Many people suffer from a lack of mental toughness.  They just don’t possess the psychological and emotional tenacity to be successful.

Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”  There is some truth to this. If you want to live a great life, you have to get up every day and do what it takes to succeed.

When you lack mental toughness, you fail to show up.  You fail to give life 100 percent.  You hide from the challenges that, if conquered, will make you successful.

We have to learn to recognize a lack of mental toughness in ourselves and to overcome it if we truly want to live the best life possible.

The Signs You Lack Mental Toughness

There are some telltale signs that you lack the toughness necessary to plow through life’s challenges to get to the other side.  You can use these to evaluate yourself and determine if you need to strengthen your commitment to success.

Here are five signs you lack mental toughness:

1.  You Give Up Too Easily

This one seems pretty obvious, but it still needs to be stated.  A lack perseverance and persistence is a plain sign that you are suffering from mental weakness. Albert Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”  Success often comes to those you persist where others give up.  You may have to back up and attack from a different angle to succeed, but many issues are overcome by a simple will to make it so.

You need to look back over your life to evaluate how well you’ve stuck to the difficult things that have come up.  Do you throw in the towel when things get a little uncomfortable or do you press on even when success is questionable?

2.  You Whine and Complain

If you often find yourself whining and complaining when you face a difficult change or a stubborn obstacle, then you probably lack mental toughness. Moaning about the situation does absolutely nothing to help.  It just tears down your resolve and fills you and those around you with negativity.  If you think something is going to be a problem, then it certainly will be.  On the other hand, a positive attitude even in the face of adversity has helped many successful people get to where they are.

Do you whine and complain when the going gets tough?  If so, then you need to toughen up mentally.  You need to steel your mind against these cracks in your optimism.  You need to stop making yourself and others miserable and start believing you can overcome anything!

3.  You Procrastinate and Are Lazy

Procrastination and laziness are sure signs of a lack of mental strength.  Successful people will not let these cancers take control of their lives.  They force themselves to get up off the couch to make one more sales call or to turn off the television so they can read one more idea that might catapult them to the next level.  Our lizard brains will tell us to sit still, but success comes from taking positive action.

Do you put off the things you know you need to do?  Do you spend too much time watching sports on the weekends instead of working on your dream?  If so, then you lack mental strength.  Toughen up your thinking by learning to overcome these weaknesses.

4.  You Have Emotional Breakdowns

Emotional breakdowns can be found at either extreme.  If you are mentally weak, you may breakdown by crying your eyes out or you may explode in fits of rage.  Either way, you are giving in to your weakness and engaging in self-defeating behavior.  I know that sometimes, if you are so inclined, that you may need to let the steam off, but you have to do this in private and in a way that doesn’t hurt others.  Most often, you need team members to help you climb your way to success, but people won’t follow someone that is susceptible to emotional breakdowns.  They will either think you are too weak or too volatile.

Do you regularly exhibit either of the emotional breakdowns mentioned above?  If so, then you are mentally weak and need to get control of your emotions.  You are hurting your chances for success by letting your emotions run wild.  When you get control of yourself, you will find that success comes much easier.

5.  You Blame Others

Finally, you lack mental toughness if you fail to accept personal responsibility for your life.  Blaming others for your lack of success is definitely a weakness.  You are the only one that can bring success to your life.  You have to take charge and make it happen.  Blaming others is a convenient crutch used to deflect the blame off ourselves.  We have to be mentally tough enough to accept responsibility for the circumstances of our lives and to do something to get what we want.

If you are in a bad situation, then I’m not saying you have to accept responsibility for the bad behavior of others.  I’m saying that you need to be responsible for yourself and get out of there.  Do you blame others for the failures in your life?  If so, then draw a line in the sand right now.  From this point forward, commit yourself to taking the action necessary to improve your life.

Be Mentally Tough Enough to Live a Great Life

Having a heaping helping of determination and tenacity are crucial to living a great life.  This requires some mental toughness.  If any of the signs above ring true to you, then you have some work to do.  The good news is that you can immediately resolve to do better.  You can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and start making a difference today.  Don’t wallow in your weakness any longer!  Get mentally tough and live a great life.

Photo by a God’s Child

Our brains need stimulation and challenging tasks to retain cognitive and memory skills.  Do you have difficulty finding the right word when its on the tip of your tongue?  Are you forgetful?  Do you lose your train of thought?  You might consider trying to exercise your brain to keep your mental acuity. 

Fantastic Ways to Exercise Your Brain!

1.  Do an art project like sculpting or painting

Art projects are great exercise for your brain.  They require you to be creative, use fine motor skills, and think analytically.  Enroll in an art class to get started.  Art can be fun, challenging and rewarding.  You’ll expand your horizons while exercising your mind.

