A Military Lesson In Mental Toughness

One of the topics I am most often asked about in the gym is mindset or mental toughness. Most people think you either have it or you don’t and that’s just the way it’s going to be for you…  

I believe mental toughness is a practiced skill and anyone can become mentally strong! Mental toughness is built just like muscles in the gym through deliberate practice, hard work and constant feedback.   

I have been fortunate in life to be in environments which have fostered a great mental toughness in me. The military being one of them…

The military is a great breeding ground for mental toughness. It’s no mistake those who make it through some sort of military training are seen by the public as prestigious roles and they have supreme confidence in their abilities.   

The mental toughness is built from the very first day of enlistment. During the recruit training process the standards and deadlines are always unreachable. Nothing was ever clean enough, you always missed a few hairs on your chin when shaving and nothing ever made your boss happy.

This was the game. I was fortunate enough to see it like this. They would always make things just outside of reach. To have you question your abilities, to continually ask yourself if this was for you and to frustrate you enough to either quit or becoming more resilient to failure and demotivating situations.  

Every time you inevitably didn’t reach the goal you would get yelled at, told to do it again or even have things taken away from you for failure to meet expectations.

Every time this happened it would build up a mental callous and just like another set in the gym would build mental toughness.

If your goal is to build this sort of mental toughness it needs to start now. Pick something to aim for that makes you nervous, something you don’t think you can do or will continue to get harder as you get better. It doesn’t have to be something as crazy or demanding as the military.

Once you start you will know you’re on the right track if you continually fall short, get up move the goalposts further out of reach and then try again!

Shaun Diachkoff

@shaundiachkoff