Mental Strength: When It’s Important?

Especially in competitive sports, mental strength plays a decisive role. Staying focused in tense situations and performing at your best can be trained — and also applied at work. Here’s how.

Mental Strength: When It’s Important

The pressure and expectations are huge. After months of training for a sporting competition, they now want to deliver their best performances. The body is in top shape and ready for action, but does the mind also keep up? Or do the doubts come: What if I fail? What if I make the same mistake that cost me victory in a previous competition?

Competitive athletes know the problem: You can’t win a competition without mental strength. To function smoothly in a highly tense situation and to be able to recall everything learned requires a special skill: Not to let yourself be upset. Block out negative thoughts. To stay in the moment without thinking about the past and the future.

The good news is that anyone can learn mental strength — it can be trained. And this is not only relevant for competitive athletes. At work, too, challenges and career goals can be better achieved with mental strength.

What distinguishes mentally strong people?

What it means to be mentally strong is formulated by researchers in a systematic review According to various studies on “Mental Toughness”, mental strength enables people to deal effectively with challenges and to survive under pressure. Due to the high level of confidence in one’s own abilities, mentally strong individuals are empowered to proactively look for challenges from which they can grow.

The 4C model for mental strength distinguishes four components:

1. Control: Mentally strong people consider things to be controllable.
2. Commitment: Mentally strong people stick to their goals despite difficulties that arise.
3. Challenge: Mentally strong people are looking for challenges. They see the challenge as an opportunity to grow from them.
4. Self-efficacy (confidence): Mentally strong people believe in their abilities.

Mental Strength: What Professionals Can Learn

Whether it’s job interviews, salary negotiations or deadlines — even in the professional world, it must be possible to call up services under pressure or stress. Professionals can learn a lot from top athletes.

For example, focusing on strengths, not weaknesses. To focus on the moment, to block out negative thoughts, and to be complete with yourself. Fear of mistakes or possible consequences is just as out of place as putting yourself under pressure. Imagining a possible consequence, for example, leads to nervousness.

Better: Imagine how you feel when you have mastered the corresponding situation. Like athletes, professionals can also prepare for the “competition” by visualizing the situation, going through it in their minds, identifying possible difficult spots, and preparing for them with arguments. Talking to yourself can be very helpful in this regard. For some, it also helps to stand in front of the mirror and say out loud: I can do it!

Mentally strong, resilient, or robust — what are the differences?

There are a few more terms that are similar to that of mental strength:

• Resilience: The term can be translated as psychological resilience and adaptability. Whoever has the assets to Stress and to survive stressful situations well and, ideally, even to emerge stronger from them is referred to as resilient in psychology.
• Hardiness: The term can be translated as “robustness”. It refers to the personality trait of dealing with stress in such a way that one remains healthy, even under great stress. Unfortunate circumstances become experiences from which one learns.

Both resilience and hardiness (robustness) each pick up on aspects that make up mental strength. However, there are also differences. The term hardiness, for example, describes resistance to stress, but not confidence in one’s own abilities. However, this is a crucial point for mental strength.

Resilience and mental strength are similar in that both qualities enable us to adapt to adversity. Resilients are those who are able to adapt positively to burdens and stress that affect them from the outside. However, being mentally strong also means that challenges are sought out proactively.

How can mental strength be trained?

The sports psychologist ( Hans Eberspächer), who has prepared numerous athletes, teams, and coaches as well as coaches for the Olympic Games and World Championships, describes in his standard work “Mental Training” (Stiebner Verlag) how competitive athletes can train mental strength in a targeted manner. However, his tips can also be applied by people who want to advance their professional careers or prove themselves in a leadership position.

According to Eberspaecher, it is crucial for athletes to train certain cognitive skills on a regular basis. Only then can the training of motor skills (for example, the execution of certain movement sequences) be successful.

Examples of mental training that can be used to improve cognitive abilities include:

• Self-talk regulation: By controlling soliloquies, power reserves can be called upon. If an athlete fluctuates between confidence and doubt in competition, he or she can regulate self-talk in such a way that there remains confidence to achieve success.
• This works, for example, through self-motivation techniques: You can motivate yourself with self-instructions (“Don’t give up!”), visualize your own abilities (“I’m better prepared than the opponent”) or praise yourself.
• Self-efficacy expectation: Whether an athlete has positive or negative expectations regarding the effectiveness of his or her own actions has an influence on his or her actions. For example, how much and for how long he or she efforts.
• The expectation of self-efficacy can be strengthened, for example, with so-called prognosis training: After the requirements and goal of a training session have been determined, the athlete makes a prognosis about the result. The result is then determined, and analyzed and the prognosis is checked. Through self-experience, a realistic expectation of self-efficacy is built.
• Activation Regulation: “Activation” refers to a person’s level of physical and psychological arousal. In order to perform successfully, a certain, individual level of activation is crucial. If, for example, an athlete is too excited, this can disrupt motor processes. If, on the other hand, he or she is too calm and inattentive, this can also lead to disturbances. The objectives of activation regulation are therefore either relaxation or mobilization.

The Relaxation various measures are helpful:

• Moving slowly or not at all and relieving muscle tension by focusing on exhalation.
• Seek out a quiet, low-stimulus environment or create your own (by listening to quiet music).
• Mentally adjust the perception to rest and relaxation. Using the method of self-talk regulation to create a comfortable state of mind.
• Also, learning relaxation techniques such as the Autogenic training and the Progressive Muscle Relaxation has proven its worth.

The following measures can contribute to mobilization:

• Move quickly and vigorously. This works, for example, with Skip rope or sprinting. Concentrate on the inhalation.
• To seek out or create a stimulating, stimulating environment (by listening to stimulating music).
• Mentally adjust your perception to the challenge. Through the method of self-talk regulation, pressure, and power can be generated.

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