How to be mentally tough
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. This is a quote from Seneca.
The ancient Roman empire sought out discomfort. He was wealthier than all of the people reading this combined. And your friends too.
He would allocate a few days each month to not eating a lot of food and also wearing casual clothes. He did this not because of money issues, but to control his desire for material possessions and worldly pleasures.
Seneca sought to deepen his appreciation for what he already possessed and, most significantly, develop the courage necessary to confront future challenges.
This is what is known as voluntary hardship. It involves purposefully seeking out and embracing challenges that push us beyond our comfort zones.
Just as going to the gym and working out makes your muscles stronger, willingly embracing difficulties and hardships provides a mental workout.
I usually practice voluntary hardship by taking cold showers in the morning. Before the shower, it is dreading. Your mind comes up with all the excuses. But since it is a habit I decided to create, an identity of a person who takes cold showers, I dive in.
Not a single day do I not dread. But after the shower, I come out refreshed. Feeling alive. A breath of fresh air and my body appreciating life for what it is.
Other times, it is going for long hour fasts of 48 hours or long hour walks of more than 30k steps. Since I eat one meal a day, going for a 48 hour fast is not that difficult at this point for me.
The key is to actively choose discomfort and challenges that stretch our boundaries and test our resilience.
By deliberately choosing to confront challenges and discomfort, we engage in a mental workout that builds resilience, discipline, and gratitude for the abundance we possess.
By actively practicing voluntary hardships, we prepare our minds and bodies for unforeseen and challenging situations, realizing that many things we once feared are not as daunting as they seemed.
Change your perceptions
“Attitude is like a flat tire. You cannot go anywhere until you change it.”
I like to call attitude, perception. How you perceive things will ultimately impact how things will turn out.
If a girl rejects you, and you take it as a lesson to improve your game, finances, or change your body weight, you win.
If you take it as anything else that is negative, you lose.
So, when you choose the fries instead of the salad, your mind doesn’t care. It’s job is to adapt. And if you make that decision over and over again, then rather than take up critical thinking which is meant to serve you intelligently, it hands it over to the mid-brain.
And it becomes an unconscious behavior or pattern or what we also call a habit.
See, now you order the fries just because it is what you do. You don’t even question it.
Now, that can be very useful when it comes to learning or not learning how to walk everyday but it also sets up some challenges, You see, we suddenly arrive at work, on our day off, we don’t know why.
Or, you know we suddenly get home and realize where did the last two kilometers or two miles of driving go? Wow. How did I avoid all of the crazies. Good old mid brain at work.
But the deeper challenge to that as creatures of habit is the fact that we are using our conscious brain only a small amount of the time. That critical decision-making. The rest of the time like 95% of the time is what I call people sleeping awake.
When you allow your mind to take on the job, it will always start with the negative. You always need to remind yourself in every interaction to be aware.
A team basketball player may be mad at you, shouting at you. The brain may immediately think that this person doesn’t like me. You need to take control and view it from a different perspective. It could just be that he is in the heat of the moment. He is seeing a mistake that you are making and you could correct it there.
If you changed your perspective to the thing that you could improve instead of seeing it as hatred towards you, you win. Your game improves.
If I give you an analogy. Imagine that the conscious mind is an ant. Ants are industrious. They are hardworking. They are determined. They are going to get the job done. This is the conscious mind.
In fact, this particular ant went to a personal development seminar last week. He set his goals and he is marching North confidently in the direction of his achievements.
The problem is, he is marching over the back of an elephant that is heading South, our unconscious mind.
With all of our limiting patterns, limiting beliefs and all of the other unresolved self issues that go on there.
We start to see why we self-sabotage. See, how do you get that elephant moving in the right direction? Well, let me give you another example, another analogy.
The mind is like a compass needle. In fact, it can only point in one direction at a time. But when we are operating from our ants, that 5% of the time where we are conscious and using free will, we can grab that compass needle and we can point it anywhere. That is what freewill allows us to do.
If we are feeling down, we can choose to watch a comedy or call a friend who can cheer us up.
If we are feeling low on energy, we can go put the kettle on and make ourselves a coffee or a drink.
But 95% of the time, we are not doing that. And as soon as we let our hand off of that compass needle consciously, it will always drift back to its default magnetic North which unfortunately for most people is more negative than positive.
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Power of acceptance
I was listening to a story of a guy that went to prison. He was framed for a mistake he had not done.
Now, while there, he had to come to terms with being there. That is where the power of acceptance comes in. Most people don’t get to acceptance because they confuse it with apathy or resignation.
But, if you are complaining about something that has already happened, you are wasting your time.
As soon as he walked in there, he implemented a zero-tolerance policy of his thinking of any thoughts that started with “if only” or “what if.”
Why? Because you can’t go back and change anything. The milk may be split but that is not going to put it back in the bottle if you sit there and feel sorry for yourself.
But by unhooking the energy of resistance and being coming to terms with where you are, you can then free up that energy to channel into whatever the next best move is to deal with what’s happened.
Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich says that “Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.”
The challenge is for most people, is that they are so busy focused on the adversity they don’t water the seed.
And I am a great believer that many of the gifts in life that come to us are wrapped in a thin layer of problems. Probably to stop somebody else from stealing our gift.
Take 100% ownership for your life
Nobody owes you anything. Nobody is going to give you anything. You are only going to get to where you want to go in life by taking ownership for you life.
The minute you start playing the victim card and blaming somebody else, you might as well sit down, lay down properly and cry yourself to sleep.
I have come to recently realize that when I die, people will just cry for a few hours. Hours after I have hit the ground, they will be hungry. They will go and eat lunch. Some will come with stories to entertain others to help them forget about the pain.
Days and weeks after I am gone, I will just be a distant memory. In the next months, many would have forgotten I existed.
Do you remember the billionaire guys that went with a submarine to the bottom of the ocean? Yeah. Maybe you just remembered because I mentioned it right now. But it happened like 4 months ago and it was the hottest topic all over the world.
Nobody care about you as you think. The only person that cares about yourself should be you. The only person that is going to make you a better version of yourself, will be you.
You are the only one that makes the choices everyday. You need to take ownership for your choices.
Whatever pain points in your life, have hurt you, have held you back. Sit back, take a deep breath. Breathe. Breathe and reflect. There is a lesson there. Don’t lose in life, learn.
Spend time in solitude
“Retire into yourself as much as possible.” Seneca.
When you withdraw from external distractions and immerse yourself in solitude, you can engage in introspection, self-reflection, and personal growth.
I decided to live alone and this has been one of my best decisions. Not only are my thoughts clearer, I don’t get much noise from the outside.
Couple this with walking in nature, is like having the infinity stones. Like Thanos in Avengers End Game.
It is in solitude that we have the opportunity to confront our thoughts, emotions, and inner struggles, fostering self-awareness and clarity.
To practice solitude, you can carve out dedicated time for oneself regularly. This can involve engaging in activities that promote self-reflection such as journaling, meditation, or simply taking long walks in nature.
By intentionally disconnecting from the noise and demands of the external world, you can create a space for deep thinking, self-discovery, and self-improvement.
During this time, I use it to reflect on my values, goals and areas of personal development. I use it to gain clarity on my priorities, assess my emotions and thoughts, and contemplate my actions and decisions.
The great philosopher Seneca believed that spending time in solitude allows individuals to recharge their minds, gain valuable insights, and cultivate inner strength.
That is all from me. See you in the next letter.
