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When I encounter anger or I encounter anger that turns into violence or rage, it's hard for me to process. I actually get emotional. Like, if someone around me is like very, very angry, I cry. And like, I don't know why. It just happens.
And I can't control it. And so what I really had to do is I've had to remind myself, you know, I think about, as I said, my older sister who was such good at like anticipating and de-escalating things. I've had to really try to prevent situations from getting to a point where the level of anger is that high. And I have to remind myself that
leaving is always an option. Like if it's safe for me to leave, I don't have to be there, but I don't have to like put my emotional resilience to the test if I know that it's going to not end well. Welcome to Cultural Collation. I'm Victoria. And I'm EJ. Today we're diving into the fascinating world of emotional intelligence and its profound impact on personal and professional growth.
Join us as we explore the importance of understanding and managing emotions and uncover strategies for cultivating greater emotion awareness and regulation in our lives. We've been talking about emotional intelligence a lot recently. EJ, I wonder how do you define emotional intelligence and why do you think it's crucial for success in both personal and professional aspects of life? I feel like emotional intelligence is
is the ability to understand, manage, and use your emotions in a positive way, especially when you're taking into consideration how they impact you and others. It's about having the ability to feel and understand those emotions that you have and those of others, and to hold space for those emotions as well.
I think we live in a world where we strive to be super rational and make rational decisions, to think rationally and to behave rationally. But I think we're not as rational as we say we are or as much as we want to be. Our emotions really impact our personal and professional lives, whether we want them to or not, primarily because our personal and professional lives matter.
I think for most of us are filled with interpersonal relationships. So we need to not only be able to navigate our own emotions, but again, those of other people's, right? So, you know, like what happens when,
You know, you find yourself in a situation where a work mentor or a friend leaves the company for another opportunity, or if you make a mistake in the workplace and you end up in HR, right? All of those things elicit an emotional response. And so we have to be able to navigate those and sometimes compartmentalize those different emotions so that, you know, we can have a healthy professional and personal lives.
I think that sometimes we put a lot of work into like separating emotions from things. But I think that they're so intertwined into our personal and professional lives that it's difficult to completely sort of live a life void of emotion. Yeah. What about you? I totally agree. I think emotional intelligence matters.
We usually, we talk about this more like I think a long time ago and then we more often
focus on the stability part. I think overall emotional intelligence is like having a good understanding of your feelings and how they affect others. Just like you mentioned, right? How we express ourselves during the work or our personal life and how we talk to other people is very important because it helps us manage our emotions better, communicate effectively and build strong relationships.
For enduring job, we can interact with people. You can find someone with emotional intelligence and you can learn from how they communicate with you when they were encounter a difficult situation, how they talk to you, how they try to solve the problem. And you feel, you can sense the stability, you can sense how they use the emotional intelligence in work and it affects you and also you feel better.
oh, I feel safe, I feel comfortable working with this person. This is from a professional perspective. Personal life is also very important. It's how in daily life we have stress, we have all different kinds of emotions coming to us, and how we talk to our partner, and how our partner takes our emotions, how they calm us down. When you feel safe in a
private environment. That's how you can create a deeper connection with the people around you. We just talked about emotions are a significant part of our everyday experiences. How do you believe emotional intelligence shapes the way we handle these emotions in our daily lives?
I find that emotional intelligence dictates our ability to handle emotions based on whether or not we have certain traits or skills, right? And so maybe you are an optimistic person or you're a pessimistic person, or are you an empathetic person or an apathetic person? Are you someone who's more avoidant?
when it comes to their emotions? Are you very proactive or anticipatory? So I think there's a mix of traits and certain skills that everyone has a combination of that are often informed by our past life experiences or learned experiences. I think that some of us might have strengths in some areas, you know, like maybe you're really, you know, an optimistic person and you're very empathetic, but sometimes
sometimes when certain emotions comes up, you avoid them for whatever reason. And so you might be weaker in other areas. So I think it's really important that we have opportunities and the ability to develop and refine these skills
with intention and practice because without these skills, you know, you don't have that foundation to be able to, I think, handle your emotions productively on a day-to-day level. How do you see yourself a passive or like optimistic person? I would say that I am determined
generally an optimistic person. Yeah, I like to see the glass half full. I like to see, you know, the silver lining in situations and the best in people. So I would probably say that I'm more on the optimistic side of the spectrum. How about yourself? I think I'm kind of like a mixed situation. I try to be optimistic, but when things come down or like some difficult things put in front of me, I will think all the passive outcomes. I do the same thing.
