10 Powerful Methods How to Build Your Mental Toughness

How mentally tough are you? Can you handle all the difficulties, problems, and hardships in your journey to success? When the tough times come, are you going to run away and quit, or are you going to say, “try me?”

Our mental toughness says a lot about our accomplishments in life. Someone who is mentally strong tends to be more successful than others.

Well, the reason is simple. Success is hard. And only those who are mentally tough are able to overcome all the difficulties, make it through and achieve the goals and success they desire.

Let’s face it, success is difficult. If it is easy, everyone would be successful. Chances are, most people are not successful.

And so if you don’t have the mental strength, you will give up when you face problems and hardships.

This is true because success isn’t something that will come to you through luck. The daily grind can take a toll on your physical, mental and also emotional energy.

Thus, if you are not mentally prepared, success may elude you.

You may want to achieve great goals and live a successful life, but wishing and working are 2 different things.

We don’t get what we wish for, we get what we work for.

The good news is that we can develop our mental strength and build our mental toughness. So that the next time when we face problems and difficulties in our journey, we will never say, “why me?” Instead, we will hustle and do whatever it takes to achieve our targets.

Below are 10 powerful methods how you can build your mental toughness. Practice these methods and apply them to grow your mental power…

1. Talk to yourself positively

First, let us start with one of the easiest methods – talk to yourself positively. Stop reading and take a minute to think about what you think about most of the time. How do you talk to yourself?

Do you talk to yourself negatively or positively? Whenever your friend, colleague, or family member tells you something, do you react negatively?

The way you talk to yourself will greatly impact your life. You can’t live a successful life thinking negatively.

If you want to achieve great success in life and become mentally tougher, you must start with thinking positively and constructively.

Imagine when it is raining or if you stuck in traffic congestion, what kind of thoughts do you run in your head?

You become what you think about most of the time. When you face a problem, what do you tell yourself?

If all you have in your head are negative thoughts, then, my friend, it is time to make a change.

Start to consciously think positive. Practice positive affirmations and create your personal mantras to help you readjust your thinking. Read this article:

How to Talk to Yourself Positively

2. Stay strong with your purpose

Next, you want to connect with your purpose. One of the reasons some people are mentally tougher than others is they have a strong purpose for what they do.

Think about it, why do some people give up when they face difficulties while some people choose to hustle and overcome the problems?

Those who choose to overcome the problems are the ones who have a stronger purpose. They know what they want and they have a strong “why” to achieve it.

If you set a goal but you don’t have a strong purpose to achieve it, guess what will happen when the tough times come? You will give up. You will tell yourself it is not worth it to pursue your goal. You will give an excuse and quit.

Similarly, when you have an empowering reason to achieve your goal, you will do whatever it takes. You become more committed because you understand your why.

You have to understand that it is your purpose that inspires you in the first place. Therefore, if your purpose is weak, so with your willpower and mental strength.

Thus, if you want to build your mental toughness, learn to understand why you do what you do. Read my previous article to understand better:

Why Clarity of Purpose is Important to Success and How to Get It

3. Set exciting goals and work on them

Goal setting is one of the most powerful ways to develop your mental strength. It is easy to understand why.

When you set a goal, you are directly challenging yourself to do something to hit your target. You are giving yourself a specific outcome to hit and within a deadline.

In other words, you know what you want, and you know by when you should achieve it. Hence, it motivates you to work harder, train your mental strength, and build your willpower.

Goal setting is a powerful tool, however, most people did it wrongly. If you want to learn how to set goals and achieve them like a winner, check out my course, Goal Setting Formula.

What you can do is to both big and small goals. You want to have big goals to inspire you to work toward a better vision, and at the same time, you want to have small goals to work on daily.

When you see yourself making progress toward your goals every day, you make yourself feel good.

It builds your confidence and grows your momentum to achieving what you want in life.

Remember, try to set exciting goals that you look forward to achieving. If your goals are not exciting to you, you will never want to take the necessary action or stick to your plan.

4. Challenge yourself regularly

Another great method to increase your mental toughness is to constantly challenge yourself.

Each day, you can do one thing that is difficult. Here are some examples:

• Learn a new word from a different language.
• Learn to cook a new dish.
• Learn to play the guitar for a new song.
• Focus on reading a book for 30 minutes.
• Take a cold shower.
• Talk to a stranger.

There are many things you can do to challenge yourself mentally.

If you have never run a marathon before, perhaps, it will be a great goal to challenge yourself to do it. Now, you don’t have to start with a full marathon. You can always start small say like running 5km for a week.

And then on the next week, increase your target and run 10km. You keep challenging yourself to do better and better.

The key is to develop your mental strength by challenging yourself into doing something that you find hard.

The more you challenge yourself, the more you will believe in yourself and the higher your self-confidence.

31 Little Things You Can Do to Improve Yourself Every Day

5. Accept your mistakes and learn to improve

One tough thing you can learn to do to make you mentally stronger is to embrace your mistakes. Not everyone can accept their own mistakes. But if you do, you can grow yourself to become someone better.

The key is to accept your mistakes. Whenever someone tells you or give you feedback about something, learn to accept it.

It takes a lot of courage to admit what you have done wrong. And if you are willing to accept your own mistakes, you will surely improve to become someone more successful.

When you make a mistake, take responsibility and embrace it. You get to learn and improve more from your own mistakes because you are accepting the responsibility.

Have you read the best-selling book by Angela Duckworth called Grit? If you’re yet to read it, do it now. It is a great book.

