Are you mentally strong, or do you have doubts that you can achieve more? Are you able to break through barriers, or does your mind let you down? In this post, you’ll learn how to break through mental barriers, how to improve your mentality, and how using these new superpowers of mental strength will help you achieve anything you want.
Wouldn’t life be easy if you could achieve anything you set your mind to? How would it feel if you could attain any position or receive any reward you set out to receive?
The questions above are pretty interesting, in that I’m guessing you would love to achieve many things in life.
For me, I’d love to go full time as an entrepreneur. I’d love to workout every day and attain a physique like a model. I’d love to become better at rock climbing, golf, and other hobbies I have. It would be awesome to travel the world, learn new languages, and learn more about other cultures.
However, as I start to dream, plan and get on the path to crushing my goals, my pesky inner voice starts to intervene.
“Are you sure you can make it as an entrepreneur?”
“You don’t have good enough genetics to become super fit.”
“You aren’t talented enough to become better at your hobbies.”
“Do you know how much time it takes to learn a new language? What are you thinking?”
Maybe you’ve had the same experience with your inner voice.
During these times, and times when you are on your journey to getting what you want, having a strong mental game is incredibly important for staying on track and not getting stressed.
Being able to take these negative thoughts, and turn them into positive, motivating thoughts is critical and a skill you can develop.
Saying “Yes, it’s hard to achieve X, but I can do it by surrounding myself with the right people” or “Talent can be beaten by hard work and I’m going to work as hard as I can to reach my goals” can make all the difference when we get discouraged.
Getting through tough times and setbacks requires grit and determination, and in this post, you’ll learn how to better control your emotions, understand your powerful brain, and develop a strong mental game for success.
Your mind is a powerful thing. When you fill it with positive thoughts, your life will start to change.
Your Mental Ability is Highly Critical for Success in Life
In sports, often times, the difference between the winner and a loser will be the winner’s ability to block out distractions, focus on the task at hand, and stay positive through adversity.
Cultivating a strong mental game comes from many hours of practice and preparation, and helps us build confidence in ourselves.
What many people don’t realize is that outside of sports, having a strong mental game is equally as important.
In the workplace, being able to get through stressful periods successfully can help us overcome any obstacle and lead to promotions, more responsibility and a higher salary.
At home, if you are constantly getting upset and not being able to resolve issues, you’ll become frustrated and angry.
But, being able to bounce back, communicate if someone has hurt you, and move on to spending quality time with your partner, everything can be back to normal and you’ll be happier.
As we have discussed briefly here, having a strong mental game is important, but what are some of the differences between being mentally tough and mentally weak? How can we become better mentally?
Let’s dive into those questions now.
The Differences Between Being Mentally Tough and Mentally Weak
There are a few differences between being mentally tough and being mentally weak.
In particular, I want to focus on a few situations where the difference between being mentally tough and mentally weak are apparent.
Situation one is being happy vs. sad. In this case, I’m not talking about clinical depression – I’m talking about in a game, business or around the house. Mentally tough are able to move on quicker from a setback and get back to being positive about the situation at hand. Mentally weak people dwell on the current situation and let it affect their energy and day.
For example, if the boss comes to you with negative feedback on a mistake you made, a mentally tough person will take the feedback and work on doing better next time. They don’t waste energy on things they can’t control (the past), and welcome the challenge of doing better next time.
A mentally weak person might blame themselves, blame someone else, be afraid to take the next assignment, and become discouraged at work.
Another example is with relationships. I’ve hard to learn this one the hard way many times, but sometimes two people are not meant for each other.
There have been relationships in my past where I spent weeks and months getting over an ex, but as I became more mature, I’ve learned that sometimes people aren’t truly perfect for each other, and everything happens for a reason.
As I’ve become more mature and mentally strong, I’ve been able to move on and not waste time on feeling sorry for myself – I realize that even though it didn’t work out this time, there is someone else out there who I can make happy and can make me happy.
Now, let’s get into the 7 steps for you to work on to break through mental barriers and improve yourself.
7 Steps to Breaking Through Mental Barriers and Improving Yourself Mentally
What are the steps and things you can do to becoming better mentally? Like any skill, you can take a number of steps and actions to improve.
Below are the 7 steps you can take and try to break through mental barriers and improve as a person mentally. You can click on any of the links below to go directly to the section, or continue to scroll down the page.
- Realize the Importance of Mental Strength
- Practice with Intention
- Do Affirmations
- Visualize Success in Your Life
- Do Breathing Exercises to Manage Stress
- Read about Exercises to Improve Mentally
- Realize that Setbacks Will Happen, but You Can Overcome Anything
Let’s dive into each of these points in greater detail.
