We often think that that some people we know are born strong. They have the ability to be work hard, face challenges and are also mentally tough. The term mental toughness is used in psychology to refer to the qualities and power people possess to fight through difficult challenges and come out successful.
In the competitive world of today, it is essential to develop a sense of mental toughness if you want to be successful.
In the world today being a WINNER is a sign of success. On the other hand, if somebody fails or is unproductive in our society he or she is marked as being unsuccessful. But most people are somewhere in between winning and losing and end up by winning in some areas of their lives and not so much so in others. However, victory is the ultimate factor for most of us and we tend to live and die by it.
The taste of victory is sweet and there are many advantages of winning in a competition oriented society like ours. We only realize this when we taste the fruits of winning. These may include amongst others ….
“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else .” Les Brown
Often we tend to ask our self is this what we want from life ? If the answer is NO, then its time to take action. We may need to make changes and also identify and change some of our behaviours.
When you think of being successful, have you ever wondered how the highly successful people in this world like Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford and many, many others reached the top in their respective areas and stayed there.
What uniqueness did they possess that took them to such high levels ?
Who does not want to be successful ? I am sure you do. We all do so in the different walks of our life, be it our education, jobs, physical fitness, personal lives etc. Not only that, we also link it to our level of happiness. But when we really sit down to assess how to go about it; we tend to back off, as it all seems to involve a lot of work.
However, some latest Harvard research shows us a fun way to do it. The researcher and author of the best seller ‘The happiness advantage’ Shawn Achor demonstrates that success does not bring happiness – but rather the reverse – it is happiness that breeds success. His research focused on those who were out of the norm – the outliers. For example, why, when an entire sales force has low sales numbers there are a few with extraordinarily high numbers. Or, in a class where academic marks are below average, there are a couple of students with outstanding results.
The way of thinking and attitude a person adopts is what speaks for their success or failure in life. Our success at school, extracurricular activities, work or within the sphere of our family life are all affected by how we perceive our self in terms of our skills, talents and abilities.
Our mindset is the view we adopt of our self, our way of thinking and our opinions and this vision is strongly influenced by our parents initially and later our teachers. The mindset we assume in turn, then has a deep and profound impact on how we learn and on which direction we take in our lives.
