Whatever you want to achieve in life is out of your comfort zone. Your talents, your skills, and your education are not the main factors of your success. it is your mental strength that will determine how high you can and how much you can achieve in life.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. Hence, the secret of your success is found in your daily agenda.
It is what you do every day that will determine how successful you are.
And when it comes to dealing with your everyday agenda, mental strength plays an important role.
Whether you are tempted to give in to your craving for a piece of hot chocolate cake, or you are about to give up on your goals, determination and persistence are not easy.
Most people fail to achieve their goals and live in mediocrity because they lack the mental power to say “no” to temptations, to resist their emotions, and they fail to persist and follow through their plans.
The good news is that you can develop your mental strengths if you want to. Your willpower or mental energy works like your muscles. The more you use them, the stronger they become.
If you’re not someone who’s physically strong, doing 30 push-ups a day may seem challenging. But if you push through and after a few weeks, 30 push-ups become the norm and you feel nothing.
This is because you’ve developed the physical strength on your upper body and you have used to do it.
Therefore, you can build your mental strength in the same way.
In just a few minutes a day, train your brain to think differently, learn to manage your emotions and feelings, and venture out of your comfort zone so that you can grow to become stronger.
Here are 10 effective methods that can help you grow your mental power and prepare yourself for greater success:0
1. Use your mental energy strategically
Mark Twain understood how our mental power works, he said:
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Your mental energy works like your phone’s battery. Hence, use your most productive hours to tackle the most important tasks of the day.
If you leave your high-impact work until the end of the day when you have no energy left, there is a high chance you will procrastinate and leave the work until the next day.
Wasting your brain energy complaining and worrying is not going to work too.
For instance, if you stuck in traffic congestion, there’s no point to focus on how bad the traffic can get. You will only waste up your mental energy doing so. Instead, choose to focus on other productive thoughts.
If it is going to rain soon, worrying about it isn’t going to prevent it at all. What you need to do then, is to prepare yourself for the rain.
Use your energy for preparation, focus on the more productive tasks, and concentrate on the solutions, not the problems.
The more you practice using your mental energy strategically, the more it will become a habit.
2. Replace the negative thoughts
While we don’t always consciously think about our thoughts, knowing how your thinking pattern can be useful.
Whenever you think about something negative, switch the thought. You have to stop the negative thinking before it spread and influence your behavior.
No one is perfect in this world. It is normal to have negative thinking. But the key is to not let your negative thoughts take control of your life.
One good strategy to overcome the negative thinking syndrome is to through interruption. You break the negative thinking pattern by distracting your thought.
Whenever you are thinking negatively, and you are aware of it, distract the pattern by saying “Cancel” out loud.
Or wear a rubber band on your wrist. Whenever you catch yourself thinking negatively, snap the rubber band. It hurts, I know, but this can train you to think more positively in the future.
3. Build up your level of commitment
When was the last time you truly commit to something and make it happen? In fact, you should do so more often. It is a great way to train your mental power and make you someone stronger.
Don’t just set a goal and keep it to yourself. Share it with someone else who will support you.
When you share your goals and your action commitments with someone else, it greatly increases your probability of achieving the goal.
In a study done by Dr. Gail Matthews, she discovered that people who write down their goals and share their action commitments with others are more likely to follow through and hit the goal.
This is because when you share what you’re going to do or what you set out to achieve with others, you are putting yourself on the line.
After all, your reputation is at stake. You don’t want to be a loser by not taking action or fail.
As a result, when you build up the commitment, you set yourself up for success.
Of course, only choose to share your goals, plans, and progress with people who will support you, not just anyone.
Here’s what you should read:
7 Easy Methods How to Be Accountable for Your Goals
4. Start with small goals
Yes, you should think big and think far, but when it comes to execution, you should focus on smaller goals.
The reason is simple, your mind is wired for instant gratification. It is easier to spend $100 and buys the things that you want rather than saving $100 now and spend it 10 years later.
We are wired to want something and want it now. This is why developing mental strength becomes ever important.
Success is not something that you can achieve in a day. You have to work for it day-in and day-out.
When it comes to setting goals and planning for the future, thinking big and far is important.
But when it comes to your daily agenda, setting small goals and achieving them is even more vital.
Small goals are easier to achieve and when you work on them, you get immediate results.
This, in turn, gives you confidence because you feel that you are making progress. More importantly, you are maintaining your momentum as you take action.
So to grow your mental toughness, you need to start small.
“Every master was once a beginner. Every pro started as an amateur. Every icon began as an unknown.” – Robin Sharma
5. Make time for review and reflection
You must make time to review and reflect on your daily progress. I know you are busy, but reflecting on your progress can greatly help you understand your progress and also grow your mental strength.
When you reflect, you understand how you perform. You become more balance from both the logical and emotional point of view.
