How Mental Strength Changes Your Body

Grit has started to fade at alarming rates.

Pic from http://games.crossfit.com/games/teams

When your grandparents were young, they practiced it. It was called having a hard life. Now with everything done with the push of a button, our brains are slowly turning to mush. There is no motivation and few people push themselves.

But there is one thing you should know.

When you take control of your brain, you can achieve the results you want in fitness.

So how does someone reclaim control of their brain, so they can boost performance and enhance mental toughness?

We’ll begin by addressing the clichés that we all know as they deal with mental strength.

• Pain is a weakness leaving the body.
• Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
• The only easy day was yesterday.
• Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.

Let’s be realistic. When was the last time a quote, let alone a YouTube video actually kept you motivated?

Sure, motivational stories, songs, videos and experience work for a short period of time. The problem is they only treat the problem for a few short minutes. But they’re a lot like a cup of coffee. They’ll help you for a bit to deal with the short term problem, but you need to address the real issue.

Shift Your Thoughts About Mental Strength

In this case, that is what you need to do, fix your way of thinking about mental strength.

If you really want to make changes to your motivations and mental toughness, then you need to push yourself. You need to make changes to your behavior. This isn’t possible when you are only addressing the symptoms. You also need to address the cause.

So what exactly is the cause?

This isn’t too difficult to determine. It is the untrained brain.

The truth is that you can build up your mental toughness, grit, will power and even the power of your brain by doing a few simple things daily. If you don’t do this, your grit will vanish overtime and you’ll lose some of your mental strength. You may already be removing some of that right now. But don’t fret, grit can be brought back and you can even improve on it from where it once was.

[color-box]How mentally strong are you?  Take this simple assessment and find out.  Go HERE to download that assessment[/color-box]

There is a secret you need to keep in mind for this entire article:

OWNING your brain = This gives you the ability to push yourself harder than ever before. So you stick to diets and have long term motivation!

Are you prepared to own your brain? Then we need to get to work!

Challenging the Brain

We need to get right down to the root of the issue. Most of us spend our days as mindless drones. We do the same thing day in and day out. We eat the same stuff that’s bad for us and we maintain the same patterns and habits.

No, I am not preaching at you. I am just like you when it comes to this and my mental strength! I hop into the car and drive to work. Before I know it, I am in the parking lot and have no idea how I got there. There are times when I can’t even remember that I took my daily multi vitamin just seconds after I took it. If this sounds like you, then it’s time for a change. We need to stop starving our brains and go above and beyond to challenge them.

In order to do this, we need to create a neural pathway and change the behavior and our environment. We can do this through a process known as neuroplasticity.

Let’s note that neuroplasticity isn’t snake oil, nor is it the next big thing. It also isn’t just a placebo effect. This is how your brain actually works. There are countless studies that support this and guess what, your brain isn’t a static organ. Your brain’s circuitry is changing all the times and this impact functions, experiences and even learning.

We’ll take a moment to look at how you can make changes in your daily routine to help you become serious about the results you want to have.

Getting Started…Taking Control of Your Brain and Your Mental Strength

While these might seem like simple changes, actually try them. When I first tried them I found that I was more aware then before. But I also felt fatigued faster.

Quick and Easy Brain Challenges:

Brush Your Teeth – Simple to do since you do it three times a day. Each time you do, brush your teeth with the other hand. As you do this, you’ll find you are more alert and focused even on this simple task. This allows you to open up and prepare to do more.

Write – Do something as simple as memorizing a small section of a song, quote, nothing major. Then each morning, take the time to write out what you’ve remembered. This will become easier each time you do it. What you’ll find is it also helps your brainpower to grow!

Driving – This is as simple as taking a different way to work. The change will have you focus more on what you’re doing, rather than taking the same route to work each day of the week.

Changing Routine – Change things up from your normal routine. This is in addition to the change in brushing your teeth. Shower at different times, eat a different meal, and switch your coffee cup to a different hand. Rotate the order each day and see how your brain can experience a boost in power as it is doing all of this. You just might be surprised at how much of an impact all of this can have in your life.

Increasing Your Brain Power

Once you have done some of these simple things, it is time to step things up. This will help you to take your efforts to the next level. Like with juggling.

Juggling is a complex motor skill that is very demanding. You need to have precise bimanual arm movements, while grasping and keeping track of an item.

There are now some studies that suggest doing this can help to improve the grey matter of your brain. This is the area of the brain responsible for both muscle control and sensory perception. That means you can do more and have greater success when you are able to boost your grey matter.

Some suggest it will also change the brain’s white matter. This is the area that impacts your learning and functions of your body.

What this means if you have the ability to change your brain just by learning to juggle. Of course, you don’t have to just focus on juggling. It just needs to be something simple you practice that utilize multiple sections of the brain and forces you to improve how your brain functions.

But what if you could do more? What if you could own your brain and truly succeed.

We can do that too!

Applying Brain Power to Mental Strength

When you write for a few weeks with the other hand, change how you drive to work, and juggle you will gain some new insight into things. This will help you to better adapt. Before you know it, you’ll be making changes in your life and seeing what you can accomplish.

One of the biggest ways you can take this to the next level, is working out. When you work out, you actually improve your brain. The reason is that when you exercise, your brain derives a neurotrophic factor that actively involves all your muscles as you exercise. This can help to prevent and to even reverse the effects of brain decay in the body.

You just need to keep in mind that working out, is like the rest of your life. If you simply go through the motions, your brain won’t be challenged. That will mean the benefits remain minimal.

You need to really get out there and get results.

That means you need to push yourself!

But how can you do that?

You can do this with loading up a heavy bar and placing on your back. Or sprinting at your peak performance rate. These are great ways to jumpstart the central nervous system, while having the whole body become involved. For some, going there seems to be the hardest part of working out.

The following tips can help you to push yourself so you go forward, despite the pain.

Visualize – When you begin to visualize things, it will help your brain a great deal. You don’t look at the pain, but the event itself. You walk yourself through each step. Doing this will build neural pathways, like we touched on earlier. When your brain feels like it has already done it, you’ll find that it better copes with things in the long run.

Remember the big picture – You must have a greater reason for working things out! Do you do it for health? How about for your family? No matter the reasons why, you need to work on it for when the going gets tough.

10-second Goals – When your workout is hard, do what you can to focus on the next 10 seconds. These 10 seconds will help to take you into the next and so on. When you stop worrying about reps and the other seconds, you won’t think about how many more you have to do and this can help you to keep going for a longer period of time.

With these tips, you will be able to promote healthy brain activity. Only if you continue to follow through with it and take action. When you push yourself to the limit, you’ll find that the payoff it ultimately worth it. Remember, mental toughness doesn’t come easy, but it can be trained over time.

There it is! A look at mental strength and how you can take back control of your body! What do you think about this? Do you think you can begin to train your body and get results?

A great resource to help with the creating mental strength is the book “Develop the Mental Strength of a Warrior.”

If you’d really like to dive deep into developing mental strength, request your Introductory Consultation today.