Mental Toughness

When things take an unexpected turn, are you the kind of person who secretly panics inside? Or do you take a moment, center yourself and get to work? The quality that allows some people to stay calm, focus and adapt is called mental toughness; the ability to control your emotions, stay on task, be flexible in a crisis, and maintain your self-confidence.

This article will explain mental toughness in detail, why it matters, and how you can assess and improve your own.

What Is Mental Toughness?

Sometimes referred to as "grit," mental toughness is actually a cluster of different skills. The first psychologists to study and define mental toughness were health psychologist Richard Dientsbier, sports psychologist Jim Loehr and sports and occupational psychologist Peter Clough.

It was Clough who developed the Four Cs model for mental toughness, breaking the constellation of traits into four categories:

This is about being in control of yourself and feeling in control of your life. It means you are comfortable in your own skin and can self-regulate your emotions. It also means you believe in your ability to shape events around you rather than have them happen to you.

This is your ability to set goals and to remain focused on achieving them in the face of distractions.

This is about how driven you are to succeed and your ability to adapt when things change.

This is not just belief in your own abilities, but also in your ability to communicate with and influence others.

Taken together, these four elements paint a picture of what it means to be mentally tough.

Let’s hear the CEO of Mental Toughness Partners, Paul Lyons, on how he defines mental toughness:

It would be easy to mistake mental toughness for an ability to suppress emotions and “hang on in there” no matter how tough things get, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, one of the most important factors in building mental toughness is emotional intelligence; learning to recognize, name and sit with your emotions, and understanding how you react to different stimuli. It’s also important, while aiming to be resilient, that you also know when to say no, to make room for rest and avoid burnout.

Here's Paul Lyons again:

You’d be forgiven for thinking mental toughness is something wholly innate, a quality you’re either born with or not, but research says otherwise. While there is some genetic quality to it, people who have come through challenging experiences tend to demonstrate higher levels of mental toughness, suggesting that this is a skillset than can be developed. [1]

Why Managers Should Develop Mental Toughness

“Being mentally tough increases a person’s confidence, promotes greater insight about themselves, develops healthy coping strategies for dealing with adverse circumstances, and increases open-mindedness and flexibility when situations do not go as planned.” [2]

There are many situations at work where mental toughness will be an asset. Whether you find yourself having to have a difficult conversation with a colleague or dealing with a project hitting a stumbling block, being able to control your emotions, maintain focus and keep a long-term perspective will help see you through.

Research also shows a correlation between higher levels of mental toughness and more senior management positions. Of course, it might be argued that those promoted to higher positions develop more mental toughness out of necessity, or that people naturally develop more mental toughness over time. However you look at it, developing your mental toughness could be good for your career prospects as well as making you better at your job. It should also have personal benefits, contributing to better physical and mental wellbeing. [3]

How to Assess Your Mental Toughness

Here’s Paul Lyons again on how self-awareness is the first step to assessing your mental toughness:

To work on your self-awareness and mental toughness, ask yourself questions like:

• What is important to me? Do I know who I am and who I want to be?
• How comfortable am I with my emotions? Can I recognize and name them when they occur? Are there particular events or situations that bring out strong emotions in me? Do I shut down negative emotions or am I comfortable working through them?
• Am I in control of my life or does life happen to me? Am I making deliberate choices about my life and career, or am I drifting wherever they take me?
• Am I comfortable when things change, or do I crave stability? When things go wrong, do I keep a cool head or do I panic? Am I good in an emergency?
• When I make a mistake, do I own up and take responsibility for fixing it?
• Do I suffer from impostor syndrome? When I need to have an important conversation, am I calm and confident or do I dread it?

For an in-depth analysis of your mental toughness you might consider a psychometric test such as the MTQ48.

How to Develop Your Own Mental Toughness

Here are ten ways you can work on building your mental toughness:

1. Get Comfortable With Your Feelings

Emotions are part of being human. Learning to recognize negative emotions when they arise, sit with them and work through them is a skill that will be beneficial to your entire life. Journaling can be a helpful exercise here - regularly writing down your thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears.

2. Be Positive

Any therapist will tell you that your brain can be chaotic and messy, but it can be trained. Your brain believes what you tell it. Instead of focusing on negatives, think about your positive traits, skills and achievements. When a negative thought comes up, stop, recognize and challenge it.

Let's hear from Paul Lyons about challenging your negative self-talk:

3. Look After Your Physical Health

Regular exercise, getting enough sleep and eating well are all beneficial for your mental health too. Exercise helps clear your body of cortisol, the stress hormone that has wide-ranging negative effects on your physical and mental health over time. And the more physically healthy you are, the more you improve your mental toughness, meaning you’re more likely to stick to healthier habits.

4. Be Kind to Yourself

Give yourself a break! Mental toughness isn’t about being hard on yourself. In difficult times, treat yourself the way you would treat your best friend in the same situation. Everyone makes mistakes; everyone has bad days. Stop holding yourself to higher standards than everyone else.

5. Focus on the Big Picture

When things are hard, it can be easy to fall into "firefighting" behavior and lose perspective. When emotions run high, remember to keep the long-term goals and objectives in mind, and try not to let yourself get dragged down by present stresses. Remember, “This too shall pass.”

6. Visualize Success

Sports stars use visualization to picture themselves winning games or scoring goals. Painting a vivid picture of success in your mind can help you optimize performance at work too.

7. Adopt a Growth Mindset

The key to a growth mindset is adding the word “yet”. If you are faced with a job you’ve never done before and your first thought is “I don’t know how to do that”, change it to “I don’t know how to do that, yet” and turn a daunting prospect into an opportunity to learn and grow.

8. Connect to your Tribe

A strong, supportive network of people around you is a big contributor to mental toughness. Choose to spend time with people who energize and uplift you, rather than those who drain your energy and bring you down. Positivity is contagious.

9. Be Mindful

Mindfulness is about being fully present and engaged in the moment. It helps you avoid obsessing about the past or worrying too much about the future. Meditation and breathing exercises can help with centering you in the present, focusing your mind and reducing stress.

10. Challenge Yourself

Get out of your comfort zone by trying new things. “Do one thing a day that scares you” might seem like a pithy platitude, but facing fears and challenging yourself builds confidence and resilience. Try out new hobbies or sign up for a class to learn a new skill.

Let's Act

Think about a difficult situation at work that you have either been avoiding, or know you have to address in the near future.

Pick one of the strategies outlined above to help you tackle the situation. Once you have addressed the situation reflect on:

• How you used the strategy to approach the issue or challenge.
• How this helped you to cope and manage the situation effectively.
• The impact on the final outcome.
• What, if anything, you would do differently next time.