15 Things Mentally Strong People Do

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this presentation on 15 Things Mentally Strong People Do. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Mental strength does not mean being tough. It means having the ability to live authentically and cope with what life throws at you. So one of the first things that mentally strong people do is that they know where they're going. Some call it self actualization. But you get a sense of pride, contentment, and even security when you achieve your goals. When you remain stuck and floundering, it often negatively impacts your mood and your self esteem and it feels like nothing will ever change. So if you create a vision of your rich and meaningful life, if you know where you are going, then you've got a target, you have a destination. And it's just a matter of figuring out the route to get there. Act with purpose. You only have so much time and energy. Just like you wouldn't take every exit off the highway, you don't want to get sidetracked and waylaid by acting impulsively. Knowing what a rich and meaningful life looks like to you provides that destination. So you know where you're going and you're going to try to figure out how to get there. And you're going to make a conscious choice. If you're going to take a detour off the route, you're making a conscious choice that you want to use your time and energy to take that detour. So before acting or when you find yourself reacting, stop and beta test. And beta test stands for breathe. So take a breath. Hold and release. Get into your wise mind. Evaluate the situation. What are the facts of this situation? And not just what am I assuming, but what do I know? What are the facts? Then think about the best response to get you closer to your goals. Sometimes that may mean just letting it go. It's not even worth your time and energy. Sometimes that means addressing it head on. You know, it could mean a lot of things. And then once you've decided what the best response is, then act tentatively. So begin taking action to improve the next moment. And if it doesn't seem to be working, be willing to stop and reassess. Because sometimes we think that something's going to work and it turns out that we were wrong. And it's always important to act tentatively. See the big picture. Notice the gifts and challenges you have in your life. Recognize that it's not all just rainbows, but it's not all just clouds and rain either. We want to recognize the gifts and and the challenges we have in our life. We Want to reflect on which parts are and are not within our control? Why spend a bunch of energy trying to control something that's not within your control? You know, if you applied for a job and you didn't get it, why waste a bunch of energy trying to control that? If you broke up from a out of a relationship, is it worth your energy to try to control that other person and quote, make them want you back? And generally the answer is no because we generally can't control other people. But I digress. Commit to using your energy on addressing the things within your control. What can you do to improve the next moment to help you get closer to your goals in your rich and meaningful life? And commit to using your energy on the way you react to the things that are not in your control. If something's not in your control, you can sit there on your pity pot, you can throw a temper tantrum, or you can recognize that it sucks. However, there's nothing you can do about it. So what's a better use of your energy? People who are mentally strong take care of themselves. It's important to get enough sleep, eat healthfully, relatively, make sure you stay hydrated and address any pain issues that can contribute to inflammation, irritability, depression, sleep problems. In order to be able to deal with life on life's terms, you need to eliminate as many fold physical vulnerabilities as possible and have self compassion. Some days you're not going to feel well, some days you're not going to sleep well, some days you're just going to get up and be on the wrong side of the bed. Having self compassion is essential. If you hold yourself up to this level of perfection and you expect perfection every single day, it's going to to wear you down. It's a recipe for disaster. So be compassionate with yourself. Cut yourself some slack sometimes. Some days you're going to be like, well, I'm going to do the best I can today. And that's all you can really ask of yourself. People who are mentally strong cooperate instead of compete. They embrace an abundance mindset, they embrace their strengths. They know what they bring to the table. You know, I know for example, that I tend to be more of a meta concept person. I do great writing grants, but I'm not a detail person. So I know that about myself and I embrace my strengths. And my old boss was great at doing this. He could see people's strengths and he would partner them accordingly. And so he would partner me with people who were better at details and those people could review the grant and, you know, identify anything that I overlooked or whatever. He didn't hold it against me and I don't hold it against myself that I am not good at both the big concepts, the broad strokes, and the details. You know, I recognize where my strengths are and, and I find people in my life that have strengths where I have weaknesses. So looking around, identify resources or people that have your weaknesses as their strengths. If it is time management, if it is compassion, if it is being able to work a room because they are more extroverted than you are, whatever it is, you know, know who those people are and think about how can we synergize, how can we work together to create this amazing endpoint and how can you mitigate your weaknesses? So, for example, I said, I'm not detail oriented. I know this about myself. I've never been. However, there's some times that I have to be. And that requires a whole lot of energy and focus and time. So instead, you know, in order to mitigate my weaknesses, I need to remove distractions. I need to make sure that I'm getting enough sleep and taking care of myself and managing my time well so I can spend that extra time focusing. But ultimately, it's usually a lot more efficient if you do your strengths and you work with people, cooperate with others who have complementary