Mental Toughness The One Thing That Will Change Everything
i left home at 14
and i spent three years in homeless
hostels in london
and sofa surfing and trying to keep my
heroin addict boyfriend from
overdosing yet again but against
all of the odds i became the first woman
in the world
to drive a world rally car and the first
woman to drive
for ford motor company i started out as
a loser
and i became a winner so
why do some people win and some people
lose why
do some people achieve their goals and
others never get there
what do you think what’s the difference
between winners
and losers is it skill talent or
intelligence
that sets the winners apart rarely
alan sugar had one gcse einstein was
told
he wouldn’t amount to much bill gates
dropped out of harvard
in his junior year elton john walt
disney
and richard branson they all dropped out
of school to pursue their passions
and i was a runaway homeless teenager
with a drug addict boyfriend i dreamt of
becoming a rally champion since the age
of six
when i saw rally cars on tv for the
first time and
the colorful cars were whizzing through
the forest throwing up mud and
gravel and i saw the co-driver shouting
instructions
pace notes to the driver who was sliding
the car sideways and
just making the car dance through the
corners
i thought it was the most exciting thing
i had ever
seen and i knew from that moment that
when i grew up
i wanted to be a rally champion when you
were a kid
what did you want to be a ballet dancer
train driver
astronaut and did you do that or did
life get in the way
i had no chance of my dream becoming a
reality
i’d grown up in a dysfunctional house
with an alcoholic manic depressive
mother
who spent most of my childhood in a
lunatic asylum
and a father i was afraid of to survive
and function
i disengaged emotionally from the world
and i believed i was useless worthless
and completely unlovable
these are not useful or helpful thoughts
if you want to be a confident successful
rally driver
i started out as a loser and i became a
winner
so what happened how did i do that
and how can you do that too well
i may have the answer thirty percent
of any achievement you make will be down
to your skill
talent and intelligence only
thirty percent but seventy percent of
your achievement will be down to your
mental toughness your confidence
commitment
focus grit resilience determination
just think about it think about anyone
you admire
in business sport politics media any
field at all
they have all achieved their success
because of their determination their
focus
and their commitment it is your mental
toughness that will set you apart from
the rest
your mental toughness is your game
changer
so what is mental toughness well it’s
not
a macho aggressive notion some of the
quietest people
are really mentally tough mental
toughness
is the ability to manage the stress the
pressure the challenge
and the chaos of life and the better we
handle stress and pressure
the more likely we are to enjoy life the
mentally
tough thrive because they can breeze
through the tough times and remain
optimistic
for the mentally tough a challenge or a
setback can be
water off a duck back on the other end
of the spectrum
are those people who don’t cope so well
with
change and stress and are much more
likely to crack
under pressure these mentally sensitive
people however
are creative and pathetic they tend to
wear their hearts on their sleeve and
they’re brilliant listeners
they’re really nice to be around so the
world
needs a diverse mix of mentally tough
and mentally sensitive people
so how did i become mentally tough
enough to overcome the obstacles
and the setbacks that i faced well i
discovered
that there were four key aspects to
becoming mentally tough
which i wanted to share with you and
practice
repeatedly these will help you to
increase
your mental toughness the first aspect
is
control this is the extent to which you
feel you are in control of your life
you might feel like you’re in the
driving seat of your life
in control of your destiny you choose
the direction
the pace the style the destination
but you might feel more of a passenger
through life at the mercy of where life
takes you
almost a victim of what the world throws
at you
some people believe they can have
considerable influence over their
environment they can
make a difference and they can change
things
and this is the growth mindset that we
hear about believing that
anything is possible always open to
possibilities
and that we can steer destiny and
results the way we want them to go
but others feel that outcomes are out of
their personal control
and they’re unable to influence events
or others
so there’s a sense of having control of
your life but there’s also
emotional control being able to manage
your own emotions
as well as the emotions of others we all
get stressed
we all get anxious it’s just that some
of us deal with it better than others
you know that when you walk into a room
full of really stressed out people it
can be contagious and you can become
super stressed as well a mentally tough
person wouldn’t be affected by everyone
else’s emotions
if you can regain a sense of control of
your life and your emotions
you will feel more excited and more
engaged and energized by what life
throws at you and more able to cope
the more changes we face the less
control we may feel so really
it’s less about what happens to you but
more about what happens
within you what could you do today to
regain a stronger sense of control over
your life
start to visualize how things could be
if everything went your way
create a picture in your mind of what
you’re after forget the things you can’t
control
and focus on the things that you can
the second aspect of mental toughness is
commitment
this is our ability to set a task and
complete a task
how likely are you to persist with a
goal a target
or a work task you know some people love
to set goals and to reach them they stay
focused they don’t get distracted
but some people set goals and do nothing
about them
some people avoid goals like the plague
they are demotivated by them because
there’s a danger that if they don’t
