REFLECTION
Through my own experiences, I have come to look at mental toughness as a combination of resilience and resolve.
It’s the ability to harness focus, composure, confidence, will and determination, in order to deal with all the challenges life throws at you. All while consistently showing up in a positive, optimistic way, no matter how you feel on the inside, so you can give everything you have toward your goals and the people who matter most to you–whether that’s the happiness of your family, the health of your business, or the success of your team.
One of the first big tests of my own mental toughness came in my fifth year at Michigan, after being named starter and then told I’d be platooning with Drew Henson. In the third game of the season, on the road at unranked Syracuse, I was benched for the second half, during which Drew and our defense led us to an important 18-13 victory.
This was the first time I didn’t start the second half and finish out the game. I was disappointed, frustrated, embarrassed. I could have been angry, and if it were a few years earlier, I might have even gotten down on myself about it. But Greg Harden’s words rang in my ears: don’t focus on what others are getting; focus on the opportunities you have, on the things you can control.
I had a choice to make. I was a team captain and one of the roles of the captains after a win is to stand in the middle of the locker room and lead the team in singing the Michigan fight song. In that moment, I could have very easily lost my focus, my confidence, my composure, and given into my disappointment. I could have receded into the background, or stood up there in body but not in spirit, going through the motions. I could have let the benching break me.
Instead, I got up on a table and sang the fight song louder than I ever had before. I wanted to be the loudest one in the room, to show my teammates that I was just as excited about the win as they were. That, as one of their captains, I was with them. That we were a team with one goal—whether I started another game or not. I also wanted to show them, as well as prove to myself, that one bad quarter, one tough decision, one rough turn of events wasn’t going to break me.
LESSON
Your mental toughness is always being stretched and stressed to some degree, because like football, life is hard. Where it’s put to the ultimate test is in the big moments, when things get really hard, and it feels like everything you care about is on the line. That’s when everyone learns about your resilience and resolve, not just you. Because your focus, your confidence, your determination and composure are on full display.
This can be terrifying if you feel like those attributes don’t come naturally to you. The good news is that mental toughness is a hybrid skill. It’s part nature, but also part nurture. Which means you can cultivate, through deliberate practice, the attributes of mental toughness that aren’t second nature for you.
That was certainly the case for me.
I had a lot of focus and discipline, and a good amount of confidence from an early age. I was out in my backyard jumping rope and doing drills starting in fourth and fifth grade, in part because I knew I could be a good quarterback.
On the flipside, I lacked the emotional composure and resilience that is necessary for consistent performance until well into college. When something felt unfair or when I wasn’t getting the opportunities that I believe I had earned, it could derail me. It wasn’t until I heard Greg Harden’s words for the first time, and I could lean on them like a mantra, that I began to turn my emotions around and eventually made composure and determination central features of the mental toughness that helped me go from 7th on the depth chart to Pick #199 to the NFL’s all-time leading passer.
APPLICATION
Mental toughness is essential to excellence. I would argue it’s the X-factor in the success of nearly every notable athlete, artist, entrepreneur, and scientist you can think of. Because there is always going to be someone faster, stronger, richer, smarter, luckier or more creative. And there’s nothing you can do about that. Your only positive, productive option is to have resilience in the face of a disadvantage that is beyond your control, and to have the resolve to play your own game according to your own goals, strategies and abilities.
The biggest mistake you can make is thinking that having no emotions, or acting as if nothing bothers you, is the same thing as having mental toughness. That couldn’t be more wrong. Mental toughness is about having those emotions, feeling them completely, and then doing the right thing, or the hard thing, despite how you feel.
There is a popular concept in psychology and parenting that all emotions are valid, but not all behaviors are acceptable. As it relates to mental toughness, you are perfectly entitled to however you feel about the challenges and adversities you face in life—the big ones and the small ones. But if you want to perform at a consistently high level and achieve great things in this world, in whatever capacity, then you cannot allow those emotions to dictate your behavior. You cannot behave as if those emotional vulnerabilities are okay to be left untended. You cannot just allow yourself to be broken. Instead, you have to work on those areas of vulnerability with things like gratitude practice, mindfulness exercises, positive self-talk, goal setting, building a growth mindset, even journaling as a way to create greater self-awareness.
Mike Tyson had a famous line: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Developing mental toughness, building resilience and resolve, cultivating focus and determination and composure and confidence—this is what will make you less breakable the next time you take a hit. Not just that, being able to bounce back and continue moving forward makes you a force to be reckoned with. Because while everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, nobody will have a plan for you when you take their best shot and you don’t flinch.
