In the latest episode, join Work Mom Lori Jo Vest for a special conversation about mental toughness with chef, influencer, and healthy cooking coach Jacqueline Laurencelle. They will discuss the many benefits of mental toughness and ways to build it, and they will recommend a few resources to help you get started. Themes discussed in this episode What is mental toughness Jacqueline Laurencelle’s mental toughness journey Benefits of mental toughness Discipline vs Motivation Tools for building mental toughness Rather than wallowing, ask yourself what lesson you can learn Featured Guest Expert Guest: Jacqueline Laurencelle What She Does: Jacqueline is a classically French-trained Chef, social media influencer, and healthy cooking coach. She’s on a mission to make healthy cooking accessible, fun, sexy, and delicious through her wellness brand and her TV show, Jacqueline Cooks! Connect: You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and her website. Episode Highlights Timestamped inflection points from the show 2:00 – Start of her journey: While walking down the stairs during a fire evacuation, Jacqueline experienced so much pain that she wasn’t sure she could get to the bottom. This prompted her to start working out for her health, which kickstarted her journey.7:00 – What is mental toughness: It is choosing to do difficult things to increase your capacity for resilience11:00 – Benefits of mental toughness: It will help you tolerate failure, reduce your anxiety, and fear, and help you embrace and overcome obstacles.16:00 – Motivation vs discipline: Discipline is more important than motivation because with discipline, you will just go do it. If you’re waiting to get motivated, you’ll wait forever.20:30 – Tools for building mental toughness: Build habits and a morning routine that you will commit to and can do every day. Whether it’s doing the morning pages, affirmations, gratitude journaling, or starting your day with a workout, find what works for you and stick to it.32:00 – Lessons: Instead of wallowing when something negative happens, mental toughness helps you swap your mindset to “what can we learn from this experience?” Top Quotes 8:10 – Mental toughness is choosing to do things that are difficult, that are good for you, in order to expand your capacity for resilience.11:00 – It’s cyclical. The more mental toughness you get, the more tenacious you’ll get. The more you tolerate failure, the more mentally tough you get. The more mentally tough you get, the more you can tolerate failure.11:50 – I can promise you that the more mentally tough you get, the less anxiety and fear you will have. It won’t just help you push past it. It will help it decrease in your life.16:35 – If you respect yourself, that’s what self-love is. And doing things that are good for you is what brings those things about.17:00 – Your current situation is exactly what you’re committed to because you’re doing everything that supports your current situation.20:40 – So I started super beginner so I wouldn’t get sore and ease into it. And then I just started to feel better because more endorphins were happening. So humbling myself a little bit, and really starting at the beginning was a crucial tool.22:30 – I also made a decision to let go of being a victim…Like I got this one life to live and what am I going to do with it? I got to go out and do something. I can’t just sit here and exist anymore. I can’t do it.24:00 – I’ve decided that in order to build a strong habit, I’m going to have to push really hard at first and do it every day so that it feels weird not to do it.29:30 – You can act yourself into a better way of thinking, and think yourself into a better way of acting. So if you’re in doubt, take action.30:45 – Choose your hard.