One of the major benefits of developing your mental toughness is that you learn to overcome negative thoughts and feelings more quickly and are able to adopt a more positive view of what is happening in your world.
Our brain responds to negative situations by conditioning us to be risk averse and adopt a negative frame around what we are thinking, feeling and experiencing.
Here are four ways we can overcome this ‘negativity bias’ to think positively right now using the mental toughness 4C’s framework.
Control – Focus on your purpose
Control is the ‘can do’ C in the 4C’s framework and your belief that you have a major influence on your environment and that what you do makes a real difference. This comes from having a clear purpose and plan. It obviously takes time to crystallise and is constantly evolving but once you have this clarity about where you are headed and why, you have a quick and easy positive reference point from which to escape any negative thoughts.
Commitment – Just do it
Commitment is the focus and stickability C in the 4C’s framework and the Nike slogan “Just do it” is entirely relevant here. It’s a powerful mantra in many ways including the instruction to get focused on making things happen, completing tasks and ticking off goals and targets.
This keeps our mind busy and active and therefore positive as there’s little time to dwell on negative thoughts or feel becalmed by inertia.
Challenge – Reframe your brain to positive
Challenge is the drive and adaptability C in the framework that enables you to see an opportunity in every setback, failure or difficult circumstance.
By teaching your brain to see the positive side of almost every situation you can quickly click out of feeling negative and sorry for yourself.
Confidence – Do what you are good at
The Confidence C measures the extent to which we have self-belief to complete on difficult tasks and the more we focus on doing what we have a high interest and proficiency in then the more positive we instantly become. Sometimes just a quick two minute blast on something small that we are expert on can switch our mindset to positive.