Maria Shriver

Mental Toughness: The Secret to Success at Just About Anything

By Valerie Latona

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It was several months before the recent birth of my child that I became interested in the topic of mental toughness: the idea that you can almost will yourself through pain, difficulty, and discomfort—no matter how bad it gets.

I believed that this would get me through a natural, no drugs birth. And while the no-drugs birth did happen, it was not because of any mental willing on my part. (I was reduced to practically begging the doctors to give me drugs, but they couldn’t because of how fast the labor had progressed.)

While in the hospital, I came to the “conclusion” that I just didn’t have a great deal of mental strength or willpower (if any at all).

That may be, also, why I read about IronMan triathletes with awe (after all, they make it through a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, and a 26-mile marathon run—all in one race!). Ditto for ultra-marathoners, who can push through pain to run up to 100 miles at one time. People who regularly compete in these super races, as well as women who give birth naturally without screaming and begging, must be super human, I determined.

And, that may be why some people are able to follow through on their New Year’s resolutions no matter how difficult it gets—while others (4 out of 5, according to statistics) start to fall off the wagon right about now, dropping their goals altogether by February 1.

So I started to wonder: Are some born with the ability to stick things out no matter how tough it gets and others just cut from a different cloth? Or is it possible for everyone to rise to the occasion, no matter what the challenge?

Always a positive person, I wanted to believe the latter. So I did a little research, and here’s what I discovered:

1) You’ve got to believe in yourself. Confidence in what you can accomplish—whether you’re trying to drop those stubborn pounds, run a 5K (or a marathon), quit smoking, etc.—is the foundation for persevering at just about anything. If you think you can do something, you’re more likely to overcome whatever obstacles exist no matter how difficult they are.

Being self-assured about your abilities extends, also, to how you talk about your goals (and yourself); thinking and speaking in positives (“I am going to be able to lose this weight” instead of “I’m a yo-yo dieter and always have trouble losing weight”) makes you feel stronger and more resilient over the long haul. Change the way you think and talk, it seems, and you can will your body to do anything. (Remember that children’s story The Little Engine that Could? “I think I can, I think I can” were the words that helped propel that tiny train up the giant hill—and that strategy can work for each of us as well.)

Hanging out with the right people also helps. Negative people (we all know some) rub off on you in the wrong way, making you think you won’t be able to accomplish things. But positive people lift you up toward your goals, helping you to believe in yourself. So a worthy goal this month (and year) is to spend more time with the optimists in your life.

2) See yourself reaching the finish line. Visualization goes hand in hand with confidence; by imagining yourself achieving your goals, you’re better able to endure any hardships you encounter along the way. Many coaches encourage team athletes to visualize how they want a game to end—and how they’ll defeat each obstacle that presents itself. By doing so, they’re replaying over and over in their minds exactly the course they’ll be taking. By the time a challenge actually appears in a game, it’s almost as if they’ve already overcome it—and, as a result, it becomes easier to actually do so.

But visualization is not just a technique for sports; anybody can benefit from this meditation-like technique. It just takes practice. You have to continually push the negative thoughts out of your head and train yourself to allow positive ones to take hold. Take a quiet moment every day to just sit and imagine yourself achieving your goal and how it feels, pushing aside any pessimistic thoughts while you’re doing it. The more you practice visualization, the easier the process will be—and chances are, the more successful you’ll be at overcoming any problem that presents itself now and down the road.

So if you’re struggling right now with your resolutions, spend less time berating yourself and more time sitting quietly training your mind; you may just get longer-lasting results.

3) Put in the right amount of prep time. An IronMan triathlete wouldn’t dare step up to the starting line without having practiced—and neither should you, whatever your aim. With dieting in particular, the worst thing is to just start your diet on January 1 with no prep. Better to clean out your pantry of junk food, establish an exercise schedule, and write down potential stumbling blocks and how you’re going to overcome them before you launch into your diet. If, like most people, you’ve already started into your New Year’s diet—take a day now to make sure you’re prepped properly to help you stick with it long term.

Think, too, about what happened the last time you tried to accomplish something: write down the challenges (e.g. too many work dinners out; not enough time to get to the gym; too much stress; etc.) that presented themselves and why you didn’t succeed at overcoming them. Then, have a plan B for what you’ll do if similar hurdles present themselves this time around. This holds true for anything you hope to accomplish, no matter what time of the year.

In my own case, looking back now, I realize I wasn’t fully prepared for a natural birth: I hadn’t taken the right breathing classes, talked to the right people and hadn’t really understood what was involved. If I had taken the time, my experience in the delivery room might have been a whole lot different (and more positive).

4) Break out of your comfort zone more often. It’s so easy to get caught in a comfortable rut; I know this firsthand. Putting yourself in new situations regularly helps build mental toughness, say experts. How do it: try new things (classes, dance steps, travel destinations, foods); crank up the treadmill to a new level (or try another cardio workout altogether); break out of your social rut and go out with different people; sign up for your first race (or a different type of competition, like a photo contest).

The idea is that doing so puts you at unease—and the more discomfort you experience and overcome, the more resilient you become over time, making you much more likely to accomplish whatever goal you want.

To inspire you to get out there, I love this quote from seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong: “Pain [or any feeling of discomfort in my mind] is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

5) Don’t fear failure. Ask yourself, when it comes to your goals, what’s the worst that can happen? For me (and most people), it’s failure. But as Michael Jordan once said, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game's winning shot...and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why...I succeed.”

All the experts I have talked to agree: it’s actually lack of success that builds mental toughness. You learn from your mistakes and you realize that even if you lose, you can—and will—rise up again. So, in the long run, failure is something to welcome.

If you make a “mistake” (e.g. have a cookie binge on your diet, come in dead last in a race you enter, or get fired from your job), don’t dwell on it. Learn what you did wrong and and just get right back on a plan as soon as possible. Don’t start thinking you’ll never succeed (see #1 above); you’ll just get frustrated and depressed, which will undermine your confidence as you move forward. Put your plan B into practice as soon as possible.

As for me, these five steps have helped me to realize that my own experience in the delivery room—and even in other areas of my life—are only helping me to get stronger and more mentally tough. So rather than feeling like I’ve failed, I’m looking at the positive: I’m one step closer to success.

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Valerie Latona is the former editor in chief of Shape — and one of the leading writers/editors on the topic of living healthy with confidence. Find more about Valerie, and read more of her blogs, at valerielatona.com.