Mental Toughness; 12 Strategies to Improve Yours!

Mental toughness; Strategies to develop yours!

Mental toughness, grit, and resilience, are in short supply these days. You can be a brilliant and talented person, but if you can’t tough out difficult situations, you’ll be hard pressed to even function in our stressful world, much less excel. So much of what people struggle with comes down to the lack of toughness. Here are 12 strategies to develop your mental toughness.

Hold yourself accountable for every attitude. Though others helped put many of these into us when we were young, they are now our responsibility to look at and keep or throw out as we deem necessary. As we experience life and stressors, we interpret those experiences through the lens of our own beliefs and attitudes. We come out with emotions and actions that are often not the only choice. For example, we can take two people who go through a cancer diagnosis; the first is initially overwhelmed, and upset, and then gets to work tackling the next steps, gathering their resources, getting support from friends and family, and driving headlong into the battle. The second is overwhelmed, upset, and then gets lost in a cycle of anger, resentment, unfairness, frustration, avoids the work of fighting the battle, expects others to do everything for them, and is angry at everyone and everything when anything doesn’t go their way. The two people have the same experience of a cancer diagnosis, but the actual experience for them and for their loved ones is radically different. The first will overwhelmed at times, but also will feel strong, capable, empowered, will feel loved and supported, grateful for every moment of added life, and grateful for each person who is caring for them. Just as importantly, those who love and support them, will want to continue to be part of that team. The second will feel overwhelmed, upset, powerless, abandoned and victimized no matter what anyone tries to do, and those who love them will feel overwhelmed and resentful throughout the already challenging experience. The upshot is, we can’t determine what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond. Choosing to hold ourselves accountable for our attitudes, helps us to manage a situation rather than be overwhelmed by it. See every challenge, disappointment, and upset as potential for growth. We used to use the acronym AFGO; another friggin’ growth opportunity. It made us laugh and reminded us to use whatever challenges we were facing as opportunities to learn and grow. Again, we don’t choose a lot of what happens to us, but we absolutely choose how we face it. When we face it as another growth opportunity, we can deepen our self-understanding, grow stronger emotionally, be there for others in ways we didn’t think possible before, and we can see ourselves as mentally tougher. When we wallow in self-pity over something that is happening, we will resent every aspect of the experience, we will bring a negative attitude to each challenge, and we not only don’t grow, we will feel worse than before.
Be accountable for your awareness. Our awareness or attention is like a spotlight; whatever we focus on is what we notice and all outside of that spotlight is dim and out of our awareness. When we focus our spotlight on the negative, the past, the anger or resentments we hold, we will dim out the rest of the blessings in our lives, the positive possibilities of the future, and the others in our lives who are there for us. We literally see only what we attend to and the rest becomes a blur. When we do this, we rob ourselves and others of any peace, joy, positive possibilities, our future, and any sense of closeness in relationships. When, we attend to those positives, they become our direction, our guiding light forward and we move into those realities. Your windshield is much bigger than your rearview mirror; keep your focus on the windshield; focusing all the time on the rearview, you will surely crash.
Take accountability for your actions; quickly and thoroughly. When you’ve made a mistake or done something you’re not proud of, apologize, make amends where appropriate, and create strategies to make sure it doesn’t happen again. No excuses, no blame shifting, just own it, and do whatever it takes to make it right and move forward. We waste so much time and energy avoiding, denying, blaming, minimizing, rationalizing, etc, when clear ownership and apology can be the bridge that gets us over the river to the next step. Learn from mistakes, grow from them, and move forward.
Realize that bad stuff happens to everyone; you are not specially picked on by the universe. I know you don’t want to hear it, but that’s the truth. It’s a broken, fallen world with many broken people in it and messed up things happen to everyone. It’s normal to be stunned by something terrible and even to ask, ‘why is this happening to me?’ But to stay stuck there, is not going to get you through it and will pollute your attitude and your ability to function in an already difficult situation. Yes, It’s a drag when bad things happen, and I’ve definitely felt this way myself at times. When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 34 and went through losses and physical hardships I don’t even want to describe, I initially felt it was so unfair. But staying stuck there would have probably cost me my life. We have to realize that bad stuff happens to everyone and we have to do our best with what we’re given.
