Young Adults: Learn This Life Skill to Crash All Your Goals In 2023.

Guest Blog from Prosper : A Beginners Guide to Mental Toughness

Hello everyone and welcome to The Black Print blog. It’s your usual host but today we have a guest blog from a Nigerian born writer, Prosper Ocheme who wanted to share his personal insights on mental toughness as someone who has battled with it before.

Note : This contribution might not apply to neuro-divergent people with ADHD and similar mental health conditions. This is Prosper’s personal reflection and recommendations. No harm is intended.

That done let’s do introductions…..

As usual we greet our guests. Prosper is a content writer/ marketer for start up companies, say hi to Prosper :

I will link his Twitter and Medium blog at the end of the blog. For now let’s hear what he has to say.

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Life is good. Depending on how we live our lives we can have wonderful experiences. We all have goals that we want to achieve. If you don’t, then you’ve got some thinking and planning to do.

The reality is most people will never reach their goals, especially young adults. The reason for this is that life is also filled with lows, negative emotions, battles, and mistakes that stand in the way of achieving said goals. 

When we encounter challenges that stand in the way of our goals, most people give a justification for why things didn’t work out. When we fail, the human tendency is to make excuses. This is exactly how I have reacted to setbacks in the past.

Why You Are A Struggling Young Adult

Young adults must understand that they will have to acquire skills, interests, and expertise to meet their goals and actualize their reality. Hard pill to swallow, isn’t it? Whether we like it or not, we must learn to solve the problems that life throws at us, because they won’t just go away.

The problem with this is comfort is very addictive. I noticed that for a long time, I couldn’t finish anything. Courses, books, a new fitness plan, you name it. I found that I was running away from discomfort.

Sound familiar?

It took me time to realize that the reason I was failing at my goals was that I lacked the mental fortitude (or toughness as I like to call it) to achieve them. Spoiler alert, it was also the reason I couldn’t finish anything. I just didn’t have the patience or endurance to keep at it.

Enter Mental Toughness

Studying mental toughness became an awakening for me. When you start to understand what mental toughness is, you realize that most people do not know how to manage the mind within the reality of a seemingly overwhelming goal. 

This is especially the case with young adults. Let’s use an example to illustrate my point. I have always wanted to learn calisthenics. For those who do not know, calisthenics is using bodyweight workouts to increase strength and flexibility. Like what you see in the image below.

Image Credits : https://unsplash.com/photos/S6zR6btkG-M

As you would imagine starting as a beginner was not easy. Especially for an overweight person like me. The first week was hell. Well maybe I am exaggerating but that’s how it felt. I struggled to do the extremely basic moves. Some of which my body clearly couldn’t handle. The people I was learning from on YouTube were extremely fit and made it look easy.

Suddenly, the reality of the journey knocked on the door. My self-doubts escalated from that point. When I started thinking of how long I needed to be consistent, I felt overwhelmed. My mind made many excuses as to why it was pointless to start in the first place. It didn’t take long before I stopped.

Later, I realized that I didn’t understand the nature of my mind and how to manage it through adversity. Calisthenics is one example of many. For you, it might be eating right, learning a skill, making money online, etc.

The reality of any worthwhile goal is that you will be tested before you can get what you want and when the test comes, many people fail repeatedly. The same way I did. The ancient part of the human mind doesn’t care about your goals and dreams. It just wants to be comfortable. So, every time you step out of your comfort zone it’s going to try and stop you. However, if you are not aware of this part of your mind then you will start believing the excuses it creates.

How To Build Mental Toughness

Image Credits https://www.gettyimages.ca/

Young adults, your goals will place you in uncomfortable situations. It’s up to you to overcome these situations or give up. The breakthrough for most people appears when the reality of what lies ahead becomes clear.

So how do you get over this block and build mental toughness?

• The most important thing to note here is to forget about the big picture. Learn to break your goals into smaller manageable chunks. Let’s say your goal is to finish an online course, and said course has 8 modules, and over 30 videos to watch. Do not focus on all the videos. Rather, focus on watching one at a time. It may be annoying but stick with it. Thinking it’s annoying is your mind making excuses again.
• Talk to yourself constantly. Scientists estimate that humans have about 70000 thoughts per day. That means you have 70,000 opportunities to either make yourself stronger or tear yourself down. Your thoughts greatly influence how you feel and behave. Practice replacing overly negative thoughts with more realistic ones.
• Take Charge of your emotions. There’s nothing wrong with being in a bad mood sometimes. However, staying stuck in a negative spot can be a slippery slope. I found that my sadness sometimes led to self-pity, and my anxiety led to a paralyzing fear. Face uncomfortable feelings head-on and take charge of your life. The more you practice tolerating discomfort, the more confidence you’ll gain in your ability to accept new challenges.

• Be productive no matter the circumstances. Most people struggle to be productive sometimes. Remember that you do not have to show up 100% all the time. The most important thing is to show up. I have a few unproductive habits that I indulge in regularly. I realized that performing these habits alongside the good ones, made my efforts counterproductive. Do not waste your mental strength pointlessly.

My key takeaway for you

Mental toughness is a skill. Everyone can learn and build mental strength. Like building physical strength, Disclaimer! won’t be easy. You need endurance, commitment, sacrifice, and action.  Dedication and hard work must become your best friends.

Life is one big psychological welfare that you play on yourself. Mental toughness is one of the things you must do to stay focused and locked into the game of life.

The more you strengthen your mental muscle, the better equipped you’ll be to overcome life’s challenges.

 The most practical way you can start developing mental toughness today

Disclaimer! Building mental toughness is a never-ending game. The more you practice the better you get at it. That is why the easiest and most practical way to start now is by building your physique. I am not saying “just exercise.” I am saying exercise with intention.

“There is purity in physical pursuit. If you continuously immerse yourself in something, you become that. Resolve to give yourself no way out. Do it until it becomes your new norm.  Keep going back no matter how many times you want to quit.” David Goggins

For me it is calisthenics, for you, it can be strength training, rock climbing, swimming, anything. Just do it. Pay close attention to your mind while making this pursuit and I guarantee your mental fortitude will skyrocket.

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That’s it from our guest blogger. I hope you enjoyed it. Prosper has no personal blog but he writes more on this on his professional blog. You can find it here.

You can also follow him on his Twitter page.

Thank you reading. Until next time take care and see you soon!

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