Resilience is at the core of a strong-minded person.
How resilient are you?
Some people experience setbacks and bounce back quickly. Others find it difficult to get back on their feet.
Our resilience is tested almost daily.
Maybe you lose a loved one, you lose a job, or a relationship ends.
While we may feel like the Universe or the world is against us, we do still have control over how we respond and react to our circumstances.
Where does this control start?
With your mind.
When you take control of your thoughts, you’re able to manage your emotions. When you’re able to manage your emotions, you can take decisive action. This type of action leads to specific results. These results become your life.
This process is called the Model, and will help you create a bigger, better life for yourself.
11 Ways to Stay Mentally Strong
#1. Acquire Skills
When you acquire and master skills, you’ll feel more confident and competent.
In challenging circumstances, our self esteem and ability to problem solve are on full display. Our ability to remain confident in ourselves and manage our thoughts and emotions is crucial to taking action in a positive direction. Your skills, internally and externally, help you create a favorable outcome in a given circumstance.
Using the Model is one of those skills that will help you stay strong-minded.
#2. Set Goals and Move Toward Them
Visualize your ideal future. Set goals for yourself. Take decisive action.
It all sounds so simple, right?
In most cases, it is simple, but it may not feel easy.
Being able to develop goals, take steps to achieve them, and adjust your efforts along the way develops a strong sense of purpose. It also helps you strengthen yourmind. Whether your goals are for physical health, mental wellness, relationships, career, or anything else, picking an outcome and sticking with the goal to achieve it builds resilience.
Goals help you feel a sense of purpose, which feeds back into your confidence and self esteem.
Set goals and move toward them.
#3. Stay Present
It’s easy to visualize your future and then imagine living there instead of taking action in the world to create it.
This “living in the future” will stall your efforts to actually achieve your goals.
However, Brooke Castillo teaches that you should act as your future yourself, now. Why? This will keep you in the present moment while preparing you for your eventual future circumstances.
Instead of daydreaming about what things could be like, you start acting as if you’re already there, in the present moment.
#4. Acknowledge Your Past
Life can get tough.
Circumstances like losing a loved one, losing a job, or a relationship ending can rock us to our core. And, sometimes, we need a boost to feel good about ourselves (or a good cry to let it all out).
This is why acknowledging your past is so helpful. You’re able to look back at what you’ve already accomplished, all that you’ve done with your life, and remind yourself how capable you truly are.
What you’ve achieved so far in this life is not negated because it’s in the past. Instead, your past is the record of how you got to where you are today. Acknowledge that. Give yourself credit.
The best part?
You can change your thoughts, manage your emotions, and take action toward your biggest, best life starting now.
No more asking for permission or living in fear.
You will change your life.
#5. Embrace Adversity
As you move toward your goals, expect and plan for setbacks.
You will face tough circumstances in life. This is what it’s like to live in the reality of 50/50. The strong-minded understand and accept this fact about life. As you live your biggest, best life, you will experience the good and the bad.
When you embrace adversity and expect setbacks, you’re able to move through circumstances more quickly than living life with rose-colored glasses and getting nothing done.
Embracing adversity, processing it, and moving toward your goals is exercising your mind.
You’re able to define your circumstance, identify the thought, process the emotion, take action, and get a result.
#6. Make Connections
Connections with family, friends, and community make you stronger.
Healthy relationships with people who care about you and your wellbeing give you a sense of belonging and connection. These relationships are an extra layer of defense to protect your mind and keep it strong, even through the toughest times. The support and reassurance friends, family, and community offers is invaluable.
The right connections make you stronger and improve resiliency in life.
#7. Avoid Catastrophizing
No problem or circumstance is insurmountable.
All it takes is a different thought to find a better way forward.
When we catastrophize, we cut ourselves off from living our fullest lives. We get stuck in a negative thought cycle that holds us back from ever making progress. When we obsess over the negative, the negative becomes our lives. Then we feel stress, anxiety, and fear. And we take action because of the negativity, affirming our negative thoughts. The cycle repeats, keeping us in a vicious loop.
Instead…
We can catch a thought, change it, feel something different, and take a new action that leads to a positive result. This breaks the negative cycle and puts us on a new path.
#8. Accept Change
Change is a constant in life, internally and externally.
You will change your thoughts, feelings, and actions to create the life you want.
The world will respond in kind and change to push against or pull away from you.
Once you accept that change is a part of life, and it’s an opportunity, not an obstacle, your life will begin to change.
Life is happening for you, not against you.
#9. Discover Your ‘Self’
Unpacking and processing yourself is one of the most important activities you can practice.
When you avoid self, you cut off our potential to live your dream life. If you cut off your potential, you’ll feel stuck, stressed, and overwhelmed with life.
But…
As you go deeper into self, you’ll identify thoughts that do not serve you. You’ll change those thoughts. Then, you’ll be able to better use your emotions as fuel for action. Those actions are what get the results you need to create the life you want to live.
This is why discovering self and processing your thoughts and feelings are so important.
#10. Practice Optimism
Like gratitude, you can practice optimism.
You will experience a circumstance and choose to see the negative and/or the positive in it.
How you view a circumstance is entirely up to you. No one else is forcing you to see it one way or another. This is the power of your thoughts. When you choose what you think about your circumstance, it unlocks your life. You take back control of your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
When you take back control, you feel hope.
Optimism helps you see a path forward in any circumstance.
There’s always a way.
#11. Prioritize Self Care
Becoming strong-minded is not a destination or an end game; it’s an ongoing process.
Self care helps you keep the ground you’ve gained.
For each person, self care is going to be different. Maybe you do spa days once or twice a month to give your mind a break from personal growth. Maybe you prefer a long weekend in the mountains to read books, listen to music, and go on hikes. Or, maybe you recharge while walking along the beach, listening to the ocean roll up and down the beach.
Self care is unique to you.
Make self care mandatory.
What You Learned
Here’s how you stay strong minded as you grow:
- Acquire Skills
- Set Goals and Move Toward Them
- Stay Present
- Acknowledge Your Past
- Embrace Adversity
- Make Connections
- Avoid Catastrophizing
- Accept Change
- Discover Yourself
- Practice Optimism
- Prioritize Self Care
Get Coached in Self Coaching Scholars
If you’re struggling to stay strong-minded and make changes to create your biggest, best life, then Get Coached in Self Coaching Scholars is your next best step.
No more feeling frustrated, anxious, worried, or unsatisfied.
Get Coached will help you manage your mind and emotions, even in those challenging circumstances, so you can create your dream life.