Mental Toughness – Can you answer this one simple question?

“With patience first and patience last, and doggedness all through, a man can think the wildest thoughts, and make them all come true” – George Psychoundakis (Natural Born Heroes)  

I believe mental toughness is hard-wired in the very fabric of our humanity. It is our capacity to face up to adversities or challenges and how well we cope with the pressures and stress to reach a higher human state or achieve something that is meaningful and fulfilling. Mental toughness is innate in us but at varying degree depending on our life experiences. I am yet to come across someone who did not have it.

You often find greatest lessons on mental toughness come from your life experiences. These are lessons that cannot be taught in classroom set ups or from reading materials. My life experience has been my teacher.

Think about it - the fragility of human lives is such we experience sadness, disappointments, failures, bereavements, separation, losses, sickness, dealing with daily stresses and many difficult circumstances. Still, regardless of such adversities, we move forward. Some of us may have had significant bifurcation or turning points in our lives due to life-altering events. So who says you do not have mental toughness?

The difference is, though, only a few are aware of their mental toughness reflected by their behaviours while the vast majority are unaware of its existence. People who are aware of it apply to anything and everything they do as a way of coping. Whereas individuals who are unaware,  become mental tough only when the circumstances demand.

If our life experience is the greatest teacher of mental toughness and if it is hard-wired in us, then how come you find people giving up or choking when the circumstances demand them to step up whether it is in their career or personal lives. How are they weighing the risks and rewards at the moment of decision to give up? I was intrigued by this, and it made me curious.

In a way, I found the answer to this in a book I read recently. It is a well-written book by Matt Fitzgerald who is a coach and an endurance athlete, on sports psychology with real-life case studies to demonstrate mental toughness in elite sportsmen and women. Even before I opened the book, the very title of the book gave the answer I was after - ‘How bad do you want it?’.

It is a simple question yet powerful one. If you can respond to this with great clarity, then you are moving to a resourceful state by taking responsibility to model your behaviours in becoming mentally tough.

A resolve to survive

First, they came to destroy our property and next they came to claim our lives. As a youngster, I witnessed my family becoming a victim of one of the worst racial violence and, thus, refugees overnight. When they destroyed the property, my school bag with notebooks went up in flame. As a na?ve kid, my thought was how am I going to go to school. Even in that bleak moment, I had this unbridled optimism I will see through schooling irrespective of this. When they came to claim our lives the next day and only a wall separating the thugs and my family, remaining calm and composed in hiding became our biggest challenge as even a single hum would have changed the fate of my entire family. My mother had hope and survived this ordeal for her five young children. We found the mental toughness when needed, and did everything to survive and live another day.

Doing what it takes to deliver an outcome

As a corporate executive who always sought business-NOT-as-usual challenges and seeing those projects or work deadlines through tested my mettle. Bonuses were not the biggest motivator instead the sense of achievement and fulfilment that followed became the draw card. Reforming a highly manual process to complete automation with zero to minimal human intervention may sound jazzy but the real satisfaction came from delivering a transformational experience to people by creating opportunities to explore their career potential away from mind-numbing manual tasks, and at the same time making the organisational processes nimble and lean.

How bad I wanted to do everything in my power to make a difference in my job? At a practical level, my livelihood depends on it. However, these projects and work deadlines provided me with the intellectual stimulation and challenge I always wanted. It taught me a few lessons on relentless focus, attention to detail, taking risks, handling failures as much as successes, not seeking out comfort zones, continuous improvement, discipline to see things through to completion, leading teams at a time of change, embracing simplicity while cutting off the clutter and managing organisational politics.

Never giving up

After swimming 3.8kms and cycling 180kms, I was half way through the marathon leg when abandoning the race became the most enticing option as I was shuffling, completely at a loss of sense of direction and gripped by an extremity of exhaustion that a mortal being like me has not experienced before. I wanted a way out of the suffering in the heat, uncontrollable negative mind chatter and flare up of a foot injury. Then I heard a spectator scream at me “Rajan this is the moment you get to know who you truly are. Keep going, mate.”

Out of all the Ironman races I have done so far, that particular race in 2012 was the toughest. That spectator’s message was powerful enough to wake me up from the delirium I was in.

How bad did I want to finish this race? I wanted to cross the finish line. I was not willing to compromise my integrity of never giving up. Somehow I finished the race. Even though I did not break my personal record, that day stands as a day I mentally evolved to a whole new level.

I realised my mind was doing what it supposed to do – keep me safe and comfortable. Mind did not trust my body’s ability to endure pain and discomfort. Endurance training and racing, I believe, in a way building this trust so that the mind could be trained to cope with the experience as you push your physical limits to the edge.

I guess a challenge that tests your mental limits, which we confront in our careers most often in the form of delivering on projects and meeting deadlines, is somehow attainable as far as there are intellectual and emotional commitment and engagement to the task on hand. However, when you add a physical element to the challenge like undertaking an endurance event, mental toughness takes a whole new dimension.

As much as I know not giving up is a great ethos to have in life, it takes a whole new level of mental toughness when deciding to abandon or letting go of something that you found meaning and fulfilment.

Becoming mentally tough

When someone talks about mental toughness, kind of images that come to your mind are grimacing faces in pain, people with mud-strewn faces, people engaged in physically demanding activities or even an image of a brain lifting a barbell.

Many experts say your mind is like a muscle, and you need to exercise it to get mentally tough, mental toughness is a skill requiring practice and so on. This thinking may be true to many. Becoming mentally tough is much more than your personal trainer barking orders at you on the last hill run repetition giving you the sense of inadequacy if you did not complete.

There is grace in mental toughness. Any thought on the subject devoid of this grace will indeed reduce mental toughness to a soul-less skill or muscle. This grace is the foundation of humanity as it gives us hope and faith in our own abilities to make a difference in our life time. 

Mental toughness starts from a place of humility, self-honesty, personal integrity, self-acceptance, self-reconciliation, self-belief and a sense of adequacy, and not self-pity, insecurity, arrogance or victim-hood. It is a belief that you have what it takes to make it happen. Being mentally tough is not being harsh on yourself or others but being tough on the task or mission at hand. This requires self-awareness and compassion. This is the essence that brings clarity to your life and puts you in a position of personal power to answer the question - how bad do you want it?

What does your life experience tell you? Did you reflect and found moments of awe and inspiration? One thing I know, if you cannot define your ‘how bad you want it?’ or your ‘why?’ most likely you are working for someone else’s. Did you find the answer now, in your terms?

So how bad do you want it?