What is Mental Toughness?
Mental toughness is a word that is thrown around a lot, but many people don’t know what it really means. Think right now what does it mean to you? Is your definition something that can give you insight into how to develop it? For many it is a stand alone concept, when in reality it is a word to describe a multitude of elements that when brought together create mental toughness. In my second book, Fortitude, I go into exactly what these elements are and how you can use them to develop mental toughness. First, however you need to be able to understand what it is in order to then potentially look at how to build it. So here is the definition I have come up with.
Definition of Mental Toughness
” The natural or developed psychological edge that is a collection of skills, attributes, values, emotions, and behaviors, that allow a person to overcome any obstacle, adversity o pressure. As well as deal with the general day to day demands (lifestyle, training, competition) placed upon them and still remain consistent, focused, confident and motivated to achieve their goals.” As you can tell, there are many different aspects to mental toughness. With the knowledge that it is not just one thing, but a combination of many different factors, it might change you view of your own definition. Sometimes we have mental toughness in one aspect but are missing it or used it up in another and that is the area we need to focus on. Most people have more mental toughness then they know, but they have been told or someone projected onto them what they thought it meant, and it didn’t fit that person. Then you begin to doubt your mindset or feel bad for not having any or needing more, when in fact you do, you just need to fine tune it. Sometimes we have the mental toughness we need for one area of our life or one level of our performance but we don’t work on building it, so when we reach the next level it is not that we don’t have it, we just don’t have it for that level. So think about what you think your strengths are when it comes to mental toughness and then think about what you feel you need for what you are doing. You will then get an indication of what you need to work on.
Kate
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Kate Allgood Masters Sport Psychology (with distinction) Masters General Psychology (with distinction) Sports Hypnosis Certification Mindfulness Certification
TAIS Assessment Certified