10 Strategies To Build Your Mental Strength
So, now you know how tough your are mentally what can you do to build and maintain your mental strength?
Mental toughness isn't something you're born with.
Developing and maintaing your mental strength takes effort, time, commitment and practice - every day!
Here are 10 things you can do to build, improve and maintain your mental strength:
1) Set goals. We all need to have goals. Our brains are designed to work towards things we want to achieve, and we need both short-term and long-term goals. Goals need to be reviewed regularly, and amended if necessary. It's important to admit if you're not doing what you need to do to achieve your goals, but youalso need to set new goals once you've achieved then ones you've already set.
2) Help yourself to achieve success. If there's something that you give in to easily remove the temptation! For example, if you like to eat unhealty snacks rmeove them from the cupboard; just donl;t buy them anymore! You don't need to challenge or punish yourself everyday because things are are tempting are in your environment!
3) Think of the bigger picture. Don't give in to instant gratification just because you're finding things a bit difficult to deal with, e.g. reaching for that glass of wine, or spending money you don;t have. Giving in to instant gratification can lead to bigger problems. Always think of the bigger picture and hang in there. The more you tolerate uncomfortable situations and feelings the better you'll be at dealing with them.
5) Keep your emotions and logic in sync. We make decisions based on emotion and logic. The emotional decisions make us happy, and the logical decisions are boring. Weigh up the emotions involved in the decision with the pros and cons of the decision before you make the final choice.
6) Take responsibility. We all make mistakes. When you do, reflect on the mistake and why it happened, but don't;t make excuses for why it happened. Understanding the reasons helps us learn from the experience and develop a plan so that it doesn;t happen again. Remember, the first time it was a mistake, the second it was a decision.
7) Write a mission statement. Help yourself to stay focussed by writing a mission statement of what you want to achieve and why. Make sure your daily actions all lead youto fulfilling your mission statement.
8) Challenge yourself. We learn and grow by exposing ourselves to new experiences and stepping outside our comfort zone. Learn what you're comfortable with and then, each day, do something over the edge of the comfort boundary. Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
9) Use the 10-minute rule. Often the hardest thing to do is get started. When there's something you really know you need to do but really don't want to do, give yourself permission to stop after 10-minutes if you're still not mentally fighting it. The chances are that you'll have forgotten why you were putting it off in the first place and will just get it done!
10) Prove it to yourself. When your thoughts are busy telling you that you can't achieve something go all out to prove yourself wrong. Commit to pushing yourself just a little bit more each time you do something until you've achieved your goal, and then oush yourself a little but more. Give yourself evidence that you are mre capable than yougive yourself credit for; your brain will get used to the idea and start being more realistic about your abilities.