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When you are mentally strong, you can think clearly and assess your options and make the choice that are grounded in logic rather than emotion, right? Because sometimes we are overwhelmed by all the emotions when we encounter something overwhelming and we don't know what to do. But I think the first thing you need to tell yourself is how you calm yourself down and you...
logically to process, to analyze the situation and make the decision what's best for you. And it's about also like keeping your cool even when the pressure is on and trusting yourself to make the right call. Mental stress can be a secret weapon for you for staying steady and making smart decisions when it matters most.
Welcome to another insightful episode of Culture Coalition. I'm Victoria. And I'm EJ. Today we embark on a journey to explore the foundations of mental strength and the implementation of loving discipline.
In a world filled with challenges and uncertainties, cultivating mental resilience is essential for personal growth and success. Join us as we delve into strategies for building inner resilience and nurturing a disciplined yet compassionate approach to life's changes. Speaking of this topic, EJ, I wonder if you can help our audience to define what mental stress means to you.
And why do you think it's important in navigating life changes? That's a great question. I would define mental strength as a mix between or a mix of discipline, resilience, and like rationality, being rational. I think maybe in extreme circumstances, you're so rational that maybe there's this sense of like coldness or apathy in extreme circumstances.
circumstances of mental strength. But yeah, I think it's a combination of all of those things, being able to restrict oneself, resilience, being able to pick oneself back up, and rationality, being able to think with logic. And I think it's necessary for dealing with life challenges, right? Life impacts us in a variety of different ways, and it often takes a mental toll on us, even if the initial impact might be physical or financial or romantic or
so I think it's really important in that sense because it helps us deal with the mental toll it also helps us push through things instead of deflecting and I think it also mental strength helps us in that recovery process when we have to get back on our feet and continue on yeah I totally agree yeah I totally agree I think like you mentioned is overcome our life challenges with like
We need resilience sometimes. We need determination and adaptability. So it's about maintaining a positive mindset. Like you said, we encounter a lot of challenges, a lot of difficulties in life. And how you deal with it, you need this strong mindset. You need this strong mental strength to help you to overcome the difficulties.
And I think it's also like very crucial because it empowers us to cope effectively with the things we encounter in our lives.
Things like losing a job, experiencing a breakup, or even dealing with the loss of loved one. The things I mentioned above are not like exception things. It's not like wanting a billion times. It's like things happening. We know that's something that will happen in our daily life. And with that expectation, then we need to build mental stress to cope the things like you know what is going to happen in your life. What are some common misconceptions about mental strength?
And how can individuals overcome them? I think there's one common reception of barmatozoid strands.
Is that something that people are born with? Like we always think like some people have a very strong mental strength because they're born with that. I think that's actually not true. It's just like things like knowledge, like you read books and you build knowledge. It was like building muscles, you exercise and you build muscles. Mental stress is also our skill. So you need to practice a lot and to build your mental strength. To overcome this, I think we can start by reframing our mindset.
about how you see mental stress, right? And to embrace idea that it's okay to struggle and experience setbacks along the way. And these are the opportunities for growth and learning. And also practice. Practice. When you practice, you give yourself some patience and you give yourself some self-compassion. Allow yourself to spend the time and space to develop this skill gradually. Also,
Sometimes you feel like it's very difficult, it's challenging to do it by yourself, which is okay. I think you can seek support from your friends. Like we always talk about like when we have encountered difficulties in our life, what are the things we are doing? So we talk to our friends, right? And like EJ, I know you also talk to health professionals, like talk to the psychologist, right? Talk to people, like talk to family members, talk to your friends and, you know,
Use the support you can get or like even read books. Like I remember we mentioned in the other episode was like, if we don't have the friends or family member can support us what we do. There are much resources online, you can go look and search for it and read books.
like i said just like it's just like something about like when you acquiring knowledge or building physical muscles so believe that you can train you can get the skills by practically like training and actively training so what do you think is the misconception for the mental strengths
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you said, especially the part about, you know, like reaching out and using the resources that are at your disposal. I think...
