Mental Toughness and Performance

Not everyone with high Mental Toughness is a champion; however, all champions have high Mental Toughness.

Skills and competencies will get you to the top but it’s Mental Toughness that will get you beyond and help you to stay there.

Be it in sports, arts, politics or business; Mental Toughness will get you beyond the skills asymptote.

Skills and competencies are the strict minimum; if you want to be a good guitar player you need to know your scales & patterns, if you want to be a good canoeist you need to be able to break in & break out and if you want to be a good leader you need to be able to influence and motivate.

However, if you want to be great at the above, you need Mental Toughness

You need the Life Control that helps you be clear about where you are going and what you want to achieve

You need the Emotional Control to stay calm in difficult situations and not be “overcome” by emotional outbursts

You need the Goal Orientation that enables you, with razor like precision, to identify exactly what it is you want to achieve

You need the Achievement Orientation that keeps you going in the face of adversity

You need the Risk Orientation that gets you out of your comfort zone and allows you to experiment and grow

You need the Learning Orientation that helps you stand back and evaluate your performance and identify reusable best practice and to be avoided worst practice

You need the Confidence in your Abilities to accept your doubts but affirm what you know

You need the Interpersonal Confidence to face up to those belittling you and putting you down

We are all as mentally tough as our weakest link and our Mental Toughness can go out of the window when our Achilles Tendon lets us down

Some are “let down” by their lack of Emotional Control for example, while for others it might be giving up too soon, a reluctance to take a risk or repeating the same mistake

We can try to ignore or deny our weakest link but, at the end of the day, it is there waiting to trip us up when, we are least expecting it!

Going from good performance to exceptional performance is not about learning a new rhythm, serving differently or working on your rhetoric – it’s not about what you do, it’s about who you are!

If you would like to explore Mental Toughness and its repercussions for you or those around you, do not hesitate to contact me: boblarcher@boblarcher.com