But here are five that can get you started:. Core beliefs develop over time and largely depend upon our past experiences. Sometimes, core beliefs are inaccurate and unproductive.

Therefore, your core beliefs may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Identify and evaluate your core beliefs. Look for beliefs that are black and white, and then find exceptions to the rule. Modifying core beliefs requires purposeful intention and hard work, but it can change the entire course of your life.

You can, however, choose to prepare for it. Focus on what is only within your control. Save your mental energy for productive tasks, such as solving problems or setting goals. The more you practice expending your mental energy wisely, the more it will become a habit.

Catch your negative thoughts before they spiral out of control and influence your behavior. Identify and replace overly negative thoughts with thoughts that are more productive.

In fact, mental strength requires you to become acutely aware of your emotions so you can make the best choice about how to respond.

Mental strength is about accepting your feelings without being controlled by them. Mental strength also involves an understanding of when it makes sense to behave contrary to your emotions.

Make notes in your training log so you can refer back to them later. Compare your results to previous days when you have completed the same or similar workouts. Over time, you will develop mental toughness during these specific intervals which will translate to enhanced focus at those critical moments.

Setting specific short-term goals on a regular basis will take your training to the next level of performance! We all want to have a good performance on race day.

But how many athletes actually visualize what they will need to do during competition in order to achieve their goals? Whether you do it in the few seconds before the gun goes off, or the minutes before your head hits the pillow every night, making visualization part of your training routine will bring you one step closer to mental toughness.

However, like physical training, the key is repetition and specificity. If you only visualize one time before the race for a few seconds, chances are you will not even remember it and there will be no positive impact on your performance.

Similarly, if you simply visualize a general swim start without any specific details about your strategy, the impact will be negligible.

Repeating this vision before every open water swim training session will increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome on race day.

Repetition and specificity will make your visualization more efficient, which is a valuable tool to have in your mental toughness arsenal.

When things get tough, what do you say to yourself? Much like visualization, positive self-talk is a strategy that should be repeated during your regular training routine in order to be most effective. Find a few mantras that work best for you, and are related to each sport or discipline. Remember—you are saying them in your head or to yourself, so nobody has to know!

Every athlete with competitive experience will tell you that unexpected things happen during races. However, part of being mentally tough is the ability to handle stress and overcome it in a competitive atmosphere. Putting yourself under stress during training, both physically and mentally, will prepare you to deal with adversity on race day.

Weather conditions are beyond your control, but you can prepare for them. Aside from weather , sometimes things just do not unfold as planned during a race. Effective stress management in these situations requires all three of the previous tactics: short- term goal setting, visualization, and positive self-talk.

It may feel like your life is ending if you've suffered a traumatic event or you've been sidelined by a major injury, but you can build mental toughness by keeping your perspective. Another thing that might help build mental strength: reflecting on past experiences and how you handled them.

What went well, and what would you have done differently? This type of self-reflection helps build up your stores of resiliency as you learn from past obstacles and put those insights into practice. Emulating somebody you admire is a great way to build mental toughness.

After all, if they overcame similar challenges, why can't you? See how they moved through and past it. I also relearned how to surf and taught her how to wakeboard! In fact, building your own support system is an incredible way to give your mental toughness a backbone. In fact, research from the journal Psychiatry shows that having social support helps build resilience to stress.

Not sure where to start? A professional coach—whether career, life, or fitness-specific—can give you specific strategies and routes to the metaphorical finish line.

Or even a group text made up of your best friends can give you encouragement and major cheers when you make progress toward your goal. Your social support system will help boost you up when your mental strength is flagging. Paying it forward helps others, but it can also improve your mood, mindset, and entire outlook on life.

Focus on ways to exceed others' expectations. Be the role model, mentor, shoulder-to-lean-on for someone else. Selfless acts are contagious. Plus, getting involved in your local community can help you develop the internal and interpersonal skills you need to build mental toughness—like empathy, problem-solving, developing new skills, and being a positive role model.

Exercise and mental toughness go hand-in-hand. Pushing yourself past your physical limits is uncomfortable, difficult, and stressful on the body. Seriously— according to Harvard Health , exercise is a form of physical stress.