That's something we call stress for ourselves, right? And then we try to be optimistic to talk to ourselves and be, that's how we use emotional intelligence, how we deal with our emotions, right? I think it's important to let us to feel all the emotions we have, but it's also important to understand why we feel them. So just like I said, sometimes if some difficult things we've never tried before, and sometimes
It's a task from work or is a personal development. And then for me, I think my first impression is, oh, this is going to be hard. What if this goes down? And that's the part like my passive mood like comes out of the surface and tell me, oh, this is going to be difficult. And that's the challenge you're going to face. And then it's
You try to be calmed down and think about like, why I have this feeling. And you realize 80% of the things you're worried about probably not never going to happen. And the optimistic side is trying to win over and we're trying to think, oh, okay, this stand the feeling. And we say like, oh, this is worth to try. Yeah. Just like I said, instead of like dwelling on them, we can challenge ourselves and find ways to see the situation differently.
That doesn't mean like ignoring or like surprising negative feelings, right? But rather finding healthier ways to cope with them. But practicing, like I mentioned, self-talk is for me, like I often say, is like brainwash to myself and reframing our perspective. We can shift our mindset and approach challenges with the resilience and optimism. That's so important. I feel like self-talk is,
is so crucial because oftentimes I feel like when I am in a stressful situation, when I want to be optimistic, I end up being anxious. And when I'm anxious, my self-talk is typically really negative.
I'm like hypercritical and I spiral, as you said, I like bring up all of the sort of pessimistic outcomes for some reason. So you paint a really good picture of that battle between that optimistic side trying to win over. Yeah, that's definitely something that I experienced as well. You share some personal experiences
observations of individuals who exhibit high emotional intelligence and how do they demonstrate empathy and manage relationships effectively? Yeah, absolutely. So the two people that come to mind for me are
one of my bosses and my older sister. I feel like they are two people who do a really good job in high stress, high emotional situations. They do a really good job of anticipating things
those emotions or those situations so that they're able to proactively respond to them instead of being reactionary. So they don't wait for something to happen. They don't wait for things to get too stressful or too emotional. They anticipate those changes are going to happen. So they're able to proactively respond.
And as a result, they have this really good ability to de-escalate situations, situations that otherwise would blow out of proportion or get really intense. They find a way to de-escalate and then they reframe it in a more positive or optimistic way, right? We were just talking about
the optimistic side winning over. They do a really good job of taking a situation that otherwise maybe seems really negative or really pessimistic or just not good. And they're able to find that silver lining to reframe it. And then at the end, they do a debrief, which I think is really important because in the moments where they're anticipating, responding, deescalating and reframing, they've had to repress their own emotional response.
They try to remain as rational as possible, but of course they're emotional beings. So it's not that they don't have emotions, they just save to process them later. So I always appreciate how it's in a more private and small setting where they're able to debrief and vent and let out their own emotions. And so that's a pattern of behavior that I try to
recreate myself when I encounter similar situations. That's very good. I also can see people like have really high emotional intelligence at work. So someone I can think of is someone I'm currently working with and she's working very closely with our founders.
