10 Daily Practices to Increase Mental Toughness // If you want to learn how to develop a strong mind then check out this motivational video from peak performance expert Eric Partaker. Here are 10 signs and habits of mentally strong people which help provide inspiration for you to build incredible resilience and mental toughness.
KEY POINTS
Do You Take Cold Showers? – Build up your ability over time to take cold showers daily. It provides multiple health benefits, as well as the ability, and mental toughness to handle stress.
Eliminate Digital Distractions – Limit the times when you’re using apps. Remove them from your phone, turn notifications off or schedule set times of the day to use them. Constantly engrossing yourself in apps, comparing yourself to others, and being constantly distracted, weakens the mind.
Dare To Move! – Bodies are built for movement. Mobility is absolutely key to maintaining a positive hormone balance. If you’re not moving throughout the day it will have a negative impact on your mind.
Exercise Your Mind, Read! – Reading helps you develop your focus. You will be much better prepared to survive challenge, and to get through obstacles when you have the ability to get into focus zone.
Schedule A Meeting With Yourself! – Gather your thoughts, think through, what are the things that are going well today. What’s not going so well? How might I change the direction in which things are headed, or the way in which I want to experience the rest of this day?
Be The Boss Of Food! – When you’re hungry, don’t eat right away! This is an effective tool in practicing your ability to tolerate challenge. Use it as a way to develop your mental toughness.
Self-Talk Is Your Power – When challenging moments appear, practice the phrase ‘Bring It On!’ Step into the direction of stress. Embrace stress. Look forward to it!
Gratitude Is The Best Attitude – Make sure that you just take a moment to be grateful for the things that you do have. This awareness will help sustain you during the times when you feel like you have nothing to be grateful for.
Your Life Is 100% Your Responsibility! – Take full responsibility and ownership for your life. Whether or not you achieve your goals, your reactions to situations, and whether you showed up at your best. If you fall down, just stand right back up and go at it again.
TRANSCRIPT
Have you ever wanted to be mentally tougher? Well, I don’t blame you, because a person who’s mentally strong and never gives up is an unstoppable force. And today I’m going to share with you 10 simple daily practices that you can use to increase your mental toughness. Hi, my name is Eric Partaker, and I’ve been recognized as one of the top entrepreneurs in the country. And I’m also the author of two best-selling books, including The 3 Alarms. So here we go, 10 things that you can do to increase your mental toughness on a daily basis.
Number one, cold showers. Have you ever been in the shower and taken the knob and turned it all the way from hot, all the way cold, as far as it can go, and then stayed in that water. If you haven’t tried this before, you need to try it, it is a shock to the system. But when you build up your ability over time to experience that, and to handle it, not only does it have a lot of health benefits, but it also gives you the ability, the mental toughness to just handle stress, to handle stress better.
It’s a shock, and you stay there and you’re able to absorb it and withstand it. And at first it could be very uncomfortable, and maybe you only can do it for five seconds, but the next day you can do six, and then seven. And then if you can get up to a minute, a minute. Ending your shower, cold shower, all the way cold, as cold as it can get for 60 seconds, you walk out of that shower feeling exhilarated. It’s like you’ve just had a cup of coffee. And once again, if you can handle that biological stress, it makes you mentally tougher. And you can do that on a daily basis.
The number two thing that you can do to increase your mental toughness on a daily basis is to eliminate digital distraction. If you’re constantly finding yourself in a Facebook hole, or a Tik ToK hole, or a Twitter hole, or an Instagram hole, where you just lost all of your time. That is limiting your ability to stay focused, discipline, and get the things done that you want to do, which in turn makes you mentally weak. So limit the times when you’re going to be on these apps. Limit the digital distraction.
There’s multiple ways you can do this. You can remove the apps from your phone. I have a friend, she removes all the apps from her phone every Sunday night, and then doesn’t put them back on until Friday. So she only has social media apps on her phone Friday, Saturday, Sunday. During the week they’re gone. They’re not even on her phone. What a clever idea. She has no way of going into those apps, and then interacting, and getting distracted in the typical way that she was doing prior to installing that little simple habit or routine.
Another thing that you could do is turn the notifications off on these apps. So that they’re not constantly pinging up on your phone and distracting you, and again, weakening you mentally. And then last but not least, you can set times where you only allow yourself to go into apps during certain times of day. But eliminating these digital distractions, controlling them will help you become mentally stronger. Because constantly being in these apps, and comparing yourself to others, and being constantly distracted, digitally, weakens the mind.
