Mental Toughness: How To Handle The Tough Times

If we want to thrive in times of pressure, uncertainty and high stress, we have to have what some have called “Mental Toughness.”

Elite athletes have it.

Soldiers in combat better have it.

And if you ever face an extreme life challenge, such as a serious illness, a huge financial crisis or a relationship breakup…mental toughness will get you through it while others fall and don’t get back up.

But what is “Mental Toughness?”

What do you think of when you hear the term “Mental Toughness?”

Do you imagine someone who never gets their feelings hurt, is never fearful or who never gets even a little “depressed?”

That’s not “Mental “Toughness.” That’s what I would call emotional rigidity.

“Mental Toughness” isn’t about being a machine or a Mr. Spock.

It’s about being able to feel whatever we feel in the moment, without judgement. It’s about honoring our emotions and feelings and learning from them.

It’s about accepting our emotions, processing them and being grateful that we can feel something. Even if that something doesn’t feel so great in the moment.

It’s knowing we are more than our feelings.

It’s knowing feeling like a failure doesn’t mean we’re a failure.

It’s knowing “this too shall pass” and in due time we’ll feel better. If we fight our emotions, we’ll intensify them.

“Mental Toughness” allows us to embrace an emotion like sadness or even despair until it transforms into hope.

Until that happens, “Mental Toughness” allows us to cry, shout or feel hopeless for a time, knowing we’ll get through the tough times.

“Mental Toughness” is resilience; it’s what enables us to bend when the winds of stress are coming at us like a hurricane.

It’s okay to cry, to lose hope for a while, to be in pain.

I’m certain that elite athletes and the toughest of soldiers have cried, lost hope and felt great pain.

They’re mentally tough, not because they’ve never been through times like that, but because they have… and have grown from it.

The irony of “Mental Toughness” is this:  easy times don’t develop our mental toughness.

Tough times do.

Interesting.

We need mental toughness to get back up when we’ve been knocked down. We need it to persevere when we just want to throw in the towel. 

But building our mental toughness is kind of like building muscle, we have to be pushed at least a  little beyond our limits.

The fact is, tough times are required to build mental toughness.

Categorized in: Mastering Stress & Overwhelm