There are many ways one could define mental toughness. What it comes down to, essentially, is your capacity to deal with challenges, stress, and outside social, family, work, and life pressure effectively. It is still possible, though, to perform at a high level, despite the circumstances being less than ideal. It’s the part of us that determines exactly how we will cope with difficulty.
Mental toughness, to a large degree, is the answer to many of life’s issues. Experts believe that mental toughness accounts for the variations in performance and outcomes among individuals. People who are mentally tough take accountability for their performance, don’t look for others to blame, adopt a healthy positive attitude, and go for it.
Mental Toughness Defined
Mental toughness essentially requires peak performance. That might seem scary, but for someone who possesses mental toughness, it’s just another challenge for them to face. Mentally tough people aren’t afraid of challenges, they tend to thrive on them. They have the skills necessary to take on what life sends their way. Your own mental toughness will also determine how well you perform under pressure. Think of it as the link between stress management and optimal performance. How can you operate at peak performance if you cannot cope with the challenges and stresses of life? Simply put, You can’t. So, mental toughness requires a measure of stress management.
Also important of note is that mental toughness can vary depending on the circumstances. You may be mentally strong, but certain setbacks and triggers may derail that for a period. If you experience the loss of a job, divorce, or death of friends and family that can take some time to get over.
Mental toughness has four main components. Thanks to our understanding of these components we can then define it, measure it, and develop it. This was discovered through research by the University of Hull’s Psychology Department. The components of mental toughness are confidence, control, commitment, and challenge. These are all instrumental aspects of mental toughness.
All four of these components, or qualities, are things that can be developed so, it makes perfect sense to realize that mental toughness is also something to develop and work on.
Mental Toughness is more than Resilience
Many people will falsely believe that resilience is the same thing as mental toughness. Although They are related, the latter is a much wider concept. Typically, resilience is described in terms such as challenge, commitment, and control. Those are three of the four aspects that we mentioned above, however, the missing component is confidence, which is crucial to mental toughness.
Modern life really is not any more stressful than what people dealt with in the past. It can feel as if we face greater stress considering work hours, technology, and balancing family and friends along with it. But you need to remember that people have always dealt with the same issues. It is much harder now, though, to get away from everything because we carry much of our stress (hint, it’s your phone) in our pockets and purses. Although the stresses of modern life are much the same as they always have been, technology makes it easier for stress to get a foothold in your life.
Conversely, it is also possible to be too mentally tough. Some people develop such a high level of toughness that they do so by robbing from other skills. You might be mentally tough, but are you empathetic to others? One without the other isn’t much use in the world. Interpersonal relationships will certainly suffer if you pursue only mental toughness do not cultivate the other skills needed in life.
What is clear is that mental toughness is a necessity. It is something that is required if you have plans to succeed in this life. As you work on developing your mental toughness, you will grow as a person because there are also other factors at play. Now you just need to decide how you plan to boost your mental toughness and set your sights on a goal to strive for.
