Well, regardless of how great your life ambitions are, achieving it all is tasking and can be difficult. This is basically because our daily activities can take a toll on us physically, emotionally or mentally.
Even those who have achieved success have also faced difficult situations. They face disappointments, failure, discouragements, weakness, stress, lack of resources and so much more.
As a result of all the ups and downs, some people kept on striving while some others gave up at some point. Some stay strong and persevere even when things worked against them.
This ability to stay strong no matter the difficulty is called MENTAL STRENGTH. It is recognized as a critical key to success. According to Duckworth, the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of "passion" and "persistence".
Mental strength/toughness is the ability to stick to something when the going gets tough. Irrespective of your current mental strength level, you can develop your mental strength to the level that helps you achieve the success you desire. The following practical steps will help you;
1. Develop a positive mindset.
A study by Cleveland clinic showed that the average individual has 60,000 thoughts everyday🙄. Of this, 95% repeat each day and 80% of this repeated thoughts are negative🤷🏼.
So to increase your mental strength💪🏽, start by focusing on building a strong positive mindset on a daily basis. This is not necessarily by building new strength but by saving your strength for the right tasks.
Think Positively.
2. Let Go of Self-limiting beliefs.
Self-limiting beliefs are those beliefs that hold you back from doing what you have to do to achieve success. They are those negative self-talk that suffocate our ability to think positively. For instance, "I can't do this", "I don't have what it takes to get here"...
Whenever they crop up, give yourself positive affirmations that contradict the negativity in your mind.
"I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me", Phil 4:13.
3. Ditch the dwelling
Do not waste your energy dwelling on misfortunes. Instead spend this energy on something that helps you achieve your goal.
When you're disappointed along your road to success, reduce the time you spend dwelling on it.
☎Call a friend and talk it through with them. You may get a different perspective on your situation.
💪🏽encourage yourself to move on because you're a human that can make mistakes or experience setbacks.
💃🏽find a way to distract yourself until you're calm.
4. Connect with your "WHY"
📖There should always be a "why" for all your short and long term goal.
This "why" is the purpose, cause or belief that inspires you to do what you do 🤔.
When you have a "WHY", its difficult for you to be distracted, discouraged or disengaged at your first experience of a setback.
But when you're not connected to your "why", you'll find it difficult to motivate yourself to achieve your most challenge goals.
Remember your "WHY" and keep it carved into your subconscious mind, it'll help you when you face challenges and difficulties.
5. Find Strength in Unity👬👭
Always know and remind yourself that you're not alone 👫. None of the prominent/successful people did all the work alone.
Steve Jobs didn't invent iPhone alone, Mark Zuckerberg didn't build Facebook alone.
When you closely look at all this successful people, there are a number of other people who offered guidance, encouragement and support in one way or another.
👫So have a group of cheerleaders 👯who help to keep your spirits up.
🗣Tell a few friends you trust about what you're doing and also let them know when things get tough.
🕵🏼find one person or a few people who have similar goals or need on accountability partner to give you a kick back in position when its needed.
Unite with people of like minds and see the additional strength you gain by relating, sharing ideas and rubbing minds together.
6. Find Intrinsic Motivation:
It is our innate desire to do something that satisfies us and nobody else. It is more powerful than a sheer stubborn willpower and drives us for a long haul.
You can have a strong "why", a group of cheerleaders, an ally and mentors but when you're not motivated from within you, all they'll say and try to do will not make any sense nor yield the adequate outcome.
But when you're motivated from your inside, the efforts of other people around you will act as a support and enhance what you're doing.
So let your motivation also stem from inside you. That's what will drive you through your long journey to success.
7. Be Patient with yourself🧘🏼.
As you stride to success, don't expect immediate result or rush things to fruition too early. One of the problems we have as humans is expecting that our work should start paying as soon as we start working💼 and when it doesn't, we begin to compare ourselves to others and sometimes give up.
I've observed that some prayers we make today is not for today's problems. Rather its for that day🗓 in the future when you may not have the strength to pray. This means that for any day you don't pray or do something in line with achieving your goal, a day in your future is going to be stranded.
Learn to be patient with yourself and remember that anything worthwhile takes hard work and endurance.
The daily effort 💪🏽you put in is what accumulates to produce success at the end.🚶🏼👍🏽
8. Have Self Validation.
Don't worry 🤷🏼about pleasing other people. Just as the population of world runs into billions, that's how different individuals can be. So imagine having to please the people around you per time. Trust me you'll get confused 😤at some point because you will have a set of different persons to please at each point in your life.
So instead of trying💪🏽 and worrying about how to please people, make an effort to do what you believe is RIGHT at all times.
Know and understand what your values are and what you believe in and stand by them.👍🏽
9. Be ready for change.
Yes you have very strong values and opinion about a lot of things. However, always remember that CHANGE is a constant. Since it us, you should also be willing and ready to be flexible and adaptable.
This helps you not to condition your mind to only one way things have to go. It keeps you ready and on track even when plans change course.
To bring this session of building mental toughness to an end, you have to:
10. Be in control of yourself.
You are responsible for your actions and emotions. Your ability to manage how you respond to what affects your actions and emotions is what gives you strength.
Therefore, do not hand over your power or control of yourself to others. People are going to say and do what they wish whether it hurts you or not. But how you respond to their actions and words is all within your power.
There are also something's you don't have control over, don't waste time complaining about them. Instead, recognize that you are in charge your own response and attitude.
Take charge of YOU.
Thank you for your interest in my posts. Don't forget to add your comment in the section below.
Thanks for the highly informative article.
ReplyDeleteIts my pleasure.
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