One thing that came up in my mind when I was thinking about a misconception about mental strength is this idea that someone who's really mentally strong means that they ignore and repress emotions that distract them. And I think that actually ignoring emotions is an avoidant behavior. It's not something that we want to do. It's not something that's proactive in processing emotions. So having mental strength and strength
Instead means having the ability to find helpful and constructive ways to express your emotions and cope with your feelings, which is what you touched on earlier, right? Especially tough ones, right? Like anger, frustration, sadness, right? Those are the ones that I think we tend to want to repress
and not have to deal with so that we can focus. But there's a lot of ways to deal with that. And it could look like a lot of things. It could look like journaling. It could look like reaching out to a friend for support and encouragement. Or it could even look like taking a break in intense situations or high pressure situations to take a break and decompress or to not beat yourself up if you need to rest.
Yeah, I agree with you so much because like we normally think people with strong mental stress, they don't suffer. Well, like even if they suffer, they feel it's nothing. It's not like that. People suffer like we are all just human beings. If we encounter something difficult, like the people who has a strong mental health also will experience difficulties or like challenges in their life.
But the way they deal with it is they allow themselves to be sad, like all the different emotions like EJ you mentioned. They allow themselves to be sad, to be angered, to feel maybe betrayed. Like all different kinds of emotions are okay to accept. And they use the strong mental strength skill they gained in the past life.
past years or like during the past experiences they have they try to cope with was that it was like maybe calm after they experienced the different emotions and they use the ways they know it's helpful for them maybe like watch a movie to calm them down or talk to a friend to calm them down or like they need to talk they need they know this is a time they need support from like if
inert from from themselves or like from like seek support from outside and then they try like to go over the situation and once this things like that happen again they know how to deal with it so when people see all these people are so calm this so like mental strength is so good it's not
because they were born with it. It's not because they are okay with the emotions. It's they know how to deal with the situations because they are actively to protect themselves or seeking help. Talking about, I think...
In our life, we have a lot of discipline. I think employment-loving discipline is also crucial in personal and professional settings. So how do you define love discipline and what are some effective ways to implement it?
So initially, I was like, this is a challenging question because I really had to think about that term loving discipline and like how to interpret it. It's a little, what's the word? It's not an oxymoron. Is it an oxymoron? Because, you know, like discipline has this negative connotation that like when you are being disciplined, that you're being reprimanded or that it's punishment, right? You've done something wrong.
And I think that loving discipline wants to reframe that definition or that meaning of discipline and reframe it through the lens of self-discipline and self-love and self-care. And that by practicing self-discipline or this loving discipline, I'm doing so in a way that is centering
the pursuit of my best self. It's right, it has my best interest in mind. Not a version of what other people want or not a version of what I think people want of me, but a version of me that's actually the best for me. So in terms of like effective ways of implementing that, something that I feel like is really important is that idea of like delayed gratification or reframing motivation for certain behaviors. So like something personally that I've been going through
recently it's doing a lot of changing in like my lifestyles and like my eating and my like habits and things like that and sometimes it feels like I'm
denying myself something, like I'm taking something away from myself. But in reality, I have to remind myself that like, no, maybe I'm eating a little bit differently or I'm doing something else a little bit differently, not to deny myself, but because it's actually doing something that's better for me. So it's not punishment, it's centering self-love and self-care so that you can see the positive side of why you have to maybe restrict yourself or
discipline yourself to change certain behaviors. Yeah. I also like when I first see this, like loving discipline is I want to properly define what is it, right? So I was looking like, I was looking online how to define this. I think it's something like setting clear expectations and boundaries while maintaining empathy and understanding. Yeah. It's about like getting others for like getting yourself with kindness and respect and
rather than just resorting to punishment or harness. I think for in personal settings, loving discipline can involve constructive communications, active listening and providing support encouragement to help yourself or others from their mistakes.
It requires constancy, patience, and focus on nurturing positive relationships, build on trust and respects. Like you mentioned, right? You eat something to deny yourself, but it's like nourish your body better. It's how you see these things is with a constructive way and trust.
don't think this is something to punish you. Discipline is not something to punish you. So speaking of punishment, I also want to ask you is, have you ever experienced something like you try to maintain a disciplined life?