strengths. So you can arrive at the. At the end a lot faster. Be better today than yesterday. Stop comparing yourself to other people. You don't know their story or what they're sacrificing to get there. You know, you may look at somebody who graduated the same year that you did, and they're a VP or a CEO of a company. Well, that's wonderful, but what do you have that they don't have? You know, maybe, you know, they have spent so much time focused on their career that they haven't traveled, they haven't started a family, they haven't done some of these other things that maybe you have. We all make choices in life, and it's also important to remember that there's plenty of room for all of us to succeed. So think about just for yourself, instead of comparing yourself to other people. Be better today than you were yesterday. Move one step closer to that rich and meaningful life. So what is one thing you can do today to make it better than yesterday? Use emotions as catalysts. Emotions are like smoke alarms. They're designed to tell you that something might need to be done. You know, the smoke alarm goes off, it definitely gets you up off the couch, but it doesn't Necessarily mean there's a fire. It means you need to get up and look and see if there's a fire. Emotions are designed to get us up off the couch, basically. And so they're good. We don't want to get rid of them. But dwelling on them, you know, sitting on the couch and going, wow, that smoke alarm is really loud. I hope there's not a fire. I wonder if there's a fire that's not going to. That's not a good strategy. Same thing with our distressful emotions. When we feel anxious, pondering that anxiety, dwelling on that distress only drains your energy. Use that feeling, you know, anger and anxiety, that's our fight or flight response kicking off. So our brain's given us a bunch of energy. Use that energy to evaluate the situation and then either change it if it needs to be changed, change your response to it. If you can't change it, consider just letting it go if it's not worth your energy, or you can choose to stay miserable. However, you know that's probably going to drain a lot of the energy you could be using to move towards your rich and meaningful life. Don't take responsibility for other people's feelings. And people always like, you know, shirk a little bit when I say this, and I'm not saying be nasty to people, that's not what I'm saying at all. Treat others as you want to be treated, and if you make a mistake, apologize. However, it's important to recognize that other people, just like you, are responsible for your own feelings. So respect other people's ability to use emotions as catalysts. Just like you use an emotions as catalysts, if they choose to hold on to that anger and dwell on it and manipulate it, then that is their choice to use their energy to do that. So again, you can potentially trigger anger or anxiety or hurt in somebody, and if you do, you may need to apologize. But then what they do with that feeling is their responsibility. So think about whose emotions do you regularly try to take responsibility for and how could you empower them or allow them to take responsibility for their own feelings? Take back your power. In order to be emotionally strong, we need to feel safe and empowered. So for goodness sake, take back your power. Forgiveness is one thing, and we're going to talk about it on the next slide in more detail. But when we are angry, resentful or guilty, we are taking energy from the future and from the present. We're stealing energy from there and we're giving it to the past. Does that make sense? Does it make sense to keep funneling energy back there. Safety and boundaries. When you don't feel safe, you don't feel empowered. So it's important to communicate assertively and create and maintain your boundaries. And that's a whole different video. But in order to feel empowered, it's important to feel like you're safe. Respect other people's boundaries, that's another thing. You know, it's not up to us to tell people what they should think or how they should feel. That's their responsibility. We want to respect their thoughts and respect their feelings. Even if we don't agree with them, we can respect them. What boundaries do you need to work on and how do you violate other people's boundaries and finally own it? And this is, I have repair, you know, hyphenated here because sometimes people have phrases or non verbals that are associated with somebody in their past and it just, it triggers them every time they see it. There were a couple of facial expressions that my mother used to have and a friend of mine. There are a couple of phrases that people say that are triggering and it's important sometimes to take that back. So identify your triggers and, and for the ones you can own them. And we're going to tell you how to do that in a second. Words, places, smells. So if somebody's. And I say this one a lot and it triggers some people. So I'll use it. If when somebody says it is what it is, or at the end of the day, if that triggers you, then start using it yourself. Make it your own, take it back. Use it in humorous situations sometimes use it excessively sometimes. So you get to the point that when you use it, it doesn't even. You don't even flinch. Places can be the same way. And I'm not saying that if, I'm not suggesting this for people with addictions that they try to repair and own places, you know, that's not, that's not a good use of energy and generally not a safe idea. But sometimes places like the restaurant that you used to go to with your last fiance, you know, you'll love that restaurant, but when you go there, it reminds you of that person. Well, get a bunch of your friends together and start going there again. So you take it back. You take back your power so that restaurant doesn't have power over you anymore. So what triggers do you have that you could work on owning so you get triggered less often? Now I told you, we talk more about forgiveness. Guilt, regret, resentment and anger are all different kind of forms of anger. And in order to cope with those, we need to forgive. When we feel guilty or regretful, we need to forgive ourself. When we feel angry or resentful, we need to forgive others. So some things that you can do, recall the event. Explore what will happen if you let go of the anger. Learn from it to create