Paul Brian
Mental strength is equally if not more important than physical strength.
Without it, even the healthiest and physically strongest man or woman is left defenseless in the storms of life.
If you have mental strength then the following characteristics are going to resonate with you.
If you’re looking to build more mental strength, then these traits are ones you can work on.
Let’s get started.
1) You face your doubts and fears
If you’re a mentally strong person, you’re brutally honest with yourself.
You face your doubts and fears and you struggle with them. They aren’t always simple to overcome, nor will all of them be overcome.
But you try.
And you grow in the process.
You don’t give up or fall for easy answers, and you have the patience and mental fortitude to be honest about your journey in life.
You’re not always doing well, but you’re always being honest with yourself.
2) You have made your peace with past regrets
Past regrets are another one of those things that tend to stick around.
They drag some of us down forever, and for others of us we build a life raft and use them as wood to chop up and float on.
Past regrets aren’t just going to disappear.
But with a mentally strong attitude they can become fuel for our determination.
We can orient our raft toward the future.
If you’re a mental champion then this is exactly what you do with the past:
You respect it, you use it, but you never let yourself be used by it.
3) Your dreams of the future are grounded in reality
When it comes to the future, you’re grounded in reality.
You have ambitious goals and things you want to accomplish, but you’re not dependent on them by any means.
Your dreams have steps to achieve them and are far from being daydreams.
Additionally, your dreams are in line with your life mission and you have no expectation of them to bring you some ideal happiness or emotional bliss.
The happiness is in the attempt itself rather than some future plateau or utopia.
4) You have strong core values and principles
It’s easy to get swept up in nihilism and relativism.
“Yeah, whatever, I dunno,” can be an easygoing response to the challenges of our day, but it’s not always the most morally courageous.
As a mentally strong person you have strong values and principles that you don’t bend and break for convenience.
You genuinely try your best to live your life by what you believe and to have a code of conduct that’s relevant to your daily life, not just grand ideals or spiritual theories that are rarely applied to the day-to-day.
5) You’re able to make strong decisions
Decisions are hard, I can attest to that.
Even small choices can seem hopelessly confusing at times.
But not making any decision is still a decision and we all have no choice but to make a choice.
As a mentally strong person you’re able to break bigger decisions down into steps and smaller decisions.
You practice making smaller decisions and not rethinking them or regretting them.
6) You don’t change direction mid-course
Mentally strong people don’t cut and run.
They bear the weight of their decisions.
This is easy to say, but extremely hard to do.
One way you help in this regard is by making decisions with intentionality and full dedication. You don’t wing it.
You only commit once you’re sure. When you do commit, you keep going until you either succeed or you must adapt to changes.
You successfully resist the urge to change your mind on a whim.
7) You define yourself by your successes
As a mentally strong person, you know your flaws and have faced your fears, like I said.
But you are also very much a can-do person.
You are the character in a story that’s going somewhere and in your mind and your presentation of your story to the world you highlight your wins instead of your failures.
You reframe your losses and disappointments as obstacles on the road to success instead of the final destination.
In such a way, you resist the easy temptation to cling to the victim mentality and beg for attention or pity.
You’re a winner, even if you’re currently losing.
8) Your wellbeing is outcome independent
You want to succeed. We all do.
When you fail or have a big disappointment in your professional or personal life you feel frustration and sadness like we all do.
But you don’t feel any less worthy or valuable as a human being.
Your wellbeing and sense of worth of yourself is not based on outcomes or external rewards.
It’s inbuilt.
You do what is in your control and leave the rest to fate, chance, God or whatever else it may be. That’s all any of us can do.
9) You only date people who respect you
When you are mentally strong, you control your desires.
Even though you may want to be in a relationship or sleep with someone, you try your best not to give into that in order not to compromise your standards.
When things do start to get serious, you pace yourself and your boundaries stay the same regardless of your feelings.
In other words, you don’t allow yourself to be pushed around by somebody just because you have feelings for them, and you don’t chase love and humiliate yourself even if it’s a person you’d love to be with.
You only date people who respect you and you’re comfortable being alone for a long while rather than with those who don’t give you basic respect or toy with your emotions.
This ties into the final point…
10) You believe in yourself
How much do you believe in yourself on a scale of 1 to 10?
I don’t mean how much you’re succeeding in life or even how much you’ve tapped into your potential.
Maybe there’s a lot still to be discovered and put into practice.
But as a person, as a unique being, how much do you believe you have value in this world just for who you are.
If you’re a mentally strong person the answer is a solid 10. Despite all your flaws and a healthy dose of humility, you know that you’re a worthy human being with potential and value.
The core of mental strength
The core of mental strength is in your endurance.
It’s not in how you start the battle but in how you persist during the course of it.
When times get tough and you find yourself going through big downs in life, what do you do?
Mental strength is all about maintaining that basic self-discipline, healthy habits and personal practices that ensure you don’t lose your respect for yourself and life.
You hold yourself to a high standard even when the cards aren’t going your way, and that ends up making all the difference in your relationships, your work and your inner sense of wellbeing.
