To be mentally strong means that outside forces cannot sway your confidence. This, in turn, means that you can make decisions that benefit you instead of being manipulated by external people and events. But if you’re not mentally strong, how can you become so?
The answer is by training yourself to think differently. Mentally-strong people do things differently than other people. They also have different thought patterns. If you’d like to develop more of these skills, then pay attention to the five tips on this list: You could become more mentally strong because of them.
1. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
It’s likely that you have things that make you feel afraid. Everyone does. Feeling afraid is normal, but that doesn’t mean you should sit on the sidelines when fear strikes. This does not mean you keep doing the same routine to avoid your anxieties.
Quite the contrary. According to Psychology Today, stepping out of your comfort zone and doing the things that scare you strengthens your “fearlessness muscle,” so to speak.
Attacking these challenges, whether that means applying for a job that’s just out of your reach or signing up for a dance competition, helps you face your limiting beliefs. Most obstacles that you face just represent aspects of you and your beliefs. After all, most people believed that human beings couldn’t run a four-minute mile before Roger Bannister did. Now, lots of people do.
2. Get Better Coping Skills
If you don’t have very good coping skills, then you may fall victim to some very unhealthy habits, according to an article on the Inc.com website. Unhealthy habits are the ones that make us eat or drink too much when we feel down.
Better coping skills include going for a jog, spending time with friends, journaling, or doing yoga to combat stress. Mentally-strong people have coping skills that keep them empowered and therefore, better able to handle what comes their way. Adopt a few of these healthy habits and see how much more empowered your thought becomes.
3. Challenge Your Habits and Your Thinking
Very often, we get stuck because we consistently think disempowering thoughts. One way to change this is by participating in activities that force us to think differently about the stories we tell ourselves. For example, you can combine out-of-the-ordinary tools, like tarot cards, with more conventional therapies, like journaling to help you identify disempowering thought patterns about your work, relationships, and health.
Here’s how that would work. The article from Psychic 2 Tarot entitled The Ultimate Tarot Card Guide explains that the Suit of Wands gives insight into your career and business propositions.
So, let’s say you pull the seven of cups, which suggests that you daydream too much and don’t take action on your dreams and goals. You could journal about this to see how this applies to your relationships. Ask yourself if it’s true.
If it is, then determine some things you can do to change your thinking. Some habitual thought patterns can be changed by the act of journaling, while others require you to get more support. If the latter turns out to be the case, then seek professional guidance from a counselor or other mental health professional.
This professional can suggest some tools that will help you better cope with your challenges. This will ultimately help you become mentally tougher as you learn not to succumb to disempowering thinking habits.
4. Let Your “No” be “No”
Maxim points out that people who feel disempowered and stressed, usually have difficulty saying “no” to people. It makes them feel guilty to do so. But not doing so means that they overextend themselves and do a lot of things that they don’t want to do.
If you count yourself among those who don’t want to say this important two-letter word, then learn to get over this feeling. In fact, you can combine this step with step one: If saying “no” makes you feel uncomfortable, then practice saying it often until you no longer feel guilty.
You might have to start small on this one. Automatically saying “yes” to things you don’t want to do usually arises from a lifetime of habitually dishonoring your own wishes.
Know as well that many of the people around you count on the fact that they can get you to do things you don’t want to do: They benefit from your unwillingness to turn them down. By starting with small “no’s” and working your way up to bigger ones, you’re building a foundation of mental toughness. Eventually, saying “no” gets easier.
5. Leave Mistakes in the Past
The Huffington Post highlights an important fact: What you focus on has a profound influence on your emotions. People who are mentally strong learn from their mistakes. Then they leave them in the past where they belong.
By doing this, they allow themselves to garner the wisdom that their experiences can give to them, without being crippled by the things they did in the past that they regret. The truth is, sometimes, the only way to develop a storehouse of wisdom is by making mistakes and making a lot of them.
While you may not exactly feel thrilled about the mistakes that you make, they don’t have to haunt you if you change your thinking about them. Sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know: Mistakes point out what you don’t know. This, in turn, allows you to look at the skills and beliefs you need to develop in order to become stronger.
Mental toughness counts as the most important tool in your arsenal when it comes to achieving your goals and to live a more empowered life. Most people need to be taught to be mentally strong, which means if you’re not, you can become so with the right training. Doing things, like learning to say “no” or taking steps to challenge your habitual thinking helps you to develop these skills.
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