WOW Mental Toughness (1 of 2)
According to Peter Clough, a leading researcher on mental toughness, mentally tough individuals tend to be sociable, competitive in many situations, and have lower anxiety levels than others.
With a high sense of self-belief and an unshakeable faith that they control their own destiny, these individuals can remain relatively unaffected by competition or adversity.
Those sound like some qualities you’d probably like to be known for too, am I right?
That is what this two-part series is dedicated to helping you with:
Developing WOW Mental Toughness.
So how do we identify mental strength, and what are the components we should look for?
According to research, mental toughness has four components:
Control
Commitment
Challenge
Confidence
Let’s use a couple references to understand these 4 Cs:
One fictional character has inspired generations of people: Bond.
Of course I’m talking about James Bond.
Bond, trained by MI6, is always cool and collected no matter the crazy situations he runs into. He may not be able to control the bad guys but he does control his own actions and you get the sense that he ultimately can control what is happening to him.
How about commitment?
Well I think this one is rather obvious. James Bond serves queen and country, laying his life on the line for his commitment. Much like our troops he will do what is necessary to get the job done because he believes in what he is doing and in those whom he is doing it for.
The third trait is challenge.
This is the tendency to see life’s downs and obstacles as challenges to be met. Bond never succeeds when he first attempts his mission. Some obstacle always gets in his way, but he runs at it every time. Being captured by the enemy might make lesser mentally tough people give up but Bond is constantly crafty and always looking for a way out or how he can turn the challenge to his advantage.
The fourth and final component of mental toughness is confidence.
Well, Bond just reeks of confidence. It’s part of his whole suave, debonair and virile attraction. A cinematic icon for over 50 years, James Bond is also a great representation of mental toughness.
Now let’s take a look at a real-life tough guy, Peyton Manning.
Manning’s mental discipline and strength is legendary. He isn’t necessarily the best quarterback of all time, or even the best athlete, but that doesn’t stop him from constantly striving to be better and doing so using mental toughness. Peyton definitely demonstrates each of the elements of mental toughness.
First control: No matter what happens on that field during a game you never see Manning overreact like so many other players. He’s very Bond—calm, cool and collected. You can see him thinking about how to handle the situation and take control on the gridiron.
Peyton’s commitment is legendary. I’ve seen it firsthand as he lives and works out in my building in South Beach Miami. He maintains his health and works at it constantly so that he can give every game and every throw his all. In the gym or on the field, he commits himself beyond the expectation. He is there before everyone else and long after.
Peyton Manning has faced his fair share of challenges as a pro football player. Hurt for an entire season because of a neck injury, he endured several surgeries. Yet even when everyone said this would be the end of his career, he came back stronger than ever. His injuries might have been an obstacle, but instead of seeing them as a threat to his commitment he saw them as a challenge that he could work to overcome.
The final trait of mental toughness that Peyton Manning displays is confidence. Like James Bond, Manning exudes a belief in himself and his abilities. Win or lose, he has the strength and confidence of mind to know he has the skills to meet his goals.
James Bond and Peyton Manning are just two societal examples of mentally tough people. There are many more fictional and nonfictional people who demonstrate qualities we identify as mental strength.
What we need to look at now is if we can identify those traits in ourselves. You might think people are born mentally tough but they aren’t. Like anything it comes through experience and hard work.
Sure some mentally strong people are that way because they have faced unimaginable hardships in their lives. Their mental toughness is a means of coping with that and preparing for it to happen again.No one is born mentally tough.
It comes from experience, grit and hard work.
The truth is, though, that we each experience our own types of hardships; it is how we handle them that define our mental toughness.
http://darrenhardy.success.com/2014/09/mental-toughness-1/
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