “Own Your Self” is realizing not only being present and understanding everything that’s happened in your life, accepting the pains and not only embracing it, but it’s also tapping into your future self so that we can not only be present, but we have an amazing future to dance with.
Francis Kong: I love that, it’s beautiful. Then why do you think it’s so difficult for so many people to get to that path to start owning their selves?
Cary Hokama: Well—to get to own themselves, it’s always going to be a journey, just like how racism right now. It’s going to be a journey, right? It’s going to be a lifelong thing where it’s never going to just end all of a sudden. And so part of self-mastery is always improving every single day. And that’s why I love the word, kaizen, and kaizen in Japanese just means continual improvement. So groups like Toyota, that’s their mission— it’s kaizen, continual improvement.
And so people say, “Well, that’s just kind of like a generic term and it’s a theme that’s kind of vague.” And then what I say is, “Well, just remember the three digits—212.” Because at 211 degrees, water is really hot and we start to boil, Vincent’s boiling some steak out there. You know, at two 211, it gets really hot, starts to boil. But, Francis, when the water starts to boil, what does it produce?
Francis Kong: Steam.
Continual improvement to experience powerful breakthroughs
Cary Hokama: Steam, right? And so steam is powerful enough to push a train —locomotive. And sometimes all it takes is that one degree to experience that powerful breakthrough. So for me, I would say, whether it’s my fitness clients and our personal coaching clients or just my friends in general, they say, “Well, you know what, in 2021, I’m going to be a millionaire.” Let’s just say, you know, let’s just focus on getting a few thousand dollars first. Let’s focus on losing a few pounds just this month. And you keep doing that small incremental steps, swing wide doors.
The small pivoting moments — continual —doing that is going to allow you to experience a powerful breakthrough. And that’s what “kaizen” looks like to me. So whether we are all in a place where we’re learning and we’re understanding the power of attention right now as a nation feels it, tension is your friend, and as crazy as it sounds, you see everything, the turmoil but that tension is what’s going to allow us to really take a stand, make a choice and then breakthrough.
So whether you’re MLK back in the day saying, “I have a dream,” and you turn the other cheek; whether you’re a Malcolm X saying, “An eye for an eye”; those two people — both profound — they had an amazing posthumous legacy after their death because they said, “I want to make a choice. I’m going to stand by it. I’m going to go full-on.” Right? Malcolm X went, “Eye for an eye.” MLK was, “I have a dream. Turn the other cheek.” Both made such a prolific impact because they decided to make a stand.
Be clear, don’t be clever. Make a decision and go all in.
And all of us, right now, it’s like — whether we’re entrepreneurs or people in the business field — a lot of us are trying to be clever. But what’s most important is just to be clear. So be clear. Don’t be clever. Stick to your — make a decision. And go all in. And that’s just been my mission for everybody.
Francis Kong: I love that. So that brings me to my next question, those philosophies — and I keep hearing this philosophy of evolution and hustle and kaizen throughout the entire day — let’s take it to another level here and like, instead of an individual, what philosophy, and in concert with kaizen, can we as an Asian community, especially from this year, we— I think more than any time we ever have since we first came over this country, such a disparity of acceptance now of our —accepted to being very conditional, right? So does kaizen play to us as an Asian-American community as a whole, then as an evolutionary mentality?
Cary Hokama: Yeah, kaizen and I think that, again, the greatest thing that we can do is it’s in our future self. So right now the buzzword is: be present, do meditations that you can be present, right? And before it was like therapy and getting coachings so that you can understand, discover what happened in the past so they can discover why and how. And so I think that the mentality is a progressive movement forward and that’s what we have to do, is to understand what our future ideal self is and tap into that so that we can move from the present and get better every single day.
Self-love: tap into your fullest potential
But ultimately, right now, there’s a lot of buzzword with the whole Asian representation, that there’s not enough. Well, if you’re not dope, you’re not going to be —you’re not meant to be on stage, right?
So I love Kanye West because Kanye, ever since he came out with the college dropout back in the early 2000s, he was just like a no-name ghost producer-writer. He produced beats for all these big-time stars. And but even then, 20 years ago, like he would say, “I’m the greatest. I’m the next—” he wasn’t saying, “I’m not going to be the next Jay-Z or not.” He said, “I’m going to be the next Disney,” “I’m going to be the Christian Dior,” “I’m going to be the next Google.” Right? And he tapped into his ideal future self and people ridiculed him for that, right?
And so, even like a year and a half ago, Kanye came out and said, “Dude, I’m freaking 50 million dollars in debt.” And everyone counted him out and said, “See that guy’s a lunatic. That guy’s crazy.” And then his YEEZYs came out, and then now he’s a billionaire.
But it’s those things where you continue to tap into your fullest potential, you know, with crystal clear to what your future self looks like. And then I think, as Asians, we really have to just be like, “I want to be the greatest of myself.” Like the greatest gift that you can give to yourself is for you to reach your highest potential.
Break the conditional self-love habit
Once we could break through that and be radical about that and have this mono— monomaniacal mission to just be the best there is for yourself—Asian representation, the new CEOs, the new disruptors—it’s just going to be a byproduct of that effort. And I think all of us are just putting ourselves in a box most of the time saying like, “This is for an Asian dude is dope, you know, this for an Asian girl to be a catalyst and you just—
Francis Kong: I see what you’re saying. Conditional.
Cary Hokama: Conditional. And we just have to break out of that. And again, it’s going to take years and decades for most prolific people to keep coming out like that. So I hope to be one of them.
