Is Mental Toughness the Key to Success? What It Is and How You Can Build It.

Life is full of negative events, crises, challenges and stressful situations. They are a requisite part of the human experience. How we meet these adversities differ from individual to individual, but why is that? Why do some persist through hardships, demonstrating mental toughness, while others are more prone to give up?

Psychologists point to mental toughness as a defining factor in resilience and perseverance.

According to research, mentally strong individuals are better able to inhibit their impulses and behaviour in order to select a more appropriate response and commit to current tasks. They have the ability to adopt coping strategies that effectively manage stress and use positive motivational imagery and self-enhancing humour. These characteristics lend themselves well to successful learning, academic results, work performance, and other achievements. Mental strength is also associated with positive psychological traits and better overall mental health.

What is Mental Toughness?

While mental strength may sound similar to resilience, resilience is only one characteristic. Resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity and grow from the experience so that we can handle difficult situations better the next time. Mental strength means you have resilience but also have a positive mindset. Most, if not all, mentally tough individuals are resilient but not all resilient individuals are mentally tough. The difference lies in the positive component. A mentally tough person sees challenge and adversity as an opportunity and not a threat and has the confidence and positive approach to take what comes in their stride.

So how do you know if you’re mentally tough?

10 characteristics of mental strength

The following are some key characteristics of those with mental fortitude:

1. Self-awareness
2. Resilience
3. Optimism
4. Delayed gratification
5. Adaptability
6. Confidence
7. Control over their emotions
8. Realistic perspective
9. Willingness to learn
10. Ability to embrace uncertainty

Much of these can be related to achieving professional and financial success, but what we’re truly after in life is happiness and contentment – things you can also achieve with mental toughness. The ability to let go and move on and look at life with optimism is a gift you can give yourself.

How to build mental strength

Both resilience and mental toughness can be developed through experiential learning. Either through targeted development, coaching or simply living through life’s natural challenges.

Studies on paralympic athletes demonstrate the impressive power adversity has in building mental fortitude.

Paralympic athletes typically have very high mental toughness. The research shows a combination of characteristics in these individuals such as determination, defiance, pragmatism, optimism, resilience, self-belief and independence. They also have strong cognitive strategies that include rational thinking, goal setting, pain management and control. What led to this strength came from a series of challenging formative experiences. When these experiences are combined with support and coping resources, reflective practices and more, the Paralympians build mental strength.

The findings suggest that anyone, at all ability levels, would benefit from demanding situations in a supportive environment in order to develop mentally tough characteristics, behaviors and cognitive strategies.

Physical exercise can help you build mental fortitude.

Stress surrounds us. While we can’t completely remove all our stress, research shows that by intentionally challenging our bodies through exercise, we can actually adjust how we respond to stress. The level and intensity of exercise needed to build such mental strength depends on the individual.

Studies on mice offer clues to why exercise can help us be mentally tough. In one series of experiments, researchers studied the stress response in two groups of mice: one active, one inactive.

Scientists checked the mice for a brain chemical called galanin, which is known to increase with exercise and is associated with good mental health. The active mice had higher levels of galanin. The next stage of the study exposed the mice to stress. The active mice recovered sooner, while the inactive mice were overwhelmed by the stress and took longer to resume normal activity.

Type of exercises that build mental strength

Movement

You don’t have to run marathons to be mentally strong. According to research, something as simple as walking can change the brain for the better.

Philip Holmes is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Georgia. His research on rodents shows that even moderate exercise can activate the locus coeruleus, a small brainstem nucleus that is crucial for attention, motivation, and cognitive function. Brisk walking in humans promotes the formation of neural circuits in the stress-resilient parts of the brain. Essentially, any aerobic exercise that increases your heart rate can be beneficial for resilience and mental strength.

Visualization and meditation

Another type of exercise that has shown to be beneficial is not physical at all, but mental. Visualization exercises and meditation can help you build the positive mindset essential to mental strength.

If we consider our most anxiety-inducing thoughts, they are usually about the past or some fear in the future. We regret and ruminate. What visualization and meditation can do is bring us into the present, where we can find that things are actually okay.

One meditation that is particularly effective at calming negative thoughts is a Body Scan. For this, you focus on each part of your body from head to toe with the goal of letting go of tension. Strong emotions and stress can manifest physically in the form of tight chests or knotted stomachs. Relaxing the body through this type of scan is one strategy for releasing these feelings. Researchers found that the Body Scan was associated with greater well-being and emotional regulation.

Another effective practice is Mindful Breathing. It can be done anywhere, throughout the day and involves bringing attention to the physical sensations of each breath. This can be done as a 15-minute meditation or fit in at a tense moment with just a few breaths. A study on mindful breathing exercises demonstrated the protective power of this practice. Those who completed the breathing exercise before looking at disturbing images reported lower negative emotions than those who hadn’t performed the exercise.

Finding motivation and support to build mental strength

While on paper, including physical and mental exercises into your life may seem quite simple, it can be challenging to establish these new habits. At Harrison, our clinical team is highly experienced in helping clients at all skill levels to create and stick to new, healthy habits.

With the right support, mental strength is something you can start building at any time. It will help you achieve your movement goals, and it may also be the key to success in several other aspects of your life.

Mental toughness has the power to transform how you approach life and what you get out of it. Being able to face the stress and adversity of life with strength is often something we admire in others, but you too, can achieve that level of peace and perseverance. We look forward to working with you.