1. Understand that Mental Strength Will Get You As Far As Any Other Skill
As discussed above in the opening few paragraphs, your mental strength and fortitude will keep you going and get your farther than any talent or ability alone.
The ability to stick with something, to be positive, and to continue to work until the job is done is more important than having the talent to do something.
Mental toughness is the gasoline which fuels your actions and abilities. Without gasoline, it doesn’t matter if you have a 500 horsepower car or a 50 horsepower car – you aren’t going anywhere.
With gasoline, and with a strong mental game, anything is possible.
Understanding that mental strength is something that you need to work on and is a skill that can be improved is s
2. Practice with Intention to Gain Confidence in Yourself
Deliberate practice is a great way to improve your skills and grow as a person.
Instead of going through the motions, using deliberate practice for improvement can help you become mentally stronger.
Over time, through practice, you can gain confidence. This confidence will work to your advantage when you get into situations where you need to be at your best.
In sports, the best players don’t worry about taking the last shot because they have practiced thousands of times for that moment.
For them, it’s not the first time they have done that, and as a result, they have the mental fortitude and confidence to perform to the best of their abilities.
Practicing and making sure you are doing the best you can do in any moment will lead to confidence, and through confidence, you’ll have the belief in yourself to do whatever you want in life.
3. Do Affirmations to Tell Yourself You are Enough
Our minds are incredibly powerful and can quite literally create its own reality.
Using positive thinking can manifest itself in living the life you want to live.
Telling yourself you are a positive person will result in you becoming a more positive person.
You are what you say you are.
Saying, “I’m a negative person who can never accomplish anything” is a reinforcing trap. Saying this sort of thing will result in you being a negative person who will never accomplish anything.
Likewise, telling yourself, “I’m a positive person who can accomplish anything” will lead to accomplishments beyond your wildest dreams.
Using positive thinking can help guide you on your path to becoming more mentally strong. 
4. Utilize Visualization to Live the Moment Before You Experience it
Similar to affirmations, you can use visualization to experience your desired outcome before it happens.
When you visualize a situation, you are tricking your mind into thinking you’ve already experienced it, and with each visualization, you become more confident.
Visualization helps you activate your subconscious into working it’s magic and helps you build your internal motivation to do your best when the time comes.
Sit in a quiet room and think about your goals and future situations you want to find success in. Try to think about all of the possibilities and try to fully experience the moment before it happens.
See yourself succeeding with that important speech, in the test to help you gain a new qualification, or winning the race you’ve been training for forever.
With visualization, you can gain confidence in your abilities and when the time comes, you’ll be ready to rock and crush your goals.
5. Learn about Breathing Techniques to Help Relax when You are Stressed
Slowing down and focusing on our breathing has many benefits.
Breathing relieves anxiety, stress and tension in the body. Also, breathing can help our mental state by helping stop panic attacks, freezing or choking under pressure and lowers our stress levels.
I try to do deep breathing a few times a day to keep myself centered and focused on the task at hand. It’s helped me a lot in keeping my cool, and has served me well.
Here’s a link for 10 breathing exercises to try: 10 Breathing Exercises
6. Read Books about Mental Strength and Overcoming Adversity
Reading books from experts in mental strength can help you develop habits to become better mentally. Having an edge in your ability to overcome things will help you achieve any goal you set, and help you separate yourself from the rest of the world as a world class individual.
I love reading, and some of the books I’ve read on mental strength have been eye opening. Reading about Olympic Gold medalists and top performers is interesting, but at the highest level, mental preparation is what separates the gold medalist from the bronze medalist.
In particular, I’ve read and reviewed the following three books which I think will help you with working on your mental game: With Winning in Mind, Unbeatable Mind, The Slight Edge.
Learning from experts is always great – we need to stand on the shoulders of giants to be able to see far!
7. Realize Mistakes Happen, But You Can Bounce Back
Without failure, there is no success. If you achieved success in everything you did, where would the growth be? How would that be a great story?
Failure and struggle is part of human nature, and overcoming that struggle is how you grow and become better.
Being honest with you, setbacks happen and they suck. I’ve had injuries in sports where I had to sit out for some time – it sucked and it made me thankful for the times I was able to play. It made me reassess my game and be smarter with my head.
However, when I recovered, I was rested and ready to give it my all, and I started playing better than before.
You can bounce back from any mistake and get back on the road to success. You are capable of achieving anything and it’s important to understand that failure is temporary.
