This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Unbeatable Mind" by Mark Divine. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Wondering how to be mentally tough? How did Navy SEAL Mark Divine train his mind for mental toughness? What are the benefits?
In his book Unbeatable Mind, Mark Divine explains his five-step system for developing a warrior mindset that fosters mental toughness. According to him, you must train your mind and body to be resilient both mentally and emotionally.
Read on to learn how to be mentally tough to better manage life stressors, according to Divine’s advice.
How to Be Mentally Tough
In Unbeatable Mind, Mark Divine offers a guide for developing a warrior mindset that allows you to reach your full potential as a person and then apply that to improving your life and the lives of others. Divine writes that learning how to be mentally tough means mastering five levels of personal development by cultivating character traits that maximize your personal and interpersonal abilities, focusing your mind on your true purpose as a human and then working toward that purpose, and training your body and mind through breathing exercises and meditative practices.
Emotional Strength
According to Divine, to train your mind to be mentally tough, you must forge emotional strength. If you build emotional strength, you can weather the emotional storms that come with every challenge you face, keeping strong in the face of adversity and using challenges to help you grow and fulfill your purpose. Use your purpose to guide your actions and motivate you during difficult times.
(Shortform note: Our natural tendencies regarding challenges are to either avoid the challenge entirely or overly fixate on it, depending on our personalities and the way we were raised. The key to emotional strength is finding the middle ground between these two tendencies and facing challenges without letting them overwhelm us.)
How to Build Emotional Strength
In learning how to be mentally tough, Divine says you should build your emotional strength, writing that you must:
Cultivate high self-esteem so you feel respected by others. (Shortform note: Divine doesn’t elaborate on why self-esteem is important for emotional strength, but we can infer that high self-esteem will help you bounce back from negative experiences and avoid internalizing them.)
Build up your self-control so you don’t react emotionally in the moment and inadvertently make the situation worse. (Shortform note: To build self-control in conversations, it may help to imagine yourself pressing a button to pause your mind and take several seconds to fully process what was said before giving your response.)
Take on a positive mindset so you can view setbacks as opportunities. (Shortform note: A positive mindset serves you best when it’s based in reality and takes into account your skills and resources so you feel equipped to handle the setbacks you’ll face.)
Orient yourself toward helping others. Tending to others will help you find meaning in your struggles. (Shortform note: Experts agree that helping other people helps you make sense of your own life’s challenges, and they add that it can help you find your purpose as well.)
Divine also writes that the biggest roadblock to achieving emotional strength is the negative emotions that result from hardships you face. However, when you encounter one of these negative emotions, you can build emotional strength by processing it effectively.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Unbeatable Mind summary:
- Advice from a former Navy SEAL on how to maximize your success
- Tools for training your mind and developing mental toughness
- Why you should come up with a mantra for yourself