2.  Expand your vocabulary

A strong vocabulary is one of the best indicators of intelligence.  Sign up for a service like Vocab Vitamins for a word a day newsletter.  You can then practice working the new words you learn into everyday conversations.  This will keep you mentally active and thinking.

3.  Practice visualization techniques

Creative visualization is the technique of using one’s imagination to create a mental image of what one desires.  In other words, visualization is the art of putting daydreaming to good use.  You can use visualization to exercise your creative faculties keeping them alive and well.

4.  Throw away the calculator

Do math the old-fashioned way to exercise your brain.  Sometimes it seems hard to even remember how to do basic math in our heads.  This is mental flabbiness.  The best way to overcome it is the same way we learned math in the first place.  Practice, practice, practice!

5.  Sing along to your favorite song

Fire up the 8-track and howl out at the top of your lungs.  Memorizing and recalling the lyrics of songs you love is a great way to exercise your brain.  It can also be a lot of fun!  Of course, your family and neighbors might disagree with me.

6.  Learn to play a musical instrument

Not a lead singer?  Then you might try out for the band instead.  Learning to play an instrument can be challenging.  This makes the perfect exercise for your brain.  You want to be challenged.  Push your mind and discover how much it still has to offer you.

7.  Memorize poetry and wisdom literature

Memorize and recite a love poem to your significant other.  They’ll love you for it and so will your brain.  Of course, if poetry isn’t your thang, then you can always memorize passages from classic wisdom literature or your favorite joke book!  Suit yourself.

8.  Solve a few brain teasers

Brain teasers come in all forms.  There are the ones you solve on paper and the ones where you try to untangle a seemingly impossible puzzle.  Either kind will serve our purpose.  The trick really is just to get your mind working harder than normal.

9.  Use a brain training video game

A great example of this is Brain Age for the Nintendo DS.  Brain Age gives your mind a workout by having you solve simple math problems, count currency, draw pictures on the Nintendo DS touch screen, and unscramble letters.  The great thing about the Nintendo DS is that it is portable so you can take it with you anywhere. 

10.  Study a foreign language

Developing new language skills is a great workout for the mind.  Plus, bilingual people are in demand in many professions.  Learning to speak another language might not only help your brain, but it could benefit your bank account too!

11.  Assemble bikes, toys and furniture

As the man of the house, I often find myself putting together all kinds of things.  These projects are great exercise for the brain.  You know what I mean.  It is like a giant puzzle with a million tiny parts.  Don’t worry if you have a couple of leftovers.  That always happens to me too!

12.  Get rid of the GPS and use a map instead

Manually plan the route for your next road trip.  This engages your imagination and analytical skills.  We’ve become too reliant on our technological toys.  We need to stop letting the gadgets do all the thinking for us!

Exercise your brain and you can forget about memory leaks!

A good mental exercise regimen for your brain will help you stay sharp and keep your smarts.  I’m old enough that I already see the memory leaks starting to occur.  I have to take every opportunity to keep my mind in tip-top shape.  I plan to live a long, full life and I want to do everything possible to be sure my mind is able to keep up!

What do you do to stay mentally sharp?

Photo by szlea

1.  Read a good book.

Reading a book stimulates the imagination.  Your brain can’t keep from drawing mental pictures when you read.  Reading gets your mind off its butt and to work.  I love to let a book carry me away.  I always have a book that I’m reading and sometimes I have 3 or 4!  I get most of my books from the library to avoid the cost of buying each one.  This also allows me to try a wide variety of books without risk.

2.  Big Brain Academy.

Video games have a bad reputation for causing brain rot, but there are some that will actually help you strengthen your mind.  I like Big Brain Academy for the Wii.  It is a collection of brain teasers that tests your mental acuity.  The tests are entertaining and addicting.  You can even compete with others which makes for some great family fun.

3.  Practice meditation.

Don’t worry, I’m not going off the new age deep-end here.  There are a lot of different forms of meditation.  To me, in its most simple form, meditation is about spending a little time alone to relax and center your thoughts.  It is amazingly therapeutic.  If you haven’t tried meditation before, I would highly recommend reading this guide to meditation.

4.  Get plenty of rest.

A lack of sleep can interfere with your ability to assimilate new information.  This means those all-nighters you pulled back in college were much less effective than you thought.  Your brain needs rest to operate at its peak performance.  This may be why things always seem clearer and brighter after a good night’s sleep.

5.  Exercise regularly.

You didn’t think you were going to get away without a little time on the treadmill did you?  Cardiovascular exercise improves blood flow to the brain which improves brain functioning.  One study found that physical exercise actually helped to increase the volume of the brain.  So, if you want a bigger, better brain, then get to exercising!