And sometimes it feels like so challenging, where it's like, cause you pain. It's not like physically pain, it's like you feel so troubled, so difficult to do. And have you ever experienced that? And how can you strike a balance between the discipline and flexibility? Yes. I'm trying to think. A time when I really struggled with the discipline. I feel like it happens in a lot of different ways.
I would say maybe for a long part of my life, I would say something that I had to learn discipline-wise was like financial discipline. Because that wasn't something that was necessarily taught to me growing up. I knew relatively that you had to save, but I didn't necessarily know what for or how. And so, you know, when you get accustomed to a life of just like saving,
I don't know, spending money and not really thinking about it and not really having a budget and not really planning, you run into a lot of issues. And so I think that's why delayed gratification is something that has been important for me to learn in terms of mental strength, because I need a budget and I need that level of...
like restraint but I also want to be able to live like spontaneously and so I had to learn how to like put that in there so I can have both discipline and flexibility I think
Particularly when it comes to spending, it just reminds me of you can do everything or anything in moderation. You don't want too much of anything because it can be bad. I think the challenge of trying to strike balance between discipline and flexibility is hard because when you do reach out, sometimes you ask people for advice. You realize that not everything that works for other people is going to work for you. And
And so it takes a little bit of trial and error to figure out what works for you. Like the process of building mental strength isn't a one size fits all process. It's one that's particular to you and your own needs. And so sometimes I wonder if like trying to strike balance is helpful. Sometimes I think about in my own life, like there are certain periods or seasons of my life where I need more discipline, right?
And then there are other periods or seasons in my life where I could have more flexibility and things are okay and my life allows for that. Whereas I think that if I was in a period of flexibility and I was trying to strike for discipline, things might not be in accord with each other. So sometimes I wonder, I think about like maybe being more fluid and adaptable to whatever the particular season or period calls for, as opposed to constantly in my everyday life striving for balance, if that makes sense.
- Yeah, I like how you divide your life into different seasons, right? Like in some seasons, I think because it's related to the professional way, like you are in the industry. So like it's seasonal. So in some time you need like discipline because you need to more time maybe deal with the staff from work, right? And like,
Or at other times you have like more flexibility so you can use that time to deal with your personal life. And I used to struggle a lot to try to maintain the discipline because there was a time I valued discipline so much and I gave myself strict rules that I need to go to gym every single day.
and I need to read for like 30 minutes. I mean these were good habits right to cultivate but once I made them like obligatory it's something I have to do I told myself I need to go to gym every single day and then it really became a burdensome. If I miss even just one day I felt bad
I was like, oh, there's something I didn't do today. I didn't tick my box. So that's what's like, everything like feels bad. Like my body feels bad. And like my mentally, I feel bad. It's something I didn't do. Then that's when I realized,
I need to stop doing this. I realized I need a balance between like discipline and flexibility. So like what I did is I adjust my goal to work, working out like straight to five days a week and trying to reboot every day without focusing on the exact duration each time. So I found like pockets of free time to do so rather than just like
allocating a chunk of time. I think 30 minutes sometimes is a lot like commitment. You can't find, our daily life is so busy. You can't find like 30 minutes to read. Then you break it down to pieces, pieces. And then compared to your story, mine is more like break down my life into like day by day or week by week.
So some things like are not important, but like don't let the discipline break your mental stress. Like sometimes we like focus too much on I need to do this. I need to do this every single day. I need to eat healthy, right? I need to eat healthy. Or sometimes I eat a fried stuff. I feel bad.
I think when you give yourself this mental... How to say is... You tell yourself this is not healthy. You give more bad influence to your body than really the eating it. So in what ways does mental stress contribute to an effective decision-making, especially in a high-pressure situation for you? I think...
particularly in high pressure situations that mental strength is helpful because it allows us to rely on precedent right we've talked about this before is that like we can remind ourselves that like we've been through these difficult things before maybe not every single time but it
assuming that this is a process where you built up some level of mental strength, that you can rely on those past experiences to help guide you through something, to remind you that the intensity that you're experiencing is temporary and that there's an end in sight. And then I think when you get to that point, you're able to make emotionally informed but rationally driven thinking. And by that I mean is that like oftentimes when we're in high pressure situations, we do have an emotional response.
