How to
Increase Your Mental Toughness: 5 Science-Backed Strategies
A chaotic world demands a strong mind. Here's
how to develop one.
It's
clearly a crazy and chaotic world out there, so it's no wonder that mental toughness(or grit, or whatever you want to call this sort of
resilience) is having a bit of a moment. Posts by my colleagues and me on signs of mental
toughness, habits of mental toughness, even destroyers of
mental toughness all garner tons of reader interest.
But
what I've always wanted to know, and never found a 100 percent satisfactory
answer for until now, is how do you develop this quality? It's great to
know what mentally
tough people do or think, but if those thoughts or
actions don't come easily to you, is there anything specifically you can do to
change that?
Apparently,
there is. And that's not just your local self-help guru talking. It's the
experts at the Greater Good Science Center, who recently rounded up several
scientifically validated suggestions for developing
greater mental toughness. The full post offers a
lot of detail and background on the studies behind these recommendations and is
well worth a read, but here they are in brief:
1. Write it out.
Playing
bad events and worries over and over in your head (what scientists call rumination) accomplishes nothing but making you more miserable. But
when you're worried and stressed, what's the alternative? Greater Good suggests
you get writing.
"The
practice of Expressive
Writing can move us forward by helping us gain
new insights on the challenges in our lives. It involves free writing
continuously for 20 minutes about an issue, exploring your deepest thoughts and
feelings around it. The goal is to get something down on paper, not to create a
memoir-like masterpiece," explains the post.
2. Face your fears.
Are your best attempts at mental toughness
undone by a specific fear, such as public speaking or social rejection? Then
try exposure therapy. "Slowly, and repeatedly, expose yourself to the
thing that scares you--in small doses. For example, people with a fear of
public speaking might try talking more in meetings, then perhaps giving a toast
at a small wedding. Over time, you can incrementally increase the challenge
until you're ready to nail that big speech or TV interview," instructs
Greater Good.
3. Be nice to yourself.
Beating
yourself up won't give you a thicker skin; in fact, it might make you more battle-shy. Instead,
try self-compassion, which the post defines as "confronting our own
suffering with an attitude of warmth and kindness, without judgment."
How exactly do you learn to stop mentally
beating yourself up? Greater Good has a bunch of practical suggestions,
including an exercise called How Would You Treat a Friend? In it, "you
compare how you respond to your own struggles--and the tone you use--with how
you respond to a friend's," according to the post.
4. Meditate.
Yes,
it's this advice again. But there's a reason you keep hearing it. The complete
post outlines a ton of research showing huge mental benefits to a regular
meditation practice, including increased mental toughness. And, no, it doesn't
take a humongous time commitment, nor do you have to do anything all woo-woo and
hippy-dippy (in case that's really not your style).
5. Forgive.
Research
shows that holding a grudge (no matter how well deserved) saps your mental
resources and basically makes you miserable. No wonder Greater Good
advises forgiving your
adversaries, not for their sake, but for the sake of
your own mental toughness.
How?
The post suggests you try Letting
Go of Anger Through Compassion. It's
"a five-minute forgiveness exercise that could help you get unstuck. Here,
you spend a few minutes generating feelings of compassion toward your offender;
she, too, is a human being who makes mistakes; he, too, has room for growth and
healing. Be mindfully aware of your thoughts and feelings during this process,
and notice any areas of resistance."
http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/how-to-increase-your-mental-toughness-5-science-backed-strategies.html?cid=nl029week46day17
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