Are You Going to Become Mentally Strong in the Next Few Weeks?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article on mental strength, and I hope that you are now interested in pursuing some of the exercises above to become more mentally strong and crush your goals.
Improving in any skill takes time, but with consistent actions and intentional practice, you can get to a point where it’s automatic and you are a rockstar.
You are on to living your best life and through these actions, you’ll be closer to your goals each and every day.
This month, I’m doing 100 push-ups everyday. While this physical fitness challenge has been tough, there have been a lot of benefits which have come from it as well. In this post, I’m going to share with you how you can do 100 push-ups a day for a month to become more fit and get in shape.
Are you looking for a body weight physical fitness challenge? Do you think you could out every day for a whole month?
This month, I’ve been doing 100 push-ups a day.
Each day, no matter what, I’ve done a few sets of 20, 25, and 30 push-ups, to get pp to 100 push-ups.
While there have been some days where my chest has been sore or tired, I still got my push-ups in.
Now, my chest is feeling strong and I’ve also noticed that I’ve lost some body fat across the rest of my body.
In this post, I’m going to share with you how to do this body weight exercise challenge, talk about why push-ups are good for you, and give you motivation to crush this challenge!
How to Do 100 Push-Ups a Day for a Month
Doing 100 push-ups every day for a month is a big task to take on.
When starting out, doing push-ups are tough and can be a struggle, especially if you’ve never done them before.
The first few days, you will be sore, but after about a week, the soreness goes away and you will see the progress and gains.
For your 100 daily push-ups, you can do them anyway you want.
You can do incline push-ups, decline push-ups, regular push-ups, or vary the technique in any way you want. As long as you are getting down and have a good range of motion (getting your elbows to 90 degrees is the correct way to do a push-up), you will be making the most of this workout.
Right now, I’, doing 5 sets of 20, or 4 sets of 25 (depending on the day). These 4 or 5 sets take me between 10-15 minutes to do, but if you can’t do as many push-ups in a row as me, then you can break it up into more sets with less reps.
Doing 10 sets of 10 is the same amount of reps as 2 sets of 50.
In addition, doing 10 sets of 10 could be spread out through the day to reduce the energy spent in any one session.
If you still think 100 in a day is too much, you could start off slower.
During the first week, you could do 30 push-ups a day. Then, in the second week you can do 60 push-ups a day.
Finally, during the third and fourth weeks of the month, you can get to 100 push-ups a day.
By the third week, your body will start to get used to the increased number of push-ups and will be able to handle this increased volume.
Why are Push-Ups Good for You?
There are a number of reasons why push-ups are good for you.
Obviously, any exercise is better than no exercise, but there are a number of tangible benefits to doing push-ups.
One of the bigger benefits of push-ups is how it activates nearly every body part. When you do a push-up, you are using your chest, your shoulders, your core, your arms, and your back.
By activating all of these different body parts, you will increase the amount of muscle fibers recruited and can strengthen more than just 1 muscle group at a time.
Another benefit is how you will be stretching various muscles in your back and arms as you perform the push-up.
One more benefit is that your posture will improve through doing push-ups. The muscles that are responsible for your posture are the same ones activated when you do push-ups properly.
Finally, you can do push-ups where ever you are! I can get a great chest workout without leaving my apartment, an if you are someone who doesn’t have a lot of money, then you can save money and get in shape at home with push-ups.
Don’t You Need to Take Some Rest Days to Recover?
Make no mistake, doing push-ups every day is tough.
One thing about the human body is that it is incredibly resilient and is able to adapt to tough situations.
From experience, the first few days of this body weight exercise challenge is tough.
You are sore, and you aren’t loving life.
But, after about a week, if you are sleeping enough, eating a healthy diet with a lot of protein, and not pushing too hard else where, you will start feeling more confident and better about your progress.
In general though, if you really need a break, then you should take a break. If you are on the verge of injury, then taking a day off instead of pushing through would be best.
However, I don’t think general soreness is necessarily an injury.
With body weight exercises, the amount of work and stress you are putting on your body is not an intense amount, so you can do it more often.
At the same time, as I mentioned, you need to listen to your body to make sure you are doing what’s right for your current level of health and physical fitness.
At the end of the day, incorporating body weight exercises and push-ups can be very beneficial for you and support your current routine.
Related reading:
Would You Do 100 Push-Ups a Day?
Now that you have finished reading this post, I hope you are inspired and motivated to get out there and try this challenge.
While I don’t think I’d recommend it if you are doing heavy bench press (there your body definitely does need to recover), I would recommend this if you want a change in your exercise schedule and routine.
