Many people talk about Mental Strength as though it is one simple skill or character trait.
If you are strong enough mentally, you can just grit your teeth and get on with it and get to the other end in one piece (more or less).
You are mentally tough or you’re not.
Come on.
Just do it.
Grit your teeth.
Suck it up.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
In reality, as usual, nothing is quite that simple.
This approach, simply equates mental strength to determination, or will power, or motivation. Many individuals have this quality in abundance. Olympic athletes have so much it is hard to imagine how motivated and determined they can be. They make themselves go training when it is cold and dark and their muscles hurt and they want to stay in bed. They curtail their social and family lives. They can do this for years and years. ,Many people who are not Olympic athletes also have bucketloads of grit and determination. They demonstrate it in everyday life. Going to work, helping the kids, raising families, getting on in life.
However there is much more to mental strength than simple determination or will power. This presumes you can overcome any mental problem you encounter with determination, and many people try to do that but not all succeed.
This approach is a bit like expecting a carpenter, or a plumber, or a builder, to do all of their work with just one tool. Which one are you going to pick?
You’re not doing a great job of knocking down that wall with your screwdriver. Put your back into it. You must be weak.
It is the same with Mental Strength. Your brain has a huge toolbox at it’s disposal.
Humans are the most intelligent and creative animals on the planet. Although anyone could be forgiven for doubting that, at times.
Man has inhabited everywhere on the planet, and beyond, from the Deep Ocean to Outer Space and from Pole to Pole. Man has one of the least specialised bodies, but one of the most intelligent and creative brains.
Naturally, man has innately many more kinds of Mental Strength for problem solving than simple determination.
You need to assess the problem before you choose your tools.
Two of the commonest problems requiring different mental strength approaches to simple willpower and determination are:-
FEAR – which comes in many forms, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of not meeting standards, fear of letting people down etc. Fear in small doses can improve performance, but in excess can be debilitating, affecting muscle and cognitive abilities.
Fear is a primitive survival mechanism. It can be very powerful and easily resist any attempts to bulldoze it with determination.
In the 1990s many people tried to lose weight with a low fat diet, which necessitated higher carbohydrate intake. Many people struggled and struggled with this diet. When they failed, they felt that they had no will power and were weak willed. When the low carbohydrate diet was re-popularised By Dr Atkins many of these people found that it worked for them, and it worked well.
The will power and determination required was massively reduced because they were not fighting against their physiology on a daily basis.
I know this because I helped many people change to a similar diet, and published the results at The International Atherosclerosis Society meeting in Kyoto, Japan.
Fear is a more powerful physiological mechanism than carbohydrate mechanism.
Determination is similiarly, less effective against fear, and other more powerful, positive emotional techniques need to be used to deal with obstacles caused by fear.
Fear if unchecked can lead to the development of
MENTAL BLOCKS or PHOBIAS.
The adrenaline of fear is a memory enhancer. It provides the physical energy to escape the fear, but then locks in the actions and feelings as a reflex memory, which can be triggered the next time a similar situation is encountered.
This is also known as a STATE DEPENDENT MEMORY.
For example a lawyer loved public speaking, but had one bad incident and discovered that he had stage fright every time he tried to speak in public afterwards.
A driver was trapped in a car crash and petrol spilled around the car. She was eventually rescued safely, but every time she got into a car she could smell petrol. Her car was checked 8 times for petrol leaks.
There was no leak.
In the face of these powerful physiologically based mental blocks, simple determination and will power are weak. We need to find other skills in our mental creativity, to deal with these blocks and move beyond them safely and effectively.
Don’t keep running into a brick wall hoping to knock it over. There may be a gate or a ladder. It might even look different from a different angle and have a louvre to bypass it.
I will discuss these skills elsewhere in this blog and website.