When I was asked to write this post, I was given a fairly wide open slate as far as which topic to write about.
Mental toughness is a tremendously fascinating and highly necessary topic. Mastery here carries with it a very high utility: the outright capacity to make some of your boldest and most ambitious ideas come to life.
Perhaps a good starting point is to consider exactly what mental toughness is…
The mental skill set requirements to achieve mental toughness differ across different occupations. For a triathlete, for example, the most important one might be mental endurance, while for a top surgeon it might be immaculate levels of concentration. A teacher might need to score higher in the arena of patience, while the CEO of a major corporation might need a much higher social IQ in order to extract motivation and excellence from such a diverse range of personalities.
We can extrapolate from this that mental toughness is a fluid and evolving concept, but that at its root, it is the cause of: thinking and action that supports your goals.
At the height of your powers, at your toughest, you could say that you have the highest percentage of thoughts and actions that are in your own best interest.
I believe it is not too bold of a statement to claim that this might be one of the more important skill sets to possess: the ability to consistently take actions that support your goals. Mastery here will open up a world of possibilities for outcomes that are tremendously satisfying, as well as usher in new, previously not perceived ideas that propel the next wave of creativity and purposeful action.
- So how do we get there?
- What does the Mentally Tougher version of you look like?
- Feel Like?
- Behave like?
In my first book, Mentally Tough Me, we tackle this question head on. I feel very fortunate that one of the biggest advantages I had as a professional tennis player, was access to some of the brightest minds across several fields, sports psychologists in particular, and their wisdom very directly impacted my results.