And sometimes it can be very hard because we both work with like the founders of a company and the ownership is different than your higher manager or you are the CEO or you're the founder of the company. So they can be very demanding and they can be
task driven and result driven and like hustle bustle and like they change the direction quite often right the the girl like i i know she studied criminal psychology which is a i think it's a joke but she knows how to talk to people she knows especially for like criminals right they maybe they are psychopaths they have like problem mental problem so like her background and how she interacts with people can really make you feel oh she
So for us, our coworkers, we feel like she has the power to calm
people down, not really like disagree with people, but you still can make things done. But like you calm people down and talk to them by like rationally and talk them about why I do this, why I give you this suggestion and make presuppositions. And that's a very important skill. I also can see the people at work when they're so stressful, they decide to shut them down. They don't want to talk to people. Maybe it's also because of their like personality or introvert.
But the downside is you can see the people, they shut them down. And the side effect is they have the health situation. They have like pains. They have like stomach pains, every like problem. You can see the problems. So I think one thing is very important is
If you don't know how to do it, one of the ways is to talk to people, ask for help. Don't be afraid, right? Like you are under a lot of stress. If you don't know how to talk, how to ask for support, you just talk to people around you. I think people around us are like very supportive and try to help if you're in like, we see you're in trouble, in a bad situation. Yeah, you make such a good point about holding in emotions, especially negative emotions is that
Holding in for too much can cause like physical ailments as well, right? It's like our emotions are linked to so much beyond just our mental health. It can affect our physical health and so many other things. So it's so important to, as you said, ask for help to be able to get those things off your chest so you're not just...
bottling it all up. So I'm curious, if you reflect on your own experiences, what strategies have you found helpful in developing greater emotional awareness and understanding, both for yourself and in your interactions with others? For myself is I try to observe if I feel stressed, I feel
I feel other emotions comes up and I try to observe myself and see why that happens and how to deal with it. I think that's very helpful for me is you need to understand we accept all the emotions, but you need to understand why, what's the reason behind this. And like,
like we mentioned before like talk to ourselves and be gentle with ourselves and that's very important was interact with others I think is the also is the observation part like I said like I mentioned earlier right like I've seen colleagues I've seen colleagues they struggled in work and they choose to shut them down right I've seen like how the bad side happened to them so I feel like
to pay attention, not only by myself, my own feelings, but like others, people around us in different situations, I've been able to better understand my emotional triggers and patterns. But understanding that and you know, like next time when it comes, you know how to deal with it. Even though like you may not know how to deal with it, but you try to talk to yourself and try to be optimistic about it. And you know this happened once before and how you should
able to settle down next time. How do you, what do you think? Yes, I think of observation is so important. I mean, observation is one of the, you know, observing and emulating is one of the basic ways that we learn how to do anything, right? We've been doing that since we were kids, since we were babies. But I think it's so important to observe good examples of emotional intelligence. And I think sometimes that can be challenging if you feel like you're in a,
environment where maybe you don't have a lot of good examples of that. Like maybe you don't have a good boss. Maybe all your coworkers are, you know, they're not super great or you don't have, you know, the best social circle for whatever reasons. And so I look to like media, I look to movies, there's books, right? There's so many examples that you can find.
of people with high emotional intelligence. So that's definitely something that I pay attention to. Something personal that I have done to help is reminding myself that I don't have to be afraid of situations where there is high stress or high conflict or tension and how that might negatively impact a relationship because I have the ability to rehabilitate and reconcile a relationship in those types of situations.
I think there's always a fear sometimes where I don't want to say or do something I know I should because I'm afraid of the emotional impact that it'll have on someone, even though it's the right thing to do, right? I'm like, ooh, I don't want to hurt their feelings or what if something happens? And so I shy away from maybe having a difficult conversation. But it's important to remember that, you know,
relationships can be repaired. And then the last thing I think that has really helped me is like being vulnerable. And I know that I feel like that's a term that a lot of people say nowadays, like be vulnerable or show your vulnerability. And like, what does that really mean? But I think it means, you know, like,
In those moments where it feels uncomfortable to show your emotions, you still have to do it because those are the ways in which we connect with people and we build deeper relationships. And so I think having that vulnerability, it's important for myself because sometimes there are emotions that I don't want to have to confront myself.
