[Music] tough times never last but tough people do and mental strength is a key component to success and building a growth mindset now mental strength is the ability to control your mind instead of being controlled by your mind and you can think of mental strength akin to physical strength but instead for the mind it involves harnessing and directing our mental resources in an effective and beneficial manner it does not mean suppressing or avoiding emotions and thoughts but understanding and managing them in a way that achieves better emotional and physicological States and what is emotional regulation well consider a situation where someone receives some criticism at work or from a partner someone without mental strength to practice emotional regulation might immediately become defensive or feel devastated in contrast someone with mental strength might take a moment to process the feedback identify any valid points and decide on how to respond constructively whether or not the other person's being an idiot at least they're not being an idiot themselves and mental endurance means that if you're facing a challenging task like preparing for a significant exam if you're running a business and everything's going wrong or you're dealing with like a hard deadline for a project in your company that can require some continuous focus and commitment and mental strength helps one push through moments of Doubt fatigue or distraction much like an athlete pushes through physical exhaustion so hello and welcome to the growth mindset podcast with your host Sam Webster Harris as always we're diving into the psychology of self-improvement and today we're discussing mental strength to build a growth mindset is to build an enjoyment of difficulty and challenges to see challenges as opportunities for growth so an essential part of the growth mindset is building mental toughness the two are inextricably linked as I said mental strength is the ability to control your mind instead of being controlled by it and is crucial for emotional resilience in controlling self-defeating mental patterns it is absolutely not about shutting yourself off from emotions but instead learning to control how you react to them and give yourself control of your own actions instead of being at the mercy of the world around you it's so important CU it's a key part of emotional resilience and controlling your mental patterns and negative mental patterns so emotional resilience is referring to the ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences and adapt to stressful situ ation mental strength will Aid you in building the resilience that you need and allow individuals to recover from setbacks faster and with less long-term emotional distress and controlling mental patterns is the patterns of thinking that become entrenched over time that you just learn as a habit many of these can be negative mental patterns like catastrophizing or generalizing things and they can increase feelings of anxiety depression or anger and mental strength allows individuals to recognize those patterns and actively work to towards changing them so for example consider someone that's dealing with the loss of a loved one grief of course is natural but individuals with strong mental strength might process their grief by seeking support remembering some positive memories and gradually finding ways to move forwards rather than getting consumed by pain and losing responsibility for their own life and their own happiness another example might be a common problem that people have is anxiety with public speaking let's say past experiences of forgetting your lines during a presentation or being embarrassed in front of of friends at school in the past now mental strength can help someone recognize those patterns and challenge the belief that your previous mistakes will dictate your future performances and instead mental toughness equips you with strategies to manage your anxiety in the future and to be able to go into speaking engagements and perform well so in essence mental strength is about harnessing the mind's power to face challenges manage emotions overcome negative thought patterns and it's just a vital skill that promotes emotional resilience enabling individuals to handle life's ups and downs with equinity so in case you haven't got the idea it's pretty essential and today we're going to discuss my three biggest ways to build mental strength that aren't that obvious or perhaps discussed as much as some of the others and I will also round off with a summary of the five other major ways proven by science to help you build mental strength so if you're ready to be mentally fortified stay tuned to this podcast the first tip to building mental strength is to be honest about your emotions as as I said mental toughness is not turning off your emotions but giving yourself awareness to feel them without being controlled by them that means acknowledging and accepting what you genuinely feel without denying or minimizing it or Worse exaggerating those feelings it's about giving yourself permission to feel what's going on without judgment without saying it's right or wrong to actually just learn from yourself and emotional honesty serves as a foundation for emotional intelligence it enables you to identify your feelings accurately and then respond to them in healthier ways it really helps you improve your own self-awareness as well as enhancing your ability to communicate by expressing your feelings genuinely which leads to more meaningful and open discussions with others and it helps you make better decisions because you're in touch with the actual feelings that are going on and you can make decisions aligned with your authentic self rather than your reactive self so for example in the workplace imagine you passed over for a promotion instead of immediately brushing off and saying like oh it doesn't matter being emotionally honest would involve admitting disappointment or frustration and recognizing that could then guide you to have a very constructive conversation with your superiors about what you can do to improve or change in the future to give yourself the chance for those opportunities or let's say in a relationship scenario if your partner seems to repeatedly cancel plans on you rather than bottling up and saying things like it's fine emotional honesty might mean that you admit to feeling hurt or undervalued that doesn't mean like telling your partner they're an idiot that means telling them your emotions in a way that can pay for a conversation about each partner's needs and boundaries within the relationship so some practical steps would be number one