Mental Toughness & Wellbeing – Commitment

 

Much has been written about how Mental Toughness contributes to increased performance; however, even more fundamentally, Mental Toughness has a significant impact on Wellbeing

In fact, wellbeing is almost a “precursor” to high performance – it is difficult to perform well if your Wellbeing is low.

In this series of four posts, I will look at how each of the “4C’s” of Mental Toughness can contribute your Wellbeing.

In this post I will look at Commitment.

Commitment has, as do all of the C’s, two sub-dimensions; Goal Orientation and Achievement Orientation

Goal Orientation is about being clear about what you want to achieve in your life; it’s one thing to feel in control of your life (see previous post) but something else to be clear about exactly where you are going.

Those with high personal Wellbeing have, usually, clarified for themselves what is important for them and what they want to achieve; they will have defined concrete targets and timelines with intermediate “milestones” to guide them along the way.

The SMART acronym is a simple yet effective model that, when applied in the right way, helps to set clear goals that outline exactly what you want to achieve and when.

The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound, though substitutions for some of these words have emerged over time

The real challenge in setting your goals is not determining the result you want, but if you are willing to accept the sacrifices needed to achieve what you want.

It’s relatively easy to think about what you want or what you what like to do; however, it is maybe more difficult to accept the trade-offs that come with your objectives.

You may want the outcomes associated with your objectives but are you willing to accept the often long and difficult process that comes before rewarding outcomes.

Many people would like to be a champion at something; but few people are willing to train morning, noon and night to become the champion.

Goals are great for helping to set your direction; however, you also need a method or system for making progress and achieving your goals.

Goal Orientation isn’t about becoming so focused on setting your goals that you become blinkered to what is going on around you and rigid in terms of what you want to achieve.

Achievement Orientation is about the focus and determination in actually achieving your SMART goals or outcomes.

A threat to Wellbeing can be having too many goals; your different goals can be in mutual competition for your time and attention and this can lead to a dissipation of your focus and energy.

This goal competition shouldn’t be underestimated as it can lead you to “flitting” from goal to goal and feeling frustrated because nothing has really been achieved.

To avoid this and make progress on your goals you will need to prioritise and make trade-offs between your goals.

Some of your goals may be more important than others and some may be more urgent than others; however, your priority goals are those that are both important and urgent – at least that is the rationale of the famous “Eisenhower Matrix”.

Whether you use Eisenhower, Warren Buffett’s 2 List Strategy, The Ivy Lee Method or a Balanced Scorecard, you need a method that allows you to avoid spending time and energy on secondary priorities while letting your life essentials slip by.

Something else that can help to achieve your goals and outcomes is “chunking”, i.e., breaking them down into manageable and achievable bite sized chunks that you can focus on – as, I think, Tony Robbins said, “Where focus goes, energy flows”

If you would like to explore your Mental Toughness and how you can increase your Wellbeing and performance do not hesitate to contact me: boblarcher@boblarcher.com