Getting stronger and becoming fit is all about consistency. By doing a little bit each and every day, you can reach your goals of becoming fit, healthy and strong.
Readers: what exercise challenges do you like doing? Would you do 100 push-ups every day for a month?
Thanks for reading!
Erik
Deliberate practice, or intentional practice, is the key to learning and improving at any skill, hobby or interest. Instead of going through the motions, having a plan with deliberate actions for improvement will be very beneficial.
Everyone has heard the old adage “Practice makes perfect”, but that’s not actually an accurate statement.
Actually, practice makes permanent.
If you practice spelling the word “business”, but actually memorize it incorrectly as “buziness”, it’s going to be much harder to correct that mistake in the future, because you’ve already built up the memory of the misspelled word.
The way you practice is just as important as setting aside the time to practice itself. And there’s a dynamic approach to practice that will help avoid practicing incorrectly. It’s called deliberate practice.
What is Deliberate Practice?
Deliberate practice isn’t just using repetition to craft a skill. Repetition, while important, can only get you so far.
Instead, deliberate practice is the practice of breaking down each aspect of what you’re trying to master and identifying the patterns and techniques that will propel you towards mastery and help you achieve confidence in the area you want to master.
The practice is systematic and purposeful. The goal is to increase intense focus and perfect the activity you’re practicing. You start with big picture ideas and break them down into bite sized chunks. Then you practice perfecting those smaller tasks, and eventually, you’ve mastered an entire skill set.
5 Steps to Use Deliberate Practice to Improve in Life
Using deliberate practice will help you unlock your full potential and start getting the life that you want. It takes your skills and brings them to the next level by consistent, systematic practice.
Below, I have laid out 5 steps you can take to use deliberate practice in you life to reach your goals:
- Identify Your Goals and Dreams
- Create a Game Plan for Deliberate Practice
- Be Intentional in Your Practice and Take Action
- Be Consistent with Your Actions
- Reassess and Tweak Your Plans Over Time
Let’s dive into each of these in more detail now.
1. Identify Your Goals and Dreams
You want to look at your future and ask yourself realistically, where do you see yourself and who do you want to be as a person?
Answering those two questions will give you a good idea of where to start.
You want to focus on things that you can develop, like career skills or maybe you want to learn a new language, or hit a home run during the company wide softball game. They should be skills you can develop or goals you want to achieve – rather than objectives, like making partner at your firm in two years.
Objectives are good to have as well, but we really want to hone in on the skills that might get you there. Like learning C++ or mastering Excel.
You want to make sure that you’re being clear about what you want.
You might even want to consider using the SMART goals guidelines when dreaming about who you want to be. SMART goals help you create specific, measurable, attainable, time-bound goals. I have a great tutorial about how to get started here.
If you’re more specific and calculated about what your goals and dreams are, then you’ll have a clearer picture to use to create a game plan.
2. Create a Game Plan for Deliberate Practice
You know your goals, now it’s time to come up with a game plan.
You have your dream. What do you have to do to MAKE it happen?
That’s where deliberate practice comes in. Deliberate practice is the science of devising a plan to help you get from where you are today to where you want to be. It allows you to stop self doubting because you’ve built a firm foundation.
Making your dream happen requires you creating a game plan for action. The 5 steps for creating a game plan for your life is as follows:
- Research
- Identify Experts to Emulate
- Start Slow and Practice Often
- Spend Time Self Critiquing and Evaluating Technique
- Celebrate Small Wins Along the Way
Let’s dive into each of these steps to create a practice plan for yourself below.
Research
Researching is the most important step of making an action plan for your success.
You want to look at where you are, and figure out the best step going forward. The more informed your research is, the better your deliberate practice will be, because you’ve taken the time to make sure you’re understanding what you’re trying to perfect.
Say your goal is to learn yoga, you want to figure out what kind of yoga you’re interested in: karma, bhakti, jnana, or raja.
You also want to figure out the most basic poses for that specific type of yoga, and best practices in order to practice them.
Next, you’d want to build a more complicated sequence, and continue exploring methods and poses.
This gives you your guideposts and metrics to know what is correct posture, and what is not.
Identify Experts to Emulate
You also want to find experts to emulate. This could mean several things. Either attending a yoga class taught at your local community center, or following a yogi on YouTube and watching their videos.
Finding a class is the more preferred method. It gives you direct feedback on your form and posture. Along with some structure and method techniques that you might not get self teaching.
However, if a class is not accessible to you, finding videos on YouTube could prove a useful substitute. You can watch proper form.
