Goal Setting & Emotional Intelligence: Overcoming Setbacks Like a Champion with Penny Mallory

Yeah, yeah.

I'd love to dive down a little bit into mental toughness.

I know you've presented on TEDx and you've talked a lot about this topic already.

But for our audience, it'd be good to cover off some of the building blocks of how people think about mental toughness so that they're able to then help shape that for their own careers.

So first of all, there's some myths to dispel.

Mental toughness is not a macho aggressive thing at all.

It's a gentle thing.

It's a mindset, an attitude, the way you behave.

It's your personality.

Your mental toughness explains why you do stuff and why you don't do stuff.

It's your ability really to manage life, stresses and strains, the challenges, the changes, the adversity.

Some people are really good at taking stuff in their stride and some people just fall to bits when stuff happens.

So if you can develop your mental toughness so that you have a bit more confidence, your commitment is there, that you feel in control of things and you can see all the challenges you're likely to face as opportunities, then you're miles ahead of most people.

So mental toughness is those four components.

It's control.

That's the sense of control you have of your life and your emotions.

Your ability to see the challenges you face as an opportunity to discover something, to learn, to move on.

And even when things don't go your way, you still have learned stuff.

You know, you still win.

Your commitment, your ability to set and complete a task and then underlying your commitment is why, you know, your purpose that drives you.

And then confidence, your confidence, the confidence you have in your ability to get this thing done and the confidence you have engaging with other people to get it done, because most of us will achieve very little on our own.

So those areas of mental toughness, we can all develop every day by pushing ourselves to do things quite often we don't want to do, practicing tolerating discomfort.

And there's lots of ways we can do that.

But taking a leap of faith, stepping into the dark, ugly place you don't want to step into and discovering it is actually fine.

And wow, I can actually do this.