self-reflection spend a few minutes if you can each day reflecting on your feelings journaling meditating can be very beneficial for this number two try naming your emotions try putting a label on them specifically instead of just saying that are you feel bad try to identify whether it's a frustrated or disappointed or lonely another nice one is to try and explain your emotions as a weather pattern I've been really enjoying that one lately number three avoid judgment remember like there's no wrong emotion to feel each emotion will offer you insight into the internal world within you what matters is understanding them so you then know how to respond to them and manage the em and manage the emotions that are important and then number four is to then seek some feedback sometimes just like discussing your feelings with a friend that you trust or a therapist can really provide so much Clarity and validation in the situation without making you feel worse and let you make better decisions of what to do so research has proven that acceptance of negative emotions rather than suppression will lead to better psychological health and so recognizing and valuing your emotions does lead to a richer and more authentic life experience that does allow you to be more mentally strong and deal with setbacks and hard times now that leads us on to number two which is being present in the moment and resisting unnecessary mental time travel now a crowded mind leaves no space for a peaceful heart and mental time travel is I'm sure something you are familiar with even if you haven't heard the term it refers to our mind's ability to wander into the past whether that's reminiscing or ruminating or to project into the future which is often anticipating or worrying now while this ability can be very beneficial and there's a reason we've adapted it as a human species to be able to plan better to think of things that might go wrong to learn from our mistakes in the past but it can also be a source of a lot of distress when we overuse this tool and we end up focusing on all the negative aspects even when that's quite unrealistic I would certainly recommend listening to my podcast about catastrophizing and how to not do that but anyway the point here is that we really want to try and reduce all this mental time travel noise and work out how to be more in the present moment because ruminating on past mistakes or constantly worrying about future events will just trigger and intensify any anxiety and depression whilst being in the present moment with full awareness really helps us enhance our experiences and makes them richer and allows us to improve our focus and productivity by resisting the pull of a necessary time travel which can help is concentrating at the task in hand and some ways that you'll notice when you're doing the mental time travel is that let's say you're trying to read a book but your mind keeps wondering so like embarrassing incident last week or an argument or something you're worried about in the future instead of actually suing up the book you're just reliving past moments or frustrated about the future or let's say you're lying in bed past your bedtime and you're like anxious about the fact that you're going to be sleepy tomorrow because you haven't got to sleep yet and instead of not worrying about it and accepting where you are you're just making tomorrow even worse by playing all of the terrible scenarios that could happen because you're so tired right now CU you're not sleeping right now and just making your life worse for yourself or maybe you're at work and you're working on a project instead of focusing on the current task you're anxious about the feedback that you're going to get and the worry about your future and how it's going to happen will just impede your efficiency and the quality of work that you're producing right now so you're probably aware of mental time travel and have a good understanding that being more in the present would be very useful but how do we do that well five practical steps mindfulness and meditation the practice of meditation is to just sit there and listen to your mind and all the crazy stuff it says and realizing that it doesn't matter too much and that your mind is just there to like constantly do stuff and be aware of what it does and let it actually just calm down by itself and regular mindfulness exercises really trains the brain to resist the pull of going into the past and the future distractions and letting it feel just more satisfied in the moment then there are grounding techniques a really good one is the 5 4 3 2 1 method where you identify five things that you can see currently in the room that you're in and then four things that you can touch and feel right now three things that you can hear two things that you can smell and then one thing that you can taste and and doing that just spend some time like really activating your brain to be aware in the present moment in the present scenario and really helps you get back into the room and like not worry so much about all these other things another proactive technique is to schedule some Reflections that means specific time in your day to reflect or do some planning and perhaps before you start work to think about things or during your lunch break have some structured time for like necessary mental time travel where you purposefully go forwards and backwards so you can reduce all the urges of time travel at times when it's not necessary number four practicing activities that just require full engagement so doing puzzles or physical exercises hobbies that immerse you can really help keep your mind from wondering so I've certainly had people on the show that like rock climbing or like mountain biking where like your brain just has to properly switch off and just be fully present in the moment and things like that can actually really help you learn how to switch off and focus at other times and they so useful so finding some Hobbies where you really have to be fully engaged super good if you struggle with things like meditation and finally gently just reminding your whenever you do notice yourself that you've drifted try and sit with it and be like right this isn't the thing I should be doing what do I need to do to get back and just try and gently bring your focus back to the present and like over time if you do notice yourself doing this it can become more of a habit and reduce the frequency in duration of a necessary time travel and again doing meditation really amplifies the effect of this and makes it a lot easier we are often told to practice meditation and mindfulness but it can be very hard to to sacrifice