Adeel 0:00
Hey what's up, everyone, thank you for tuning in to another episode of calm Talks. My name is Adeel, and I'm here alongside my co host, Ant. We're here to help you lead your life of peace and progression one compound at a time.
Ant 0:20
Before we get started, I just wanna say thank you to everybody that's been listening in. Again, we're seeing week on week growth. And we really appreciate the support. Just wanted to just stop here and just say, thank you so much for that continued support. And in this episode, if you'd like what you hear, don't forget to share our content, follow us on Instagram, and leave us a comment and share our Spotify page out.
Adeel 0:41
Now, this might be one of the most important episodes that we've done. If you're someone who has had challenges in their life, that have shaken your core, you're not alone. It's not easy to overcome difficult periods unscathed. Yet, it's crucial to be resilient during those moments. Nobody's life is perfect or free from stress and tragedy. For our aunt and my soul, we share a lot of our similar principles and values through the experiences that we've had. And now we're both born and bred abroad. And our childhood was, how should I say just far from extravagant, for and he grew up in a ghetto in North London. And I grew up in a third world country like Pakistan. But through hard work, resilience, and some luck along the way, we've built a stable life for ourselves, each focusing on peace and progression. So if you feel under equipped to deal with stressful moments, do stick around to the end of the episode, as we're going to share five ways for you to build an ironclad mindset to help you in your journey to a life of calm. But first, let's actually define what an iron clad mind is. What does it mean to have an iron mind? As always,
Ant 1:55
great first question. When I think of the term having an iron clad mind, for me means somebody that is mentally strong, they are resilient. They're resistant to ideas and values that don't align with who they are, as someone that is really strong and forthright in their opinions, and they know why have a good sense of center, a good sense of self. And they're kind of unwavering in what they stand for. Someone's able to like, put up and go through really difficult times, and keep persevering for whatever their goal is about for you.
Adeel 2:32
Yeah, I mean, I would echo that it's someone who's just got a steady hand, even when tremors overtake your city. It's someone who just has the stability and unwavering an unbending mind, to the external factors, the external pressure that they experience and go through. It's an internal strength, it's the resilience within and to me, and ironclad is a mentality which remains steadfast, despite any external pressure. In fact, the only thing that could break and ironclad mind is only an internal war, nothing external could break.
Ant 3:09
I think that actually leads us to the first tip when we're talking about having an ironclad mind, you want to kick us off on the first tip, you take it away, you got it? Yeah, well, it's really is about that internal monologue that you have with yourself. To your point, somebody that ironclad mind, you know, is so unbreakable, they're really strong what they stand for. And that's in part because they have an inner monologue of themselves, where they, you know, have a dialect of what they're doing, why they're doing what they're standing for what it means. They're sure, they're very assured at the same time as well. And they reinforce their beliefs who'd like a positive mindset, positive thinking, and a will to persevere because of that, that inner monologue with inside them is like, fine tuned to their own values,
Adeel 3:57
is probably the most important thing to have control over that internal chatter. Because we consume so much of content outside of our mind that we start adopting everyone else's ideas, everyone else's beliefs. And if you have a resolute mind, and if you have conviction in your beliefs, your values, do you sort of almost reinforce what you already know and what you already believe by having an internal dialogue, internal mantras, it's something that I've actually learned a lot through going through therapy. With my therapist in the past, I would actually chat about how I speak to myself how I get mad at myself, if I make a mistake, then actually correcting that to being more compassionate with myself if I made mistakes or even being my own cheerleader. Like if I go to the gym, I feel like I'm whispering under my breath. Like, you know, nobody gonna stop me. Now. Yeah. legit like, especially if I'm on a treadmill because like I have like a breathing condition, I have asthma and like mild asthma. So running is like my least favorite activity. So I don't do it that often to be fair, but when I do have to amp myself up, and when I'm on the treadmill, if I'm like, 20 minutes in 25 minutes, and once I've made it past the first five minutes is, it's kind of like that internal chatter of motivating myself. Yeah, you said mantras
Ant 5:22
as well, right. I think that's something that is individual to all of us. I know, we've spoke about our mantras on another podcast. But you know, for me, without going into what the mantras are, the mentality behind them is always to ask why. I'm someone that often questions myself, not because I don't know myself, but because I want to make sure I know myself. So for me, like, you know, when when things are going on, and my internal monologue is no doing his thing. So asked myself the motivation, or the the reason or what things mean to me or why, basically just, I look for that level deeper, so that I can make sure that decisions I make are the ones that are actually attuned to who I am as a person.