6.  Eat a good breakfast.

It is not a myth.  Eating a good breakfast does get you off to a better start.  You should eat a breakfast high in protein and good carbohydrates.  A couple of pieces of whole-grain toast with peanut butter will fit the bill.  Eggs are also an excellent source of protein.  Nuts, milk, and fresh fruit are also great ways to feed your brain.

7.  Think positive thoughts.

Encourage yourself.  I am convinced that positive thinking increases the effectiveness of the brain and helps to avoid things like depression.  I like to say that your brain works much like a computer, garbage-in, garbage-out.  Find positive, encouraging people to hang around, read material that jazzes you up, do whatever it is that makes you feel good about yourself.  These things will also help you be more mentally productive.

8.  Be a continual learner.

Never stop being curious about your world.  Seek out new experiences, skills, and knowledge.  Think of something that you’ve always wanted to learn to do and then get started.  A now famous study, showed that certain areas of the brains of London cab drivers were more developed compared to the average citizen.  This was due to their need to learn how to navigate the maze of downtown streets.  We can use this technique of challenging our brains to improve our abilities.

9.  Lay off the alcohol.

Alcohol is of course a depressant.  It slows down mental functions.  The effects of alcohol on a person’s cognitive ability is well-documented.  If you need peak mental performance, then stop drinking alcohol.  In addition to its obvious effects, it also decreases the restfulness of one’s sleep which, as we have already discussed, impedes your ability to think clearly.

10.  Get romantic (especially if you’re a woman).

Studies have shown that there may be a link between regular sex and improved brain performance in women.  Love-making increases a woman’s estrogen levels and higher estrogen levels are tied to better mental performance.  Of course, the mental benefits probably do not outweigh the risks, unless you are in a faithful, monogamous relationship.

11.  Break your routines.

Drive a new way to work.  Try writing with your less dominant hand.  Mix things up a little.  This perks up your brain because it requires you to think more.  You aren’t just running on auto-pilot.  Challenge your brain by getting out of your routines and it will respond.  This is a great way to get your mental juices flowing.

12.  Stop watching so much television.

Researchers have found that too much television between the ages of 1 and 3 leads to attention problems later in childhood.  Let’s face it, TV is mind-numbing.  Get up off the couch and away from the television.  Sure, there is some good educational stuff for children and adults, but the average American watches way too much TV.  If you want peak mental performance, then turn off the boob tube.

13.  Work with numbers.

Do math problems in your head instead of on a calculator.  For many of us, it is use it or lose it.  We have become mentally lazy.  We rely on our gadgets instead of thinking for ourselves.  Working with and memorizing numbers is a great way to get your brain back in shape.  This could pay off big dividends down the road!

14.  Stop relying on your GPS to tell you where to go.

Remember the cab drivers in #8 above?  Using your brain to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B is good mental exercise.  You have to use your brain’s ability to determine spatial relationships to effectively read a map and navigate a city.  Traveling in an unfamiliar area is even better!

15.  Recall old memories.

Get out those old picture albums and start thumbing through them.  This taps into your brains memory banks.  Pictures will help you recall things that you thought you forgot.  Dig deep to see just what all you remember.  If you have other ways to stimulate your memory, like old letters or home movies, then by all means use those too.

16.  Make beautiful music.

Learning to play a musical instrument is a great way to super-charge your brain.  It requires a number of different parts of your brain to work together to make the melodies that you desire.  Of course, if you are already a musician, then learn a new piece.  Push yourself to learn new techniques.  Music is a great workout for the mind.

17.  Speak a new tongue.

Many people agree that learning to a speak a new language is a powerful way to give the mind a stretch.  If you’ve ever tried to learn even a few new words, then you know this can be difficult.  Of course, the harder something is for the brain, the better!  You have so much more mental capacity than you might imagine.  Give it a try!

18.  Memorize a song.

Many of us have lots of old songs stored in our heads, but why not expand your memory by learning a few new tunes?  It may take awhile at first, but if you keep at it, you will find it gets easier.  This is your brain getting back in shape.

19.  Walk around the house blindfolded.

It might seem like a strange activity, but your brain can handle it.  Once you try it a few times, you will probably find it fun and challenging.  Again, this one draws on your memory, motor skills, and reasoning abilities.  What a workout!

20.  Expand your vocabulary.

Decide to learn one new word a day.  There are several websites out there that can help you with this endeavor.  You’ll not only be expanding your mind, but you’ll also be able to impress your friends and co-workers when you work one of your new words into a conversation.

Get started today and be smarter tomorrow!

There you have it!  I have just given you 20 very practical ways to sharpen your mind.  These suggestions will have your brain back in tip-top shape in no time.  Why are you waiting?  It is time to start exercising your mental muscles!

How do you keep your brain in perfect working order?

Photo by Gaetan Lee