And that emotional response we have for a reason. And so, again, you don't want to completely ignore it and disregard it in the name of making rational thinking, right? Because I think sometimes we say, well, to make a rational response, that means the complete and total absence of emotions. But I think in doing that, then we completely disregard part of us that was a part of that experience.
And so I think we have to make emotionally informed, rationally driven thinking when we are making decisions in high pressure. And I think mental strength helps us do that because it prevents us from,
breaking down and it allows us again to push through without deflecting or avoiding the tough parts of that. I totally agree because sometimes it's like I feel like mental stress is like having a strong anchor amidst a storm. So like you just mentioned, right, it helps to stay calm and focused when we need to make a decision, right, make a tough decision, especially in those intense high pressure moments.
So we have a lot of intense high-pressure moments from work, from personal life, right? When you are mentally strong, you can think clearly and assess your options and make the choice that are grounded in logic rather than emotion, right? Because sometimes we are overwhelmed by all the emotions when we encounter something overwhelming. And we don't know what to do. But I think the first thing you need to tell yourself is how you calm yourself down and you...
logically to process, to analyze the situation and make the decision what's best for you. And it's about also like keeping your cool even when the pressure is on and trusting yourself to make the right call. That's something I think I feel like is very difficult because we often do make a decision and then we second guess ourselves. Am I making the right decision? Am I doing the thing best for me, right? And I think you have to
trust yourself once you make a decision or when you make a decision when you are calm then you make a decision you think it's better for yourself then you really then you have to believe it and you don't second question yourself don't second guess don't give yourself like
just back and forth thinking about it. And I think that's mental stress can be a secret weapon for you for staying steady and making smart decisions when it matters most. 100% agree. The mental strength, like you said it right, staying steady and making smart decisions when you need it most. I often find myself in situations when I'm really stressed or like overwhelmed that like my knee jerk reaction is to make a decision that
helps me not be overwhelmed or stressed anymore, but it doesn't help me actually solve the issue that's making me stressed. And I always have to remind myself, okay, the goal is to not get rid of the stress. The goal is to get rid of the thing that's causing the stress. And that's the mental strength smart decision for me to be able to make, right? Because otherwise, as you said, you're making decisions that are rooted in emotions as opposed to being informed by your emotions, right?
Yeah, exactly. Because the situation will happen again. Because if you don't know what caused your stress, you just want to be out of this stress bubble right now, then you will figure out all the ways. Maybe you can do all the things to get you distracted. You can just be okay with distracted by the stress. But if you don't know what's the source, what brings you the stress and how to deal with, how to cope with, the next time it comes,
you're going to be crushed again, right? Like mentally break and we don't know how to do. So it's important to make decision when you're calm. So don't make rash decisions. And I think that's the importance of like how to build a mental stress. So speaking of reflecting on your own experiences,
How has building mental strengths and the problem-solving abilities impact your personal and professional life? That is a really good question. I would say I first, when I was thinking about this question, I thought about it professionally because I work in an industry that has a lot of turnover and
And my initial response to like turnover was always panic. I was scared. I was like, like people are leaving, you know, like, is there a reason why all of this is happening? Should I jump on the base, you know, the bandwagon and go along with it because that feels safe because everyone else is leaving. But I think my mental strength has helped.
teach me how to learn to ride the waves of that uncertainty, especially in a professional industry that has this level of turnover. Because what I realized is that had I followed all of those other people is that I may have made a short-sighted decision based off of comparing other people's situation to my own and not doing what's best for me in a given situation, right? So I feel like in this course, it's really important for me to have the mental strength to like stay on my own course.