Adeel 6:04
This internal dialogue that you mentioned, if I could just dive deeper, is that something that you've always sort of had when you were Charles, did you reinforce that internally?
Ant 6:13
Yeah, that's actually a fantastic question. And again, this is why says individual, because I know that for me, a lot of this internal dialogue has happened because of the experience I've had, and will have different experiences. So for me, I learned very early on that the only way is up, you mentioned that I'm from a very, very rough part of town, which is true. And the way I saw it growing up was, well, I can't get any lower, I can only go up. So I just always thought to myself, I just got to get on with it, go push on, gotta keep going. And that's kind of insane. That was reinforced, I guess I learned here and it's been reinforced, and I kind of stuck by that ever since. So I think it's individual, I think is individual based on your own experience. I'm sure you have your own way of thinking doing stuff. Probably because it's born out of your own experiences to growing up,
Adeel 7:02
I think, yeah, you sort of learn to adapt to your environment to your circumstance, rather. And you you realize what you need in that moment. And you need self belief, you need sort of that internal confidence within yourself to move forward to overcome adversity. I will also admit that a large part of my internal chatter was contributed by external factors, were listening to my parents and my family, to my friends back home and Fox on. And that brings us on to the second point, which is that you want to be mindful of your external influences. They do shape how you think. And ultimately how you act. Your thoughts have a really powerful compounding effect your thoughts, even though they may be your perception, your perceptions do become your reality. And you want to be spending time with quality people who are going to be reinforcing positive, optimistic ideas, instead of someone who's always reinforcing and looking at the glass as half half empty.
Ant 8:04
I mean, he's obviously important to hang out with an experience, people have different mindsets, of course, right. We're not saying only hang around your circle. But ultimately, when you really have a strong sense of self. And you know why really importantly, understand your own motivation, you understand your own ethos in life, it's good to hang out with people that also share that with you. Because if you cycle, upward spiral, you kind of bounce off each other. And you basically amplify each other's positive points, then equally, you don't want to do like you said, hang out or have influences from negative negative people or negative sources, because that equally can contribute to a downward spiral. We speak about, you know, you are your top five in episode two. And I think that's a great for anybody that wants to listen back. Because we really discussed the pros and cons of how your circle really reflects you. But again, without going into in so much detail, what we really mean here is that you need to be cognizant of who's around you and what's around you. That even includes the things that we consume, social media being one of the things I love people consume a lot of. And you know, you could easily be influenced by the people on there, or they have this or they have that they're in there. So whatever it is, right? Or TV, another good one, in my opinion, that's like a second mental drug, you can easily get addicted to binge watching 10 hours of TV. So you got to be careful of all your influences, not just your people, but also anything else you consume that can affect your mentally in your psyche.
Adeel 9:31
I mean, totally, I mean, we consume so much content today. And I've had some some of those mornings on like Saturday or Sunday where I'll just be on it for like an hour or two. It's just so easy to get into that spiral, right? No matter how resilient a person is. We all effectively are susceptible to just absorbing everything around us. We were kind of like sponges we just keep taking an absorbing all the thoughts and speech that we hear around us. And doesn't matter how ironclad your mind is is if it's going to rain, you're going to get wet. And you want to be just making sure that your environment is also suited to contribute to your resilience as opposed to taking away from it.
Ant 10:09
Another thing that I would say, moving on to the third point, you know, aside from this, there's also a big part of it, which is emotional. Have an ironclad mind also means making decisions that are clear, you make them with clarity. And a big element of making clear decisions is about how you manage and process your own emotions. So the big tip here is making decisions in line with your values. And sometimes understanding that your emotions might be biasing you in certain places.
Adeel 10:37
Yeah, I think it's so important to have a calm mind. And that kind of goes back to the ethos of calm talks. And what we try to encourage and what we try to live our lives by, is by having a level of stoicism, having poise in how you conduct yourself. And not only moments when everything is going your way. But when dark clouds arise when there's a dark storm, because everyone's going to have that everyone's going to go through their version of difficulty and challenges. But having the ability to catch yourself in the emotions, and then moving forward with an objective mind.