the time to sit and do nothing it can seem like a very big waste of time when we already don't have enough time but the funny thing about meditation is that it's often a very small amount of time that you have to use compared to the amount of time it actually saves the time where you frustrate yourself by not being able to control your mind and not doing things efficiently and not controlling your emotions where you can waste entire days doing the wrong things because you haven't spent the 10 15 minutes to just like quiet in your mind a little bit at the start of the day so it genuinely is a massive time-saving hack it's just hard to realize that because you're just sitting down doing nothing for 15 minutes but scientific Metro analysis has consistently shown that engaging in a regular mindfulness exercises and meditation will help ground you reduce stress reduce depression and improve your cognitive flexibility to deal with things so in summary try to be more in the present moment and reduce your mental time travel to really help you find balance between learning from the past past and preparing for the future whilst actually experiencing the present and harness your power as a human to use these techniques to enrich your lives rather than detract from your life now I didn't say it was easy but the point of mental toughness is doing things that are difficult and this leads us into our final habit coming up after the [Music] break we're going on to the final big habit today which is distinguishing between your wants and your values now that means deeply understanding what you value in the long term making that very clear in your head and understanding how your values contrast with things like your short-term neediness and your frivolous passing desires so understanding the distinction I want or a desire these are the temporary desires and Cravings that arise often spontaneously whether that's checking the fridge or having a nicer car they can be influenced by external factors such as peer pressure advertisement wanting to just get away from work that is difficult and these temporary and these wants might not always a want and these wants and desires might not always align with your long-term values or your best interests whereas your values are things that are deeply held beliefs or principles that guide your decisions and actions and understanding of the world your values are an enduring thing that remain relatively constant over time and serve as the foundation for the way that we live and serve as the foundation that the way that we should live our lives now benefit of really understanding your values means that you can really seek longer term satisfaction fulfilling a temporary want might give you some temporary pleasure but living according to your values results in enduring satisfaction and sense of purpose using your values can really improve your decision making being aligned with your values really helps improve your decision- making when you make decisions based on your values because they're going to be aligned with your long-term goals and your personal well-being because if you make decisions based on like fleeting wants and desires that can often lead to regret in contrast decisions rooted in values typically feel very right and meaningful so for example if you're eating and you want a sugary treat due to a craving if you value long-term health and fitness and you truly value it instead of succumbing to the impulse you'll choose a healthier snack if you've got the broader healthier goals in mind but you often don't notice that in the moment or let's say you're shopping a nice advertisement might tempt you to buy something expensive and you'll think that you'll look cool have this amazing Gadget or this fashionable bag whatever but your value might be some more financial responsibility and if you remember that you could decide to save the money and spend it on something that's actually more necessary or meaningful in your life or let's say relationships you maybe have an argument with a friend you might want to send a hasty angry message about how much of an idiot they are and why you're great but if you value the long-term friendship you should really be seeking effective communication that really brings you together and that would prompt you to take a moment to cool down and approach a say situation more construct so some practical steps to build some understanding of your values firstly reflection schedule some time to actually think deeply about what you truly value in life who you are who you want to become do you care about family do you care about health do you care about integrity do you care about growth in your growth mindset do you care about Community you have to really Define those values for yourself and become aware of where they come up and how and then do things like journaling that's writing down some of the instances where you act based on your wants versus acting on your values and what you learn from them over time this can really offer insights into the patterns and help realign the actions with your core values I also really like using a tool called future me.org where you can send an email to yourself in the future and you can kind of put down all the things that you kind of think that you value and you think that you want to do over the next 6 months and then so see what happens 6 months later and like reflect on like what you actually did versus what you thought you wanted to do and it's super useful to get some awareness of yourself now another tool that's commonly used by many people is visualization if you really visualize like the outcome in the long run of acting according to your wants or acting according to your values you'll really start to see something that you actually care about in the long run and it'll feel much more fulfilling to do the long-term act rather than the shortterm act and then another really powerful technique of course is accountability so sharing your values with trusted friends and family members who spend a lot of time with you can really serve as a sounding board for when you're torn between things that you want and things you value and you can just get some feedback and awareness in the situation be like okay actually there's a reason I'm doing this this is going to align with my long-term goals if I make this Choice even though you might not want to do it at the time you're going to feel better for yourself because you have not only the accountability from your friends but also someone will see you making these better decisions and you'll feel better yourself for doing them so to summarize it's hugely important