Develop Mental Toughness With These Strategies
1. Eat the Whole Elephant
Eating the whole elephant is a strange term that refers to breaking down a big task (like eating an elephant) into much smaller and more manageable chunks. You then focus purely on those short-term goals, rather than considering the overwhelming challenge that you may find daunting.
That means a SEAL might not think at all about getting through all of Hell Week, but rather just getting through the next “evolution.”
Likewise, in the gym this might mean that instead of trying to perform 1 minute of battleropes when you’re exhausted, you instead break this down into six ten second chunks. Ten seconds is nothing, right?
2. Four-by-Four for Four
Four-by-Four for Four is a breathing technique used by SEALs that requires you to breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, breathe out for four seconds, hold for four, and then continue. It’s similar to techniques used in yoga.
By doing this, you are able to focus on something other than what’s going on around you (your breathing) and thereby calm your mind as you might do in nearly any form of meditation.
At the same time though, you’ll also be sending calm signals via your vagal nerve to your autonomic nervous system. This can reduce anxiety and arousal and help you to feel calmer as you take on the next challenge. It can be considered a form of arousal control, and is similar to how you might prevent a panic attack by controlling breathing.
3. Nonreactivity
Nonreactivity is essentially like the mental toughness equivalent of a flow state. It means that you’re going to switch off from your situation and the implications and instead focus purely on the moment. This is a kind of zen state where your body just does what needs to be done, while you maintain a calm focus.
Nonreactivity is a state you might find yourself in naturally when you push yourself beyond your limits, and it can allow you to tap into deep reserves of strength and endurance. Swimmers experience something similar called a “swim coma.” Once you’ve achieved this state once, you’ll find it easier to reach in future.
But you can also improve your chances of experiencing this state by using mindfulness meditation, and even by adopting a stoic philosophy. Stoicism teaches us not to try and create a life of sunshine and rainbows, but to expect that sometimes bad things happen. That is outside our control and what we can control is our reaction to those things.
Your body just does what needs to be done
By learning not to dwell on the negative and to stay focused during intense challenge, we can get through nearly anything.
4. Cognitive Behavioural Threapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a topic I’ve gone into in depth in the past, so I won’t beat a dead horse here. What this means though, is becoming more aware of your own thoughts and beliefs, such that you can begin to replace the negative and unuseful ones with more suitable alternatives – using a process called “cognitive restructuring.”
In short, you need to try to find what thoughts are actually motivating you to quit, and then to assess whether they’re at all logical.
For instance, we often listen to our body telling us to stop training because we’re worried that we’re going to injure ourselves. But as David Goggins points out, our brain often starts telling us we’re done when we’re really only about 40% spent! You can definitely walk another 100 meters with those kettlebells without injury then.
Likewise, I’ve done some personal reflection and found that often the reason I don’t want to be productive or workout in the evenings is because I’m trying to preserve my sleepy state AND to communicate to others that I’m done. This isn’t me consciously shirking my responsibility, but rather an unconscious motivation to embrace the tiredness.
Our brain starts telling us we’re done when we’re really only about 40% spent
Simply knowing that this is what is going on, now allows me to push through that feeling and train anyway. If I exercise, I’ll feel awake and better. And that’s a GOOD thing!
There’s no point getting disheartened when things go wrong. No point giving up when the going gets tough. So why do you do it? Time to do some soul searching!