Ant 11:13
I mean, resilience really is shown when you're challenged. So catching yourself in the moments, especially where you could be emotionally imbalanced. Drawing that back and understanding that, Hey, hang on, I need to make decisions now, to push forward in this difficult situation. Maybe sort of take that feeling out of it, and see the woods for the trees, if you will, allows you to be resilient. Yeah, and
Adeel 11:37
to be honest with you, for me. And we were chatting about this actually before the episode where like, I did not always have the comments or reactions when I was younger. So I've had certain moments where my initial reaction was to be quite emotional, and maybe reactive. But through practice, and through some all some internal mantras, going back to the first tip I've been able to kind of deal with and deal with them much better today is incidents that I can think of even just this past year, where I will get upset or annoyed. I can't really control my initial reaction. But what I can control is every subsequent response. So what I would do is like if I feel and catch myself, getting emotional, or getting drawn in or invested emotionally, I'll catch myself and try to actually step in, and actually tell myself, take a deep breath, stay calm. And that would actually help me sort of slow things down so that I can be more steadfast in what I do next.
Ant 12:43
Yeah, and I think that's a really important skill. Because when it comes to having the ironclad mind to, as I said, being someone who's really strong in their sense of purpose, their sense of self with their values, and making decisions in line with that, and being so unwavering, it's best to do when you're not imbalanced.
Adeel 13:00
I think if someone's trying to learn more about this, something that helped me a lot was the book meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which is emphasizing stoicism and how everyone should practice the act and art of staying stoic, even when confrontations and difficulties arise. So definitely a good read. And we'll link it out in our show notes.
Ant 13:21
You know, you sort of mentioned there that, you know, you sometimes have an initial reaction, but if you like kind of subtly think about it, you kind of understand that, you know, you're not perfect, none of us are, we will understand that. I hope we will do. And I think the beauty in that is understanding that you are allowed to get things wrong, you're allowed to make a misstep. And that's okay. Because the tip here is to understand that, even if you are to make that misstep, it's just an opportunity, just a lesson. So you can learn to be better next time. And I think that also helps you be resilient. Because when you understand that failure is opportunity to grow, he was employee next time to make sure you make decisions that are
Adeel 14:03
we all make mistakes, I wouldn't be able to count the number of mistakes I've made. But through mistakes that we make, we could even have some feelings of inadequacy or guilt even perhaps that could arise I certainly have. And I think to have an ironclad mine does mean that you are unbending, but it does not mean that you're unbreakable. And you could have some missteps. What matters is how you react to that what matters is how you bounce back from those mistakes. How quickly can you catch yourself, learn and then move on. A lot of this I mean if I was to share like I because I used to play poker a lot when I was younger, in high school, and in college. Back in the day, I would get really upset or angry. If I made a made a bad bet or if somebody else I didn't like the way that somebody else played, and I would have an emotional reaction. But even though it was hard on my So often I made mistakes when I was young, to actually go through them was a good thing, because I learned to make mistakes very early on that that actually build resilience in itself, there's actually strength in you opening yourself and having the courage to be making mistakes, because a lot of times, we can be guilty of playing it too safe. And speaking of playing it too safe. The fifth step that we could give, is to actually challenge yourself to a difficult task so that you can overcome it. Take those risks, so that you can actually put yourself through the bender through difficult and strenuous circumstances so that you can overcome it. And and I have had our life, which came by some luck or misfortune, whichever way you want to look at it, we had to overcome certain challenges, it may not be the case for you, that doesn't mean you can go and go out and seek difficult things to overcome, whether that's going to the gym on a regular basis, maybe it's even just as difficult as going on a diet for you. And sticking to that and represent discipline over there. Maybe you pick up a sport, some task, which is actually going to teach your mind that you can do difficult things and you will arise a better person from them.