to spend time establishing what your fleeting wants and desires are and really getting to understand and know what your values are and where they come up in life and that can provide a really robust framework for making better decisions and to emphasize your long-term well-being and satisfaction over momentary pleasures and that can lead you having a more purposeful and contented life and to be more mentally strong and tough in the times when you give in to when you give in to Temporary weaknesses okay so those were the three bigger habits that I don't think get discussed quite enough when it comes to building mental toughness perhaps not from that lens and as I said there's going to be five more habits now that I'm just going to Briefly summarize they're all proven by science and you probably heard of them before uh number one cultivating gratitude now being able to zoom out of your negative thinking in the moment and see some positives in a situation is so incredibly powerful and it just helps you even in those down moments I'm sure you've heard it before and yet so many people just don't do it but being able to reframe your situation and actually find any reason to be grateful is so empowering and motivating and something that I like to do is when I notice myself leaning into negativity try and come up with like as many positive ideas as I can negative ones cuz it just puts me back in the moment and makes me realize that I'm being a bit of an idiot and my brain just wants to find all the negative things so I can just be annoyed and addict to myself and instead trying to find reasons to be grateful can really help you move forward with more strength number two self-compassion now mental strength isn't about being addict to yourself as I said it's not treating yourself like a robot that's just a recipe for Burnout so being kind to yourself and managing your energy giving yourself rest recuperation is essential to not be overwhelmed it's essential to maintaining mental strength self-compassion is scientifically proven to help with psychological well-being reducing anxiety and depression the issue with self-compassion is that people think that they're practicing self-love but they go too far and they start doing all the things based on their wants rather than their long-term values like just always being nice to them themselves always letting thems have the beer have the cigarette have the cake and that's too much self-compassion and so you need to balance it with being responsible and working out what your values are rather than just giving into whatever you want right now number three setting and communicating your limits to ensure that you're not being stretched too thin is so important whether that's personal or professional settings boundaries are essential to maintain good mental health and prevent burnout as well as keeping your relationships healthy and balanced on the subject of relationships number four social support being close with people and with family is such an essential part of managing depression and being able to be mental tough in hard times because if you have a support system that can buffer you against Adverse Events numerous Studies have shown that social support can act as a protective Factor against mental health problems and can even help you live longer so don't isolate yourself if you're working really hard on something that's important and you're neglecting that time to spend with family with friends it can really bite you and actually prevent you from maintaining the mental toughness that you need in the long term so find ways to always stay in touch with people and to have some healthy hobbies that involve hanging out with friends and having conversations at a deeper level with people and then finally number five setting goals and plans clearly defining what you want to achieve and planning the steps to get there will give you a sense of purpose and direction that makes a huge difference when trying to maintain mental resilience if things get difficult but you know where you're going it's a lot easier to manage those difficulties so goal setting has been proved to be linked to improved motivation confidence and performance and being able to stay mentally tough so those are a bunch of tips to help you build mental toughness and of course it goes without saying building a growth mindset is essential to building mental toughness as I said they are inextricably linked embracing challenges and seeing them as opportunities for growth instead of avoiding difficulties will let you learn to thrive amongst Challen es Carol D's research on mindsets shows that individuals with a growth mindset that's those people who believe their abilities can be developed through hard work those people tend to achieve more than those with a fixed mindset because they are less likely to give up so learn to reframe difficulties as a safe place for Learning and that lets you enjoy these challenging environments for yourself and is the ultimate strategy to building mental toughness as Ernest Hemingway said there is nothing Noble in being Superior to your fellow man true nobility is being Superior to your former self so as always it's all about self-improvement and working to become better today than you were yesterday so thank you so much for listening to this podcast about building mental toughness if you liked it please share it with a friend who you think might enjoy it or that you might want to become a collaborator on building your mental toughness together with and if you're feeling super kind today and like the world needs to hear more of the growth mindset podcast then please leave me a good rate on whichever rap you happen to use because of it kind of helps a lot with that remember that life is to be enjoyed and that means enjoying today enjoyment is not a thing to be put off to the Future so be kind to yourself and whilst you're at it be kind to someone else too thank you so much for listening go you your consistency to reach the end of an episode is legendary my hero but when we learn things it's important to reflect so I politely invite you to take a pause rifle through the biggest ideas you just heard so here's your opportunity to hit pause and have a think okay did you wrestle with some insights information doesn't stick when we race from one podcast to the next without using our brain to play with the knowledge so here's another go at a pause all righty I'll let you off to continue with your life now if you have any ideas or feedback for the show I'm always interested to hear from you you're the best and other than that please stay curious curious gr smiling for no reason