The Importance Of Mental Toughness

Creates a Winning Mindset Renowned world athletes such as Roger Federer, Lebron James, Brian Lara, the late Mohammad Ali, and many other exceptional athletes are prime examples of the importance of mental toughness in creating a winning mindset. When you are mentally tough, you do not play to lose: you only play to win. Your thinking is beyond the mindset of an average person. You do not consider ‘no’ an acceptable answer, and under high-pressure situations, you rise to the challenge because you are driven to win. Further, mental toughness helps you create a winning mindset because it encourages you to reach your full potential. When you are working at your highest potential, you reach peak performance; this gives you the advantage to win even when you under pressure. As you rake up more and more wins, your mindset becomes firmer and winning becomes your default thinking mode. NOTE: When I talk about winning, I'm not talking about being in competition with other people to see who has the best of X or Y.

What I mean is winning at life and coming out at the other end stronger and better. Increases Self-Confidence Self-confidence is your belief in your abilities, qualities, and judgments. Self-confidence and mental toughness are a close blood relative. For instance, when you are not mentally strong enough, you will question your ability to perform well in any situation. For example, if you have a speech to deliver, you will panic under pressure and probably make a fool of yourself in front of the audience. This affects your self-confidence, and you end up giving a poor speech because you broke under pressure. If on the other hand, you are mentally tough, you will not panic under pressure, and you will have faith in your ability to deliver a killer speech. Constantly working on building your mental toughness increases your overall self-confidence at work, home, or life. Moreover, when you are mentally tough, you quickly overcome past mistakes and failures. It allows you to build your confidence because you avoid lingering on mistakes long enough for them to damage your self-belief. Teaches Self-Discipline Self-discipline is the art of exercising control over your emotions, feelings, and behavior and overcoming your weaknesses so you can reach your goals. Mental toughness is crucial because it teaches you self-discipline, a very useful trait to have. Let me use an example to elaborate this. Soldiers are mentally tough because they undergo rigorous physical and mental training. Despite being around gunfire, blasts, and the threat of death looming over their heads, they perform at their peak.

The reason behind this is their grounded self-discipline that comes from being mentally tough. When a soldier is on the battlefield, he checks his emotions and even if he is afraid, he is mentally strong enough to overcome fear and perform exceptionally well. Sets You Apart Lastly, mental toughness is important because it sets you apart from the rest of the world. The difference between an ordinary human being and a successful person is the level of mental toughness. A leader of a country is responsible for millions of individuals, and yet, most world leaders do not crumble under pressure. However, a normal human being slips up and loses control even if they are responsible for taking care of a few. Why is this? Because a leader has developed his mental toughness and that is what sets him apart from ordinary folks.