Mental toughness is the ability to push through difficult, even painful, situations while maintaining peak performance. It is what separates elite performers from the average, and it only comes through training and hard work. For entrepreneurs and business owners, it means having the strength to get through hard times, and the clear-headedness to avoid getting complacent in good times.
LaRae Quy spent 23 years as an FBI counterintelligence agent, a job in which this quality can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. She now spends her time writing, speaking and teaching others how to use mental toughness to survive risky environments, uncertainty and deception. In other words, how to survive the jungle of work and business.
Business Insider has gathered some of LaRae’s advice, and this is what it takes to develop such a valuable quality:
1. Develop emotional awareness
To be mentally tough, you need a deep understanding of the signals around you. That means being acutely aware of your emotions and learning to control them, instead of letting them control you. If a situation makes you angry, it is far better to channel that energy into something productive than to lose control in a fit of rage.
Greater awareness of your own feelings and behaviour, in turn, helps you better understand other people’s emotions. Many people go through daily life without observing their surroundings, with their heads buried in their electronic devices. FBI agents are trained to look at the people around them in restaurants and airports and try to work out their stories: how they make a living, what mood they are in, what they are thinking. All of this based purely on observation.
This simple exercise in focused awareness trains the mind to stay attuned to what is happening with the people nearby, and anyone can practise it at any time. In business or at work, it helps you tailor your approach to the specific person or audience you are trying to reach.
2. Push through your limits
Mentally tough people know that to reach their full potential, they have to get comfortable with discomfort. When we don’t know what the future holds, or we are starting our own business, the fear of change is always there.
One of the things LaRae found most irritating about the FBI was its transfer policy, which kept moving her to new places and forcing her to adapt to the needs of each new office. As a new agent, she worked on two different squads in six months. In her first three years, she moved to three different cities.
It wasn’t easy for her to change her life, break off relationships and start over with every new assignment. Her anxiety rose because all she could see ahead was tension and uncertainty.
But the old saying is true: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” She focused on the fact that the situation was temporary and that it could bring her benefits. For example, embracing a new situation forces you to grow and keeps you from becoming complacent. It teaches you not to depend on external sources, and it lets you thrive in any place or situation.
Change is never easy, but you have to learn to adapt to it and find the positive side.
3. Control your mind
To be mentally tough, you need to keep a tight rein on your thoughts. Why? Because we become what we think.
Negative thoughts are inevitable. But you can refuse to dwell on them and not let them take root.
By changing the way you think about self-limiting beliefs and other obstacles, you can rewire your brain so that it works for you rather than against you.
4. Focus, focus, focus
If you want to be mentally tough, you have to learn to focus your physical and mental energy.
Olympic athletes are excellent examples of how to channel talent successfully. They don’t rely on luck to bring home the gold medal. Professionals practise by holding a specific goal in mind. But it is not just a matter of repeating the same task over and over; effective practice has the following features:
- Break each task down into its individual parts.
- Spend more time on the actions you find especially difficult.
- Get feedback and adjust accordingly.
- Put your ego in the back seat.
- Keep your goals in front of you.
By focusing on practice, your willpower, persistence and training will lead you to personal mastery.
5. Pursue growth
Learn. Try. Repeat.
Above all, mentally tough people are learners.
Sometimes intelligence and natural talent actually get in the way of success. Some people who are born smart and talented never learn to work hard, because things come too easily to them. But when the going gets tough, they give up. These are the people with a fixed mindset we discussed in our previous article on why attitude matters more than IQ.
People with a growth mindset are voracious readers and love learning new things. They also recognise the need to keep improving at the tasks they already do well. They know that starting somewhere is very different from finishing there. And when they fall, they realise that mistakes are not failures. They are simply opportunities to learn. And with learning comes the confidence that you will do better each time.
Further reading
Featured image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