Francis Kong: Now, you already are, I totally believe that. Why do you tend to live here? What do you think we have the conditional mentality?
Cary Hokama: Yeah, it’s—there’s a saying that, we’ve all been in a mental prison with the doors wide open, and it’s as simple as being conditioned on a subconscious level. And so in psychology, they’re saying that most of us—our paradigm and our subconscious mind—has been set by the age of seven. And so if you see all of us here, most of our parents are immigrants, they came with their own paradigm of “I sacrificed everything. I’ve risked everything so that I could come and just get a job with the American dream looks like.”
The American dream looks like you buy a house, your kids go to college and I look great as parents. Right? And that’s that’s just the damn truth right there.
You need some self-love to break out of your mental prison
And so much of it is just us living with our parents and our before generation’s narrative, it’s been ingrained in us. But things like what’s happened now allows us to truly be like, “Wait, wait a minute, man. What’s really the truth?” The truth is I can do anything.
The truth is we didn’t have to follow all these rules— business owners—I’m in the restaurant business. I see all these restaurants were like, “You know what? I could have done this the entire time, I could have packaged up new products and ship it out and use QSR, using all these types of apps, to reach a new customer.” And they’re killing it. Whereas the older people are just like, “No, I’m still going to wait and hopefully the customers will come in,” through advertising like the old way.
So it’s times like these allow us to get our paradigms disrupted and start from fresh and say, “What can I do?” So the question you got to ask yourself now is, “Who do I want to be?” And that’s been very congruent.
What I’ve been talking about is just like tapping into your future self and so it’s the paradigm that we have to unleash. We have to unlearn all the things that we’ve been taught and learn that’s been ingrained. We’ve been living in the mental prison with the doors wide open. All we had to do is go to the left, walk right out, and there’s a breakthrough right there.
The journey to self-love
Francis Kong: Wow. For 2021 going on over here, what are [the] things that you think—and you can give us one or two or even three solid steps that you think we as a community, as an Asian American community, can do to start walking toward that path of future self like actual exercises or mental focus —just rituals we do every day?
Cary Hokama: Yeah, I didn’t come with that out of my back pocket today, Francis.
Francis Kong: What do you do?
Cary Hokama: Yeah, what I do is I continue to remind myself every single day that I’m ignorant. I always remind myself that, “I’m nothing right now, I know nothing.” So how do I learn from every person that I come across?
I always visualize the person that I truly want to be, not the person that my parents wanted me to be or what I think would be accepted and be cool as an Asian-American to be. But it’s understanding that when I was seven and I saw Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson for the very first time and I understood what greatness meant and trying to emulate that and not let anyone else tell me how or when or who I need to be, because I think that’s what it is: we’re ingrained, and we’re living everyone else’s narratives.
Getting married on the Oprah Winfrey Network
So what happened was when I got married, my wife and I got married on the Oprah Winfrey Network, on a reality show.
Francis Kong: Yes, I remember this.
And I remember I did—I felt like I did everything right. When that show came, they depicted me as just this really horrible, cheap, like Asian dude who used all my money on my bachelor party, which is completely false. I was like, “Man, that’s so freaking wrong. That’s so, like, outrageously —just ridiculous. How do you do that to somebody on their wedding day?”
And growing up, I was in a band too, as a lead singer of a band before YouTube. And one after one like record labels, we always sound like, “You guys are awesome, but you just— we can’t sell you guys. You guys aren’t marketable with three Asian guys in the front.” And I never understood what that meant. I was like, “What do you mean? Do— we have an awesome following here in L.A.?” And like, “Yeah, you guys are good, but we can’t market you guys.” I didn’t understand that at that time that rock band that consists of three Asian guys in the front aren’t sellable.
And so I always walked around with this narrative and story in my head, like, “OK, I guess I’m not marketable. I better try to be a TV anchor or something instead.” That will be the next greatest thing, all right?
Cary Hokama’s journey to self-ownership and self-love
And then when that wedding TV aired, when I came out, I remember I was shopping at Trader Joe’s and this lady comes up and goes, “Hey, I remember you from that show—you’re that guy. Is that really you?” And I was like, “No, that was that wasn’t me. That’s story was completely scripted and they flipped it on me.” She was like, “OK. Well, thank God, because that was pretty bad but your friend was hilarious, right?” And I remember going home, I started getting really pissed off and I was angry and I was 33 at that time. And I said, “Oh, all right, that’s it, that’s it, that’s the last time I’m ever going to let anyone tell my story.”
From this moment on, I’m going to tell my story, create it and then tell it truthfully. And so that was the beginning of my journey to where I am today, just helping people navigate through a transformational journey by me, first and foremost, owning the person I am today and being the greatest version of myself. And so I want to speak into existence that I’m going to be one of the greatest storytellers and the communicators of this generation have ever seen.
Self-love is the key to owning yourself
Francis Kong: I think you already are and that I’ve watched with your —at a time this point that I love the message you have. And I think today, I truly understand what you mean by owning yourself, taking ownership of your life, and then let someone else tell your story for you, for their own benefit. Beautiful. Cary, Thank you so much for coming. You always make Imagine Talks such a wonderful place to be and I can’t wait to have 2022 , hopefully to have you with a full audience next time, but thank you so much for coming in and we will see you in 2022, okay?
Cary Hokama: Can’t wait. Appreciate you guys. Thank you.
Francis Kong: Thank you so much.
Cary Hokama: Thanks, Francis.
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