10 habits
of mentally strong people
1. You have to fight when you already feel defeated. A
reporter once asked Muhammad Ali how many sit-ups he does every day. He
responded, “I don’t count my sit-ups, I only start counting when it starts
hurting, when I feel pain, cause that’s when it really matters.” The same
applies to success in the workplace. You always have two choices when things
begin to get tough: you can either overcome an obstacle and grow in the process
or let it beat you. Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get
tough, it gets that much easier to quit the next time. On the other hand, if
you force yourself to push through a challenge, the strength begins to grow in
you.
2. You have to delay
gratification.
There was a famous Stanford experiment in which an administrator left a child
in a room with a marshmallow for 15 minutes. Before leaving, the experimenter
told the child that she was welcome to eat it, but if she waited until he
returned without eating it, she would get a second marshmallow. The children
that were able to wait until the experimenter returned experienced better
outcomes in life, including higher SAT scores, greater career success, and even
lower body mass indexes. The point is that delay of gratification and patience
are essential to success. People with mental strength know that results only
materialize when you put in the time and forego instant gratification.
3. You have to make mistakes,
look like an idiot, and try again — without even flinching. In a recent study at the College of
William and Mary, researchers interviewed over 800 entrepreneurs and found that
the most successful among them tend to have two critical things in common:
they’re terrible at imagining failure and they tend not to care what other
people think of them. In other words, the most successful entrepreneurs put no
time or energy into stressing about their failures as they see failure as a
small and necessary step in the process of reaching their goals.
4. You have to keep your
emotions in check. Negative emotions challenge your mental strength every step of the way.
While it’s impossible not to feel your emotions, it’s completely under your
power to manage them effectively and to keep yourself in control of them. When
you let your emotions overtake your ability to think clearly, it’s easy to lose
your resolve. A bad mood can make you lash out or stray from your chosen
direction just as easily as a good mood can make you overconfident and
impulsive.
5. You have to make the calls
you’re afraid to make. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do because we know
they’re for the best in the long-run: fire someone, cold-call a stranger, pull
an all-nighter to get the company server back up, or scrap a project and start
over. It’s easy to let the looming challenge paralyze you, but the most
successful people know that in these moments, the best thing they can do is to
get started right away. Every moment spent dreading the task subtracts time and
energy from actually getting it done. People that learn to habitually make the
tough calls stand out like flamingos in a flock of seagulls.
6. You have to trust your gut. There’s a fine line between
trusting your gut and being impulsive. Trusting your gut is a matter of looking
at decisions from every possible angle, and when the facts don’t present a
clear alternative, you believe in your ability to make the right decision; you
go with what looks and feels right.
7. You have to lead when no one
else follows.
It’s easy to set a direction and to believe in yourself when you have support,
but the true test of strength is how well you maintain your resolve when nobody
else believes in what you’re doing. People with mental strength believe in
themselves no matter what, and they stay the course until they win people over
to their ways of thinking.
8. You have to focus on the
details even when it makes your mind numb. Nothing tests your mental strength
like mind-numbing details, especially when you’re tired. The more people with
mental strength are challenged, the more they dig in and welcome that
challenge, and numbers and details are no exception to this.
9. You have to be kind to people
who are rude to you. When people treat you poorly, it’s tempting to stoop to their level and
return the favor. People with mental strength don’t allow others to walk all
over them, but that doesn’t mean they’re rude to them, either. Instead, they
treat rude and cruel people with the same kindness they extend to everyone
else, because they don’t allow another person’s negativity to bring them down.
10. You have to be accountable
for your actions, no matter what. People are far more likely to remember how you dealt with a
problem than they are to recall how you created it in the first place. By
holding yourself accountable, even when making excuses is an option, you show
that you care about results more than your image or ego.
Bringing it all together
Mental
strength is as rare as it is important. The good news is that any of us can get
stronger with a little extra focus and effort.
