Finding difficulties to stay positive?
Life can be difficult, challenging, and incredibly unfair. In order to survive and thrive, you need to be mentally strong. Mental toughness isn’t a destination; it’s a journey. You need to be patient and spend enough time and effort on training your mind to be strong.
Here are some proven ways to boost mental strength and toughness.
It All Begins with a Positive Mindset
The first, and inarguably the most important, step in building mental strength is having a positive mindset. Mental toughness is all about staying calm in challenging situations, not getting stressed out, and staying optimistic. A positive attitude is critical to achieving that.
How can you build a positive mindset? There are a few proven practices that you can follow. Start by letting go of self-limiting beliefs. None of us is perfect. We all have limitations. Dwelling upon those deficiencies will deteriorate your mental health even further. Ditch the dwelling and start appreciating yourself.
Find and Connect with Your Purpose
Identifying and connecting with your “why” is another critical element to building mental toughness and having a focused mind. If you want to achieve a huge goal but you haven’t yet identified your “why,” you’re likely to get distracted and disengaged when you experience a setback. It isn’t possible to endlessly pursue a goal that you don’t have a purpose for.
There are two ways to find your purpose – extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is the motivation you get to perform an activity to earn a reward, such as money or recognition. In intrinsic motivation, you pursue activities to earn personal rewards, such as self-satisfaction.
Focus on One Thing at a Time
If you want to become mentally strong, leave multi-tasking to your smartphone and focus on one thing at a time. Our mind has a limited amount of energy. When you do multi-tasking, you exhaust all of that energy, which affects your mental toughness.
Learn to be in the present and try doing one thing at a time. When working, only focus on getting the work done. When having dinner, only focus on eating. Keep your mobile phone, emails, and calls on the side. When you spend time with your family, don’t let work and other things distract you.
Move Your Body
You might’ve heard hundreds of times that physical exercising is good for mental health, and that’s absolutely true. Physical and mental health and go hand in hand, and science provides that. Exercising normalizes neurotransmitter levels that regulate emotions like anger, anxiety, stress, happiness, etc.
When you exercise regularly, you can experience reduced stress, enhanced mood, improved mental clarity, and deeper relaxation. And it doesn’t really matter which exercises you do. All you need is to get your body moving.
Practice Mindfulness
Like physical exercise strengthens your body, mindfulness strengthens your mind. Exercising and training your brain is crucial if you want to develop mental toughness. There are myriad ways to practice mindfulness.
Meditation is one of the most common and widely practiced mindfulness techniques. Set aside 15-20 minutes of your day, preferably in the morning, and do some meditation. Find a quiet place to sit, close your eyes, and take deep breaths. While breathing, try maintaining focus and let go of any thoughts.
Apart from meditation, you can read books, listen to soothing music, do memory exercises, and do other things that put your mind to the test.
Spend Time with Yourself
It isn’t possible to train your mind to be tough if you don’t know yourself. Achieving mental toughness is all about knowing yourself well and understanding how you react in certain situations.
The only way to know yourself is to have more “me” time. Once in a while, take a break from work and life, and spend some time alone. You can go on a solo vacation to your favorite destination. However, a vacation may not be possible during this pandemic situation. In such cases, you can spend some time at home and read a book or watch your favorite TV show.
Set Rules and Limits
The final step in building mental strength is to set some rules and limits for yourself and strictly adhere to them. In this competitive world, pursuing a goal is crucial, but that doesn’t mean you should compromise other things that matter in life. It’s not right to be so consumed in pursuing a career path that you can’t make time for your family or loved ones.
To avoid this, set boundaries and limitations for yourself. Allocate a specific amount of time to work and ensure that you don’t spend more time on it. Of course, there will be exceptional days, and it’s okay to break the rules once in a while. But set and stick to rules and limits to the extent it is possible.
Final Thoughts
Mental toughness isn’t an option. The world is competitive, and the existing COVID-19 pandemic has made things more challenging for humankind. In such circumstances, being mentally tough is the key to survival. Follow the techniques discussed above to train your mind to stay strong.
