What having mental toughness does is gives you an edge. It can be a turning point in your life where you’re able to overcome the gates of defeat, and push you to places most won’t dare to go. It’s the element to get you through difficult times, when the going gets tough.
This is when you can reach peak performance in your pursuits. This is what separates the elite, the high achievers from the very good.
Those who may appear meek, can gain mental toughness through hard work and training, once they commit themselves with this extended effort.
This applies especially for business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, which means developing the grit you need to get through the hard times.
What this mental toughness affords, is the ability to survive another day in environments which presents risk and uncertainty. Developing this trait, allows you to make better decisions in times of doubt.
Developing A Sense Of Emotional Awareness
It’s not who you know, it’s you, you know. To be mentally tough, you need to understand precisely what makes you tick, what pokes and motivates your crank.
This means becoming aware of and controlling your emotions, instead of letting them control you in times of turmoil.
If a certain situation makes you angry, then learn to channel that into something productive rather than losing control.
What this magnified awareness of your emotions and how you behave does, is helps you better understand the emotions of others.
Most however will live their lives without observing their immediate surroundings, but instead bury their heads in their emotional issues.
Take A Look Around
What the most astute among us, such as police officers are trained to constantly observe the people immediately around them.
They do so in the attempts to instantly analyze the stories of their lives at that precise moment in time, based solely on observation.
This simple awareness technique can be practised by anyone at anytime to observe others, to determine where they’re coming from.
In business, it helps by framing your strategy specifically to that person you’re trying to reach, by reading their mood and mannerism.
Go Beyond Your Limits
Those who are mentally tough realize to reach their potential, they need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
When there’s no idea what the future holds, such as starting a new business or a new project, the fear of doubt and change exists.
One of the constants about being an entrepreneur is it’s always uncertain, making sink or swim decisions on a daily basis, to survive with the big fish.
This means twisting and turning when needed, making yourself uncomfortable.
It’s not an easy process to constantly change, to make sudden alterations in protocol at a moments notice, hoping you make the right decision.
The anxiety level elevates as there’s often nothing but tension and uncertainty that’s ahead. But know if it doesn’t kill you, or make you broke, it makes you stronger.
Focus on the fact the immediate situation is usually temporary, and it can provide benefits such as learning something.
What embracing a new situation does, is it forces you to grow while keeping you from becoming complacent.
It teaches you to avoid becoming dependent on external influences, which allows you to adapt and thrive in any situation.
Always Be Mindful
What mental toughness needs is mindfulness, to stay on track at all times, where you need a tightrope on your thoughts and it’s reactions. The reason for this is because we become what we think.
The default setting in our brains however is negative, as a safety precaution to keep us safe from harm. Our initial negative thoughts are unavoidable.
What you can do however, is not dwell on them so they won’t take root.
You can do so by altering the way you think regarding your self-limiting beliefs along with other obstacles.
What you have is the ability to rewire your brain, so you can make it work for you and not fight against you.
Intense Dedicated Focus
To become mentally tough, is learning how to harness and focus your mental and physical energy.
Professional athletes have mastered this, which is a way of channelling their emotions into performance. What they don’t do is rely on luck but alter it.
They laser focus their talents by directing it into a specific goal in mind, to win at all costs. What it takes is effective practice while constantly making alterations.
What’s required is breaking down each task into individual segments. To focus on spending more time on things which are particularly difficult.
What’s needed is getting constructive criticism and then resolving them. They keep their goals directly in front of them.
What focusing and practising does is it increases willpower, persistence, and confidence. What dedicated training leads to is personal mastery.
Pursuing Further Growth
Those who are mentally tough are learners, they’re constantly developing to get better. At times, what natural talent and intelligence can become, are obstacles to success.
Those who are born brilliant or talented, often think they don’t need to work hard, because things have always come easy to them.
Once times get tough on them however, once they get challenged like never before, they usually give up.
Mentally tough individuals love to learn new things by expecting and inviting failure.
They recognize the need to improve on the things they’ve already mastered. They know starting out is a lot different and harder than finishing there.
Once they do fail, which in enviable, they realize their mistakes aren’t failures, but opportunities to learn or do things differently, to find new opportunities to excel.
What the learning offers is a jolt to their confidence, so they can do the task better next time.