on my own and I need to be vulnerable with myself but I think it's also really important with other people because without that vulnerability I think you're not able to build deeper bonds with people. Yeah I totally agree about the vulnerability part and also I'll just say if your friend show their vulnerable like show their vulnerability to you or like your partner I think
We should be even more, show more like empathy and show we understand them. Don't be critical. Because if we encounter that situation, the next time is so hard for us to open up ourselves. So when someone is show their most vulnerable part to you, make sure you are like,
try to support them as much as you can, or even you don't know how to do it, you just listen. Yes, listening is so important because sometimes there's that instinct to like build a connection, right? If someone gets vulnerable with you, you go, oh, that makes me think of the time when I also experienced something similarly. And I think sometimes that can be really helpful because
But a lot of times people don't need that. They just want you to listen and hear them out and to hold space for their feelings. So that's such a good point. Many of us encounter challenges in regulating our emotions. Can you share a specific instance where you struggle with emotion regulation? How do you manage to overcome it? Yeah, that's such a good question. I find myself
A lot of times really struggling to deal with the emotion of anger, both in terms of like processing my own anger. Like I'm not someone who tends, I don't like being angry or if I do become angry, I don't like staying angry. I feel like it takes up so much energy to be mad all the time.
But I think I like fear seeing anger in other people. And, you know, as I said earlier, a part of how our emotional intelligence is formed is influenced by our past experiences. And I think growing up, I saw a lot of people being angry around me and oftentimes anger turned into violence.
And so for me, when I encounter anger or I encounter anger that turns into violence or rage, it's hard for me to process. I actually get emotional. Like, if someone around me is, like, very, very angry, I cry.
And like, I don't know why. It just happens. And I can't control it. And so what I really had to do is I've had to remind myself, you know, I think about, as I said, my older sister, who is such good at like anticipating and de-escalating things. I've had to really try to prevent situations from getting to a point where the level of anger is that high. And I have to remind myself that
leaving is always an option. Like if it's safe for me to leave, I don't have to be there, right? I don't have to like put my emotional resilience to the test if I know that it's going to not end well. And so that's something that I've had to remind myself of is that sometimes the best thing to do is to leave a situation as opposed to stay in it and try to force myself to
sort of ride the storm, if you will. I think they are both very good strategy. Like one is you can de-escalating the things before it reach out to some point you can control, right? And then the other situation is like you always can leave the situation.
Even though you tried to de-escalate at the first time, then you failed. Maybe you failed where you're like, you made it, right? And then the other thing you can try is to walk away, leave the situation. Because I know emotion can be very contagious, right? And the people around you, if they're also stable, I think that's why it's so popular. Like, I don't know, like from like two years ago or a couple of years ago is on the social media to find the people with emotional stable, right?
I think we see in the extreme cases, it's like the guy in the relationship is very emotional and they kill the wife or the girlfriend. And that you cost the life to deal with that. That's why emotional stability is very important. I think for me, I actually just like two weeks ago, I've been dealing with a lot of shame. So in my work, so I did some like, there are some mistakes, but basic mistakes. The things you don't need to
be really like for people work for 10 more than 10 years and you make mistakes is something I don't think like acceptable for me so I treat myself really bad so I was in that motion I can't get out of it and then it's interesting I recently read a book is called Daring Grigley written by
Brene Brown, and they were talking about shame and guilt. As soon as I realized, oh, what's the difference between shame and guilt? So she gave a very good example in the book. So she said, if you are like, so you had your friend are scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. to see a movie, and then you were late. Then you will feel like, oh, I'm so sorry I'm late. And next time I'll be, next time when I leave home, I'll leave earlier, right? That's guilt because you did something wrong.
Shame is you talk to yourself, oh, I'm such a bad friend. How should I do this to my friend? I'm a bad person. So this is shame and shame can cause pain, pain emotionally and also in physically.
