Being strong physically and being strong mentally go hand in hand, but being mentally strong can help us overcome much more than we could ever imagine. Our mind generally gives up much earlier than our bodies do, which tells us that if we were able to create more mental resilience, then we could achieve much more.
A simple test of this is holding your breath. Did you know that the world record breath hold is over 24 minutes? And that the natural stress response and feeling of wanting to breath kicks in around 60 seconds. This is a clear example showing that the body has an incredible ability to withstand stress, however, the mind is over protective and wants to keep us safe.
Once we understand this phenomenon, we can use it to our advantage. If we can learn our thresholds and capacity, we can turn off or down regulate the premature warning signs. Allowing us to get more out of our physical capacity.
By implementing these simple changes listed below, you’ll see marginal gains that will compound into huge wins in the long term.
- How you react to a situation is more important than the situation itself.
I’m not going to sit here and write motivational quotes and anecdotes, but events happen in life that can hit us hard and have the potential to derail our plans of happiness.
We can either choose to let this consume us and become a detriment to our everyday life or we can choose to accept the circumstances for what they are and grow through what we go through.
Those who are able to adapt to adverse situations will not only be the ones who are more likely to survive, but the ones who are more likely to thrive.
This starts with mindset and choosing your attitude. Choosing your attitude doesn’t have to be something you only apply when something bad happens, it can be something you apply to your everyday life and ultimately allowing you to have a great day which then leads to a great week, which leads to, you guessed it, a great month
You have the power to choose what you make things mean and what you make things mean to determine your attitude.
2. Focus on the positives and wins- no matter how great or small.
The key to achieving big goals is to realise that they aren’t going to happen overnight, or the next month, or the next year.
Demotivation usually appears when we think we’ll never reach our goals. Maybe achieving our goal it is right around the corner, but we’ll never know if we give up.
When we don’t achieve a goal, we tend to focus on what didn’t happen, rather than what did happen. We focus on what we can’t control rather than celebrating the small steps we took and the lessons we learned.
Understanding the concept of marginal gains and the compound effect can help to overcome this. If we can improve by 1% per day and control the controllable, then we will eventually reach our goal.
If we focus on the end goal without giving credit to the actionable steps, then the goal will remain a dream.
3. Control what you can control
We can only control our input, not the outcome. If you cannot control it do not waste your energy on it. Create actionable steps that are within your capacity to control and forget anything that falls outside of it.
4.Take the pressure off yourself, you’re doing great!
Whilst a little bit of pressure and cortisol can be a good thing to get you moving, it can also be detrimental if you overstep your thresholds.
Although learning from your mistakes can be beneficial it would be great to avoid that in the first case. So step back, take a few deep breaths to regather your parasympathetic state, collect your thoughts and reevaluate your next actions. This will help put things into perspective and realise how far you’ve already come.
5. Find your WHY.
If you find your why, you’ll then find your how. When we have an end goal it’s much easier to put a plan in place to get there.The most common reasons people don’t reach their goal is because their goal isn’t congruent with their deepest desires. Your WHY must be aligned with your goals.
Take the time to ask yourself WHY, 5 times. Each time try and find something a little deeper. If you can’t answer it, perhaps it’s not the goal for you and you should reevaluate. The more clear you are of your why, the more resilient you will be when adversity pops it head up.
It’s simple, own your narrative and choose to have a good day, if you want things to change you need to make changes.
“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t” – Steve Maraboli.