Ant 16:22
Yeah, I think kind of said this earlier very well. We said resilience really shows can difficult situations. And maybe you haven't had many personal difficult situations to your point. But that doesn't mean you can't go and seek something challenging, doesn't mean you can't go and try to push yourself. Because it's like a muscle, right? When you work on muscles, they get stronger. Resilience is just like a muscle. And if you haven't had anything challenging happening to you, you know, I think that's, that's great, that's, you know, fortuitous by you can go out and learn to build that muscle. So that one day when you need to, you can also flex it,
Adeel 16:57
like diamonds form under pressure, you build resilience under stress. So put yourself through some task. And for each person, it could be different, we gave a few different examples. It could even be just going to like a meditation retreat. That's a really difficult task to do nothing to go and sit and think nothing, do nothing, have your phone's completely stripped away from you. I've actually thought about this about going to like a retreat, a meditation retreat, and you basically get a uniform, and you have to give your phones away. And you just do like a full day meditation, that's actually quite daunting for me to think about. And that's why I haven't done it yet. But that's certainly something on my list. Is there something on your list that you would want to overcome a difficult task or challenge? Perhaps?
Ant 17:48
That's actually a really good question. And the first thing that came to my mind was putting film out of myself putting video content out. It's kind of ironic, because we're on the podcast. I mean, they have podcasts for me is a very safe space. But that for me is actually very challenging. I don't take many pictures. So definitely no do any video. And I know actually been on my mind, I don't have any resilience towards them. Because I don't even take me how am I going to do video when I don't even take pictures? So I know not been learned to be resilient in that
Adeel 18:21
can be hiding the pretty boy face?
Ant 18:23
You said? How about for you?
Adeel 18:29
I think that's a really good one. I mean, I just gave the example of like a meditation retreat, you know, me, I've been doing jujitsu. And that's definitely like a big task I get I get a little bit nervous every time I'm going there. I messed up my, my back the other day a little bit because like somebody had me, you know, in a rear naked choke a really tight one as well. So I think that that's probably the one that I've picked so far that I'm actually going through, where I am trying to prove to myself that I can overcome those difficult things and have a tough mind. I know have a tough body. Having a tough mind is what really matters.
Ant 19:05
You know, I think I just want to build on this as well, right? Like, we have different things that we're not resilient towards. I definitely don't like you said, take pictures or whatever is what we do in this case, either. Whereas you would struggle maybe to be in a meditation retreat. I think for me, that sounds like bliss, I would love that. Alright, so we will have different things that we're resilient to we have different strengths, different development areas, it's just about knowing yours. And I guess for this point, we're saying identify them and build resilience towards them by going towards them.
Adeel 19:38
And you know what, I know that this episode is all about building resilience and having an iron mind. And we want to clarify one thing as well. In a bonus tip that we're just sharing right now which is to be compassionate with yourself. And and I have gotten to this point of our life where we are I would say pretty stable, emotionally and financially thankfully. And while we can be tough on ourselves to push forward, our ethos is all about finding progression with peace having the balance between the two. So make sure that even as you're trying to build an unbending mind, you are compassionate with yourself, you are easy on yourself. It is okay to falter, it is okay to have missteps. It's okay to make the wrong turn, so long as you course correct and get yourself back on your path back onto your journey of a life of calm.
Ant 20:34
So let's just wrap up, we gave five tips plus one bonus on how you can build an ironclad mind. First tip being to manage your internal monologue. Make sure that you have a positive dialogue with yourself in your mind, you reinforce the beliefs that you know to be true. And then you make decisions in line with what you value. Make sure that internal monologue is clear and decisive. Say Secondly, you want to make sure that you manage your external influences both your positive one and your negative ones. You want to reinforce the positive ones. And try to limit the negative ones, whether that be people or other or other things you consume, whether that's social media or other forms of media. Just make sure you're limiting things that take away from you building something that is resilient in your mind. Thirdly, try to make decisions in line with your values and your objectives. And where possible, try to limit the emotion out of that. So you can make sure that you're making that decision with clarity. Fourth, make sure you understand that each wrong decision is just opportunity to learn. We are going to get things wrong. That's okay. You have to course correct and make sure that next time you're gonna get it right. And lastly, we think you don't demonstrate resilience, then go towards it. Go find something that's challenging. Go learn to train that muscle so you can flex it when the time comes. And lastly, we want to say the bonus tip being be compassionate, but have some humility. When you get things wrong. That's okay, we will get it wrong. Being resilient just means picking yourself back up, dusting yourself off and going again. And no matter what you do, stay calm
Adeel 22:16
Thank you for listening to another episode of comp talks. And just as a reminder, if you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. You can also
Ant 22:23
find us on Instagram account talks and join our mailing list by visiting our website at con talks.com.
Adeel 22:29
And as always, stay calm.