The number three thing that you can do to help build your mental toughness is move throughout the day. If you’re not moving throughout the day… Our bodies are built for movement. Mobility is absolutely key to maintaining a positive hormone balance in our body, to feeling good, and to being fit, and healthy and strong. And if you’re not moving throughout the day, once again, it will have a negative impact on your mind. It will weaken you. And what I do movement-wise, is I make sure I get exercise first thing, at the start of the day, tO really spike up my energy. And then throughout my day, I’m making sure that I’m taking breaks throughout the entire day.
I do not let myself, for example, just stay seated in a single hour. In a single hour, I set a timer for 16 minutes and 40 seconds, so 1000 seconds. And every 1000 seconds, when that timer goes off, I just simply stand up. I move around, I walk around, and then I sit back down and continue working. But having that constant movement throughout the day helps me keep my mood high. And when my mood is high and positive, then I’m more able to stay mentally strong, and not drift away into the mental weakness that we’re trying to avoid.
The number four thing that you can do to increase your mental toughness is to read. When you develop a disciplined habit of reading, it helps you develop your habit of focus. It helps you develop your habit of getting in the zone. And we’re much better to survive challenge, and to get through obstacles when we have that ability, when we can turn on that ability to get into the zone to focus. And reading is a wonderful way to practice that ability. It draws us in. It requires us to direct our attention to one thing and one thing only, and to sit there for a period of time, distraction free. So you get this two for one when you develop a reading habit, not only are you acquiring the knowledge of whatever it is that you’re reading, but at the same time, once again, you’re developing that habit to stay disciplined and focused. And a disciplined and focused mind is a stronger, healthier, tougher mind.
Number five, to develop your mental toughness, on a daily basis, make sure that you are taking time to be alone. Gather your thoughts, think through, what are the things that are going well today. What’s not going so well? How might I change the direction in which things are headed, or the way in which I want to experience the rest of this day? Have time on your own. Have time to stand back and ask yourself, how is this day going, and what can I do to positively influence the direction from this point forward? And it need not be a huge chunk of time. It could just be five minutes, but make sure that you’re taking time alone throughout your day.
Number six, when you’re hungry, don’t eat right away. The beautiful thing about this is that you will become hungry every single day at a certain point in time. And that’s a wonderful way to practice developing your ability to tolerate challenge, because you feel that hunger and you want to eat right away. Maybe wait another half hour, another hour, but practice not eating right away. And use that, once again, as a way to develop your mental toughness.
Number seven, you can practice breathing and mindfulness. Those develop a calm zen-like state of mind, which you can get through a breathing routine, or a mindfulness, or a meditation routine, are much stronger in challenging and tough situations. And you can actually combine this with one of the things that I mentioned earlier about making sure that in the course of the day that you’re taking the time to be with yourself.
So one of the wonderful things that you can do is at the start of your day, just for five minutes, set a timer, 300 seconds, five minutes. And just sit there and close your eyes and breathe in through the nose, and a slightly longer exhale through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Do that for five minutes, get your thoughts together, gather your… Make yourself a bit more composed. You could perhaps think about the day ahead. You could think about nothing. But get into that calm state, because activating that calm state makes you more likely to go through the challenging states. It gives you the power to stay mentally strong when things aren’t going in the direction that you would like.
Number eight, change your self-talk. When challenging moments come along, start practicing the phrase, bring it on. Practice the phrase that, yes, I like pain. I step in the direction of stress. I embrace stress. I look forward to it. Change your self-talk, change the way you perceive these challenging moments. Practice doing this. Practice stepping towards the difficulty, towards the hardship, towards the challenge, and do that on a daily basis. Look forward to those moments during the day that are going to trigger you, that are going to challenge you. Because those precisely are your moments to develop the ability to step towards those very things. To turn those challenges into growth.
Number nine, be grateful. And once again, you can combine this with what I mentioned earlier, about making sure that you take time to spend with yourself. But make sure that you just take a moment to be grateful for the things that you do have, because when you’re grateful for the things that you do have, and when you’re constantly acknowledging those, you’re making deposits in your gratitude bank account. And the more that that balance grows, the more it can help sustain you during the times when you feel like you have nothing to be grateful for.
Number 10, if you want to become mentally stronger, if you want to become mentally tough, then on a daily basis, take full responsibility and ownership for how the day goes. Take full responsibility and ownership for whether or not you achieve your goals. Take full responsibility and ownership for your reactions, and how you showed up at your best, or perhaps something less throughout the day. Take full risk possibility, take full ownership. And if you fall down, just stand right back up and go at it again.
So I hope you enjoy that 10 things that you can do in the course of your day, that can build your mental toughness, so that you can survive just about anything that comes your way. And I’d love to hear from you. So don’t forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. And if you’d like to get a copy of my new book, The 3 Alarms, please head over to my website at ericpartaker.com. That’s E-R-I-C, ericpartaker.com, where you can pick up a free digital copy of my new best-selling book, The 3 Alarms.
