If you want to climb up the ladder without losing your mind, the only way to do it is through developing mental fortitude.
Every job carries a certain amount of stress with it. Either you’re often on a strict deadline, or you have demanding projects to finish. Sometimes just dealing with other people in the workplace can be stressful, so you need to be resilient to succeed.
What Is Mental Fortitude?
Mental toughness or fortitude is the ability to stay calm under pressure, to find solutions to the problems you’re facing instead of panicking and breaking at the thought of them. It may seem as if it is a talent that some people are born with, but it’s a skill that can be learned.
By developing your mental fortitude, you’ll find your path to success more efficiently, and you’ll advance in your career faster.
How to Develop Your Mental Fortitude to Advance Your Career
Developing mental toughness to advance in your career isn’t just a matter of changing a few habits, and adapting your daily routine. It’s changing your entire outlook on life and your perception of yourself. It’s changing your lifestyle. There are a few things you can do to develop your mental fortitude and reach success:
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
One thing that most business leaders have in common is consistency. They have a clear goal in mind, and everything that they’re doing is to help them reach their goal, this makes them consistent and dedicated.
So, whatever it is that you’re doing, have a goal, and keep working towards it. Whether you’re going through a very profitable period or you’re struggling with certain losses, make sure that your every decision leads to your ultimate goal.
If you have a very ambitious goal, divide it into milestones and focus on those. Want to be the CEO but are currently a desk worker? Aim first for a managerial position and focus on developing leadership skills. In short, please keep your eyes on the prize, but take it one step at a time.
Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
Failure is a normal part of life and work. About 20% of small businesses fail within their first year, does this mean that no one should have an entrepreneurial spirit and attempt to start their own business? Of course not.
It merely means that you should accept failure as a learning experience, then try harder. Face the problem and overcome it.
If you manage to get back up on your feet after you fail, you’ll know that you’ve developed enviable mental fortitude.
Be Realistic About Your Abilities
Sometimes when you fail, it’s not because of some outside influence, horrible partners, volatile market, or whatnot. Sometimes it’s because of you, and that’s fine. As long as you can notice your shortcomings and learn from your mistakes, you’ll be able to find success. So, every so often, do a self-evaluation. Notice your flaws and see how you can improve yourself.
It’s also important not to sell yourself short. Many women struggle with feeling inferior to their coworkers and friends, and this is detrimental to your career and your mental wellbeing.
A person with real mental fortitude will be able to detect both their flaws and their strengths, then use them to succeed.
Learn to Prioritize
You’ll find yourself overwhelmed at times, with countless essential tasks to finish, millions of important projects, and thousands of demanding clients. You’d think that the best business leader would successfully juggle all of them at once, but this is not true.
The best leader will know how to prioritize. They’ll know it’s impossible to do it all at once, so they’ll determine what needs to be done immediately and what can wait.
Prioritizing your personal life is at times the best thing you can do for your professional life. You need to take care of both your mental and physical health if you want to be successful in your career and boost your productivity.
With mental fortitude, you’ll be able to make critical decisions like these with ease.
Keep It Cool
One of the clearest signs of a person with a strongly developed mental fortitude is calmness. It’s easy letting your emotions get the better of you, and at times it’s almost impossible to keep your composure, but if you hope to establish yourself as a professional leader, you need to work on this.
Keeping it together in stressful situations is, for most people, the hardest skill to master. On a bad day, when the clients are too demanding, the coworkers too incompetent, and the bosses too disinterested — the easiest thing to do is get angry and panicked.
Most workplaces today are dynamic and hectic, and without mental toughness, you’ll crumble under pressure. You need to learn to keep a cool head, take control of your emotions, and make the most out of a bad situation.
When you learn to manage your emotions effectively, whether that’s anger, rage, fear, or anything in between, you’ll find yourself more productive and efficient.
However, you need to keep in mind that it takes a lot of time and a lot of trial and error to master this skill. Be persistent, learn to recognize the moments when you start losing control and find the best ways to prevent this from happening.
Some believe that mindfulness meditation can help them achieve better emotional control — others just like to take a 5-minute break. Others still can just take a deep breath and move on. You need to find out which strategy works best for you.
The Bottom Line
Mental fortitude can pave your path to success, but you need to be determined and willing to change yourself. It’s not about “manning up,” it’s about developing the strength to deal with problems sensibly and efficiently.