Every rep, every dumbbell you pick up, helps you prove to yourself that you can do hard things and overcome previously insurmountable hurdles.

The benefits of regular fitness can actually change your brain chemistry too. A study from Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience showed that regular exercise helps the brain build resilience against cognitive impairment, setting you up for a long, healthy life and plenty of mental toughness.

On the other hand, having a strong mind can help you tackle physical challenges with—well, if not ease, than with optimism and determination. With a heightened awareness that recognizes if one hamstring is a bit tight or whether your form is a little bit off, you have a better chance of crushing your workout goals.

Want to keep learning about how to build mental toughness? We recommend checking out these books and resources on mental toughness:. The Science of Developing Mental Toughness in Your Health, Work, and Life , by James Clear: James Clear is the best-selling author of Atomic Habits , which helps readers create good habits and break bad ones.

This article dives into why mental toughness is so important throughout your life. The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It , by Kelly McGonigal: This book helpfully reframes stress as a good thing and offers tactical tips on how to harness stress and learn from challenging experiences.

Prefer listening to reading? Try watching this TED Talk from Angela Lee Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. In it, she explains grit a concept very similar to mental strength and why she views it as a predictor of success.

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Social Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Copy link to clipboard Share via email. In this article Arrow Introduction to Mental Toughness Arrow The 6 Habits to Cultivate Mental Resilience Arrow The Role of Exercise in Mental Toughness Arrow.

Introduction to Mental Toughness. What is Mental Toughness? Why is Mental Toughness Important? Here are four simple ways to sharpen your mind and push through challenges. Going through rep 8, 9, and 10 on the third round, you feel tired and want to put the bar down to take a break.

The more you do this, the more you would be able to decide when they should put the bar down rather than the warning signs from your body derail your progress.

You physically have the ability but you mentally need to keep yourself on track and this is where the mental toughness comes in. The next two techniques have to do with the amount of rest that happens when the bar is down or when you are transitioning from one movement to the next movement.

Many times we feel that we push ourselves so hard and do so many reps that we congratulate ourselves with a longer rest.

However in most circumstances, fitness style events are not won because someone did reps faster. They are won because there is less rest time, less time where nothing was happening, and more active time that reps are being cut down. There are two parts to this mental training.

Have you ever put the bar down, walked away from it, circled around your area, then finally made your way back to the bar? The first part of this training would be to keep your feet planted right by the bar.

You stayed in it. By keeping your feet right there, you are training your mental toughness. Taking control of your rest time in this fashion takes mental toughness.

To improve this you need to be sure that you are counting seconds, not breaths. This way, you could have a countdown at 7-seconds and get you moving again at the 10th second.

Again, this is not a physical toughness characteristic. The ability to get back on the bar regardless of how you feel, or how many reps you did, is a mental game that takes practice and training to improve. No matter what the WOD is, get in the practice of counting your rest time, and then making yourself stay on whatever plan that you decided.

We all have lives with a million things going on in them. We have stress with family, jobs, money, school, illnesses, you name it.

The easiest thing in the world is to justify not coming to the gym and training because these things have tired you out. Keeping that time in your schedule is important. The more often it happens the more regular it is. The more of a habit it becomes and your natural default.

It may just mean that you stretch, or that you do the mobility, or that you do the workout but with very low intensity and weight. But you need to get there.

We all know that physical toughness can be improved by doing more work. But what is even more important than during more work is consistency over time. Just by being there you are winning. But get there. Get in your car and go there anyways.

But by you being there you are training the mental toughness aspect and, again, fortify those barriers to letting anything derail you from your path. A post shared by Bill Grundler billgrundler.

You might be reading this and thinking that these strategies seem way too simple to be effective. Our level of mental toughness will help us achieve the things we want: the goals in our lives or the tasks.

Mental toughness training obviously goes hand-in-hand with physical training. But mental toughness is needed in all areas of life. And just like your muscles, it needs to be trained regularly and practiced to success. We all have the ability to achieve some level of mental toughness, but we need to practice it every day.

Take these simple techniques and use them to build your defenses against the world that is trying to derail you from your goals.