Today, reviewing some college work with my daughter, she told me they had been discussing mantras and had been tasked to come up with one.
“Okay,” I said, “so what’s yours?” Her reply was “Just do it!”
Great I thought, so there’s some drive and commitment! It was interesting to also hear some of the others crafted by her fellow students.
That started me thinking about others I had used over time. One that popped into my mind, which I hadn’t recalled for a while, was used by my grandad: “You just have to keep going”.
Looking back, he seems to have lived his life by this. For 30 years he was a mining engineer; for 25 years he was a groundsman and club steward; then, after a few years in retirement and at the age of 82, he went back to work in my dad’s newsagents. He retired for good when we sold the business seven years later.
My grandad lived to the great age of 94. Interestingly, his level of fitness was incredible throughout his life, although he didn’t train like people do today. He just looked after himself and ate sensibly and rarely drank or smoked. He could still walk as quickly as me when I was in my late teens and he was over 90!
In this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world we find ourselves in today, many of us would do well to adopt his attitude to life. We really do “just have to keep going”, weather the storm and plan to come out the other side.
Mental toughness
I think that the character trait that drove him on was his positive attitude to life; these days, we would describe him as being mentally tough.
Sometimes we need to be tough and show decision-making and grit, but sometimes we need to be sensitive and show understanding.
Whether we tend to be mentally tough or mentally sensitive, we can gain insight into our thinking by using the mental toughness model. Understanding ourselves better will help us be the best we can be, when we need to be.
Knowing my grandad and now understanding the mental toughness model, I think he could have done with working a bit on his sensitive side!
If you would like to learn more about mental toughness or about improving your self-awareness to achieve personal or professional success, please get in touch.
