The Four C’s of Mental Toughness: How to Become Gritty

The Four C’s of mental toughness are something that I studied quite a bit as an undergrad. I worked in a psychology lab that focused on building resilience and bouncing back from setbacks. As you progress further into schooling, or your career, your ascent is only going to get steeper and steeper. What does this mean? You’ll just have to keep working harder and harder. Probably harder than you ever have before.

I just had my first medical school exam, and it did not go well. So, I had to ask myself, why not. What was I doing so wrong that I could do that poorly on an exam? I was mostly upset because I had been studying my tail off, but had nothing to show for it. Was it all a waste? Was I not where I was supposed to be?

OF COURSE NOT! But, in times of hardship, it’s so easy to question your purpose. But, as one of my favorite tweets says, Don’t put a question mark, where God put a period.

I needed to toughen up and get over my mental hump. I was studying a lot, but let’s be honest, I’m in medical school. I needed to study a lot more, and it took being honest with myself, to really come to that conclusion. I had to put aside some personal stubbornness to make this happen. And so might you to get where you want to go.

Something that may help you are the Four C’s of Mental toughness.

What is mental toughness?

Mental toughness is an a construct that’s talked about a lot in reference to sports. I wrote a whole blog post about mental toughness and Michael Jordan because he is the epitome of pushing through tired. There is no tired. There’s only completing the job. Not everyone has this burning desire to push through obstacles and fatigue, but that’s exactly what mental toughness is.

Mental toughness is looking at any barrier and deciding that no matter what, you are overcoming it to get to your end goal. You have this deep drive to push past your physical and mental limits and go the extra mile. It’s easy to show this in sports. Run that extra sprint. Play your heart out those last five minutes. Take a hit, and get right back out there.

But we can show mental toughness just in everyday life. When you get knocked down, how do you respond? When you’re alarm goes off in the morning, how many tries does it take you to get up and go work out or get to work on time? Are you pushing yourself to do your best at work and school, or do you let laziness and fatigue take over?

We’re all busy and we all have problems and trouble that pops up unexpectedly. That’s one of the few guarantees in life. But guess what is going to set you apart from everyone else who lets their problems and troubles deter them from accomplishing anything in life? Cultivating the Four C’s.

What are the Four C’s of Mental Toughness?

Now that you have a basic understanding of what mental toughness is, we can break it down a little further.

Challenge. Commitment. Control. Confidence.

These are the Four C’s of Mental Toughness that you need to cultivate in order to boost your mental toughness and become gritty. Gritty is when you are hard pressed to get something done. Relentless in your pursuit to the top. Work on improving these Four C’s and watch you start to accomplish things that you once thought were impossible.

Confidence

Confidence is something you have definitely heard of before, but just probably didn’t know that it contributed to mental toughness. It’s one of the Four C’s of mental toughness because without confidence, what can you do? You can’t go accomplish any goals if you don’t have any confidence in yourself to do so. It’s impossible. You have to believe that you can go out and do something. With this confidence in hand, nothing can stop you because you won’t have any doubt that you are meant to reach that finish line.

How to increase your confidence?

Increasing your confidence is tricky because there are a couple of different confidences, and you have to decide which one you want to work on. One is more surface level. It changes based on how other people feel and think about you. When we seek to be “perfect” this is the confidence that we are feeding. If someone makes fun of you, this is the confidence that takes a hit.

The other type of confidence is deeper and longer lasting. This confidence withstands whatever is happening in the environment because it’s internal. For increased confidence to increase your mental toughness, this may be the one that you put more effort into.

Say some affirmations. Repeating things over and over to yourself until you believe this is a way to activate that cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a discord between your beliefs and actions. Sooner or later, they have to meet up in the middle. This is the job of daily affirmations. Post them on your mirror or say them to yourself before bed. Some examples are:

• I deserve good things
• I am smart and beautiful
• My dreams can become a reality if I put in the work
• Nothing can get in the way of accomplishing my goals.

