Top 10 Best Mental Strength Workouts

Do you want to succeed in life but you find that things just keep going wrong and you’re not sure why? 

The odds are pretty good that you need to work on your mental strength.

Physical strength is great and gives us what we need to get through a day.

Mental strength, howver, is what allows us to tackle life’s challenges and overcome them.

Our 10 Best Mental Strength Workouts

1. Turn negative thoughts positive – they talk about “limiting beliefs” in all the best mental toughness books but it’s a simple thing to do to turn your beliefs around. The next time you catch yourself thinking, “I can’t do this”, substitute it for  “If I work hard and do my best, I will be more likely to succeed”. You’ll be amazed at the impact this has. 
   
2. Prepare to succeed – set each day up for success. If you intend to do strength training tomorrow, tonight, set up your gym bag and leave it by the front door, so you’re ready to rock and roll in the morning. Small steps to prepare make the big tasks look less intimidating.
   
3. Learn that discomfort is OK when it’s for a greater good – workouts are supposed to wear us out, diets are meant to make us hungry, budgeting makes everyone anxious. Learning to push through the discomfort in order to achieve a bigger goal is what separates life’s winners from its losers.
   
4. Have a purpose to fulfil – you can’t succeed if you don’t have something to fill your life and aim for. You should know what you want to accomplish in life, write it down and then bring it out when you need reminding. Having a purpose makes focusing easier. 
   
5. Implement the 10-minute rule – if you don’t want to do something, do an internal deal with yourself, you’ll put your heart and soul into it for just 10 minutes and after that 10 minutes, if you still want to quit, you can. In the main, getting started is hard, carrying on is not. The 10 minute rule rarely results in quitting.
   
6. Always have goals – goals should be SMART goals, that is they should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. It is better to aim for a 5 minute run after a year without exercise than an hour run and lose hope. Have goals but make them goals you can get done.
   
7. Tackle one hard thing every day – you can’t get stronger without challenging yourself. Enroll in an online yoga class, read a book on a subject you don’t understand, have a difficult conversation, at least once every day, push yourself to do something hard.
   
8. Use logic to keep your emotions at bay – too much logic and life is boring, but too much emotion and you quickly descend into anxiety and even depression. The purpose of logic is to keep your emotions at bay, to recognize how you feel and ask “why do I feel like this and what can I do about it?” Even a simple pros and cons list can help you make rational decisions when you don’t feel particularly rational.
   
9. No excuses, but explanations – if you don’t hit your goals or objectives for the day, don’t beat yourself up but don’t make excuses either. Work out why you didn’t get things done and then accept your part in that and resolve to do better next time. This is how you learn from mistakes rather than repeat them.
   
10. Teach yourself to be wrong – in a good way. What we mean here is that you should prove yourself wrong when you think you can’t do something. Set a challenging fitness target and beat it, do something at work that you didn’t think you could do and when you do do it? Give yourself some credit and praise for it. Reinforce the feelings of winning.

Final Thoughts

We’re not suggesting for one minute that our tips will instantly provide mental strength but if you use them regularly over time, as you would a piece of gym equipment, you will build up mental strength.

The stronger your mind is, the easier it is to accomplish anything, and while we may not all be able to become a world champion weightlifter, every single one of us can have the same level of mental toughness as a world champion.