How Mentally Strong are You?
Do you allow a negative comment to get you down? Do you achieve the goals you set out for yourself? Do you see the positives in a situation or do you automatically see the negative? All of these relate to our mental strength. As young leaders, it’s integral that we focus on building our mental strength as much as our other leadership skills. Mental strength is vital in achieving our goals and reaching our best performance.
The Five Elements of a Strong Mindset
1. Intentions
Set your intentions for the day, month or year. What do you want to achieve? What would you like to happen? Your intentions will guide your everyday actions and behaviour. It’s your compass to steer you in the right direction. If you have an important meeting coming up, spend some time thinking about what your intentions are and be clear.
2. Confidence
Do you have a strong self belief? Or is your lack of confidence holding you back from what you should be achieving? In my years of leadership development of young people, I know that confidence is built through action, small consistent steps towards who you want to be and what you want to achieve. What is the next challenge for you to develop yourself and your confidence?
3. Optimism
Do you see the positive things in your life and appreciate them? And do you reframe the negatives? We can so easily start to see the negatives in our life and work. Instead, optimism allows us to practice focusing on the positives in our life and work and gain the benefits of doing that. What filter do you see life through?
This includes people too. I have a rule to think the best of people rather than the worst. A colleague may be 10 minutes late for meeting and you could automatically start thinking “I’m obviously not that important for them”, “they don’t want to hear what I have to say” or “why do I bother?”. All this negativity when they could be honestly be running late. How quick does your mind jump to the negative thought? And can you become aware of this and flip it into a more positive one?
4. Focus
How well can you focus your thoughts and attention on what you want? Focus is about commitment, consistency and control.
Commitment - being committed to focusing on your intentions. Do allow yourself to get distracted with what others say about you? Or do you stay committed to your own intentions?
Consistency - being consistent in our thoughts and actions. Are you aware of your self talk and thoughts on a daily basis? Do your actions represent what is most important to you and do you act on your intentions on a consistent basis?
Control - focusing our attention on what we can control. I love the Serenity Prayer which is “please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and to have the wisdom to know the difference”.
5. Motivation
Motivation is the energy towards our goals. How do you maintain your motivation? Dan Pink in his book Drive, asserts that motivation is about three elements - autonomy, mastery and purpose. 1. Autonomy means your ability to choose. Choose your goals and how you’re going to achieve them. 2. There is nothing more motivating then seeing yourself progress, this is mastery. 3. Use your purpose and intentions to motivate you to act. If your purpose doesn’t motivate you, then maybe you need to redefine it until it does.
So how do you rate yourself on your mental strength?
posted by Alicia Curtis @ 9:13 AM
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