The Mental Toughness Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Facing Life's Challenges, Managing Negative Emotions, and Overcoming Adversity with Courage and Poise

by Damon Zahariades

The fact that an individual has excelled over the long run is sufficient evidence that he or she is mentally tough.

the general principle: mental toughness is our durability in the face of adversity.

After all, you have tremendous influence over your mindset. Control that, and the battle is nearly won.

First, it involves our reaction to stress. Do we crumble or persist? Do we give up or stay the course?

Second, it involves our responses to our emotions. What do we do when we feel frustrated? How do we deal with our anger and disappointment when life seems unfair to us?

Third, it involves our resilience. When things go wrong in our lives, do we dust ourselves off and get back on track or complain and blame others for our predicaments? Fourth, it involves our grit. When we face roadblocks to achieving our goals, do we press onward or concede defeat? Grit and mental toughness are often considered to be the same thing. In truth, they’re not. Grit is an attribute that defines our inclination to persevere in adverse circumstances. Mental t...

But mental toughness exhibited in one area of our lives often eludes us in other areas.

Benefit #1 - Greater Resistance to Negative Emotions

Benefit #2 - Improved Performance

Benefit #3 - Confidence That Circumstances Will Improve If you’re not resilient to adversity, it’s easy to become fatalistic when things go wrong. You may feel like giving up, convinced that life isn’t fair.

Benefit #4 - Greater Ability to Manage Stress

Benefit #5 - Less Susceptibility to Self-Doubt

Mental toughness doesn’t eliminate self-doubt. Instead, it prevents self-doubt from sabotaging your performance. It gives you a chance to acknowledge that even though failure is a possibility, fear of it stems from insecurity rather than hard evidence. Success is probably more likely than your inner critic insinuates.

Benefit #6 - Greater Clarity Regarding Your Intentions and Purpose

Benefit #7 - Fearlessness Fear of the unknown is one of the most common obstacles to our achieving our potential. It manifests in different ways, but one of these ways is familiar to us all: alarm at the prospect of venturing beyond our comfort zones.

Benefit #8 - Ability to Accept (And Learn From) Failure

Mental resilience prepares you to not only accept failure as a potential outcome of any endeavor, but allows you to learn from your mistakes.

Benefit #9 - Greater Ability to Delay Gratification

Benefit #10 - Willingness to Let Things Go We tend to hold onto things that have caused us emotional pain. Examples include mistakes that carried terrible consequences, perceived slights from others, and regrettable decisions from our distant past. These things can sometimes begin to define us.

Enemy #1: Self-Pity

Enemy #2: Self-Doubt It’s difficult to stay mentally

Enemy #3: Your Inner Critic This enemy is related to Enemy #2

Enemy #4: Fear

Enemy #5: Laziness

Enemy #6: Perfectionism

Enemy #7: Emotionalism

Enemy #8: Self-Limiting Beliefs

Write down how you normally react to unanticipated problems. Do you wallow in self-pity (e.g. “why does this always happen to me?”). Does your inner critic tell you to give up? Do you feel compelled to avoid or ignore the issues at hand? Do you procrastinate taking action due to uncertainty and fear of failure? Do you immediately feel frustrated and angry that life is unfair? Or do you instinctively roll up your sleeves and prepare psychologically to deal with whatever difficulties you face? This exercise will reveal your current temperament toward adversity. Keep in mind, there’s no shame in how you respond today to setbacks and obstacles. After all, the goal of this action guide is to gradually change your responses and behaviors when life gets tough. As we’ve discussed, that’s a long road. The purpose of this exercise is merely to get a fix on your mindset in the present. Time required: 10 minutes.

Remember, mental toughness comes from within you. It has nothing to do with receiving validation from others.

Step 1: Contemplate how you can apply mental toughness in your life.