Whether you realise it or not, you already have mental strength. How much mental strength you possess will depend on many factors such as your job, your family, and the other people you surround yourself with. What is important is that because it is not a case of whether or not you have mental strength, but rather how mentally strong you are, you can always work to better your mental strength. In this post, we will cover ways for you to develop your mental strength.
What is mental strength?
Mental strength involves skills such as resilience, self-control, willpower, confidence, and dedication. It is the thing that helps you persevere when the going gets tough. Great mental strength helps you have the dedication and self-control to achieve your goals and helps you manage tough situations.
Ways to develop mental strength:
1) Take control of your emotions
Mental strength involves learning about controlling your emotions rather than pushing the emotions aside and ignoring them. Emotional control is all about how well you identify and then manage emotions. Controlling your emotions is not always easy! It is a skill you will need to spend a good amount of time practicing. When you feel negative emotions, it is best you don’t push them down and bottle them up, because otherwise, those bottled emotions will come streaming out.
It is better to face the emotions and acknowledge them. You might feel angry, sad, or frustrated at a given time. Sometimes it can be unclear, so to identify exactly which emotions you are experiencing, ask yourself how you are truly feeling. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the fog of negative feelings. When you label the emotion it makes it far easier to process it. From there, you can look at what caused you to feel this way and how you can best deal with the emotion going forward.
Great mental strength requires identifying and managing your emotions, so keep at it, with time you will get there! By being aware of your emotions and acknowledging their existence, you can put them into perspective, rationalise them, and even channel them for productive purposes.
2) Watch your words
Your own words impact you more than you may realise. The words you speak can directly affect your attitudes, your outlooks, your emotions, and your actions too.
Let’s look at this scenario: There is a task at work you really don’t want to have to do. So, you let out your frustration by spending 10 minutes complaining to a workmate about the task.
Firstly, you have just wasted 10 minutes which you could’ve been working on the task. Secondly, you have also spent those 10 minutes building up negative emotions about the task inside yourself. When it comes time for you to work on the task, you will be feeling worse than you would have if you did not dwell on the negative thoughts. You will then want to procrastinate further. This builds a mental and emotional barrier around the task which you will then need to overcome. Lastly, what we hear impacts how we feel, so the conversation with your workmate may have left them with a bunch of negative emotions too. What is even worse is when these conversations are reoccurring. It can be extremely draining for yourself and your workmate.
With this example, please note that you should feel comfortable talking about events and tasks that bring you negative feelings. In fact, conversations centred around feelings are very helpful. It becomes an issue if you build a habit of complaining and using conversation as the only outlet for your emotions. In the example above, you see the toll it can take. This habit may highlight a need for an attitude shift or a lifestyle change.
It is therefore very important to watch what we are saying when we interact with others. Being mindful of your words will enable you to practice self-control and emotional control.
3) Practice self-compassion
You deserve kindness and compassion. Read that again.
You deserve the kindness, support, and encouragement that you show other people in your life. You know what they say, “Treat others the way you want to be treated“. Let’s flip that around and say, “Treat yourself the way you want others to treat you”.
Rather than being critical, harsh, and judgmental towards yourself, show some compassion! When you make a mistake or are feeling inadequate do not beat yourself up. Build yourself up! Instead of tearing yourself down, try offering yourself a compliment or some encouragement. One skill that is very beneficial to learn is turning a negative thought about yourself into something constructive and goal orientated. For example, if you are not feeling confident in your body, let that feeling become your drive to change your body so that you feel as confident as possible! This positive twist on an initially bad feeling can be great to help you be kinder to yourself. Self-compassion is a super powerful way to build resilience and help yourself to develop the mental strength to bounce back from adversity.
4) Shift your brain’s reactions
By shifting your brain’s automatic responses when faced with challenges, you can develop your mental strength. Our brains hold two types of thinking systems; a hot system, and a cold system. Hot thinking is fast and impulsive whereas cold thinking is slow and rational. When faced with a stressful problem it is common to respond swiftly using your hot thinking system. Responding this way, with less rationality, may lead you to make poor actions and feel like the problem is the end of the world rather than what is actually just a mild inconvenience.
So, what can you do about this? When a situation arises, take a minute and take a deep breath. Let the hot thinking system run its course in that minute and wait to take action. That time allows your brain to transition to the cold system and become more rational. Then you will better process the emotions that come with this scenario. Once you are feeling calm, assess the situation with a rational mind. Ask yourself critical questions like, “is this a complete disaster or am I overreacting in the heat of the moment?” or, “is this a failure or something I can learn from?”. When you take the time to assess and rationalise the situation, you can start coming up with ways to work through the adversity of the situation.