safety and positive self talk. You know, sometimes people do really crappy things and we need to learn from it so we don't let them do that to us again. You know, I'm not saying that everybody is an angel, but staying angry about it is just sucking your energy. That person probably doesn't even think twice about it anymore. Make amends if needed. So if you did screw up, okay, what can you do to fix it? Live in the and recognize that some things just suck or some things just can't be changed. And so forgive yourself for things that have happened. And live in the and recognizing that all people are fallible and you can have a rich and meaningful life. Separate behaviors from the person. Just because you make a mistake, you feel guilty about something, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It may mean you made a bad choice, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person. And the same thing for other people, just because they screw up doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad person. It means they chose a bad behavior. Adjust your expectations. Stop expecting people to be perfect. Stop expecting yourself to be perfect and then getting angry when that doesn't happen. Empathize without minimizing. Empathize with the person or with yourself. Recognizing that people do the best they can with the tools they have. At any point in time, people don't, you know, go out and go, well, how can I really screw this up? So empathizing with the other person or with yourself, you're not minimizing it. You're not saying it was the best choice, you're not saying it was right. But you're also recognizing that, you know, sometimes unfortunate things happen. Sometimes we make really bad choices and we can move forward from them. A lot of times it's easier to forgive smaller things first. So forgive yourself for the little minor things before you start trying to forgive yourself for that big doozy. Consider writing a letter and sharing your feelings. And this can be even to yourself, if you have to forgive yourself for something. But write a letter and share your feelings. If you're writing a letter, theoretically to express regret to someone else or, or to express to someone else how they made you feel and that you're forgiving them, it doesn't mean you've got to send it. A lot of times if we just get it out, get it on paper, it helps us purge some of that distress, Release past hurt, and then practice thought stopping. When that anger, when that guilt comes back up, remind yourself that you've already dealt with it. Remind yourself how you've dealt with it so you can move on. Embrace change. Things are always changing mentally. Strong people don't resist change because that, again, would take a lot of energy. Every experience has the ability to change you. Driving to work in the morning has the ability to change you. You know, I was driving to work this morning, it was really early, and I saw three different groundhogs, you know, just ambling around on the side of the road. And it made me happy. You know, I noticed that. And it will remind me in the future when I pass that particular area to look to see if they're out hunting tomorrow morning. So it changed me just a little bit. It altered the way I what I do on my drive to work. So recognize that lots of things may make little changes. Hopefully they're good changes. Practice radical acceptance, reminding yourself that it is what it is. And I know some of y' all hate that. I'm sorry, that's one of my key phrases. But things happen. And once they've happened, you can't change the past. You can't change something that's already happened. All you can do is figure out how to improve the next moment. So embrace change. I say, when change knocks, view it as an opportunity to create a win win. Think of change like a door to door salesman. I know we don't really have those anymore, but ask yourself, how can I make this situation work for me? If you get a job transfer, maybe it's not one you really wanted, but how can you make it work for you? You get into a new relationship, you're learning about this new person. Some people love it, some people hate it. Most people do not just fit together like a hand in a glove. From the beginning, there has to be some compromise. And that's where change comes in. You have to be willing to work and compromise with that person. If you get a medical diagnosis that alters what you are able to do, you know, that really sucks. However, embracing it and saying, all right, I can't do some of the things that I used to want to do, how can I make this work for me? You know, there are a lot of people, for example, who end up losing a leg or both legs, either in War or diabetes or whatever. And they can't play basketball anymore. But there are lots of wheelchair basketball teams out there, so people can still play basketball. They may just not be able to do it the way they used to anymore. You have a new baby. Oh, that brings change and lots of lost sleep. So how can I make this work for me where I'm trying to exist on two hours of sleep? Technology. You know, old fogies like me who still say things like, before the Internet, we used to. Sometimes it's hard to embrace change. And it's important sometimes to recognize, okay, we don't do things the same way. I miss libraries. I miss hard copy books. You know, those are the things from my childhood. I miss the smell of libraries. Now anything I want to find, I can find at my computer. I don't have to go to the library, but I miss libraries. So, you know, that's resisting change. But I've learned to embrace change and recognize that technology is useful. It saves me a lot of time. I can still go to the library. I just don't have to go to the library anymore. So think about it. What changes in your life can you start embracing instead of resisting? Learn from don't dwell on the past. Just like resisting change is like spinning your wheels in the mud, dwelling on the past means you're consistently stealing energy from your present and giving it to your past. Mistakes are a part of life. Learn from them so you don't repeat them. You know, I can look back over my life and there's lots of mistakes. Do I regret them? Well, yeah, they're unfortunate. However, I don't dwell on the regret. I've learned from them so I won't make them again. Make amends when necessary. So think about what