Like what this article from Success.com wrote, “If all your decisions were emotional, you wouldn’t save for retirement because you’d be too busy spending your money on what makes you happy right now. But if all of your decisions were logical, you’d live a boring life devoid of pleasure, leisure, and love.”
Daily reflection helps you make better decisions in life. Whether you are buying a house or shifting your career, you need to consider your decision from both emotions and logical sense.
Thus, by the end of each day, before you go to bed, just spend a few minutes reflect and review your day.
Ask yourself what you have learned and how your thoughts, behavior, and emotions are affecting you.
This way, you will improve and gradually become better, stronger, and wiser.
6. Remember your visions and dreams
It is challenging and difficult to stay focused on your course. Unless you consciously hold your visions in your mind, you will be easily distracted and procrastinate.
Highly successful people understand the power of visions and dreams. They think about what they want all the time.
On the other hand, unsuccessful people let their thoughts wander and they react to whatever that comes to them. They’re drifting in the sea of thoughts and thus, they are not in control.
If you want to build stronger mental strength, you need to constantly remind yourself of your visions and dreams.
Let your purpose becomes your driving force. Let your “why” backs you up and guides you through when the tough times come.
So write down your visions, your dreams, and your goals. And then constant reviewing them, remind yourself of them, and focus on your purpose why it is important to keep going.
7. Do one thing to challenge yourself every day
There is no way you can become mentally stronger if you don’t challenge yourself. To become better, you must train yourself and improve yourself.
Hence, do one thing hard to challenge yourself every day.
Whether it is to read for 30 minutes straight, to run an extra mile, to swim 10 laps, to write a 2,000 words article, or to cook a dinner for your spouse, you have to challenge yourself.
When you’re trying to do something difficult, notice how your thoughts react.
If you challenge yourself to run 6 miles and your mind says, “that’s impossible and it’s too tiring,” ignore the thought and do it anyway.
Remember, it is your thoughts that are stopping you. It is your thought that says, “It’s too difficult”, “I don’t have time”, “I don’t know how to do it”, etc.
Therefore, challenge yourself to overcome your thoughts.
Train yourself to become mentally stronger by taking control of your thoughts.
8. Use the One-Minute Rule
This method is almost similar to starting with small goals. The One-Minute Rule says that you don’t have to scare yourself by thinking you have to put in a lot of effort and do big things.
You just need to do it for one minute. Yes, just one minute.
For instance, if you want to exercise, do it for just one minute. If you want to write a book, do it for just one minute.
The key is to put yourself in action by lowering your resistance to act.
Let me ask you, do you think it is easier to do push-ups for a minute or to exercise in the gym for an hour?
The smaller the task, the easier it is to perform.
When the resistance is lowered, you are more likely to follow through.
You can read the full explanation of the rule in my previous article here.
9. Set yourself up for success
To become mentally tough, you don’t have to subject yourself to temptations every day. You can make your life easier by setting yourself up for success.
Modify your environment and alter your surrounding so that you are primed for success.
Want to go jogging the next morning? Put your sports shoe next to your bed at night and sleep in your sports attire.
Want to eat healthier and avoid junk food? Get rid of all the junk food and stock up healthy foods in the pantry.
Want to make it a habit to read? Put a book beside your bed, on the kitchen table, and set a reminder to read using your phone.
This way, you don’t have to exhaust your mental energy by trying to resist the urge in the first place.
Besides that, you are preparing yourself for success. You are making the environment to work for you rather than against you.
Here’s what I suggest you read:
10 Tips How to Change Your Environment for Greater Motivation
10. Expand your comfort zone
Needless to say, one great way to grow your mental strength is to expand your comfort zone by tolerating discomfort.
You see, discomfort and the addiction to soft life can ruin your life. Rather than dealing with problems, people reach for shortcuts and take immediate emotional reliefs.
When they feel stressed, they go for drinking. When they are boring, they binge-watching on YouTube. When they feel discomfort, they look for short-term solutions that often lead to long-term disaster.
Never let this happen to you. You need to expand your comfort zone by doing things that are uncomfortable.
You have to push yourself to work on your goals even when you don’t feel like doing it.
Exercise can be exhausting, but you have to get rid of the discomfort and face it. You can’t just run away from what’s difficult.
The more you face your discomfort and do it anyway, the more confidence you will have and the stronger you can mentally be.
“Those who only do what they feel like, don’t do much. To be successful at anything you must take action even when you don’t feel like it, knowing it is the action itself that will produce the motivation you need to follow through.” – Hal Elrod
Conclusion
You can’t succeed and achieve greatness without developing your mental strength. I love how Jim Rohn said it, “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.”
On your journey to success, you are guaranteed to face setbacks, challenges, rejections, failures, mistakes, etc.
But you don’t have to let them stop you. Choose to grow yourself and become mentally stronger so that you can become the right person worthy of success.