Soft Power Project

Sherry Fang
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

The Soft Power Project is a podcast about the courage it takes to become who you’re meant to be. Through intimate conversations and personal stories, host Sherry Fang journals the journeys of women navigating reinvention, uncertainty, and growth. This podcast explores the messy middle — the quiet seasons, the pivots, and the moments that don’t always make it onto highlight reels. The intention is simple: to remove the shame around starting over and remind women that transformation is rarely linear. Through shared stories and practical insights, The Soft Power Project encourages women to trust themselves, embrace change, and move toward the next version of their lives with softness and strength. If you like to share your story on Soft Power Project, please fill out this from --> https://forms.gle/wE4it5KSXfu815dw9 ✨Soft Power Coaching Program✨ A coaching experience for high-achieving individuals ready to step into their next level of leadership without abandoning themselves in the process. This program is designed for high-achievers navigating career growth, executive visibility, leadership transitions, and identity expansion. Because moving from high performer to influential leader requires more than working harder. If you want to have a chat to see if you are ready for leadership embodiment, fill out this form -> https://forms.gle/BfPnrra7v1CuDCsC6 👉For any questions, please find me at softpower.you@gmail.com

  1. 1d ago

    I Spent Years Performing Confidence

    For most of my life, I thought confidence was a performance. The right body language, the right phrasing, looking sure of myself on stage even when I was terrified.I learned that version growing up between two worlds. In Taiwan, humility was the virtue: speak up only when you have something worth saying. Then I studied in North America and got the opposite lesson: just speak, it barely matters what you say. I spent years getting good at performing confidence. I never had much fun doing it.Now I teach communication back in Taiwan, and I keep meeting people with PhDs and real experience who still feel like it isn’t good enough.So I’ve been rethinking the whole thing. Maybe real confidence isn’t the loudest voice in the room. Maybe it’s the soft power of trusting yourself enough to speak the truth without softening it, and to say “I don’t know” without flinching. It’s the question I keep coming back to on the Soft Power Project, and I’m still figuring out what it looks like in 2026.If you’ve ever performed a certainty you didn’t feel, this one is for you. What does confidence mean to you? 0:00 - The Journey of Understanding Confidence4:03 - Cultural Perspectives on Confidence7:54 - Redefining Confidence in the Modern Age #SoftPowerProject #Confidence #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #SoftPowerLeave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/commentsYoutubeInstagramWould you like to share your life stories?Please fill out this form. See you there~

    11 min

  2. 6d ago

    What I manifested last year is coming to reality

    In New York City on June 20, I'm hosting my first in-person event for The Soft Power Project. A three and a half hour Soft Power Summit, and the theme is coming home to yourself.I've been quietly manifesting this for a year. When I started this show, I was craving honest women's conversation. The real talk that happens before the recording starts, when we skip the small talk and say where we actually are. After eighty something episodes and around sixty women on the show, I wanted to bring that off the mic and into a room.The day moves through an arc: release with face yoga from Teja of Butter Be Kind, listen with nutrition from Tammy of Everglo Wellness, embody with boxing taught by Bella, a stunt woman who's going to close us out.I'm not building this alone. The women in this community made it possible.This is your invitation. Early bird seats are limited.What part of yourself are you ready to come home to? REGISTER:https://luma.com/q8i8ubvg?coupon=FRIENDS20 TIMESTAMPS:0:00 - Announcing my first in-person event0:50 - Coming home to yourself1:30 - Release: face yoga with Teja2:30 - Listen: nourish with Tammy3:30 - Embody: boxing with Bella4:30 - The tote bag and the goodies6:00 - Why I wanted to bring this offline8:30 - The women who made it happen #SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #SoftPowerSummit #ComingHomeToYourself #WomensWellness Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/commentsYoutubeInstagram Would you like to share your life stories?Please fill out this form. See you there~

