80. Three ways to build your “mental toughness”!

Hi everyone and welcome to a new episode of Project Mindset. It’s great to have you back! Today I want to talk about mental toughness, which can be roughly translated as psychological resilience or mental strength.

Personal experiences with mental strength

When it came to the birth of our two children, my wife told me right away during our first birth that she wanted to do it without any aids, without anesthesia, without a C-section, and so on. To be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had imagined beforehand that it would be incredibly exhausting and painful, and that’s exactly how it was. I was just there, watching from the sidelines, but I really realized how strenuous and painful a birth can be, and I truly respected that my wife actually went through with it without painkillers. She also told me beforehand that she wanted to do it the same way with our second birth.

My thought was, crazy, you actually know what happened the first time, or how it went, all the pain and so on, it takes quite a long time until the child is born, and yet she still wanted to go through it again in the same format.

I was very impressed that she actually went through with it, and what I can say is that I absolutely noticed that it was definitely mental strength and self-confidence from my wife to say, “I’m doing this again now. I know what happened the first time, but I’m doing it again, and I can do it again, no matter what pain it involves.”

Coping with difficult decisions

If we apply this to our lives, or if I apply it to my life, I’ve also noticed that the more mentally resilient I am, the better I get through life with the decisions I make, and the more comfortable I feel with the decisions I make when I know it was a great decision. It really wasn’t an easy decision, but I went through with it anyway. And after such decisions, you simply feel better overall in your life.

I’ve been thinking about how one can actually practice, increase, or improve their mental strength, and three points came to mind that I’d like to share with you today. Perhaps they will help one or two of you to build a kind of mental strength in your own life, especially if you know that sometimes you lack this resilience, sometimes you don’t quite believe in the things you set out to do because you know perfectly well that you’re not that resilient. Perhaps there’s something among these points that has helped me, at least.

Keep your own promises

The first thing that has always helped me a great deal is that when I set myself a goal, so to speak, when I make a promise to do something, then I stick to that goal at all costs.

What I mean is, we’re all experts at keeping promises we make to other people. We want to keep those promises, we stick to what’s been stipulated, and we do. I’d even say it’s partly out of conscience that if I don’t keep my word, the other person might not believe me in the future, or I might lose my credibility with them. For example, if you tell your employer to be at work by nine in the morning, you stick to it; it’s contractually agreed upon. It’s a promise you make, and you keep it.

Building self-confidence

Interestingly, many people keep the promises they make to themselves; for example, if they make a promise to do something, they don’t keep it.

And I’ve noticed that the more often I haven’t kept my own promises, to myself, the more I’ve been in my comfort zone, and the less often I’ve actually managed to make tough decisions, difficult decisions, because I constantly had the feeling that I’d made plans several times and still somehow hadn’t stuck to them, and in the end you don’t even believe yourself anymore, you lose credibility, especially yourself.

Take your own standards seriously

That’s why it’s so important to me that when I decide to do something, I stick to it; in fact, keeping my own promises to myself is now much more important to me than keeping them to others.

I’ve said it several times on the podcast: in the end, it all comes down to how you think about yourself. It doesn’t matter what others think, but what do I think at the end of the day when I’m sitting alone somewhere in my room? Am I happy or not? And usually, if you’ve kept to the things you set out to do, you are happy.

Preparation creates security

The second thing is how I build up my mental strength, or train regularly; I prepare myself accordingly for difficult situations or things I have set out to do.

I remember that some time ago, we were in a difficult phase at the start of our business. Raising new capital required me to pitch to investors. I knew it would be a very difficult pitch; we were also in a precarious financial situation. We really needed to raise new capital, and I had prepared quite thoroughly for the pitch. However, I was still nervous about whether it would work, whether the investors would agree or not.

Encouragement before a difficult pitch

And one of my buyers said something important: “Hey Resa, you’ve pitched in difficult situations before. I know you’re super prepared because you always do it, so it will work out today too.”

And then I realized he was right. I had prepared myself, I had done what was necessary to get through this difficult situation, or in this case, this difficult pitch, as well as possible. So I did everything that was somehow possible for me to get through this whole thing. And I can’t do any more than that anyway.

Reduce pressure through preparation

And just knowing that I had prepared helped me incredibly to cope well with the psychological stress at that moment because I knew I had done everything I could or could have done. That means preparation is also very important for me to build my mental strength.

Consciously seeking challenges

The third point, this might sound a little strange, but sometimes I deliberately put myself in tough situations just to really train my toughness muscle, to know that yes, I can accomplish difficult things, even those I set for myself.

It doesn’t have to be a world-changing decision; for example, it could be that you really plan a long training session when you’re tackling something, like a difficult topic or work where you know it will be really tough today, so you need to give 110 percent to get through it.

Testing one’s own resilience

So, I sometimes put myself in tough, difficult situations so that at the end of the day I know, hey, I can do what I set out to do.

It is true, and I firmly believe that, overall, one respects people more, or one respects oneself more, when one has done difficult things.

Respect earned through overcoming challenges

At the end of the day, nobody says, “That was cool, you sat in front of Netflix for ten hours watching TV, and I totally admire that.” But everyone would say, “I admire that you jogged or ran or did something like that for ten hours straight.”

We admire other people when they do tough things, and of course we admire ourselves when we have gone through difficult situations and endured them.

The three approaches in retrospect

Great guys, those were my three tips on how you can increase your mental strength. I hope there was something in there for you. That’s also the whole point of the podcast. I say it myself every now and then: in a podcast, I’m not at all about giving any psychological tips on how you should best do things. In the podcast, I try to share how I deal with difficult situations, how I dealt with them in my past life, or how I want to deal with certain situations in the future.

Brief summary of today: I try to keep my promises to myself so that I can build and maintain my credibility, even with myself. Secondly, I prepare myself for difficult situations. If I know I am super prepared, if I have done everything possible to prepare, for example, this pitch, then I know, hey, I couldn’t have done more anyway, so I can go in relaxed.

Use experiences for future decisions

And the third point is that I occasionally put myself in difficult situations. This doesn’t have to be about truly momentous decisions; it can also be sporting decisions or whatever. I put myself in the situation to know that at the end of the day I’ve pulled it off, meaning I’m capable of doing something like that. And when faced with the next difficult decision, I’ll draw on these thoughts again.

I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast episode. If so, please leave a like and subscribe to the channel, because that’s the only way Project My Set can continue to grow. I hope to see you again soon, and don’t forget, until then, my set is everything.