Leading with Love vs Fear

What do you want to improve about yourself? On this podcast episode, join the conversation I had with Alec Cuenca as we discover how self-awareness can help you achieve significant things and how self-kindness can lead to improving yourself even more to inspire your future.

How to keep your mental health strong?

Be kind to yourself.

It's cool that other people are affirming how good you are and what you do, but at the end of the day, if you don't like yourself and you don't like what you see in the mirror every single day, then it’s different.

Let love, not fear, inspire you. You can be able to achieve great things when you're coming from hate or fear. But the piece that comes from the process, while you're getting to that success, when it comes from love, that's something that you can't replace.

What causes you to fear things?

The reason why we worry and get anxious about certain things is because of superficial values that we put on things that are not actually important. Choose the things that you care about and be driven by those things that you care about more than the anxiety that you have of the things that you put superficial value into.

So many of us operate in such a way that we just want to please everyone because of the world that we have right now. It's the kind of world we're in. We live in a culture wherein we place a lot of value on things that don't matter.

*Budol culture – why is it not good?

We’ve become superficial.

As people, because our brains are so malleable. Budol culture often prioritizes instant gratification and fleeting trends, promoting superficiality rather than considering long-term value and genuine personal preferences. We strive to keep up with the latest trends or products, they may neglect deeper introspection and reflection on our own values, needs, and interests.

The focus on image and external validation can overshadow genuine personal growth and individuality, leading to a mindset that prioritizes superficiality over substance.

It is important to be aware of the negative implications of budol culture and take steps to resist its influence.

A need of change.

When we're setting our values, our goals and our intentions, they should never be past-focused. They should be future-focused. It should be inspired by our experiences and the things that we've learned from our past, but fueled solely on our vision of the future, that’s what it should be. Because I think so many of us fuel our present intentions and our goals with our past.

Healing is never linear.

Self-realization before Self-improvement

You have to realize the things that we value and what are the things that are constantly driving us. As human beings, it's either pain or pleasure. We're always almost driven solely by trying to avoid pain or figuring out what gives us pleasure. Self-improvement does not happen if you do not know yourself.

Looking at the past, we need to do some inner work and actually being okay with the current situation - all the traumas that led you here. Once we do that, the process of self-improvement becomes clear.

We need to have that courage to say, “You know what? I'll do it. I'm scared. This is hard, but I'll do it. Because if that's the way for me to have a better life, a better reality, a better truth, then that's going to be worth it.”

You can achieve great things rooted from hate and revenge but you’ll never find peace.
— Alec Cuenca
 

From Episode 173 of Adulting with Joyce Pring: “ Leading with Love vs Fear”