Start Slow and Practice Often
This is the most important part of preparation. You want to make sure that you’ve set aside time every day (or several dedicated times a week) to practice your craft.
But almost more importantly, you want to make sure that you’re progressing slowly. Dedicated practice is systematic. And these systems only work if you’ve designed them to give yourself enough time to master the basics before moving onto intermediate work.
This is how Joe DiMaggio got so good at baseball. He started with the basics. He practiced them often and he built on existing skills. But he couldn’t do that without making sure he was dedicating enough time to the craft.
So make sure that you’re taking the time you actually need to practice. Instead of trying to get good insanely fast, as this often leads to bad technique and burnout.
Spend Time Self Critiquing and Evaluating Technique
Another crucial aspect of planning is to make sure you’re allowing space and time in your process to self critique and evaluate your own technique. As mentioned above, the best way to do this is to have an instructor advise you, but there are other ways to prepare for this.
If you’re practicing child’s pose, record yourself following along to a yoga session from YouTube. Then watch both videos simultaneously. Make sure to note where your form doesn’t mimic the instructors, and then critique your learning plan to spend time perfecting that specific pose.
Celebrate the Small Wins Along the Way
And make sure you’re planning to celebrate the small wins along the way. Part of deliberate practice is learning to self motivate.
Choosing specific milestones in your practice plan to celebrate will help keep you going and pushing towards that goal.
Maybe that’s holding a pose for 45 seconds for the first time, or mastering a specific salutation. What the milestones are don’t matter as much as taking the time to map them out.
This final step really helps solidify your action plan and gets you psyched for deliberate practice.
3. Be Intentional in Your Practice and Take Action
Now that you’ve spent a considerable amount of time planning your goals and routine and the milestones you celebrate.
What does being intentional mean?
First, it means showing up. You’ve spent all this time crafting the perfect set of steps to get you from point A to point B, but they’re absolutely useless if you don’t spend the time practicing.
Second, it means showing up wholeheartedly. You’re here, you’ve put in the time and you’re ready to go, but you still need to make sure that you’re leaving everything at the door.
Take a moment to write down what thoughts are popping into your head about whatever distraction might make you pause and wonder if practicing is important. Then, put your phone away, turn off your notifications, do whatever you have to do to pause distractions.
Finally, take action. Review your deliberate practice plan. Set up whatever things you need to help you succeed. I find that it’s helpful to set a timer, so that I don’t have to continue to watch the clock to know how long I’ve been practicing. And just practice.
Use the guidelines you’ve given yourself from your deliberate practice plan to guide the session, but ultimately, putting in the time and working on the craft is going to be what makes you better. As long as you’re continually critiquing yourself and striving for more perfect repetitions. 
4. Be Consistent With Your Actions
Consistency is key throughout this process. Spending a consistent amount of time every week is going to help you master your skill.
This is due to several factors.
First, muscle memory is built by repetition.
You want to make sure that you’re spending enough time on each action to get it ingrained into the body. But make sure that you’re integrating more experience techniques and making sure you’re practicing the technique correctly and critiquing yourself when you need to be.
And second, habits are built over time.
If you only work at something sporadically, you might get better. But you won’t be building a habit. And so much of mastery comes from habit making.
If you want to get better at yoga, setting the habit of practicing yoga is half the battle. The habit is how you maintain consistency.
That’s why deliberate practice focuses so much on the planning phase. We want to set you up for habitual success by taking as much decision making out of the process as possible.
5. Reassess and Tweak Your Game Plan Over Time
This step cannot be stressed enough. It’s the key to deliberate practice and what sets deliberate practice apart from repetitive practice. It takes time and patience. It definitely won’t happen overnight.
Reassessing your practice plan allows you to look back on progress and look forward to skills you’re hoping to acquire. It also makes sure that you’re giving yourself enough time to make sure you’re practicing to perfection.
And if, for some reason, you’re not perfecting something, it allows you to step back and make sure all your steps are aligned with your goals.
Practice makes permanent, and this allows practice to morph into something perfect, not just permanent.
Stop Going Through the Motions and Employ Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice is a great way to learn mastery of something.
Instead of going through the motions, use deliberate actions for improvement and put your deliberate practice plan in place.
I hope that this article has given you some great tips and food for thought on how you can use deliberate practice to reach your goals and dreams, and I’ll look forward to hearing how you are doing in your life as you make a game plan and put it into action!
Readers: what’s your goal? Are you going to use deliberate practice to reach your goal? What’s your plan?
Thanks for reading!