‘Mindset work’ helped, until it didn’t.

Reflections on culture & when “mindset work” doesn’t fit right.

And how it intersects with “the middle”

“Go together, with others. If you do, 100 miles will feel like ten.”
- ‘When Life Gives You Tangerines’ 🍊

Over the long weekend, I sat down to watch When Life Gives You Tangerines, a slow, tender Korean drama (K-drama) that follows the quiet emotional lives of two young people on Jeju Island. It’s a story about grief, friendship, unspoken family dynamics, and the way love often shows up in small, ordinary acts rather than grand gestures. If you’re not familiar with K-dramas, this one isn’t the fast-paced or romanticised kind. It lingers. It sits with discomfort rather than rushing to resolve it. And in doing so, it invites reflection.

There’s a moment in the show where a quote stands still for a while:

“Go together, with others. If you do, 100 miles will feel like ten.”

That line stayed with me.

Days later, I sat on this line and what it made me think about was how therapeutic and coaching spaces often frame growth as something deeply personal, something we’re meant to do alone. Real progress, we’re told, is internal. Individual. Self-led.

But for many of us particularly those raised in collectivist cultures, or between worlds where interdependence shaped our sense of self, that framework doesn’t always make sense. And it doesn’t always feel like it lands.

The Common Message: Mindset Is Everything

In therapy, coaching, and wellness spaces, we often hear refrains like:

• “You’re the only one in your way.”

• “It’s your mindset that’s blocking you.”

• “At the end of the day, it’s on you.”

These messages are echoed across client work, social media, and workshop spaces. They’re also embedded in well-established, evidence-based models like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Schema Therapy, both widely used and often incredibly effective.

CBT can help us notice and reframe thoughts. Schema Therapy explores unmet needs and early emotional patterns

Both models emphasise personal agency: recognise your patterns, challenge your beliefs, make a different choice.

There’s deep value in that work, especially when we’ve never been told we have a choice.

And yes, I say this as someone who deeply values Schema Therapy and uses it in practice. But as I’ve learned, it’s possible to hold dialectical truths: to appreciate what works and still question what’s missing.

These approaches are grounded in particular worldviews often ones that centre the individual. They embed cultural values like autonomy, self-sufficiency, and rational control.

When they’re practiced without cultural awareness or rigidly from a therapy manual - they can unintentionally overlook how many of us have learned to survive, care, and connect.

When Culture and Context Are Left Out, and “Growth” is centred on the individual

If you’ve grown up in a collectivist culture or been shaped by one:
where needs are negotiated within family,
where sacrifice is a kind of love,
where silence is a form of respect
then mindset work alone might feel… off.

Not wrong. Just not enough.

Dissonant to the body, because it feels unfamiliar.
Dissonant to the nervous system, because care was always mutual even if it wasn’t said out loud.
Dissonant to your values, because putting yourself first might not have been safety. It might’ve been shame.
Dissonant in that quiet, gut-level way, where something inside pushes back…
but you’re not sure how to name it without sounding like you’re “not doing the work.”
Because your needs haven’t always been just yours.
They’ve been shaped in relationship - with parents, siblings, community, cultural memory.
This is especially true for many Asian Australians and others raised in-between navigating life in a Western system,
but still carrying unspoken family codes, inherited roles, and intergenerational expectations.

So when you're told:

• “You have to do the work yourself.”

• “You can’t rely on anyone else.”

• “You’re just blocking your own growth.”

…it doesn’t always feel empowering.
Sometimes, it feels like something important is being missed.

When growth is framed as something only achievable through internal work, we risk overlooking:

• The relational labour many people carry - caregiving, emotional holding, translating between cultural and generational worlds

• The cultural obligations that shape how we express (or suppress) our needs

• The intergenerational roles that influence how we show up in relationships, workplaces, and systems

For some, separating from family or community isn’t “growth.” It’s grief. And autonomy isn’t always safe. Or even desirable.

Not Everything Needs to Be Unlearned

Many decolonial scholars have spoken to this. What Western mental health concepts and frameworks might label as:

• “Enmeshment” could actually be care

• “Self-sabotage” might be cultural loyalty

• “Avoidance” may be protective silence

Perhaps we don’t need to discard these frameworks. But we do need to contextualise them.

To ask:

• Who were they designed for? What are we calling dysfunction, and who’s deciding?

• What happens when we stop asking care to sound like a thought, and let it sound like a story?

• What if care was shaped not just by what we think, but by where we come from?

• Can growth still include connection not just separation?

If you’re still learning how to name what’s yours and what’s inherited, It might just mean you’re in the middle. And that’s a space worth honouring.

Why I Keep Thinking About Tangerines

That’s why that line from When Life Gives You Tangerines keeps echoing for me:

“Go together, with others. If you do, 100 miles will feel like ten.”

Some of us were raised to walk with others, quietly, loyally, without asking much, without being seen.
And some of us are still figuring out how to hold our own ground, without letting go of the people, places, or values that shaped us.

If mindset work, whether it’s reframing thoughts, pushing through “thought blocks”, or doing “the inner work” has ever felt like it skimmed past something deeper…
I just want to say: that makes sense.

Sometimes it doesn’t land.

Sometimes it asks too much of one part of you, and not enough of another.

Sometimes, it just feels… like it’s not written with you in mind.

If that is where you are right now, here’s a quiet permission slip to the left to metaphorically (or even physically) hold.

If this resonates with you, feel free to share it, sit with it, or bring it into conversation.

Especially if you’re figuring it out from the middle.