In her book, Dr. Angela Duckworth explained that people who are more willing to make a change tend to have a growth mindset, while people who believe that everything is fixed and can’t be changed tend to have a fixed mentality.

And accepting your mistakes shows that you have a growth mindset. Instead of arguing your point and running away from responsibility, learn to improve by taking full responsibility for what you have done.

How to Grow from Mistakes and Stop Beating Yourself Up

6. Learn to bounce back from your failures

After you have learned to embrace your mistake, the next thing similar thing you can do is to be more resilient and learn to bounce back from your failures.

It takes a lot of courage and mental toughness to wake up from where you fall. Most people choose to give up and continue to lie where they have fallen.

However, mentally tough people don’t do that. They choose to bounce back from their failure.

Look at people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, both are my business role models. Jobs was fired from the company he started, but he didn’t give up. When SpaceX failed their first 3 rocket launches, Musk almost goes bankrupt, but again, he chose to hustle and keep it going.

If you want to be successful, you can’t let your failures stop you. Instead, you must turn your failures into feedback.

Many people have the wrong perception to think that failure is the opposite of success. No, it is not.

In fact, failure is what leads you to success. When you win, you celebrate, but when you fail, you tend to ponder and learn.

Your failure will become your experience and golden lessons if you learn from it.

Thus, if you want to build your mental strength, you must learn to bounce back from your failure. But how do you do it? Read my article below…

7 Powerful Steps How to Overcome Failure in Life and Bounce Back

7. Make a change and venture out of your comfort zone

How often do you make a change and do something new? If you want to develop your mental power, one of the most effective methods is to go out of your comfort zone and do something you have never done before.

If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got.

And if you want to get a different result, you must make a change. You must be willing to venture out of your comfort zone and do what is uncomfortable.

Most people don’t dare to make changes in their lives because they are afraid of failures and uncertainties. They are too addicted to soft life and are too afraid to make a difference.

Never let this be you. Just like the first time you jump from a diving board, it can be scary to you. But after a few jumps, you get used to it. You become more confident. And on the 10th jump, you even make a backflip.

This is exactly why you want to venture out of your comfort zone and do something difficult.

The more you challenge yourself, the stronger you become.

15 Ways How to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone and Live Great

8. Act like a confident person

How often have you heard the phrase, “act it until you make it”? Well, there is some truth in that statement.

When you act like you’re a confident person, you will eventually make out the confidence. Science has proven this. Your physiology plays an important role in determining the state you’re in.

When you feel bored and lack motivation, try to stand up, clap, move your body and jump around, you will quickly become alert, energetic, and more positive.

Try to walk and talk confidently, the more power poses you show, the more confident you will be.

A lot of people wait until they feel motivated only to make a change, but that’s not how things work. You should go ahead and act, and then you will feel motivated.

In other words, you don’t have to wait to feel good. You don’t have to wait to feel powerful or that you are motivated. You just need to act like the person you want to become, and the thoughts and emotions will follow.

Don’t expect to develop a strong mental strength if you are always feeling down or talk like a person who has lost his direction. If you want to gain a higher confidence level, you must show it. You must act like it.

7 Ways to Appear Confident (When You’re Really Not)

9. Make decisions and be responsible

If you want to increase your mental toughness, you must be decisive and be responsible for all the decisions you have made.

Many people are afraid to make decisions. They worry about the uncertainties and if they do something wrong.

Extraordinary people who are mentally strong will never be afraid to make the call and to be called. They are willing to take responsibility for all the decisions they have made, regardless of the result.

So, don’t be afraid to pursue what you really want in life. Don’t worry about setting goals, and don’t be afraid to chase your dreams. Even if in the end, you fail or find out that what you pursue is not what you really want, it doesn’t matter.

First, because you can’t tell if the goal is the right goal until you make plans and execute on it. Second, if you fail, it doesn’t matter, because everyone fails at some point in life.

If you have never failed before, perhaps, you’re playing it all out yet. Like what Michael Jordan said, “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Thus, to build your mental strength, make the decisions and commit to them. Train yourself to become tougher by taking 100% responsibility for your life. That’s how you grow yourself to become someone stronger.

10. Start small and build your mental toughness

You don’t have to start with a really big goal or take the leap of faith. You can always start small, and grow from there.

You don’t have to commit to reading a book every week, just read 15 minutes reading every day or read a book a month will do.

The key is to get yourself started. You don’t want to leave things up to chances and just let life be. You want to commit to growth by taking small action steps that will transform you into someone better every day.

Hence, start small…

• Put 15 minutes into reading every day.
• Use another 15 minutes to exercise.
• If you can’t run 10km, start with 2km.
• If you are a blogger, commit to writing 1,000 words every day.
• If 1,000 words are too much, aim at 500 words.
• Take one small step to move forward to your goal each day.

This is how success can be created. It is not what you do once in a while that counts, it is what you do day-in and day-out that matters the most.

You can’t lose weight if you hit the gym just once. You have to be consistent. The same goes for success and building your mental strength.

If you want to be tougher physically and emotionally, you must take the small steps to train, grow, and build those muscles.

Therefore, start small and act right now.

Starting from today on, set some exciting goals for yourself, make plans, and then commit to taking some form of action steps each day.

If you have no idea what to do, go through my course, Goal Setting Formula.

And more importantly, challenge yourself to do one thing that is hard each day. You want to move out of your comfort zone to expand it.

It is comfortable to be where you are and do what you do right now, but nothing grows in your comfort zone.

A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.

You’re not meant to live this world in mediocrity. You’re meant to live your best life with your maximum potential.

And it all starts with developing your mental toughness. Stay strong, my friend.