I’m sure you’ve seen and heard hundreds of videos from strength gurus that shout at you to push harder, to cross your limits, and then some.
There is a fine line between a toxic masculinity movement that gained traction lately, and the concept of self-improvement and striving for greatness and resilience.
Everyone should push themselves to be better! The work that never ends is the work you do on yourself! If you want to be better than 99% of people, you need to do this work!
However, that doesn’t mean breaking your body or your mind!
So let me set the ground here, and guide you through how you can have a better mindset than 99% of people while taking care of yourself!
Let’s join the self-improvement and self-care concepts into 10 easy steps to achieve mental fortitude and improve your life!
10 Steps to have a better mindset than 99% of people
Practice Gratitude
There is a conflicting theory here that if you are grateful for the current state of your life, you can’t also strive for improvement and look toward your goals.
That is one of the biggest lies out there!
Only someone who is truly grateful, can tackle something new with a positive outlook and remove the fear and doubt attached to the unknown.
If you are truly grateful, you’re going to have a positive outlook on life, you are going to recognize opportunities faster and be more willing to act on your dreams and plans.
Before you say anything, let me tell you that there is always something to feel grateful for. To provide an example, I am going to borrow an exercise from Roxie Nafousi.
Write down or think of a gratitude list that is split into 3 categories:
- 5 Things from your life that you are grateful for (i.e. your partner, your family, your children, your house, your job, etc.)
- 5 Things about you that you are grateful for (i.e. your resilience, your intelligence, your beauty, your power, your calm, etc.)
- 5 Things from the world that you are grateful for (i.e. the sound of the ocean, the chirping of the birds, the smell of flowers, etc.)
Even though you might not have something for each category, you have something for the last one. And this will help raise your vibration.
Get out of your comfort zone
This is one of the most important things to do for yourself. It will help you embrace a growth mindset, make you more flexible and adaptable, and increase your resilience and ability to constantly learn.
This is something that I am guiding my life on! Whether it’s career, nutrition or my fitness regimen, this always ensured that I was moving forward!
The worst thing you can do for your mindset is to stay in the same place, in favor of being comfortable!
You can achieve this in many ways and I am going to give you some examples:
- Change your gym plan or your running route
- Start a course or a certification in an unfamiliar area
- Take on a project at work that you don’t have experience with. (Yet!)
- Change teams within your organization if that is possible
- Change companies
- Change your career and go for your dreams
- Travel to a new destination
Mindfulness and Meditation
Being mindful and practicing meditation is not just a useful habit, but also a great tool in achieving great clarity and inner calm.
Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and other classic Stoics are talking a lot about observing and analyzing your feelings and reactions. This will keep you more self-centered, and self-aware and also predict how certain exterior things will impact your life.
By practicing meditation, you will be able to control your responses to the outside influences, actions of other people or things that happen to you. This way, you are achieving a very strong mindset and a steel resilience!
As long as manipulation doesn’t work on you, fear techniques don’t affect you, and you can’t be emotionally destabilized by things outside of your control, you have a clear path toward your goals!
Learn from failure
Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is just a try.
Remember Candy Crush, Angry Birds, Solitaire, or any other popular games you played years ago or are still playing now?
Were you devastated when the game ended? No. You just pressed the “Play Again” button and started all over again. In time, you certainly passed that level and evolved.
Apply the same gamification concept to your life.
Failing in life can indeed cost a lot of time, money, or relationships. And I am not saying to carelessly try time after time. You need to pay attention analyze each failure and work on fixing what went wrong.
However, mentally strong people, see failure as a lesson. You should apply the points from the previous section and not let this affect your emotional state completely. You will be disappointed. Allow yourself to feel those emotions and then, when all processed, extract the lessons.
Allow yourself to feel each emotion
This might sound weird at first, but let me explain.
To achieve mental fortitude, you need to understand yourself and your mind. To clear the fog. To clear the confusion!
A lot of confusion in our minds is created by unprocessed feelings, or feelings that we suppressed.