So I think what is very important, I learned from the shame I had from my work, is remind yourself that everyone makes mistakes and experiences setbacks. It doesn't define your worth as a person, especially at work, right? Instead of like dwelling on the past mistakes, focus on learning from them and moving forward. Use the experiences as opportunities for personal growth and development. Engage in positive activities. Engage positively.
the activities that boost your self-esteem and confidence, like things like hobbies, exercise, mindful practice, or spending time with loved ones. Like how that helps, like what I did two weeks ago, I think one thing is talk to myself, like often talk to myself. And the second thing is talk to my friends. And I need their like support. I talk to them. Sometimes it's one thing or sometimes it's just like they see how my emotions are not stable. And I was really...
grateful for my roommate and she and her boyfriend see how I how stressful I am from work and they took me out for dinner and walk around in a new neighbor in Singapore so that could that kind of things is really helpful for to calm me down and to drag me out of the situation like I was in I was deep in the emotion like shame emotion I cannot really get out of that emotion by myself then I need the support around me I use the support around me I have friends
to help me get off that situation. That's so great. I'm curious, what maybe advice would you give to someone who feels like they can't rely on friends or family, or maybe they live somewhere where maybe they're in a new situation, they just moved to a new city, they just moved, you know, they just switched to a new job, and they're sort of getting used to things.
What sort of advice would you give for them when they're, you know, looking for that support or they're looking for that emotional stability when they don't might not have it yet? What sort of resources might you recommend or strategies might we be able to recommend to people in those situations? Let's see.
Like I mentioned, I highly recommend the book about even though it called Daring Greatly, but it talks about shame a lot. And then it analyzed like, what about women's shame? And what about like the shame for men? You need to understand why you have this feeling, the deep logic behind it. You understand yourself. I think
It's very lucky I have friends support, like I have friends nearby to support me. But deep down, you also need to understand no one can really save you but yourself. So you need to do something
All the things you can do to try to drag yourself out of the situation. By reading a book, understand yourself. I think watching movies make you happy. Anything makes you happy. Do things you enjoy. And then also something I really like is for the last week, I used to walk to office. So it took me 35 minutes every day. So I think that during that walking process,
the 35 minutes, I was able to clear my head and really to talk to myself and think about it. I think that's very helpful. How about you? Do you have any suggestions? Yes. I definitely think something that I used to do a lot of were affirmations. We've talked a little bit about self-talk. And so I,
I would literally write on like post-it notes and I would put them on my mirror. I would put them around on my fridge. I would put them in my car. Just like little reminders to myself every day because if I didn't have a friend or family member or coworker telling me those things, I needed to be able to tell them myself so I could break that habit of that negative self-talk.
So that was one thing that I did that was really, really helpful. You mentioned Brene Brown. And I also have a book by Brene Brown that I've just started reading. And it's called The Gifts of Imperfection. And I think that books are a great avenue into
space or into spaces where you can get that self-help that you need when you're not in a position to get it from other people. They just open a lot of doors. And especially nowadays, there's so much good literature that's out there about these topics that
Because people are really interested in emotions and regulating our emotions and dealing with vulnerability. And, you know, how do we get over our anxieties and things like that in order to build greater connections? Especially in this world where we're so plugged into our phones and technology and the Internet, where we have these parasocial relationships and it feels like we're connected to people. But in reality, we're really not.
And so those are two things that I would recommend that I have been doing recently that I think are helpful. Yeah, I think that's very important. I think one more thing I want to emphasize is
You have to be proactive about it. There are, like EJ, you just said, like there are resources out there. Just sitting there, you need to, but you have to do the research. You have to try to save yourself out of the situation you are in, whatever is a bad emotion or like shame or like guilt or anger situation. You need to realize, oh, I'm in a bad situation. I need to get out of it.
I need to save myself. That's very, very important. So how do you believe emotional intelligence enhances communication and conflict resolution skills in your personal life and interactions with colleagues or peers? Can you provide examples from your own experience to illustrate this?
