How To Build Mental Toughness

Mentally tough people possess a certain measure of confidence and resilience that exponentially increase their chances of success in sports, business, and life. By mental toughness, I mean being able to perform consistently and productively under pressure. If you want to know how to build mental toughness so that you may succeed like the pros, check out these five things you can do.

1. Stay positive

Life is often beset with a lot of negativity. There are negative news, negative coworkers, negative friends, and a host of other negative scenarios bombarding us each day. With all this negativity around you, the way to stay on a positive frequency is to fortify your inner-self. You can do this with positive self-talk or by looking for at least one positive in every negative situation that happens to you. In other words, refrain the negative thoughts.

2. Practice visualization

Visualization is about forming a mental image of a situation or outcome you would like to achieve. Mentally tough people often practice visualization, in that they imagine possible scenarios, with possible solutions, as a way of helping them deal with the actual events when they occur.

3. Manage your emotions

Mentally tough people are masters at managing their emotions. Hence, they do not get ruffled easily. They do not get ruffled easily because a sense of meaning and direction guides them. This inner compass regulates their emotions and helps them to stay on course. Another way of managing your emotions is through breathing exercises and relaxation techniques which help to disarm anxiety and reset emotional and psychological states.

4. Set goals

Having goals in life is one of the qualities of a mentally tough individual. Mentally tough people have clear goals that they work towards, consistently and persistently. These goals generally have long-term and short-term components, and mentally tough people keep marching towards them irrespective of the obstacles that confront them. 

5. Stay motivated

The word motivate comes from the word motive, which at its core is about the reason for doing something. In other words, to get motivated, you need to have a reason to pursue the thing you want to achieve. Mentally tough people take motivation, however, to another level. Their “why” drives them. Generally, mentally tough people attach an emotional reason (like I’m doing it for my child, etc.) to achieving what they want, and with this mindset, they are pretty much unstoppable. Suffice it to say, knowing why you need to get something makes it easier to stick it through and gives you the willpower to break through any barrier you might encounter.