The book “Untethered Soul” is saying that your heart gets clogged and heavier with any unprocessed feeling. Any Emotion that you didn’t allow yourself to feel.
Similarly, to have a strong mindset, you need to understand yourself better. And to do that, you need to allow yourself to feel:
- sadness
- fear
- missing someone
- nostalgia
- envy
If you properly process each of these, you can properly identify what it is you need to work on, what you haven’t dealt with, what traumas you have, and what you desire.
When properly processed, the stimuli that would make you sad or envy before might make you calm and inspired the next time they arise.
Set clear and motivating goals
Setting goals is something we do since we were kids, whether we do it consciously or not.
When you started a game, you were aiming for a new high score. When you studied for an exam, you were aiming for a certain mark. When you work hard on your job, you are aiming for some promotion bonus or recognition.
However, the way we set our goals will determine how we will feel, our level of motivation and the state of our mental health!
When setting goals, you need to adhere to the following criteria:
- The goal should be big enough so that you are motivated and excited
- The goal should be achievable, otherwise, it will have detrimental effects to your confidence
- The goal should be challenging enough, but not a lot. The soft spot for growth is to be challenging enough so that you are out of your comfort zone, but easy enough so you don’t get extremely stressed
Surround Yourself with Positivity
The environment around you will affect your mood and internal state and vibration, whether you like it or not.
However, you can mindfully introduce the cues and elements that will impact you positively and raise your vibration:
- Interact with people that inspire you and make you feel good
- Do not dismiss compliments from others. Simply say “Thank you!” instead of “Oh, that’s nothing. It’s not true!”
- Accept praise but also offer praise constantly
- Catch yourself having negative thoughts and switch that same thought into a positive one.
- Only visualize positive scenarios in any situation
Following the advice above will help you to cultivate a positive vibration and also guard it from negativity around you.
Limit Negative Inputs
Eliminate all sources of negativity from your life:
- Negative people that always complain
- Exposure to negative news
- Other sources of stress and negativity
You need to be able to maintain a calm and positive state for as long as possible, in order to build resilience with this and change your permanent state into a more positive one.
So, similarly to when you want to get rid of a negative habit, eliminate the cues that put you into a negative state, as much as possible.
Exercise
Taking care of your physical health will provide you with multiple mental benefits as well:
- Endorphins from working out will get you into a better mood
- Seeing progress in your body development will provide great confidence which leads to more mental fortitude
- Discipline required in training and nutrition will make you more resilient and will go a long way in your practices
Exercising is considered by many, the best therapist, with some people using it as a form of meditation.
I do the same. While exercising, I am freeing my mind of any negativity and worry, turn on my favorite music and start a process of visualization with each song.
It doesn’t matter what you visualize, as long as it is a positive scenario.
Positive Affirmations
You’ve certainly heard the expression “Fake it till you make it!”.
This is strongly related to the principles of manifesting and law of attraction.
However, it can be translated into this:
Where your mind goes, your attention flows!
Or into this:
What you feel, is what you attract!
These are more correct, because they related to how we use our energy. The more energy you are putting into visualizing positive scenarios, and the better those make you feel, the more of those you will attract.
It’s a process that takes time, and it will take you enough of it to change your view of life, and start focusing on the half full part of the glass.
But one useful tool for this is to use Positive Affirmations.
You can write your own affirmations, or use some that you find online, but they need to explicitly affirm success into your life.
I’ll give you some examples. Let’s say you are trying to manifest a promotion:
- I am always blessed with opportunities!
- I am always growing in my career!
- My hard work is always recognized and rewarded!
- I am worthy of praise and appreciation!
- I am confident!
These are just a few examples of affirmations you can use.
Remember that you also need to take action towards these goals! This will help you nurture the good feelings regarding the promotion, but you still need to work for it!
These are some of the steps you can do, to improve your mindset and mental fortitude.
This is an ongoing race, and unlike the physical changes, it might take longer to see the results, but it doesn’t have a destination, it doesn’t have an end, you just need to enjoy the ride and be 1% better today than you were yesterday.
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