No matter your decisions in life, obstacles will always present themselves. You will have to be able to build up your resilience and your ability to solve challenges. For that reason, mental toughness is required in all areas of life. Mental toughness is the inner drive to push through and pursue your goals. Furthermore, it is an integral part of your character and prevents you from being a quitter. It gets you places that your personal skills, strengths and talents cannot.

Mental Toughness Leads to Success

Mental toughness is a “muscle that needs occasional flexing”. Mental toughness constantly requires nurturing your self-esteem and improving your attitude. In addition, it involves letting go of fears, taking on challenges, staying focused and failing up. Mental toughness keeps you motivated, overcomes self-doubt, helps you face your fears, regulate your emotions, listen to your inner voice, accept, learn and bounce back from your mistakes.

The Habits Of Mentally Tough Leaders

Leaders have to handle difficult situations on a daily basis in the workplace and still have to make space for their personal lives. Furthermore, they have to build a vision from the ground up, communicate and maintain their vision. At the end of the day, to be successful and efficient, leaders need to be mentally tough. Generally, mentally tough leaders have been through challenging situations and came out stronger.

1. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Self-Confident

They experience life outside of their comfort zone, take risks and overcome failure.

2. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Able to Manage Their Emotions

They are able to control their emotions. Furthermore, they are selective of the people around them. They share their emotions only with the people they can trust.

3. Mentally Tough Leaders Face their Fears and Take Action

They overcome their fears and risk failure to achieve success.

4. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Selective Of Whom They Associate With

They patiently select their support system. Their support system is positive, will celebrate their success, and share their vision and mindset.

5. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Self-Disciplined

They maintain a routine, a healthy diet and exercise regularly to secure their health and wellness.

6. Mentally Tough Leaders Know how and when to say No

They don’t people please and say no without feeling guilt or regret.

7. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Independent

They do not compare their progress with that of others. They are their own competition. They mind their own business, don’t care about people’s opinion of them and are accountable for their decisions.

8. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Ready and Equipped for Anything

They don’t operate out of fear or under pressures of office politics. They do the right thing and keep their conscience clear at the risk of losing their job.

9. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Obsessed with Productivity and Positive Outcomes

They are focused on becoming more productive and successful.

10. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Strong

They are ready to fight for what they want until the end.

11. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Responsive

They aim to make a sound decision whether it is under pressure or not.

12. Mentally Tough Leaders Are Willing to Learn

They need to keep learning, evolving, and adapting to changes.

13. Mentally Tough Leaders Possess Control

They have control over themselves, their thoughts and circumstances.

14. Mentally Tough Leaders Focus On the Right Priorities

They value quality of work over quantity.

15. Mentally Tough Leaders Realize the Likelihood of Developing Decision Fatigue

They know that they can burnout so they maintain a healthy lifestyle and keep making the best decisions for their teams. every task takes away energy and a fatigued mind is ineffective.

16. Mentally Tough Leaders Build Themselves Up

They maintain a flexible schedule for activities meant to build up their mental toughness. They take care of themselves with specific and routine activities.

17. Mentally Tough Leaders Stay Positive

They are positive in their way of thinking and associate themselves only with positive things. They think positively about themselves and their team. They believe that they are what they think.

18. Mentally Tough Leaders Put Quality first

They delegate and encourage their team to produce quality work.

How do you become mentally strong?

To become mentally strong, there are several skills you need to acquire. Suitable skills are developed after many trials and failures. After years of training yourself, you can develop:

• A Hyper Focus Mindset. You don’t allow distractions to clutter your mind and take you out of your zone.

• A Winning Mindset. You must believe in your expertise and believe that you will succeed no matter what.

• Willpower. You must be able to stay on to of your goals until you have achieved them, despite the obstacles or your fears. Your willpower has to be maintained through relaxation methods and healthy activities.

• Composure. You are able to stay calm under pressure.

• An Ability to Handle Failure. You must acknowledge that a mentally strong person can fail too. If you have failed, you must extract a lesson from it.

• Accountability. You must own up to your mistakes, overcome negative emotions, learn from failure and move on.

• Preparedness. You must plan and prepare for the unexpected.

• A Readiness to Take On the Challenge. You must face and embrace whatever challenge comes your way.

• An Ability to Optimize Stress. You are able to take advantage of a stressful environment and still reach your objectives.

• A Capability to Stretch Out the Limits. You stretch your limits and are able to achieve your objectives in spite of physical discomfort or mental stress.

The Qualities Needed to Develop Mental Toughness

Mentally tough people possess numerous qualities too that shine through when push comes to shove. These qualities are ingrained in their personalities and in their character. In general, mentally tough people:

• Are Self-Motivated. Your drive to succeed comes from within and you are capable to endure for what you love to do.

• Maintain Positivity. You are able to get in the zone, to stay focused on positive thoughts amid the chaos or in high pressure situations.

• Visualize The Life They Want. You visualize the outcome of a task from beginning to end before performing it which makes it easier to implement.

• Meditate. Meditation reduces stress, clears your mind and allows you to relax.

• Talk Positively To Themselves. You can coach and motivate yourself with your own words.

• Constantly Seek Discomfort. You get out your comfort zone frequently and are able to handle whatever life throws at you.

• Are Prepared For The Unexpected. You will have to be prepared and have experienced everything in life in the worst possible conditions so you don’t break or have to be taken by surprise.

Review

Mental Toughness: Essential Principles of Leadership and Success by Mak Hill is an easy to read and straight to the point motivational book. Truthfully, I had this book on my shelf and was eyeing it for a very long time. Though the principles in this book are known, this book has put a lot of things in perspective for me and has reminded me that perseverance is key to success. I truly recommend this if you are seeking more for yourself, want to quiet their mind and take back control, are going through challenges or have taken heavy hits lately. As cliché as it may sound, it teaches you that:

• You have to believe in yourself and stand up for what you want.
• When life gives you lemon, you have to make lemonade.
• Quitting should not be made a habit.

Try one principle at a time and observe the results. Every time, you acquire a skill, move on to the next one until you become mentally strong.

Let me know below what you think about this book!

Favorite quote(s)

Mental toughness for an individual is his ability to deal with pressures, stressors, and challenges, and to give the best possible results, in spite of the circumstances that individual finds himself in. Others define it as the ability to rise after failures and setbacks, and the resolve to spot and take hold of the opportunities that come up. Experts swear by the fact that grit, or mental toughness, plays a critical role in your achievement of anything in life. This is excellent news to many of us who desire success in some activity but do not carry the genes. We can still be top achievers, if only we become mentally tough. In itself, success is not an event that finds you; it is a state of mind. The courage and strength to win develop internally, in the brain. If you want to reach your goals and become a success, you must learn how to get that mental strength by yourself. Keep in mind that calm, smooth seas do not make adept sailors; it is the violent and turbulent ones that do. The challenge you encounter in the course of your life will not matter, what matters is the reaction you will have towards it. Developing the right attitude towards failure will require you to know that failure does not condemn your abilities; it is merely a reaction or feedback to the effort put.

Ratings 4/5

About the author

Mak Hill Subscribe to Journey To Leadership Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2021