I find that emotional intelligence is the foundation for building deep relationships with people, right? Without that ability to be vulnerable, you know, we're just colleagues and nothing more, or we're just acquaintances and nothing more, or, you know, we're friends or we're just drinking buddies or, you know. And so I find that like without emotional intelligence to feel and articulate our emotions and those of others,
it's really easy to feel sort of like bogged down by things, right? You just feel like you're a cog in the machine of life. And so in thinking about ways that it's enhanced my own communication, I found that when I'm able to, um,
open up and be vulnerable with people, even if it's not in the most poetic way. I think sometimes I get caught up in like, how do I express myself in the right way? Right? Like there's a right or wrong way to be emotional. And I think that sometimes the most important thing isn't speaking
saying it in the best words. It's just getting it out there. You can figure out the right words later, or you can sort of process and interpret it later. Obviously, you don't just want to say anything, right? Because when you're in an emotional state, right, words do have meaning. And so you want to make sure that you are being intentional. But I think don't
I find myself being so caught up in saying the right words that I end up paralyzing myself. I end up getting what one of my therapists called analysis paralysis, where I just end up overanalyzing what I'm going to say. And am I saying it the right way that I analyze it for so long that there's no action that ends up being taken? And so I find that it's really important to sometimes
just do things even if it doesn't feel perfect because otherwise procrastination sticks in for me. I find that like with my colleagues and at work, it's important because it helps us relate, right? You mentioned a lot about stress
you know, especially in the work that we do, it can be really stressful. I have to be empathetic with people, right? You know, if it's right before, you know, a major deadline and maybe someone hasn't turned in something or given it to me, instead of me making assumptions about why, you know, I should have a conversation with them and open up to see maybe there are things that are going on in their life. Maybe there's things that are going on with a project that are causing them to behave differently than I know they normally are.
And me being able to approach them with care and empathy, as opposed to in an accusatory tone, I think really helps build smooth relationships in the workplace. Yeah. How about you?
First of all, I want to say, like, I really love how you approach this, especially you are in a leadership role in how you talk to your colleague, right? When you find someone make mistakes, your first instinct is to blame someone or to criticize someone, right? Like, how could you make this mistake? This is a very easy mistake, but you have so many years experience of work. How could you make so this careless mistake? But like you mentioned, how we communicate this,
with colleague is very important because maybe this one is having some problems or having some issues dealing with his or her own life, right? Criticizing with support, right? Like, how can I help you? That's kind of like conversation with your colleague. It's very important because one aspect is when you talk to this with your colleagues, with your peers, with maybe someone reports to you, and then the next time if they have
trouble or they're in difficult situation, they will volunteer, they will politely come to you and try to solve the issue. That's a very good, positive way to affect how people work with each other in the office or in the work situation. I think that's very important because when you, just like you mentioned, when you are emotionally aware, you can better understand others' perspective and respond appropriately.
So for example, like being able to recognize when a colleague's feeling stressed and you can be the one to offer support and this help improve the teamwork and prevent conflicts from escalating. So for me, I think for me is like to
practice, observe and practice active listening and emphasizing with others emotions. Like this helps me with, I can see people are under stress. If they don't want to talk about it, like I will try to help them. I'll ask them, do you want to help? Do you want to talk about it? If you don't, if I'm not busy, I'm not that busy. I have like my extra time. I will ask, is there anything I can help? Right. Because at the end of the day, we are a team. We are not like
We are individual contributors, but you need a team to support you. If the people around you, they are all failing, then you cannot be success. That's very important to know in the real professional world and also in the relationship board as well. So,
Yeah, we've been talking about like professional life. Do you have any like personal life examples you want to share or like someone you observed who's been dealing very good with their relationships? Personal life. Yeah.
Yes, I can say in my personal life, I am having, recently my family and I have been dealing with a situation with one of my siblings. And it's challenging because it's like a super complicated situation because of various factors, financial and mental health factors. But something important that you said earlier was that
there comes a point where someone has to want to save themselves, right? They have to want to be able to fix their own situation. They have to want to be able to seek out the resources that are available to them and take advantage of them.