I think the flip side of that, when I started to think about it in a professional situation or a personal situation, is that sometimes it feels challenging to push myself out of my comfort zone because I feel like I lack the mental strength.
to like fight the inertia or the contentment that comes with being in a situation for a really long time. You get used to it. You don't want to change and like shake up the status quo or anything like that. And so I think in those situations, needing to implement mental strength is really important because then that allows me to take a leap of faith
And it allows me to have confidence in myself that I can work things out, even if I come against new things. So having that level of discipline can be challenging. Or not discipline, rather. That level of mental strength can be challenging, I think.
in certain periods of time. How has it impacted you? Yeah, I think while you're giving some examples in your professional life, I was thinking about more personally. So thinking about my experiences, I think it has a profound impact on my personal life. I think one significant moment was when I decided to end the relationship with my ex. It was a tough time.
Because my grandma was diagnosed with cancer. And my dad's situation has been unstable all the time. And I have a lot of burden from my family, the loved one situation, and this heartbreaking situation. But then I also really rely heavily on my loved one's mental support during this period. I think despite all the situations happening at the same time for me, I
made a conscious effort to stay calm and make decisions with the longer term in mind.
Like we just discussed, right? It cannot make a decision to make me feel better on the circumstances, right? So I can try, if I need more support from loved ones, I can try to forgive him and maybe just be together with him again. And to deal with the situations, I was like with so many difficulties, but that's not for long-term because the problem is not solved.
Like when the things come back again, when the things like whatever make us break up and you realize the thing is still there and the pain is still there. So I think what helps me is I take a few days to really think through like maybe a week, few weeks to really think through the situation and make the decision good for me in the long term.
And this process, I will say, is not only require mental stress, but also helped me to further develop it. Because during the situations, like we mentioned in the beginning, like one misconception I feel like mental stress is not like you're born with, right? So you are developing the skill while you encounter some difficulties. And then experiences this, you realize, what if happens again, or like,
you become stronger. Become stronger, like, mentally, and maybe, like, also, you feel good. So...
Facing adversity head-on taught me the importance of resilience and problem-solving, leading to a personal growth and an inner strength. So I also want to give some tips to our audiences who listen to this podcast. So what can you do when you're facing challenges? How you can really...
build mental strength. I want to say something like maybe embrace challenges, right? Rather than avoiding difficult situations, view them as an opportunity for girls. Each challenge you overcome strength, your resilience and probably solving skills. EJ, you want to give some tips to our audiences? Yes. Practice self-care.
Take care of your physical and mental well-being. Engage in activities that rejuvenate you, such as exercise, meditation, or spending time with loved ones. A healthy mind and body are essential for maintaining mental strength. Also, I think I'll develop a growth mindset, right? So to cultivate a mindset that views setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve.
Focus on solutions rather than dwelling on problems. Like I mentioned that like the examples we were giving, right? And maintain a positive outlook, even face of adversity. I think that's very important because when you maintain a good outlook, you feel better. Sometimes it's kind of a lie to yourself.
by maintaining an over good look, right? And then at the end, maybe you just really believe it and you feel good. You can also seek support. So don't hesitate to lean on friends, family, or mentors for guidance and encouragement. Surround yourself with a supportive network of people who uplift and empower you during challenging times. Also, you can set some realistic goals, right? Break down larger goals into smaller, achievable steps.
Celebrate your process along the way and adjust your approach as needed.
By setting realistic expectations, you build confidence in your ability to overcome obstacles. Sometimes, though, you don't overcome those obstacles, and that's okay. So it's important to learn from failure. Failure is an inevitable part of life, but it's also a valuable teacher. Instead of viewing failure as a setback, analyze what went wrong and identify lessons to be learned. Use these insights to refine your approach and grow stronger.
And always remember to stay at that goal. So life is unpredictable. Unexpected obstacles may arise.
cultivating adaptability by remaining flexible and open-minded in your approach to problem solving, be able to pivot and just courses when necessary is the key to overcoming all the challenges. As we conclude today's episodes, we hope to gain valuable insights into the importance of building mental strength, fostering problem-solving skills, and implementing loving discipline in your life.
Remember, these are lifelong practices that require dedication and consistency. By cultivating inner resilience, honing problem-solving abilities, and embracing loving discipline, you can navigate life's challenges with grace and fortitude. Join us next time for more enriching conversations on cultural collision. Until then, stay resilient and keep striving for personal growth. Bye!