Gaining Mental strength can be easy with these 5 amazing practices.

When we encounter a problem, we immediately blame someone instead of exploring the solution.

Is it a sign of a lack of mental strength?

Before diving in, we have to understand the basic concepts behind these.

Do you believe that the term “Mental strength”, which initially meant only for people in sports? Yes, as per Wikipedia, mental strength or mental toughness is a measure of an individual’s confidence. It predicts his success in sports.

Then, as the day passes, this term becomes more common among all the people, especially around business people.

So, as per the definition, the answer to the above question is yes.

Mental strength is most commonly embedded with resilience. The above picture shows the resilience of the plant to grow even from the harder surface. This resembles the mental toughness in humans which helps us to self revive from the toughest situations.

Some situations I faced made me think about mental strength. So, I researched the topic and came out with the 5 simple solutions to gain or improve it.

Now, we can explore the crucial practices which can help us, stay mentally strong or gain mental strength, if we are mentally weak.

Avoid judging from your perception

I always notice people complaining about the other’s behaviour.

When do people complain about others?

Most complaints arise when another person doesn’t act as per the particular person’s perception. Let me clarify this with an example.

Example: Two girls were working in an office. One was a perfectionist while other was equally perfect with a bit of laziness. The perfectionist completes all the works on time and regularly reports every update to her senior.

While the other, complete the work as instructed on time with no pro-activeness and didn’t even care about updating the happenings away from her allocated work.

They both were working properly. But the second girl feels negative about the first girl. As per her thought, the first girl was overacting to gain a delightful name from the senior.

From the above example, as explained, both are equally good from their own perception. But the second girl, while judging, compared the behaviour using her perception despite empathetic thinking.

Here, this empathetic thinking helps an individual to gain mental strength.

So, if we think from their point, we can learn unique perspectives, which helps us to broaden our vision, which assists us in gaining mental strength.

Embrace positivity from negativity

Everyone around you, at least most of them, advice you with this word “Be Positive”.

Can a person be positive when in a Negative situation?

What will be your reaction, if I say yes? It induces you to ask another question. How?

Let us explore.

As per research,

“We have half a minute to prevent a negative thought to enter our inner part of our consciousness”

So when the negative situation arises, it automatically plants negative thoughts in the mind. But we have 30 seconds to tackle it with positivity. Every situation has a positive side. You just need to find the positive side and embrace it.

I can feel your thoughts now. Yes, it is easy to say but harder to implement. But with the simple practices, we can tackle the harder part that is negativity with the easier practices that is positivity.

Meditation

The first practice is unavoidable, we have to Meditate with Matchstick. Wait, Don’t enter the negative thought process. I will also explain the simplest way to meditate.

Please sit-in a silent environment with a matchbox in hand. Fire the match stick and close your eyes immediately. Now you have a glowing match stick in your hand which will soon reach your finger. Open your eyes when it reaches. That’s all. Your meditation is over.

I can feel a sense of confusion in your mind. Let us see the science behind this. When you close your eyes with the firing match stick in your hand, your complete concentration will be on the matchstick. Meditation completely depends on concentration.

The approximate 10 seconds arrests your concentration in a single place. Practice it several times a day to master your mind.

It helps you to divert your concentration to positive aspects and fix your concentration with positive thoughts which increases mental strength.

 Practice Positivity

Another practice is. practising positivity as a day-to-day habit. Every one of us has a hobby and loves to do some activities. But, because of the hectic work schedule, we avoid hobbies as the cost of productivity.

The best way to practice positivity is to stop being productive all the time. We always find excuses to schedule our time for other activities because of our work. Allocate specific time for hobbies and relaxation. It creates peace of mind which helps you to stay positive in every situation.

Because of the positive attitude, you can easily tackle the negative thoughts within the 30 seconds.

Designing healthier thoughts

Now we are diving deeper into our thoughts. Even without our knowledge, our thoughts are designing our actions. So, now the question arises,

How thoughts are controlling our actions?

Let me explain the answer to this question with an example.

Example :

1. Consider you are on a bus which got stuck in heavy traffic. You think the traffic will consume some hours of your time. You feel impatient and frustrated. Because of this, your heartbeat changes and you may act aggressively in the situation.
2. Consider the same situation. You think the traffic may get cleared soon and you think about how to make use of this time. So you feel relaxed in this situation. You may watch a series or read a book.

From the above 2 examples, what will be your suggestion?

In the first example, your thought made you feel frustrated and act aggressively while the second thought made you feel relaxed and act productively.

From this, you can get clarity about how the thoughts can control your actions.

Then what will be the next step? Just direct your mind to think positively. It is much simpler when you do it. Practice it to gain mental strength.

Controlling your reactions

You can think controlling thoughts, can automatically control the reactions. Yes, what you think is right. But reactions sometimes bombard without thoughts.

When you face any action from another person, you will react to them. But here your thoughts don’t play a role. But your positivity, however, helps to react healthily.

How can one control his reactions?

Anyone can take control of their reactions. But the first important rule to control your reaction is.

“Do not react or React late”

Yes. When you face some action, the first thing is to think, if it needs a reaction.

Can your reaction add value to the action? If yes, then react.

For example,

Your friend is in frustration because of her unpleasant day in the office. She expels her anger towards you because you are the only person close to her.

What will you do?

If you react, then definitely it will add fuel to the fire. Just keep quiet and try to console instead of reacting to her action. You may think consoling is also a reaction.

The reaction itself means action against another action. So, if you try to talk about her frustration and give a solution to her action, then it is a reaction. Consoling is different.

You can react late to this situation. Yes, you can advise her about reality after consoling her. But you have to make sure you consoled her, and she is in a pleasant mood to accept the advice.

So, control your reactions by following the above mantras which help us gain mental strength.

self-rewarding attitude

The most important part of gaining mental strength is to reward ourselves. One must have a self-rewarding attitude which brings a sense of achievement which improves the mental strength.

How to reward ourselves?

We can reward ourselves. Just create a note of your to-do-list of the day. It can be anything from watering plants to completing the project milestone.

Note down everything in a sheet of paper every morning. At the evening, strike out the tasks you completed. Ignore the tasks you left unfinished.

For example:

If you wrote 5 tasks in the morning and completed 3 in the evening, then strike out the three. Now you can see the list shortens.

Now you have completed 3 tasks, so add 60% to your achievement. (3/5 is 60%. )

Then write the positive things you have done on the day on one side and unpleasant things on the other side. Now give 1 point for one good and -0.5 for a bad thing.

Example :

Positive things can be anything like helping your friend to lift the dropped pen, donating to a beggar, giving way to the ambulance, etc.

Negative things are like hurting someone, breaking something, etc.

Now as an example, on a particular day, you have done 6 positive things and 4 negative things. So your score is 6 – 2 is 4. You have to consider 4/10. So you scored 40%

Summing up your scores 60% + 40% is 100%. Reward yourself every day with a small gift when you score 100% or above. For me, I reward myself with an extra cup of coffee.

So, what is the relation between these scoring and mental strength?

When you score over 100%, as explained earlier, it gives you a sense of achievement. If you have done 10 positive things today, the scoring sheet motivates you to do more positive practices and eliminate negative practices.

It automatically harvests positivity, which cultivates positive thoughts. So, self-rewarding helps in increasing the mental strength on a whole by improving other aspects like positivity, thought process and even controlling reactions.

“Let us embrace a healthy lifestyle with the expert level mental strength”

Thank you for reading. If you have questions or views about this topic, use the comment box.

Mental strength sometimes depends on Integrity too. To read an article about living with integrity, please click.