    16 min
  3. When the Body Starts Speaking with Alica Glavanova

    May 21

    When the Body Starts Speaking with Alica Glavanova

    Alica Glavanova was 18, in her last year of high school, when the panic attacks started. The doctors ran their tests, handed her pills, and explained nothing. She did her own research, realized it was anxiety medication, and decided she wasn't going to take it. Right after school she started traveling. India, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia. Somewhere in those years she found a different way to understand what her body was doing, and it became the work she does now. Sherry and Alica talk about what happens when you stop overriding your body and start listening to what it's trying to tell you. Alica decodes a rash that kept showing up on Sherry's knuckles and ears after stressful morning meetings, and what it meant that it landed exactly there. They talk about why symptoms so often surface in the healing phase, once the stress is already over, and about the one thing none of us can control alongside the one thing we always can. This is a Soft Power Project conversation about emotional healing, and it goes somewhere unexpected. TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - The body starts speaking1:18 - Panic attacks at 187:04 - Western medicine vs TCM8:29 - Growing up without roots11:32 - The seminar that changed everything15:13 - You have to do the work20:33 - Decoding Sherry's mystery rash31:35 - Finding the source of a symptom39:02 - A chaotic world and soft power MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Free German New Medicine masterclass (on Alica's Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/shenmentherapies/Carl Jung's dream analysis: water as a symbol of emotion ABOUT ALICA GLAVANOVA:Alica Glavanova is a certified complementary therapist based in Switzerland with more than a decade of clinical experience. After severe panic attacks at 18, she trained in traditional Chinese medicine, German New Medicine, hypnotherapy, and nervous system work. She now helps clients trace physical symptoms back to their emotional root, in person and online. https://www.instagram.com/shenmentherapies/ | https://www.shenmentherapies.com/ #SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #Healing #MentalHealth #WellnessJourney Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments Youtube Instagram Would you like to share your life stories? Please fill out this form. For Soft Power Leadership Program, fill out this form.

    49 min

  4. May 19

    What I Couldn't Unsee

    The rage came up first. Then the grief. Then the shame for feeling either of those things, because no one had taught me what to do with them. I didn't have a name for what was happening, only that the water I'd been swimming in my whole life had suddenly become visible. Once I could see it, I couldn't unsee it. This episode is about that messy in-between time, when you start to see something the people closest to you aren't ready to see. There's a name for it. It's called an egregore. A pattern that stays alive because a group keeps feeding it energy, until it stops feeling like a system and just feels like common sense. If something is stirring in you right now that doesn't quite feel right, this is your permission to sit with it. What water are you starting to notice? TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - The fish that didn't know about water 1:30 - Naming the egregore 3:00 - When you start to see it 4:30 - The rage and the grief 6:30 - The validation I was carrying 9:00 - The friend who couldn't see 11:30 - The cost of seeing 13:00 - Permission to sit with it   #SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #SelfDiscovery #Healing #WomenPodcast Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments Youtube Instagram Would you like to share your life stories? Please fill out this form. See you there~

    14 min
  5. The Good Girl's Detour with Jess Prudhomme

    May 14

    The Good Girl's Detour with Jess Prudhomme

    Jess Prudhomme had been with her high school sweetheart since she was 17. For half her life, she was a "we." She didn't know who she was as Jess alone. Then the marriage started coming apart. One day she realized there was no book she could read, no podcast she could listen to, no couples therapy session left to attend. So she stopped fighting. What came next was a beautiful launching pad for her journey of self reclamation.   Sherry and Jess talk about what happens when the only adult relationship you've ever known ends, and you have to learn who you are from scratch. From a good girl's checklist she'd built her life around, to a decade-long corporate career she eventually quit with nothing lined up, to the friendships that didn't survive the version of her that came next.   This is a Soft Power Project conversation about the messy middle, and the version of Jess that got built there. It goes somewhere unexpected.   TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Cold open 0:50 - Meet Jess Prudhomme 1:48 - The good girl and the checklist 5:41 - The marriage breaking point 7:08 - Becoming Jess again 25:31 - Quitting corporate without a plan 32:27 - When growing costs friends 45:31 - Trusting intuition again 53:12 - Soft power and the detour   MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: The Great Detour podcast: https://www.thegreatdetour.com Jess's Substack: https://jessprudhomme.substack.com @thegreatdetour on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegreatdetour/   ABOUT JESS PRUDHOMME: Jess Prudhomme is the host and creator of The Great Detour, a podcast about the unplanned paths that bring us back to ourselves. After 17 years with her high school sweetheart, a divorce at 35, her father's hospitalization, and a decade-long corporate marketing career she eventually quit with nothing lined up, she built The Great Detour from inside her own unraveling.   https://www.thegreatdetour.com | https://www.instagram.com/thegreatdetour/   #SoftPowerProject #LiminalSpace #DivorceRecovery #Reinvention Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments Youtube Instagram Would you like to share your life stories? Please fill out this form. See you there~

