The First Step to Reaching Your Goals: Mental Toughness

Self-Efficacy

To clarify, self-efficacy is a belief in your capability to organize and execute actions that will lead to a specific outcome. Makes sense right? If you believe that you are able to do something, and you organize the proper actions that will lead to the outcome desired, you will be successful. For some context, you know eating Burger King daily is bad for you, and you also know that if you were to make yourself a salad with chicken and veggies in the morning before work, and didn’t go to Burger King on your lunch break, your overall health would benefit. However, if you believe and convince yourself that you are completely incapable of making a salad in the morning for lack of time, lack of skill, lack of anything that can be an excuse for you not to do it, it will not happen. Mental toughness begins with self-efficacy, holding yourself accountable, and believing in yourself that you are capable of achieving a goal – as long as you take the right steps to get there.

Now, if you’re reading this, you are clearly looking to make a difference in your own life by changing your mindset and the way you think about working out and dieting, which is awesome! Some of you might already have a personal trainer who gives you workouts, weekly motivational speeches and tells you to do your 20 minutes of cardio, but they are doing the mindset work for you. They hold you accountable and make sure you know what you’re supposed to be doing, but if we don’t push ourselves that extra rep after they told us to stop, or the extra couple of minutes on the bike after we’ve reached our goal time, will we ever mentally improve? Maybe, but not to full capacity. To be mentally tough is to push yourself past your comfort zone, without fear of failing, because we know that if we fail then we only have to try harder the next time to get where we want to be. The driving force behind this mindset needs to be meaning. Find meaning. Meaning manifests in our life due to desire, because we deeply care about something. Meaning translates directly into effort and priority. Maybe you invest time into working out because you want to avoid surgery, prevent diabetes, get stronger, or live to see your grandchildren grow up. Whatever it is that you truly care about, use that meaning to light a fire, hold yourself accountable, and push yourself past where you’ve been before because you sure don’t want to retreat back to where you came from.

Choosing To Eat Healthy Shouldn’t Be a Punishment

Let’s revisit the Burger King example. We know Burger King is the last thing that any self-respecting person should eat, and if we just made that salad before we left the house in the morning, we would be healthier. The same principles that I explained in regard to working out and pushing yourself also apply to this Burger King example. Choosing to eat healthily shouldn’t be a punishment, it should be a reward for working hard. Yes, fueling your body with essential nutrients can be difficult sometimes, but don’t you want to do it in order to help yourself progress further in your journey to good health? In order to change the negative mindset on how “healthy” food tastes or how hard it is to prepare, we have to eliminate the negative experiences we’ve had with these foods before. I’m sure everyone has had moments in their lives when they’re going to try a new “healthy”  food and they absolutely hate it. Naturally, we associate that “healthy” food with something negative now, and all of a sudden every other healthy food is negative also, even though you’ve only based your opinion on that one thing. Stop that. Eating healthy should not be a punishment. Catch yourself in the act of reaching for that Burger King, and realize that there are thousands of other foods in this world that are so much better to fuel yourself with. After you catch yourself, stop yourself in the act of biting that burger and hold yourself accountable. Self-efficacy influences behavior and behavior influences self-efficacy. Don’t drive to Burger King next time and you won’t get a burger. It’s simple, yet challenging. Self-control is huge here; you need to stay on top of your actions in order to make those actions translate into the things you need to achieve your overall goal.