Mental Toughness: Are You Tough Enough?
To succeed consistently in any field of high performance, you’re going to need mental toughness. Don’t be mistaken, if you’re a top performer, or you want to be, then mental toughness is a vital part of your skillset.
No one starts out with mental toughness, but successful people work to develop mental toughness, and being aware of what Mental Toughness really is and its powerful benefits is going to help you towards your own definition of success. Successful athletes, the military, dancers, musicians and entrepreneurs seem to have it, so what is Mental Toughness?
MENTAL TOUGHNESS is “The resilience and ability to perform consistently at the highest possible level – whatever the circumstances.”This definition may surprise you. It has nothing to do with being a tough person, or insensitive, or hard. It has nothing to do with being fearless. (although bravery is a component!)
The quality of mental toughness is the RESILIENCE to PERFORM at YOUR BEST, regardless of all the shit that life and work and family throws at you. When you have Mental Toughness, you still experience all the same problems as everyone else, ALL the same, but you have trained yourself (no one is born with this) to handle it.
When you have Mental Toughness, you experience 3 HUGE interrelated benefits, you have unshakeable FAITH, FIRE and FOCUS and these create the resilience to succeed.
ONE: FAITH is an unshakeable BELIEF in what you’re doing.
TWO: FIRE is an insatiable burning need, the motivation to succeed.
THREE: FOCUS is the distraction-proof ability to put your attention on the critical variables, the most essential elements, involved in success in your particular field. All the fire and faith in the world is pointless if you don’t have the right things to aim it at!
When you have FAITH, FIRE and FOCUS, you are constantly renewing and restoring your mental toughness.
FAITH: Do you believe you can do this? What’s stopping you? There are always obstacles, but people developing mental toughness acknowledge barriers, and learn to negotiate them. Without faith, you’ll be knee-capped by self-doubt.
FIRE: Do you really NEED to do this? As coach Eric Thomas asks ‘do you want it like you need to breathe?’ Without the motivation, when the fire is out, you’ll struggle to motivate yourself.
FOCUS: Do you know where to place your focus? Are you busy fighting too many fires? Are you trying to deal with things out of your control? Is all your energy being poured into completely the wrong places?
And additionally, here’s 1 more quick tips:
Those with Mental Toughness are not moaners.
Don’t complain. Don’t whine. Don’t moan. The words we use have huge power over us and how we handle the experiences of life.
The more you complain, the more you focus on the negative.
Simply put, don’t talk about the problem, talk about how you’re going solve it. That’s mental toughness!
It’s within your control to start building your mental toughness today. Have FAITH, you can do this, stoke the FIRE, you need to do this for you, and FOCUS your efforts on the things that really make the difference. And if you think that I can help you with this, please do get in touch.