Life is full of unexpected turns and challenges. When faced with difficulties, such as illness, death, divorce, job loss, failure, or other painful and difficult life events, you may feel disoriented or shaken, as though the ground beneath you is no longer stable.
Tough times are inevitable in life, and during these tough times it’s not only your emotional health that is tested, but your mental strength as well. Learning strong coping strategies will help you remain on course despite the struggles of the moment.
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When life hands you a bunch of lemons, do you make lemonade?
Some people crumble at the first sign of adversity, and can remain stressed out for an extended period of time. Rather than working through their hardships, they just look for escape route.
Other people, however, rise to whatever challenge life throws their way. They have an incredible knack for turning setbacks into comebacks, and they tackle hardships with vigor, enthusiasm, and confidence.
What distinguishes these people is their will to keep going when others start dropping off. This persistence requires developing mental toughness—the ability to embrace uncertainty and discomfort while negotiating a way forward. They are able to overcome difficult situations by remaining cool, calm and collected. They are ready to seek solutions and get back on track. They do not let disappointments deter them from what they want. Instead, they stay focused and plan to be successful.
What do you do? Do you weather the ups and downs, only to come back stronger? Or do you hide under a rock until the storm blows over? How can you develop the kind of strength and perseverance that will keep you going? What’s the secret?
"Mental toughness" - keeping strong in the face of adversity
"Mental toughness" is frequently used colloquially to refer to any set of positive mental attributes that helps a person to cope with difficult situations.
It's the ability to maintain your focus and determination, despite the difficulties you encounter. Events in our life rarely go the way we'd like them to, but that doesn't mean you have to let it throw you off your track. Mental toughness gives you the tenacity to learn from your mistakes without the devastating blow failure can sometimes bring. This resilience and fortitude also gives you the strength to keep emotions in check when something in your life seems overwhelming and you need to be strong. Essentially, mental toughness is the internal strength or grit that allows you to keep going, keep pushing, and keep trying, even when the going gets tough.
Why is mental toughness so important?
If you want more out of your life, whether it's to do better on the job despite a competitive work culture, or enhance your skills no matter the severity of the roadblocks you've previously faced - then it's time to get mentally tough.
Without adequate mental strength, life's challenges can fill you with self-doubt, anxiety, and depression. Those uncomfortable feelings can then lead to negative thinking and affect your behavior and performance adversely. Staying strong in the midst of hardship requires you to manage your thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
Research reveals that your mental toughness plays a more important role than anything else for achieving your goals, whether those goals are in the area of health, business, sports, career, relationships or life in general. That’s good news, since there are many ways to develop a tougher mind!
Developing mental toughness to face challenges
We can all learn to be more resilient and mentally tough. It's all about being in the ideal psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual state, in order to get going and perform at peak levels.
Here are 8 tools to help you become more resilient during tough times
1. Have faith. “You are never given a problem that you cannot handle. Every problem that comes in front of you is to make you realize that you have the skill, talent and ability to come out of it! It is just for you to uncover your true potential.” There is so much uplifting wisdom in these words of spiritual master Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. To believe that whatever is happening is a blessing in disguise, and that nothing is permanent and this tough time will also pass, gives us much needed patience and positivity.