Episode 5 - Building Mental Toughness

This week on the podcast we explore mental toughness, what it is, what it isn’t, and how to build it.

Some Definitions

We start by defining what mental toughness is. My personal my person definition is, “having a controlled and measured response to stimulus instead of an untethered emotional response”. Wanting to give you all a fuller picture, we dug up some more “official” definitions.

From Mental Toughness Inc.,“Mental toughness is the ability to resist, manage and overcome doubts, worries, concerns and circumstances that prevent you from succeeding, or excelling at a task or towards an objective or a performance outcome that you set out to achieve.”

For a more sports centered definition, we got this from the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology, “Having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to: generally, cope better than your opponents with the many demands (competition, training, lifestyle) that sport places on a performer; specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure.”

We talk about the difference between being “macho” and actually being mentally tough. We often associate aggression with toughness which isn’t really how that works at all. Mental toughness can be a quiet force. As I say in the episode, think Mr. Miyagi, not Cobra Kai.

Tools and Tips

Then there are some tools we go over to help build mental toughness with examples of how these tools have helped Rob and I through the years. These tools include, positive self-talk, using the 3rd person perspective to “self-distance” for more effective self talk, and building toughness through progression. As a closing thought, we circle back to the previous episode’s topic on Purpose and Finding your Why and how it can be a “power-up” for being mentally tough.

There’s so much more we’d like to cover but didn’t have time, it’s definetly a topic we’ll come back to. Mental toughness is a core philosophy at NFR and is part of the “Do The Work” ethos we have here.

Let us know what you think, give us a review on iTunes, and send us any questions.