Mental Toughness Traits

While it’s obvious we need to exhibit a certain amount of self-control while choosing what we put in our bodies, that is not the whole story.

If we educate our bodies and learn about nutrition, longevity and how our individual bodies function, we could be eating a lot healthier.

There is a lot of stuff available for us to do that makes us feel better instantly. Watching TV, going to the beach, drinking alcohol, smoking, and almost every other activity that seems pleasurable to us, giving us temporary pleasure in a jiffy. When we keep doing that, the long term effects are bad, and we feel older, weaker, sicker, while not having any achievement in our lives.

This is a natural process of a slow movement towards disorder, is also the second law of thermodynamics, called Entropy.

Recently, six traits were identified that are consistently linked to workplace success: Conscientiousness, adjustment, ambiguity acceptance, curiosity, courage, and competitiveness.

Each trait may have drawbacks at extremes. The relative importance of each trait will be determined by the job you are doing. Knowing the traits can also aid in personal development so that you can identify your own strengths and weaknesses and the ways you may account for them.

Conscientious people are committed to plans and ensure they carry them out accurately. They consider the wisdom of their decisions for the long-term.

They are essential for strategic planning but can be too rigid.

While it can be quite scary, stepping out in the unknown is necessary every now and then.

In order to push your limits, you should consider taking up new challenges that will not only make you experience fear, but most probably also later success into dealing with new and stressful situations. Furthermore, your brain will get trained to form new connections, which can only prove beneficial in the long run.

Recent research has shown that uncertainty scares people even more than knowing that things are going to actually end up badly.

Therefore, in order to be mentally prepared to beat uncertainty, what better way than just imagining the worst case scenario? If it turns out badly, you will at least not be taken by surprise and, if it turns out well, you will be happy.

If we keep out a million distractions surrounding us and think about our goal day and night, we will succeed in our goal, no matter what. The key here is continued focus, and also making the right thing as our goal.

If the aim is only money, it may not help us much, but if we keep our aim towards learning or striving to become better at something, we achieve success in monetary terms as a bonus.

Emotional Intelligence, the ability to understand yourself and the people that you live and work with, is an excellent trait to balance and correct yourself.

Everything and everyone is connected to one another forming a huge ecosystem. Our endeavours, whether to get a job, to lose weight or to find a life partner is always related to others.

Our personalities have two distinct triads: The Light Triad and The Dark Triad. The dark ones sometimes overlap with the light ones to form a complete personality.

The Dark Triad, which is associated with the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Anger, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride and Envy) seems to be very fascinating, with many researchers drawn towards it just like viewers are drawn to serial-killer shows and murder mysteries.

There are certain personality traits in literature that fall under the Dark Triad:

• Machiavellianism: A tendency to strategically exploit or deceive other people.
• Subclinical Narcissism: It means focusing towards the self, giving oneself entitlement and importance.
• Subclinical Psychopathy: A tendency to be insensitive and cruel with regards to others.

It describes people who enjoy the arts and new experiences. Possible facets:

• Fantasy: they have a vivid imagination
• Aesthetics: they believe in the importance of art
• Feelings: They experience emotions intensely
• Actions: They prefer variety to routine
• Ideas: they like complex problems
• Values: they tend to vote for liberals.

People that score high on this are organized, methodical and tend to keep going and going. Possible facets:

• Competence: they complete tasks successfully
• Order: they like order
• Dutifulness: the follow the rules
• Achievement-striving: they work hard
• Self-discipline: they get chores done right away
• Deliberation: they avoid mistakes.

Change scares us, almost always: not knowing how a new chapter of our life will end up feeling like can really lead to feelings of distress. However, change brings out, most often, evolution. Embracing change can prove to be the best thing you have ever done, as growth is seldom possible without change.

Whenever you face difficult times, be patient. Whenever you feel like following your passion, do it without regrets. Whenever you want something, work hard to get it. Whenever a change is inevitable, embrace. Learn to adjust your attitude according to what you go through in the different moments and do not forget to cherish the present moment.

Focusing on our strengths, understanding them and finding true purpose is a two-step exercise:

1. Ask yourself what you are good at.
2. Ask yourself if you enjoy that activity.

Write down what insights come to you in a journal. With time, introspection and humility you will find your true purpose by this self-assessment.

Our comfort zone stands in the way of our growth and learning. The only way to conquer fear is to push yourself into uncomfortable situations.

Even small tasks that make you uncomfortable gets the momentum going towards bigger challenges.

Our fear of disappointing others could just be something created because of our childhood, past relationships or some traumatic experience in our lives.

How we react tells us about who we are.