Having mental strength is important when accomplishing a goal, dealing with stress or embracing change. Being mentally and emotionally strong helps you cope with difficult moments in life and to keep persevering when you feel like you are hitting a wall or are close to quitting.
Mental strength is something you need in pretty much every area of your life. You might need the strength to find time to meditate each day, exercise, go to work or school and put yourself out there and make friends.
You may need the emotional strength to take care of yourself when going through a difficult time in your life. Even when things are going great, you may need mental strength to keep pursuing your goals and dreams. You will also need that strength when something unexpected happens and you find yourself feeling lost and overwhelmed.
1. Work on developing a positive but realistic attitude. Too much optimism may set you up for disappointment or may encourage you to be unprepared. Alternatively, too much negative thinking can discourage you from trying or believing that you can succeed.
When applying for jobs, I had to focus on finding a good balance with my attitude. I remained positive that the right opportunity would come along but also tried to be realistic that the process could take me months. I also was realistic about what my resume was lacking or needed work on.
Before investing in the application process, I worked to polish up my resume, created a personal website and focused on showcasing my best projects.
I worked to calm my mind when things didn’t work out in the way I had hoped. Keeping myself realistic kept me grounded through the process.
As a result, I got a job much faster than I anticipated but I didn’t allow myself to get discouraged or upset whenever an interview didn’t work out or a job never contacted me.
Focus on being realistic and honest about your situation. Yet, stay positive and know that you can achieve what you want if you are willing to do the research, do smart and hard work and take advantage of the right opportunities for you.
2. Push yourself out of your comfort zone each week. Mental strength means that you will need to get accustomed to doing something tough that pushes you in some way. Many of us struggle with doing something new because we live much of our lives in comfort.
Aim to do something different each week. You don’t have to do something big, but focus on doing something that makes you a little uncomfortable. For instance, just last week I ran around a new area in the evening that involved more hilly terrains and was a tougher workout than I’m used to.
Stepping out of your comfort zone could involve taking up a new hobby, working on a project that is a bit of a challenge for you, putting your idea into a story, initiating hang outs with your friends or joining a dating site.
You don’t need to avoid difficult things in life or be afraid of something different and new. There’s no better way to teach yourself that it’s okay to be out of your comfort zone by allowing yourself to be out of your comfort zone each week.
3. Break your task down to small manageable steps.When accomplishing a big goal or managing too many things at once, it’s best to break it down into small steps. Then focus on doing one step at a time until you reach your goal or clear out much of the work.
You don’t need to feel overwhelmed by doing everything right now. Break it down so you can focus on moving forward and getting started.
4. Give yourself a realistic timeline. Avoid making goals that sound vague. It’s easy to say “I want to lose weight and be healthy” or “I want to change my job soon” or “I’m going to travel someday.”
It’s wonderful to have things that you want to achieve but when you don’t have a timeline you might end up putting things on hold or allowing yourself to procrastinate on what you must do and let your goals take months or years longer to achieve.
For instance, if you want to switch jobs and become a programmer but currently have little to no knowledge of programming, avoid saying vague statements like “I want to be a programmer one day.” Instead give yourself a realistic timeline since you may be teaching yourself programming languages while balancing a full-time job and other commitments and priorities.
Instead you might say, “I’m planning to get a career in programming in two years. In that time I will focus on learning these languages, making these projects and forging strong networking connections.”
A timeline also encourages you to do the research, save money and learn more about what you want to do. If your goal is to visit a dream country, then this is a great time to set a realistic timeline and work to save up money each month that will go to your upcoming holiday.
5. Stay in the present. One of the worst things we can do is allow ourselves to feel anxious before getting started or procrastinate too much. Instead of getting started, you might be fearful of failure or not completing what you need to do.
Or you might focus on the past when you didn’t succeed and get things done like you should have. Or you might avoid what you need to do by distracting yourself with entertainment, your social life or even sleeping. Focusing too much on the past and future wastes time and encourages negative thinking. Avoiding what you need to do wastes time and makes a situation tougher than it ever needed to be.
When you do reflect on the past, use it as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and failures. Instead of dwelling on what happened, focus on what you can do now to make a different decision. Your struggles in the past made you who you are today, so embrace what happened.
Staying in the moment takes time and practice but it’s an important skill to develop. As you stay in the present, you can focus on what matters right now and stop allowing negative thoughts or avoidance to have power over your actions.
6. Take care of your health.To be mentally strong, you must be physically strong too. I’m not talking about being able to lift heavy weights either. I’m talking about taking care of your general health which includes eating the right foods, getting a solid amount of sleep and doing exercise throughout the week.
Attaining your goals and dealing with stress is much harder when you aren’t getting sleep and feel exhausted. Eating unhealthy foods can also help result in lower concentration, mood swings, fatigue and greater health problems in the long run. Imagine being overwhelmed by work and suddenly becoming sick which makes it far more difficult to manage your priorities.
Take steps to build and maintain a healthy body. You might notice that you become more mentally strong when you focus on making yourself physically strong.
7. Be accountable for what you can control and accept that there are things outside your control.Work to find the balance of taking responsibility for your life but not placing the blame for things outside of your control.
Unexpected things will happen in your life that are outside of your control and usually have nothing to do with you. Instead of being angry or blaming yourself for these roadblocks, work to accept these obstacles as a natural part of life.
Yet, there will be times where you make mistakes or played a part in what happened. That’s perfectly okay. You are human and capable of making a mistake. Take responsibility and control of your life and do something about it.
8. Find solutions. Life is full of challenges and problems. Instead of focusing on problems which are out of your control and will often happen unexpectedly, focus on finding solutions to your problems.
There is always a solution to your problem. When you are struggling to work out the best thing to do, reach out to your support network, do research or ask others who have struggled with similar problems in the past.
9. Embrace adversity. Failure, struggles and problems are inevitable. Instead of focusing on how you can avoid failure and problems, be realistic and accept that there will be times where you fail and problems will arise.
Failure is a part of life and the more you embrace that reality, the easier it will be to move forward when you do fail.
Also when you embrace adversity, you keep yourself well-prepared. You maintain an emergency fund when you unexpectedly need money. You maintain a strong support network that you can lean on when you need to. You place yourself in a strong position so that when an inevitable adversity does come, you will be prepared to push through.
10. Stay authentic to who you are and true to your values.All of us have limited time in a given day and you will be managing various priorities in your life. As a result, you might realize that you are investing too much time into something that you don’t care about or that you aren’t staying true to who you are.
It’s important to check in with yourself and be honest about if your lifestyle matches what you value. Having mental strength is easier when your life is aligned to what you value.
Several years ago, I realized that my lifestyle was not aligned with my value to maintain a healthy body. I was eating large amounts of bad food, not exercising regularly and could easily succumb to bad habits like drinking soda everyday. The lack of alignment was a source of stress and sadness in my life.
I decided to make a huge lifestyle change and make exercise something I do 5-6 times a week and ensure that I eat healthy for the majority of my meals. Making sure my lifestyle matched my values reduced my stress tremendously and helped me develop positive habits.
Touch base with yourself and ask yourself what you truly value. Are you committing enough time to the things or people you value the most? Are you investing too much energy into something that isn’t that important to you? Does your lifestyle match your values?