Life doesn’t always go as planned. One minute everything is peachy keen, and the next, life throws you a curveball. You lose your job. Someone you love leaves you. Or maybe you’re just having an off day and not sure how you’re going to keep going. Life is going to challenge you. Your mind will be put to the test. What you do during those times is what defines you. Will you rise to be a stronger woman or crack under pressure and become a broken woman?
Having mental strength is about remaining calm, focused, and optimistic even when everything around you is falling apart. Mental strength allows you to keep pushing through when life is stressful, face failure head-on, and never give up.
Building mental strength is like building muscle strength. You have to exercise it. You don’t wake up one day and suddenly become mentally strong. You make choices every day that allow your strength to grow.
Here are 15 ways you can build mental strength:
1. Accept the Things You Can’t Control
Life is full of things you cannot control. You cannot change the past. You cannot control other people’s decisions. You cannot predict the future. Stressing over these things will only overwhelm you and leave you feeling defeated.
When you accept that life is full of things you can’t control, you will no longer waste time and energy on trying to control the uncontrollable. Mental strength begins when you learn to let go of the things you can’t control.
Read also: 13 Positive Reminders for Mental Health
2. Practice Self-Awareness
Being mentally tough takes self-awareness. You have to know what triggers your fears, what sets off your emotions, and what stresses you out. Sit with your emotions, even if it’s sadness or anger. Why do you feel this way? What caused this emotion?
Self-awareness allows you to respond to situations instead of reacting out of emotion. The more you practice awareness of your thoughts and emotions, the better you’ll be at directing yourself during times of adversity.
Read also: 15 Signs You Need a Mental Break
3. Lay Down Boundaries… guilt-free
It’s hard to say no sometimes. You may fear letting someone down or appearing selfish. But allowing others to run all over you to keep the peace is not mentally strong. Setting boundaries is empowering. It allows you to take control of your life.
You are allowing others to know how you wish to be treated. You are showing yourself and everyone else that you matter too.
4. Teach Yourself to Live in the Present
Your mind likes to focus on the past or the future, but never in the present. That’s where mental strength resides. You want to learn how to live in the present moment. The more you practice living in today, the less anxious you will feel.
Force yourself to practice mindfulness by focusing on your breath or what you see around you. The more you practice this, the easier your mind will learn to quiet down in the middle of chaos.
Read also: 9 Mental Fitness Routines for Beginners
5. Practice Having a Growth Mindset
When something goes wrong, a person with a fixed mindset will say, “I’ll never be able to do this.” But a growth mindset will think, “How can I improve?” Mentally strong people believe they can learn and grow through hard work and effort. Failure is seen as something to learn from, not defeat.
Once you start believing you can always grow and improve your skills, obstacles don’t seem so scary. They become opportunities to improve.
Research shows that students who have a growth mindset do better than students who believe their talents can’t be developed.
6. Be Thankful Even When It’s Hard
Life is good. You wake up feeling grateful for your family, health, job, and smile. But what happens when you’re stuck in pain? Can you still find something to be thankful for? Practicing gratitude will change your perspective on life. It helps remind you that just because something is wrong, it doesn’t mean everything is.
Start a gratitude journal. Before bed, write down 1 thing you were thankful for that day. You will be amazed at how little things add up.
7. Become Master of Your Inner Dialogue
The voice in your head is powerful. If you allow that voice to constantly speak negatively to you, telling you that you aren’t good enough or pretty enough, it will destroy your mental strength. But you have the power to change your inner voice.
For every negative thought that pops into your head, dispute it. Replace that thought with something reasonable and something you would say to a friend. Remember, you are not your thoughts. You have the power over your thoughts.
8. Create Healthy Habits
Healthy habits may be boring to you, but they create structure. And structure creates strength. Create small habits that will allow you to take care of your mind. Get enough sleep, eat nutritious foods, and exercise.
These types of habits are the foundation of your life. When your foundation is weak, everything else falls apart. When your foundation is strong, you can handle anything life throws your way.
