The Mental Toughness Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Facing Life's Challenges, Managing Negative Emotions, and Overcoming Adversity with Courage and Poise

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When some people hear the terms mental strength or resiliency, they may think it means the absence of mental illness, but that is not the case,” says Duke. “Many people with mental illness have learned to manage their condition in a healthy way. They enjoy good mental health and have cultivated emotional resilience. Similarly, someone can have no history of mental illness, but have both poor mental health and emotional resilience.” Superb. A helpful and/or enlightening book that is extremely well rounded, has many strengths and no shortcomings worth mentioning. The goal is to quiet your inner critic and be kind and gentle with yourself, the way you would a friend. Practical optimism. Unfortunately, our world wasn’t designed by Disney, but by randomness and coincidence. Yet, it’s still a nice enough world, one that we’ve improved a lot over time. And we can even more. This type of “cautious optimism” is the trademark of mentally tough people. It’s what allows them to see opportunities where others see only hopelessness. What are some examples of times in your life when large disruptions challenged your mental toughness?

I don’t believe that you can have mental strength or emotional resiliency without having a proper sleep schedule,” says Duke. “Also, limit your social media use and news consumption.” How your mental strength affects your overall health This was a disappointing concoction of common knowledge, useless advice, and patronising narrative. This book was so desperate to point out how it wasn't like other books that it didn't manage to achieve anything at all and was full of errors, repetition, and contradictions. The book is easy to read, may be slightly more demanding though to follow the implementation of the proposed training and exercises program. Turning purposeful action into a habitual behavior makes engaging in goal-driven activities more automatic. One practical method for buildingself-control is to takefive minutes to meditate whenever you feel tempted to indulge in an activity that’s not goal directed. Buildmotivationby writing down five activities that inspire you to take purposeful action, and five that detract from your motivation.Identifying the environmental factors influencing your motivation levels guides you in making adjustments that serve your goals. “Willpower is like that friend who’s occasionally there for you but mostly not. He – or she – cannot be relied upon. Self-discipline is like that friend who’s always there for you, regardless of the circumstances.”Working on your mental strength can lead to greater life satisfaction and help protect against future mental health issues. That’s all well and good for that moment, but it’s not going to be something that’s viable to do every time. I would have liked more mental structures to put in place to build resilience and toughness, and that is really only skimmed over towards the end of the book. When dealing with a large overwhelming task, segment the task but then be sure to provide mini rewards at each mini-task completion. Ie if need to finish 30 lectures, at end of each lecture give yourself a chocolate (or watch a youtube video). Threats to mental toughness include self-pity, self-doubt, negative self-talk, fear, laziness,perfectionism, self-limiting beliefs andthe inability to control emotions. Control your emotions and thoughts – even when facing adversity. Resistance to negative emotions. Emotions, says Zahariades, are a double-edged sword: when positive, they propel us forward, but when negative, they prompt us to make terrible decisions. The only way to stay in touch with all of your emotions without allowing them to have a negative impact on you is through regulation. That’s what mental toughness is all about.

Respond rationally to overgeneralization – When you catch yourself using words like “always,” and “everyone,” replacethe baseless claims of yournegative inner voice with reasonable statements.Eliminate temptations– Remove environmental temptations to avoid triggering impulse-driven behaviors. Get comfortable with discomfort – Tolerate feelings such as malaise rather than indulging your impulses. Your mental strength or resiliency can affect everything from motivation and relationships to performance, decision-making and productivity.