Changing Your Mindset on Two Fallacies About Mental Toughness
There are two common fallacies about mental toughness. First, there is a belief that mental toughness is a character trait people are born with.
If you think this, you must break this fixed mindset, and view mental toughness through the lens of the growth mindset. Mental toughness is a skill. Just like all skills, mental toughness is not something mother nature gives you without earning it. It takes patience, persistence, planning, and practice to develop mental toughness. Sometimes parents do this for their kids and sometimes people must go through the process of developing mental toughness on their own.
The second fallacy is that mentally tough people are always optimistic and think positive about the pain they face. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Mentally tough people are no better at blocking out pain and the negative thoughts that come from that pain than someone who is mentally weak. The big difference is that mentally tough people don’t let the negative thoughts consume them. Instead, mentally tough people use skills they have practiced over and over thousands of times to filter those thoughts. That filter then produces a behavior pattern with new thoughts that maintain if not increase performance.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental toughness, start with these two mindsets and understanding how they are impacting behavior.