The 5 life-changing qualities of mental strength and how to develop them.

Once upon a time, there lived a fierce warrior known for using her sharp sword to cut down anyone who’d disrespect her.

One day, walking over a small beautiful bridge, she saw an old man.

The old man looked humble, wearing simple clothing and yet there was something majestic about him.

In the middle of the bridge, their eyes met.

The old man did not greet her, and in an instant flames blazed up in her eyes.

‘’Old man, don’t you know that here stands a warrior who will cut you in half and won’t blink an eye.’’

The old man kindly smiled at her.

‘’Young warrior, don’t you know that here stands a man who can be cut through in half, and won’t blink an eye.’’

The warrior slowly put away her sword.

They greeted each other with respect.

That is one of my favorite stories ever.

For me, the story captures the essence of mental strenght:

• Fierce and calm.
• Sharp and soft.
• Intense and merciful.

We can fearlessly cut down harmful things from our live, while being flexible and courageous to welcome challenging experience into our live.

We stand our ground AND learn from our mistakes.

Ultimately, strong mind leads into:

• When others give up too early, you stay on your path, grow and collect the benefits.
• Becoming a person with life experience and confidence that empowers others.
• Being the stability and comfort for others at the funeral while being able to process our grief healthily.
• Living a calmer and more peaceful life because we know that we can trust ourselves in chaotic life situations and difficult periods.
• Spreading confidence and calm into our surroundings.

Everyone can strengthen the resilience of their brain and body through neuroscience-based tools and insights.

In today’s article, as you are in a relaxed focused learning mode, you’ll understand:

• The 2 big mistakes to avoid.

• What mental strength is and isn’t
• 13 science-based best practices for developing the mental muscle of your brain.
• That you are 100% in charge of the strength and stability of your mind, and you have tools that you’ll enjoy using.

Ready? Let’s go.

The 2 main mistakes to avoid

• Constantly pushing yourself by using willpower. This isn’t mental strength, this is stubborn and certain recipe for burnout.

• Overriding your emotions and pushing them into your unconscious mind.

Both approaches are often confused with mental strength, but only lead to a lack of mental energy, flexibility and eventually to burning out.

What mental strength is and isn’t.

It’s NOT:

• Cold and harsh attitudes towards ourselves or others. This is a facade plastered over fear of emotions.

• About being full on all the time. A rocket ship and formula can fulfill their mission and function by knowing when to go hard and when to go slow. Arrow is shot into the target by letting go.

• Prideful insistence in staying unnecessary pain. One of my hockey teammates would lift weights using his unique style which caused a a lot of pain, thinking that ‘’more pain,more growth’’, while he ended up having frequent neck and back injuries.

Mental strength IS:

• I define mental strength as the ability to choose compassion, gratitude, love, joy, wisdom and actively be for others even when we don’t feel strong.

• Ability to be at our best, when we are at our worse.

• Willingness to accept things that are difficult to accept, and not ruminate or complain (both strengthen the negative feelings and bias in our brain.)

• Determination to stay in the fire and pain for long periods because are wise enough to see the meaning of it while not damaging ourselves mentally nor physically.

• Being that warrior and wise old sage at the same time.

Sounds paradoxical? It is, and when we observe life - we see that life is one big paradox.

13 best approaches for developing our ACC

It’s useful to see mental strength practices in 3 categories:

• Daily practices that are doable on daily basis without exhausting ourselves.
• Weekly and monthly practices that would be possibly too much on daily basis.
• Rare yearly events that stretch us way out of our comfort zone.

That helps us build a ‘mind training schedule’ that develops 3 specific aspects of mental strength:

• Stability that doesn’t get shaken and reactive when strong emotions shake us.
• Flexibility that quickly finds new solutions and move forward when life becomes intensely uncertain.
• Powerful calmness that keeps overwhelming energies and emotions within a bearable container, and turning them into fuel and guidance.

I’d say that those are one totality, while acknowledging that without the POWERFUL CALM the other two become overwhelmed.

That is why all mental strength practices impact the ‘mental muscle’ part of the brain, ACC.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex is a part of the brain that has deservedly received a lot of attention from neuroscientist recently.

Because well developed ACC:

• Helps you to maintain focus and anchor your attention into the task in front of you.
• Without much stress recognizes when you are being derailed from what is important to you and helps you to course correct.
• Make difficult and risky short-term decisions and risks in order to serve the highest priorities - for example speaking your truth even when knowing that others don’t agree.
• When an impulse and harmful reaction arises in your mind, ACC helps you to choose a healthy response.
• When your most important goals demand you to stay out of your comfort zone, you’ll feel physical and mental pain, and ACC will help you to process that pain.

You get the idea.

Prioritizing short-term comfort, ?while sacrificing the development of our mental strength - is a massive obstacle to being the person who we want to be.

Or does anybody want to be in control of their short-term impulses?

ACC grows in the moments when we feel that we don’t want to continue anymore with something, but we do continue.

(Disclaimer: this does not mean that if we doing a work we dislike would, develop ACC.

Disliking our work is more of a perception, while for example taking a cold shower or lifting weights even when everything in us asks us to stop, are both real states of discomfort. It’s one thing to be disturbed by our reactive emotions and another to consciously stay in discomfort for a meaningful reason.)

Below you can find 13 mental strength habits and ways of developing your ACC.

Daily

• Exercise that takes us to that ‘’I don’t want to continue further moment’’, and going past that.
• Meditation and visualization.
• Cold showers.
• Resisting impulses (every time we fall into doing things that we know are harmful to our well-being, we conclude that we can’t rely on our mental strength.)
• Writing down our achievements and what we are grateful for - and FEELING the feelings associated with them.

You can maybe see why some people might not be too keen on developing mental strength.

However as the legenary saying goes, ‘’Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.’’

Frequently (weekly/monthly)

• Difficult conversations that we are scared to engage in.
• Opening ourselves to risks and doing things publicly that we don’t feel fully competent or comfortable in.
• Doing an inventory of how we feel, challenging our beliefs and honestly revising our life goals.
• Recognizing limiting patterns of behavior and going into the root cause of them, ideally with a therapist, competent coach, or through visualization methods that we know how to use.
• Using intense breathing techniques.

Rarely (1-4 times per year.)

• Taking on a big physical challenge like a marathon, etc.
• Going for a meditation retreat where you meditate 4-12 hours per day.
• Taking ‘’sprints’’ in our coaching, for example, 5-10 monthly sessions on challenging topics.

(Important: This article gave you the foundational insights and practices.

However, I’ve left out vital points like why life vision, daily life structure, self-compassion practices, and other aspects are also crucial for mental strength. I left them out because most of my content already covers those topics.)

So, the question is, what do you want to do to grow your ACC?

So that you can have the strength and ease of being the guide of your mind, instead of being controlled by it.

Thank you,

Niki

PS. One of my most popular masterclasses ''Develop The 3 Levels Of Mental Strength and Fall Less Into The Need To Procrastinate.'', is now available here.