regrets, resentments, and unpleasant memories do you continue to dwell on? How could you learn from or process those situations so they don't continue to steal energy from your present? Think about them as like little zombies reaching up from the past, reaching up from the grave, and stealing your energy. That's a really morbid visualization. Oh, well. Focus on what you can control. Virtually nothing is 100% within your control. Emotions get triggered, but how you cope within your control, your health changes, how you respond is within your control. People, other people act from their own reality. How you react to them is in your control. You can't change them, but you can change how you react to them. The whole world may be in upheaval. How you react is in your control. You can choose to feel hopeless and helpless and out of sorts. Or you can say, all right, what can I do to improve my next moment? You know, and if everybody improves their next moment, then it starts to be contagious. So think about if you improve your little corner of the world, your house and your neighbor, improves their little corner of the world, their house, the neighbor, and their neighbor and their neighbor. Then all of a sudden you've got all of these people and this orb of happiness is starting to grow. You can't. You personally probably can't change the whole world, but you can change your part of the world and have positive effects on those around you, and they can change their part of the world, etc. So think about what things in your life are good and what aspects of that can you control or nurture? What challenges are you facing, and what aspects of that can you control? Celebrate other people's successes. When we celebrate other people's successes, it improves our connection with them. They feel like they are important to us, and it increases our oxytocin, our bonding hormone. And when we increase our oxytocin, it also increases dopamine and serotonin and all kinds of other good stuff. So celebrate other people's successes. This also increases the chances that they're going to celebrate and support you. So you're increasing your resources, you're increasing your safety net, you're increasing your oxytocin. All these things are good. It also reinforces the notion of abundance. If you can celebrate other people's successes, it also means that somewhere in there, you recognize that you still have the opportunity for success yourself. So it's a both and I can celebrate your success and still believe that I can have a success myself. It's not an either or. Either you succeed or I succeed. No, we can both succeed. Celebrating other people's successes takes a whole lot less energy than being angry about it and resentful. So think about, who do you envy? How can you celebrate their success? How can you reframe their success as a both and so both of you can have a success. What are some of your successes that you've already had that contribute to your rich and meaningful life? Practice mindfulness. Being aware of your thoughts, wants, needs, and vulnerabilities in the present can help you prevent, or at least mitigate minimize distress. So at each meal and whenever you're feeling triggered, ask yourself, what am I feeling physically? You know, is my heart racing? Am I feeling anxiety? Am I feeling tired, Hungry? Hangry? What's going on? Why am I feeling this way? What do I need to improve the next moment? What are my feelings and thoughts in this situation? Are they based in the facts of the current context? What do I need to do to improve the next moment? What's going on around me? Is it helping me feel safe or stressing me out? So, you know, maybe you're feeling really anxious and part of it's because you're in the middle of this big restaurant and there's a lot of hubbub and hustle and bustle going on and lots of noise and it's just completely overwhelming. Okay, well, it sounds like that environment is stressing you out. So what do you need? Maybe to leave or to excuse yourself and get a break from all the input. And finally, what is my impact on others? How are others impacting me? What do I need from me? I know that sounds really weird, but we, you, us, whatever, it's important to have a relationship with yourself. So what do you need for you to do in order to improve the next moment? Do you need to give yourself compassion? Do you need to cut yourself some slack? Do you need to give yourself a good swift kick in the butt to get moving because you've been procrastinating all day? What is it that you need from you? What is it that you need from others in order to feel safe, happy, supported, loved, and finally, be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day. Patience is a virtue that most of us lack. In the microwave satellite digital age. Stop expecting to always get it right the first time. Aim for progress, not perfection. It's unlikely that you're going to start doing something this morning. Be an expert at it this evening. So, you know, be patient with yourself. Allow yourself the luxury, the ability, the room, whatever you want to say, to make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, to get better, to improve. Stop expecting instant results and set micro goals. Realizing the finale will take time. Many years ago, I guess, gosh, it's been about 10 years ago now, I decided my daughter wanted to learn how to crochet. I didn't know how to crochet, so I decided, hey, we'll learn together. Well, it was important for me to set micro goals because crocheting is harder than it looks. So I learned first, you know, the first day, how do I cast on and do the base chain? Then, you know, I progressed to learning how to do, you know, a single crochet. And then the next day, we worked on learning a double crochet and we learned a different stitch every single day. And at the end of a month, we were pretty proficient at a lot of different stitches and were able to put together a lot of simple things. I mean, we weren't doing sweaters by then, but we were able to do scarves and belts and handbags and some smaller things. So what things in your life are you impatient about right now? How could you set micro goals, those daily goals, to help yourself be more patient, to help yourself wait for the ultimate finale. I hope these have given you some ideas on things that you might try to do in order to help make yourself mentally stronger.