The Five Key Pillars of Mental Resilience

Last week was a very busy exciting week in Dubai, yet by comparison this week has been a quiet week of planning and business development. It’s certainly not as exciting as last week but just as important. There has to be a balance to work life and there has to be space to grow the business.

It’s similar to when I played professional basketball and I used to love to play the games. The excitement of the games, the pressure to perform, the crowd, the desire to do my best was a great energiser. However this was only once or sometimes twice a week whereas we had to train every day.

The training isn’t fun

The training was tough and at times very boring. It wasn’t something we enjoyed much but was something we had to go through in order to perform well in the games. If we missed some training sessions through illness or injury our performance and confidence levels were a bit lower in the following game.

Business if very similar to sport where there are times of fun in meetings and presentations. But there are far more times when you have to put in the work behind the scenes, which allow you to perform well in the meetings and presentations. This work builds your confidence, as well as a good material for the proposal or presentation.

The pain of writing the book

Launching my book ‘Off the Wall’ was great fun and signing the books for people and receiving the 5 star reviews on Amazon is really exciting, but the work that went into writing the book was huge. The hundreds of hours spent writing and rewriting have been long forgotten, but there is a price to pay for success – and that price is well worth paying!

I have learned quite recently, believe it or not, that there is a price to pay for success and that price is called WORK. No sports star, musician, business leader, celebrity chef or any other successful person has achieved what they have achieved without an extraordinary amount of hard work. There has been research undertaken which indicates that to achieve mastery in any area, 10,000 hours of practice are needed. That is 1,000 hours a year over 10 years or 20 hours a week.

Hard work is the key

One of the reasons that I haven’t reached great heights in my business career over the past 30 years is that I found myself switching off after a successful period in whichever job I held. I would work hard for the first year then I would switch off and not work as hard and slowly things would start to slide. There were reasons for this in my subconscious which I have addressed and it’s been dealt with.

The reason I reached the top level in basketball is that I worked very hard and long to develop the skills I needed to play for England and professionally. I simply worked harder than the other players and eventually overtook them to reach the summit in my sport. When I joined Metro Radio in the North East of England as a sales person, I worked hard for 5 years and had a very good career in that industry.

The Five Key Pillars

When I left the radio station to run my own business I started to lose the work ethic and things started to slide. I didn’t really get this ethic back until I set up JD Mindcoach 5 years ago and I am now seeing the difference that hard work makes. Keeping a high level of motivation during the tough times is difficult, and that is where my expertise in the area of Mental Resilience comes into its own.

I have identified 5 key pillars needed to achieve success and these are Commitment, Motivation, Confidence, Control and Focus. These are described in detail in mybook and when mastered really do make a difference to the way you perform. They also help you keep going when you want to give up, and help you stay positive when things are going wrong.

You have to keep going

Being unable to keep going when they want to give up, is probably the single biggest reason most people fail to fulfil their potential. It’s so easy to give up for the day, go home early or just coast through the day fighting the feelings of negativity. The reason successful people make it is their ability to keep a positive mindset when all around them is going wrong.

They use the five Pillars of Mental Resilience like battle armour to fight the enemy of negativity, distraction, lack of energy, fatigue, and hopelessness. They keep going when others give up and eventually they break through to a victory which is so sweet because of the battle they have been through. This is the case for all the elite performers in all walks of life.

Thoughts for the week:

1. How is your level of Commitment for what you do?
2. What is your Motivation like and could it be improved?
3. Overall how would you rate your Confidence at work and in social circles?
4. Do you have Control of your emotions of Fear and Anxiety, and control of how you respond to negative events which hit you on a regular basis?
5. What is your level of Focus like? Do you waste any time during the day on easy tasks which make you feel good, but don’t get you closer to your goals?
6. Out of 10 how would you score your level of Work? 10 is outstanding and 0 is poor.
7. We all have the same amount of time – it’s how we use it that counts! I coach my clients to achieve more in each hour so they can work less hours yet get more done.
8. Study the five pillars of Mental Resilience and see if you can develop these to help you achieve more.

Well that’s it for this week – it is a privilege to connect with you through this blog and I simply hope that you are inspired and motivated to achieve more through reading these. Do let me know if you find these helpful by hitting reply to this blog.

Have a great weekend and stay positive.

Warm regards

John