Fortifying the Mind: Strategies for building Mental Strength.
When life knocks you down, do you quickly pick yourself up and adapt to the circumstances? or do you find yourself completely overwhelmed with little confidence in your ability to deal with the challenge?
Psychological resilience is the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or to return to pre-crises status quickly. It is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant source of stress- such as family, relationship problems, serious health problems or work place & financial stressors. Such challenges, however, present the opportunity to rise above and come back even stronger than you were before.
Building Mental Strength is fundamental to living your best life. Just as we go to the Gym and lift weights in order to build our physical muscles, we must also develop our mental health. Optimal mental health helps us to live a life that we love, have meaningful social connections and positive self esteem. It also helps in our ability to take risks, try new things and cope with any difficult situations that life may throw at us.
Here are five tips you can follow to make yourself mentally stronger.
- Label your emotions: Put a name to your feelings, this decreases the intensity. so whether you are feeling sad, anxious, angry or scared,- acknowledge it, at least to yourself. also pay attention to the way, those emotions can affect your choices. When you are feeling anxious, you may be less inclined to take risks. when you are excited, you may be more impulsive. By increasing your awareness of your emotions, you can decrease the chances that will not make you take irrational decisions based on emotions only.
- Establish Healthy ways to deal with uncomfortable emotions: Naming your emotions is only part of the battle, you also need skills to regulate your emotions. Think about your current coping skills. Do you eat when you are nervous? do you drink to calm down? do you vent your anger on friends or family? do you stay at home and avoid going out when you are anxious? These common strategies may make you feel better in the moment but they will make you feel worse over the long term. There ways to cope with your emotions- deep & controlled breathing, exercises, meditation, reading, spending time in Nature are some of the few strategies to make you feel better.
- Identify and replace unhealthy thought pattern: The way you think affects how you feel or behave. “I am an idiot”, I can’t stand it/him!” robs you of the mental strength. Pay attention to your thoughts, You will likely notice common themes & patterns. You may talk yourself out of doing things that makes you feel scary or you convince yourself that you have no control over your life. Changing the thoughts that you have with yourself can be the most instrumental thing you could do to change your life. so instead of saying ” I am going to fail or do something wrong” say “This is my chance to succeed and I will do my best.”
- Take Positive action: Train your brain to think differently by changing your behavior. Keep doing things you feel are tough and you feel you can’t, you will be able to prove to yourself that you are stronger. Establish healthy daily habits like showing gratitude, exercise, plenty of sleep. Seek out people who inspire you to be your best. Create such an environment that supports your efforts to build a healthy life- style.
- Give up Bad habits that rob you of all mental resilience: All good habits in the world, won’t be effective, if you are performing them right alongside your unhealthy habits. Its like eating sweets while you are exercising.
Pay attention to your bad habits that rob you of mental strength- It might be feeling sorry for yourself or feeling jealous of other people’s success, it only takes one or two to keep you stuck in life. Once you recognize these bad habits, devote your energy into replacing them with healthier alternatives.
