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Mental Toughness

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With the Super Rugby competition entering the play offs, the NRL into round 19 and the AFL into round 17, all 3 footy codes are gearing up for finals footy. What’s the difference between finals footy and round robin stuff and what’s this got to do with you living a healthy wealthy life style?

If you lined up the entire player roster from all of the three footy codes and measured their physical attributes, the margin between the strongest and the weakest, would be very minimal indeed.  So, if all of these professional sports people are so fit & strong why is there such a vast difference in performance between the top teams and the bottom ones?  What separates a Geelong Cats from a Gold Coast Suns, a Melbourne Storm from a Parramatta Eel, a Queensland Red from a Western Force?

The answer: Mental Toughness.  But what is mental toughness and how can the ordinary person like you or I develop their own mental toughness?  In simple terms mental toughness is used by elite sports people to define the edge that they have over their opponents to cope with the many demands that they face through their competition, their training, their nutritional requirements and even coping with injuries or other setbacks.

Elite sports people aren’t born with mental toughness.  They are born with certain traits like natural ability and skill.  Like most other facets of their chosen sporting path, the rest of it had to learned and then practised and the ones that succeeded are the ones that put in the hard yards.  So, why do we mere mortals need mental toughness and what can we do to strengthen our mental toughness?

Mental toughness is what stops you from eating that chocolate cake when you know you shouldn’t.  Mental toughness is what gets you out of bed to go and train, when it’s dark, raining and cold.  Mental toughness is what gets you those health and wellness goals when everyone around you is telling you that you are a loser.

So what can you do to become mentally tough?  Here are my 5 simple strategies:

  1. Talk to Yourself. We tend to listen to people who have no expertise in the area of advice that they are giving.  How many of you have been told by a family member or loved one not to invest in some scheme?  Plenty I’d imagine, yet what expertise did that person have?  Absolutely none.  In the scheme of things the most important person we MUST listen to is ourselves first and foremost.
  2. Say The Right Things. Once you understand that you are the most important person to listen to, you have to say the right things. So what should you be saying to yourself?  If you had a choice, would you say, “I can’t do this” of would you say, “I can do this”.  The truth is, we choose what we say, the question is what do you choose?
  3. You Don’t Have to Believe It AT FIRST. Many of my clients struggle to start Self Talk because they don’t believe whatever it is they are saying.  Here’s a question for you.  How old are you and how do you know?  The truth is we don’t know for sure how old we are.  We simply believe our age because we’ve been told it over and over again and have been shown documents that claim when we were born.  The reality is, only our mother’s and those present when we were born can testify as to our date of birth.  You don’t have to believe it at first, but if you hear it often enough, eventually it will transcend into the truth.
  4. Say It LOUD! Say It CLEAR.  The trick is to hear it.  Simply reading something to yourself isn’t enough.  You have to hear it, so say it loud and say it clear.
  5. Repetition Is The Key.  Doing something once, or twice or even 3 times isn’t enough.  How long did it take for the habit of brushing your teeth to become a habit?  My kids are 5 & 8 and they still need to be reminded.  I’m 45 and I can clean my teeth twice a day without having to be reminded, so somewhere in between the habit of teeth cleaning became habitual.  If you want to do something repeatedly without having to think about it and therefore make it a habit, you have to repeatedly do something over and over again thousands of times to make it a habit.  So, start off by talking to yourself twice a day.  First thing in the morning and last thing at night.