By practicing shifting your brain’s response from being impulsive, emotionally driven, and irrational to being calm and rational, you can build greater resilience and emotional control. You will gain a deeper level of confidence in the control you have over yourself and your actions.
5) Learn to deal with discomfort
Discomfort is an unavoidable part of life and unfortunately dealing with discomforting situations can be nerve-wracking. Learning to challenge yourself with things that make you feel uncomfortable develops self-confidence. A challenge could be doing things like offering your opinion in a work meeting or saying no to an event you would otherwise feel pressured to go to. These challenges push you out of your comfort zone and help your brain overcome the negative emotions that may arise when uncomfortable situations occur.
Look out for opportunities in your everyday life to create some discomfort and challenge yourself! Like anything, developing mental strength comes with practice. Once you have found your focus, practice until it no longer feels discomforting or scary for you. When it is no longer a barrier for you and you feel comfortable doing whatever your focus was, move on to the next thing. Keep expanding that comfort zone! There will be times it is super difficult, so do your best to remain resilient. Try, try, try. Over time, this will help you realise that you are more capable than you think. Stepping up to the challenges we’ve mentioned will help you have confidence in your ability to deal with situations that bring out some of the more discomforting emotions.
6) Increase your willpower
Willpower is like a muscle, it gets fatigued when it is overused. On a day-to-day basis you therefore only have a certain amount of willpower to exercise. This is why after a busy day at work using your willpower to avoid distraction and concentrate on your work goals, you find it difficult to gather enough willpower to motivate yourself to go to the gym or to resist an unhealthy treat when you get home.
However, like a muscle, willpower can be strengthened. One such way is to cultivate the right environment for yourself. For example, if your goal is to maintain a healthy diet, one way to change your environment to assist you is to not keep naughty treats and non-nutritious foods in your home. Doing this helps you avoid having to find the willpower to resist the temptation of digging into your treats. If your goal is to get up and run in the morning, help yourself by getting all your gear ready the night before so that you can just get up and go the next morning. The better prepared you are, the less willpower you have to find during those cold winter mornings!
Another way to increase your willpower is to develop replacement behaviours for when you are struggling to exercise self-control. This is done by identifying your triggers and having better behaviours in place for when you are triggered. Replace the behaviour that concerns you with another that will neutralise the impact of temptation and keep you on track to achieve your goals. Using the example from above, say you sit down to watch an episode of a TV show on Netflix and that suddenly triggers the temptation for a sweet treat. Instead of giving in to the temptation to eat a treat, replace it with more positive behaviour such as drinking a glass of water or going for a quick walk!
7) Know you don’t have to go it alone
Part of being mentally strong is having the self-awareness to recognise when a challenge or situation is beyond your capacity for dealing with it alone. It is also having the confidence to reach out to your support networks for that additional support to help you cope with the challenge or situation.
The development of mental strength is definitely a personal journey. You may find some unique ways of improving your mental strength over time but be open to suggestions peers give to you and don’t be shy to seek advice from them! Remember: asking for help when you need it is not a sign of weakness!
Additionally, when trying to develop mental strength you may find it beneficial to talk to someone about the journey. They can help to hold you accountable for your journey, be a soundboard for any challenges you face along the way, and provide any other support they feel capable of offering.
8) Fight procrastination
Procrastination is the arch-enemy of achieving your goals. Luckily you can combat it by practicing some of the skills that develop your mental strength. If you really stop to analyse yourself when procrastinating, you will find that it is not necessarily the task that you are avoiding, but rather it is the emotions surrounding the task that you are avoiding (i.e. the task feels difficult, overwhelming, and unpleasant).
Instead of procrastinating and avoiding tasks, exercise your mental strength related skills such as self-control and dedication. For many tasks, you can break them down into bite-sized pieces so that you can chip away at them over time until the task is complete. Another way to do something you’re procrastinating over is to say to yourself, “I will do this task for 15 minutes and then assess how I feel”. Often the greatest obstacle is getting started. If you get over that initial obstacle, the negative feelings will subside and allow room for your dedication to take over, making the activity feel easier to deal with. The less you procrastinate, the more you achieve and the more you grow!
