Mental Toughness; a 10 Question Quiz to Assess Yours!

Mental Toughness; A 10 question quiz to assess your mental toughness.

So many of the questions and concerns I hear from young people these days come down to wanting to know how to develop mental grit, self-discipline, a thicker skin, an ability to push through difficult times, diligence, what I’m referring to as mental toughness. This video will go through a ten question quiz to help you assess your toughness. The next video will offer strategies to improve mental toughness. So be sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the bell too so you will be alerted when the next video comes out.

Let’s assess how you’re doing in the toughness in different areas of your life; answer these questions honestly to yourself. You may find you’re tougher than you think in some areas and not so much in others.

When you run into something difficult you tend to;
Quit
Avoid until later
Try to get someone else to do it for you
Push through consistently to completion
When someone challenges your ideas; for example a teacher challenging your project idea, a boss at work challenging your idea, or a friend putting down an idea you’re passionate about, you tend to;
Abandon it entirely
Shelve it, but keep pondering it
Rethink it and come back with it
Ask for specific input, incorporate what you think is interesting, and move forward.
When you’re exhausted but have a deadline with a school project or work project, you tend to;
Give up and make excuses
Complain and pressure for extensions
Talk with boss or teacher and see if an extension is possible, and if not try to get someone else to do it for you.
Push through to completion.
When you’re with people and someone looks at you judgmentally, you tend to;
Leave quickly without saying goodbye.
Say goodbye to the group and head home?
Move on to talk to someone else but be devastated and distracted
Move on to talk to someone else and think to yourself, ‘that person is judgmental, and their judgements have nothing to do with me.’
When you get constructive criticism at work or school you tend to;
Feel devastated and overwhelmed and need to go home for the day.
Feel upset and angry and resistant to anything that person has to say
Tell everyone what a jerk that person is and how you hate your job or that class and are going to quit.
Take the feedback, assess it’s worth to your work, and push yourself to grow with it.
When your living partner(s) such as roommates, significant other, or family give you feedback; for example cleanliness, organization, moods, attitudes, sharing space issues, etc. you tend to;
Be devastated and decide to move out
Shut down and refuse to talk or listen
Get angry and badmouth them to anyone who will listen
Ask for more information and let them know you will work to remedy those things
When your significant other talks to you about things in the relationship they would like to work through, you tend to;
Collapse into tears or rage, and walk out
Verbally blast them with all the things you’ve been harboring about them
Deny and argue every point to make it all about them, taking no ownership for yourself
Look at the feedback and commit to working on the things you can see are valid
When times are just plain tough like, when a family member is sick and you have to muster strength to take care of them, go to work or school, be there for others, take care of yourself, and do it all for weeks or months, you tend to
Quit and walk out
Complain bitterly and do the minimum
Get sick yourself, so no one will ask anything of you
Determine what you need to do, keep plowing on, and be as gracious as you can be
When you make a mistake of any sort, you tend to
Cover it up and if found out, deny it and defend your cover up?
Blame others?
Own up to it but make excuses for why it happened?
Own up to it, do your best to fix it, make amends and find ways to assure it won’t happen again?
When you struggle with disappointments you tend to;
Melt down, cry or rage, and expect that others will rescue you emotionally and/or make the disappointment different so you don’t have to face it?
Blame others and complain about it to anyone who will listen?
Avoid it by various escapist strategies such as quitting, using drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling or shopping?
Face it directly, look at what you might have done differently, and what you need to do now to cope the best you can with the disappointing or upsetting situation?

As you probably already guessed, I designed this to help you measure your degree of mental toughness on a spectrum from least to most resilient and the more a’s, you have, the less tough you are, to the more d’s you have the more tough you are, and the b’s and c’s being the poor but not as catastrophically terrible coping strategies in between.

As you asses for yourself, what areas are your strengths, and which are the areas where you really struggle?

In my next entry we will get into strategies to improve your mental toughness in each of the areas above.