How to maintain work-life balance and safeguard your health; 4 tips from a successful Chinese daughter

‘My mother was a typical Asian parent. She lost her dream because of the Cultural Revolution,’ says Yu Dan Shi. ‘I became the product of high expectations’

A tech graduate at age 17, who quickly rose through the corporate ranks, Shi had a transformative moment during emergency surgery to remove her gallbladder

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After a health scare, entrepreneur Yu Dan Shi learned how to slow down and enjoy life, and became an executive coach. She shares her four tips to achieve better work-life balance. Photo: Yu Dan Shi

Published: 12:45pm, 24 Mar 2023Updated: 12:00pm, 5 Apr 2023

In 2008, Yu Dan Shi was 32 and a successful marketing officer for a global tech company. She had left her native Shanghai over a decade previously to do her MBA at Sydney University and stayed on in Australia to build a career, marry a classmate and have two children.

Life was good, if stressful.

“Of course, I was stressed out, I was working full-time and had two kids. I was sure I wasn’t the only one who was stressed out, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me,” says Shi, director of behavioural science at CoachHub APAC.

After a client meeting, she was in a taxi back to her office when she felt an intense stabbing pain on her right side. She asked to go to the hospital before she blacked out.

Shi is the director of behavioural science at CoachHub APAC. Photo: Yu Dan Shi

For the past half year, she had been getting sick quite easily, catching colds and experiencing chest pain – which a doctor put down to a panic attack. But she had ignored the pain on her right side, making excuses for it and hoping it would go away.

“One night, the pain was so bad I was curled up on the floor in my bedroom. It was Chinese New Year and we’d had a big meal, I thought it must be the food. I was coming up with all sorts of excuses,” she says.