    57 min

  6. May 12

    The Burnout We Don't Talk About

    There's a kind of burnout I don't think we talk about enough, and it has almost nothing to do with working too hard.   Last week I posted a reel about the achievers and the cruisers, and so many of you wrote back saying that's me. What stayed with me wasn't the pattern, it was the burnout underneath it. Achievers don't break from long hours. They love the work. They break when their effort stops being valued, when the hard work becomes expected instead of appreciated, when the smartest people in the room go quiet because they've learned nothing changes. It's a kind of learned helplessness. It's why a lot of the women I've interviewed left their jobs without a Plan B, and why none of them recommend doing it that way.   I'm not sharing this as someone who has the answer. I'm still sitting with it. If you've ever felt your effort quietly stop mattering, this is your invitation to name it, even if just to yourself.   What kind of burnout have you been carrying?   TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - The reel that hit a nerve 0:55 - The burnout we don't talk about 1:35 - When you love the work 2:25 - When your effort stops being valued 3:30 - Why intelligent people go quiet 4:20 - Leaving without a Plan B   CONNECT WITH ME: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soft_power_project/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SoftPowerProject Email: softpower.you@gmail.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherryfang83/   #SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #WomenEmpowerment #PersonalGrowth #WomenPodcast #Burnout #Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #WomenInBusiness #CareerAdvice Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments Youtube Instagram Would you like to share your life stories? Please fill out this form. See you there~

    8 min
  7. Where the Ego Quiets, Growth Begins with Justina Rosu

    May 7

    Where the Ego Quiets, Growth Begins with Justina Rosu

    Justina Rosu was stranded in Milan at midnight, no hotels, no trains, in the rain. The kind of moment that tests every identity you've ever rebuilt.   Sherry and Justina talk about confidence as memory, and what becomes possible when the ego stops insisting it has to figure everything out. Decades at the BBC. Three kids raised close together. A career remade from PR to content strategy. The same self underneath every shift.   This conversation is about the growth that lives where the ego quiets down.   TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Evolution, identity, and adapting 1:34 - Inside the BBC newsroom 6:05 - Why analog beat the algorithm 10:23 - Taking the redundancy package 14:21 - Not a natural-born mother 25:03 - Identity vs core values 33:43 - The Erin Brockovich mind game 35:32 - Stranded in Milan at midnight 39:05 - Defining soft power   MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: BBC: https://www.bbc.com/ Erin Brockovich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich Purple Square Content: https://purplesquarecontent.com/   ABOUT JUSTINA ROSU: Justina is a content strategist and founder of Purple Square Content. She started at the BBC in 1992, was part of the team that launched BBC Three, and has reinvented her practice with each shift in the medium since: broadcast to smartphones, production to strategy, and now into AI. Today she leads the senior content function for growing beauty and health brands, across strategy and workflow. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinarosu/ Website: https://purplesquarecontent.com/ Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments Youtube Instagram Would you like to share your life stories? Please fill out this form. See you there~

    47 min

  8. May 5

    Breaking Free from Toxic Ecosystems: The Role of Enablers

    In this episode of Soft Power Project, we explore the role of enablers in narcissistic and deeply codependent relationships: the friends, family members, and communities that minimize harm, distort reality, and make survivors question themselves. We unpack why enablers protect toxic systems, the psychology behind their behavior, and why survivors often have to walk away from an entire ecosystem, not just one relationship. This is a conversation about reality, self-trust, and what it takes to reclaim your voice when everyone else keeps explaining your pain away. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments Youtube Instagram Would you like to share your life stories? Please fill out this form. See you there~

    17 min
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5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

The Soft Power Project is a podcast about the courage it takes to become who you’re meant to be. Through intimate conversations and personal stories, host Sherry Fang journals the journeys of women navigating reinvention, uncertainty, and growth. This podcast explores the messy middle — the quiet seasons, the pivots, and the moments that don’t always make it onto highlight reels. The intention is simple: to remove the shame around starting over and remind women that transformation is rarely linear. Through shared stories and practical insights, The Soft Power Project encourages women to trust themselves, embrace change, and move toward the next version of their lives with softness and strength. If you like to share your story on Soft Power Project, please fill out this from --> https://forms.gle/wE4it5KSXfu815dw9 ✨Soft Power Coaching Program✨ A coaching experience for high-achieving individuals ready to step into their next level of leadership without abandoning themselves in the process. This program is designed for high-achievers navigating career growth, executive visibility, leadership transitions, and identity expansion. Because moving from high performer to influential leader requires more than working harder. If you want to have a chat to see if you are ready for leadership embodiment, fill out this form -> https://forms.gle/BfPnrra7v1CuDCsC6 👉For any questions, please find me at softpower.you@gmail.com

Information

  • Creator
    Sherry Fang
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    91
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sherry Fang
  • Show Website
    Soft Power Project

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