Recognize your humanness; we are all broken, imperfect, fallible, and oh so very human. None of us are perfect, and none of us are garbage. We are all very flawed, and at the same time, we all have the potential to be brilliant, loving, caring and wonderful in our own unique way with our unique gifts. Look at your tendency to swing wildly from believing you’re above it all, to feeling like garbage. When you realize and remember you’re human, and refuse to let yourself aggrandize or degrade yourself, you will give yourself permission to learn and grow.
Every time you want to quit or avoid, do the opposite. This means whenever and whatever makes you want to quit or avoid or escape, stop yourself, and drive straight into the fray. If you want to become mentally tougher, it’s like lifting weights. You have to show up and keep lifting heavier weights. In mental toughness terms this means noticing opportunities to get tougher. Can you stay the course with something longer and work harder to get the outcome you want? Can you look at this deadline as a parameter that is making you work harder and smarter for this period of time and getting to the deadline on time, and with a solid outcome, will feel so strong and so good.
Be early for everything. This is one of the very simple ways to start showing up, literally, for your life. Being chronically late is avoidance, entitlement and lack of accountability all rolled into one habitual action. See this for what it is in yourself, and plan to be early to everything. You may be amazed at the impact it has on you and others in your life. You will begin to feel more in control when you’re not always anxious about being late, or having to defend your right to be late. You will see how much you annoyed people with your lateness and see them appreciating you and respecting you more.
Do everything for a higher purpose. When we do things for ourselves or someone else we often are inconsistent with the quality and quantity of work. We will do the minimum or try to skate or slide by and see how much we can get away with when we “feel” like it, and then work hard when we “feel” like it. If we do everything for a higher purpose, we will do it with excellence always and not act out our passive/aggressive attitudes or momentary emotions. There is a Bible verse that says, “do all as if for God, not for man.” This reminds us to keep our focus on excellence above the humans we are working with and for. When we do this, we will feel good about our work, even when we’re upset with our boss or company. We will also strive for excellence for our own sense of self and purpose, without thinking about others’ judgments.
Welcome feedback of all sorts. Reflect honestly on your progress, on your attitudes, actions, and awareness, and see all feedback as potentially helpful. In AA we say, ‘if it fits, let it sit; if it don’t apply, let it fly.’ This means you welcome feedback without defensiveness, then assess it for yourself to see if it might be helpful. If you’re defensive when people give you feedback, they’re not going to bother to give you any input in the future.
Being teachable means being willing to fail and willing to feel stupid. This is really tough; it means that you are more interested in your own growth and excellence, than in feeling coddled, and built up. We all want positive feedback and to feel comfortable, but to be mentally tough and to learn, grow and move forward, we have to be able to tolerate discomfort. We have to realize you don’t know it all in order to be teachable. Will you feel stupid at times, yup, we all do, and then, if we stick with it, we don’t.
Be someone you respect. Be kind, be supportive of others, show self-control when things are tough, celebrate others’ successes, and be grateful; I can’t emphasize this enough. When we are grateful, we feel better within ourselves, and those around us feel appreciated instead of put upon. When we are grateful we don’t expect others to do for us, and we appreciate it when they do something kind, or helpful. This is a much healthier dynamic than the often entitled attitudes people carry these days. Many people bring this entitlement into their personal and professional relationships and carry the resentments that go along with these expectations. Another slogan from AA; ‘expectations are pre-planned resentments.’
Work hard, play hard. In all of my supervisory roles, I’ve tried to live this. In a special needs school where I worked we were having a particularly stressful staff meeting. A woman had donated a bunch of puppets to us, and in a moment of inspiration, I threw puppets at each of my staff, and we all started talking with our puppets. We were having so much fun, while actually being very productive too. When the very stiff, stodgy superintendent of schools came in, I tossed him a puppet too. He went along and the working relationships we developed with him that day lived on to help us in more ways than I can count. Find ways to make things fun, creative, interesting and productive. If you work alone, get up and out frequently so you work hard, play hard too. This balance builds resilience.

Mental toughness is at least as important as brilliance, inspiration, and talent. Develop your mental toughness and your life at work and home will improve dramatically.