9. Make Your Own Responsible Choices
Pointing fingers and blaming others may make you feel better for a little bit, but it doesn’t allow you to grow. Taking responsibility empowers you. You don’t have to blame yourself when things go wrong, but you can ask yourself, what can I own? What can I learn to do differently next time?
Asking yourself these questions allows you to grow up. And with growth comes strength.
10. Do Things That Are Hard Intentionally
The more you step out of your comfort zone, the stronger your mind will be. If you run from everything that scares you or causes you pain, your mind will never grow resilient. But when you push your mind to do hard things intentionally, you condition your mind to be tough.
Take a cold shower. Speak up at your next meeting. Conquer one of your small fears. Each time you push your mind to do something that feels challenging, you are proving to yourself that you are tougher than you think. Before you know it, hard things won’t feel so hard.
11. Rest Without Feeling Guilty
Being mentally strong isn’t always about toughing things out. Sometimes being strong is allowing yourself to rest. Going nonstop isn’t strength. That is called burnout. Learn to allow yourself to rest without feeling guilty.
Listen to your body and give yourself the break you need. Get plenty of rest. Your mind can’t work if you aren’t allowing it to rest. The WHO explains burnout as an occupational phenomenon.
12. Don’t Tolerate Toxic People
The people you allow in your life will affect your mindset. If you surround yourself with people who lie, complain, and drag you down, it will be difficult to remain mentally strong. Choose your circle wisely.
Only allow happy, uplifting, and positive people in your life. The kind of people who call you out when you are being ridiculous AND the kind of people that remind you how amazing you are when you forget.
Read also: 150 Tiny Ways to Improve Your Life
13. Allow Yourself to Feel Uncomfortable
You can’t fix everything overnight. Some things take time to figure out. Other emotions aren’t going to go away immediately. Being mentally tough is allowing yourself to feel the emotions you are feeling without trying to push them away.
Allow yourself to feel sad, scared, or angry. Don’t fight the emotions you are feeling. As you sit with your emotions, you will learn that emotions don’t destroy you. They come and go, and you are still here.
14. Keep Promises You Make to Yourself
Every time you tell yourself you will do something and don’t follow through, you are stripping away from your self-confidence. But each time you keep a promise you make to yourself, your mind grows stronger.
You promise yourself you are going to take a walk? Take that walk. You tell yourself you will stop watching YouTube before bed. Then YOU. MUST. STOP. When you learn to keep small promises you make yourself, your mind learns it can trust you.
15. Just Keep Showing Up
Sometimes all you have to do is just keep showing up. Show up even when you are tired. Show up even when you are scared. Being mentally strong isn’t about pretending you don’t feel weak. It’s about showing up even when you feel like your weakest.
You don’t give up on yourself. You continue to grow. You continue to learn. You build a strong mind one day at a time.
Final Thoughts
Being mentally strong doesn’t mean you don’t feel emotions. It’s allowing yourself to feel all emotions in a healthy way. Building mental strength is allowing you to create a calm, focused, and grounded mind that can handle the ups and downs of life.
Life isn’t always going to smile at you. But if you build mental strength, you will be able to smile back at those hard times.
You work on building mental strength when no one is around. You don’t have to be perfect. Simply allow yourself to grow each and every day, even when it’s difficult. Your mind will become a muscle you never knew you had.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is mental strength, really?
Mental strength is remaining calm, focused, and optimistic even when everything around you is falling apart.
How do I start building mental strength if I feel overwhelmed?
Start small by focusing on what you can control and practicing one habit at a time, like gratitude or self-awareness.
Does being mentally strong mean I shouldn’t feel emotions?
No. Being mentally strong doesn’t mean you don’t feel emotions. It means you allow yourself to feel them in a healthy way.
What if I keep slipping back into old habits?
That’s normal. Building mental strength is like building muscle strength—you keep exercising it, and it grows over time.
Save the pin for later