succeed they might be exposed as a fraud
or a loser
people differ in the degree to which
they remain focused on their goals and
targets
some people are easily distracted or
bored or they divert their attention
away from completing goals whereas
others will persist
until the goal is reached have you ever
committed
to do something and you stick with it
for a bit but
you end up wandering back to your old
ways that’s because your commitment
wasn’t complete it wasn’t 100
you are either committed or you are not
a commitment is a hundred percent or
zero
99 commitment means you enter a danger
zone a tug of war where you
give yourself excuses and get outs and
you talk yourself
out of your commitment so what could you
commit to today 100
what if i could give you a task that
would take just five minutes a day
and will help you to start developing
your resilience
immediately are you up for it
well i want you to commit 100
to taking an ice cold shower every day
for the next seven days i know it sounds
awful but
you know lots of people do this every
day of the year
because they really feel the benefits it
activates the body’s natural healing
powers it makes you more alert it aids
digestion
helps with weight loss and improve sleep
anything in fact that you can do to
practice
tolerating discomfort will build
resilience commitment and determination
please give it a go and stick with it
because you will
thank me the third
aspect of mental toughness is challenge
people really differ in how they
approach a challenge or a setback some
people
when faced with a challenge will
immediately see the threat in it the
problems and the difficulties
but a mentally tough person will
consider every challenge
or problem that they face as an
opportunity
they’ll get excited at the prospect of
turning a challenge into something
exciting
a chance to try something new discover
something new
and they’ll thrive on the prospect of
flipping it around
and winning or just coming out on top
things won’t always go your way but
there is always
something to be learnt from whatever
happens
taking learning from every experience is
so
important sport of course is notorious
for teaching us
all about failure and disappointment and
in rallying they say
if you’re not crashing you’re not trying
hard enough
and what they mean is that you have to
push yourself
and the car to find your limit to
uncover your
as yet unknown ability and needless to
say i have had my fair share of crashes
in pursuit of finding my limit
lastly there is confidence most of us
want more confidence but of course
confidence is
intangible you can’t see it you can’t
hold it you can’t photograph it
but you can sense it and you can feel it
people will make a judgment about your
confidence in half a second
and that will influence how they deal
with you if they sense
nervousness in you they may find it hard
to trust you
people with high levels of confidence
have a strong sense of
self belief be warned though you can be
too mentally tough
you can have such high levels of
self-control that you’re hard to read
and
no one knows what you’re thinking or
feeling you might be so
focused that you don’t listen to anyone
else
and you maybe miss out on some amazing
ideas
with so much uncertainty lots of people
are losing confidence right now
we lack self-confidence and we can be
intimidated
by confident people but your skill and
your experience will almost
certainly be greater than you give
yourself credit for
you can have confidence in your ability
i have self-belief i believe i can
but it’s also important to develop
interpersonal confidence being
around other people i can influence
others
ask questions argue my corner speak up
and speak out
looking back i’d been developing my
mental toughness since i was a small
child without even realizing it
i grew up holding beliefs that i was
worthless useless unlovable and
i disconnected from the world
emotionally i hit rock bottom in london
and after years in homeless hostels i
just wanted to check out of life
but rock bottom can be a great place
to bounce back from my childhood dream
of becoming a rally champion would have
stayed just that
if i hadn’t lied and borrowed some money
to spend half a day at a rally school
that day changed my life 12 years later
i became the first woman in the world to
drive a world rally car and the first
and the only woman
to drive for ford i developed my
confidence commitment resilience
and sense of control of my life i
developed my mental toughness
and you can do that too we might be
stuck with the genes that we’re born
with
but we can all develop our mental
toughness you can choose to change
or choose to stay as you are a few years
ago i worked with a professional and an
amateur golfer
and i was helping them with their mental
approach to their game and their skill
was immense
breathtaking i couldn’t believe how they
could both hit a ball
such huge distances with ridiculous
accuracy
i personally couldn’t see any difference
in their ability
but it did strike me the amateur was
never going to make it as a professional
because under the stress and the
pressure
of a competition he cracked and felt a
bit
but the professional took the pressure
in his stride it was
water offered ducks back to him their
success
lie in their attitude approach and
mindset
just like yours does your mental
toughness will play a more important
role than
anything else in your success whether
it’s as a sporting hero
a partner a leader or a parent anything
so why do some people win and some
people lose
the winners have true self-belief
confidence commitment courage and they
feel in control of their lives they
don’t give up they are relentless
in the pursuit of their dream or their
passion their purpose
drives them just like it did for me
they see the challenge as an opportunity
and they embrace change as a chance to
learn and grow they learn something
valuable from
everything that happens to them they are
mentally
tough what could you achieve if you were
able to better manage the stress and the
pressure of life
as a confident committed focused and
determined person
imagine what would happen if you
developed
your mental toughness
you