And right now what we're struggling with is that one of my siblings is in a situation where we are all approaching them very empathetically and we're being very vulnerable and, you know, we're doing our best not to assign blame and point the finger and make him feel sort of any shame or guilt around it. But he's not being receptive.
And he is in a position where he's having a block and he's not able to be vulnerable enough. And he's not ready to make the change. He's being avoidant. He is reacting as opposed to proactively responding. And it's leading to a lot of challenges. And so all we can do is continue to be patient and vulnerable and wait and hope that things change. But it's one of those things where sometimes you...
I don't know. I think that as much as I want to be optimistic about the situation, and I am, sometimes there are those moments where the guilt or my own shame sneaks in, where I'm like, ah, am I not doing enough? Again, like, am I not saying it the right way? Like, you know, how doesn't he get it? Like, how is it not changing his mind? And I have to remind myself that everyone is different. You know, everyone has sort of their own process and their own journeys to getting there. And so I can't blame myself
for someone who isn't willing or ready to make the changes they need to in their own life. And that's a really difficult reality to come to or a really difficult sort of conclusion to accept. Because I want, I wish, I wish I could, you know, directly go in there and like do the things for him, but I can't.
And so it's an ongoing thing and it's definitely tested my own resilience and my own ability to manage and regulate my own emotions. And I think I'm doing a good job at it. I'm very fortunate that I have support. I can talk to my other family members about it. I can go to therapy and talk about it. I have books that I can rely on. But it's definitely hard. It's hard watching someone not respond in the way that you hoped that they would.
Yeah, for sure. I think we're all going to experience that like someday. So I can feel that because I experienced that like a couple of years ago with my family situation. So I totally understand what you're saying and how you feel about it. But here I want to share with this actual experience for me and at the stage decide where I want to go next. Right. And you want to go back.
I'm at the age where there is a mid-age crisis where like the people in China and they don't really want to hire the people born after 1990s, right? And some of the JDs, they really just write it down. We want to have a male and born after 1990s.
Yeah, that's just there, right? And I think for me, there is the uncertainty in front of you. Sometimes I feel like I'm scared to death. I really don't know what should I do, right? And I also feel like when you don't know what's in front of you and you also feel anxious, anxiety around you, right? That's all the emotions come together.
floating in front of you. I feel like, oh, I'm so overwhelmed at all the different emotions. But I also want to share is how I deal with this. I also think life is an experience and I
Think about the reason why I came to Singapore in the first place is I want to experience different things. I want to do some explores, right? I want to try. I want to try to see and experience. And that's how it got me here. And then even though I need to move on to the next step, it also can be very scary. And I talk to my friends. I think if our listeners, you are like above 30, you understand, I think after 30, you feel like your life is...
It's really hard. Life is hard and more like part like that happiness part, right? Like you encounter a lot of challenges, you face the things you don't face in your early 20s. You don't need to face that, but you're just like have less clear goal before. But for currently in this stage is you need to have a strong mindset because we are already at this stage where it experiences a lot. And then we need the resilience to
help us and support ourselves like talk to ourselves right like bring wash ourselves to be to have optimistic mindset yeah that's i i want to share for like a personal experience yeah i think about that as well as being someone who like you know in my 30s i was recently listening to another podcast and it was saying how people who are like around the ages of 33 and 34 this is like
the hardest time for our generation because we're like peak millennials are the largest group of millennials in the world and at various stages of our lives, peak millennials have had it the hardest. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot of thinking about that and how that impacts our trajectories and our futures.
Yeah. As we wrap up today's episode, we hope you gain valuable insights into the importance of emotional intelligence and strategies for enhancing your own emotional awareness and regulation. Remember, cultivating emotional intelligence is an ongoing journey. And with practice and dedication, we can all learn to navigate our emotions more effectively and lead happier, more fulfilling lives. Join us next time for another enriching conversation on cultural collision. Bye. Bye.