These simple phrases said over and over again will truly start to change your mind so you really believe them, hence increasing your self-confidence.

Also, do the prep work it takes to make your dreams come true. Nothing boosts confidence like really believing you have done what you need to do. For example, you can boost your confidence on taking tests by actually studying well and preparing yourself for the content.

Control

Control is focusing on what you can and can’t control. This is one of my favorite of the Four C’s of mental toughness because this helps you be a Positive Polly. I’m not saying you’ll be running around painting a silver lining on everything, but you’ll learn not to sweat the small stuff.

The serenity prayer emphasizes this.

When we spend all of our time focusing on what we can’t control, we start to feel helpless and defeated. So, when things go wrong, we throw our hands up in the air and say “Wasn’t meant to be I guess?” Either that, or we complain and complain to no avail. All that does is waste time and increase your feelings of I can’t.

When you turn your attention on what you can control, then you feel in control. Who doesn’t like to be in control of themselves or the things around them? Can we control everything? No. But, when we focus on what we can control, then it helps us take our lives back from bad luck and unfortunate circumstances.

Can you control what other people are doing? No. You can only control yourself and your reaction. If people try to get you worked up and get you to take your eye off the prize, and you let them, then they win. You prove how mentally tough you are when you focus on yourself and the things you can control, blocking out everything else. It’s nonsense. Just roll with the punches and tune out anything trying to get in your way.

Challenge

Challenge or opportunity? Depends on which way you look at it, right? Which one sounds more inviting? Definitely the opportunity. So why wouldn’t we just look at all barriers as opportunities?

When you’re a mentally tough person, this is exactly what you do. Every time you face a challenge, you don’t shy away from it. You go and attack it, looking at it as another time to prove how great you are. Tests aren’t challenges, they are opportunities to show your mastery of the content. Rejections aren’t barriers, but opportunities for you to go back and grow, then come back even harder. I had to choose to look at my 9 rejections as an opportunity for me to really learn why I wanted to be a doctor. Was it a challenging year? Sure. But looking at it as an opportunity made it more fun.

Next time something comes up, and you feel that little voice in the back of your head telling you that you’re scared, tell it to shut up! Literally, I talk to the little voice in my head all the time telling it to hush. Stand in your Super Pose and tell yourself, I can do this. I am ready. This challenge is nothing but another opportunity for me to strut my stuff. Before you know it, you’ll be taking everything head on without an ounce of fear about anything!

Commitment

This is for all you Flaky Felixes out there. We all know who I’m talking about. The ones that always say what they’re going to do, then never do it. Then when you ask them about it, they always make up some lame excuse. They just be talkin. Literally all talk, no action. Some of you are those people…

But, if you want to be mentally tough, you have to be committed to your goals. It’s not enough to say you want to do something, then never do it! I’m up writing this blog right now at 11:05 pm (time stamped) and I have to be up at 6 am tomorrow to workout before class. It was important for me to get a blog post up this week before my schoolwork makes me too busy. I want this blog to be successful and a live look at my life through medical school. That can’t happen if I blow it off because I’m too busy or tired.

You have to make things happen if you want them to. I don’t know anyone whose dreams landed in their laps without the back work. Commitment takes time and patience. It also takes being willing to buckle down and start grinding. No more excuses. You either do it, or you be quiet about it. If you’re having trouble with staying committed to your goals, keep reading below.

Increasing Commitment

• Make a vision board so you can visualize your goals every day
• Get an accountability partner to help keep you on track
• Implement a reward or cost system to keep you motivated
• List out all of your goals and the steps to make them happen
• Give yourself a timeline for each goal and make it public
• Learn from your mistakes, dust them off, and keep pushing.

Let’s get mentally tough!

You heard my stories about overcoming. I want to hear about yours! Leave them in the comment section or share them with me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Right now, this blog is a challenge for me because I wanted it to take off and be an InstaHit. That’s not realistic and I encounter a lot of barriers in this process. However, if I truly want to build a community, then I will make this happen. And you will too!

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