"Despite your hard work and talent, you’ll struggle to reach your full potential when you’ve got certain thoughts, behaviors, and feelings holding you back."

"Developing mental strength is about improving your ability to regulate your emotions, manage your thoughts, and behave in a positive manner,despite your circumstances."

"Stop and think for a minute about how you behave when you’re really angry.  It’s likely that you’ve said and done some
things that you regretted later, because you were basing your actions on your emotions, not logic."

"Being mentally strong isn’t about acting tough. You don’t have to become a robot or appear to have a tough exterior
when you’re mentally strong. Instead, it’s about acting according to your values."

"Mental strength doesn’t require you to ignore your emotions.  Increasing your mental strength isn’t about suppressing your
emotions; instead it’s about developing a keen awareness of them. It’s about interpreting and understanding how your
emotions influence your thoughts and behavior."

"You don’t have to treat your body like a machine to be mentally strong. Mental strength isn’t about pushing your body to
its physical limits just to prove you can ignore pain. It’s about understanding your thoughts and feelings well enough that you can determine when to behave contrary to them, and when to listen to them."

"Mental strength is helpful in everyday life, not just in the midst of a crisis. You’ll become better equipped to handle
problems more efficiently and effectively, and it can reduce your overall stress level."

"You’ll never become an expert at anything by simply reading a book. Athletes don’t become elite competitors after reading about their sport nor do top musicians increase their musical abilities by simply watching other performers play. They also have to practice."

"We all experience pain and sorrow in life.  And although sadness is a normal, healthy emotion, dwelling on your sorrow and
misfortune is self-destructive."

"Feeling sorry for yourself requires a lot of mental energy and does nothing to change the situation.  Even when you can’t fix the problem, you can make choices to cope with life’s obstacles in a positive way. Feeling sorry for yourself won’t move you any closer to a solution."

"A victim mentality is not an attractive characteristic. Complaining about how bad your life is will likely wear on people rather quickly. No one ever says, “What I really like about her is the fact that she always feels sorry for herself.”"

"Our choice to spend the day doing something enjoyable isn’t about ignoring our grief or masking our sadness. It’s about
making a conscious choice to celebrate life’s gifts and refusing to behave in a pitiful manner. Instead of pitying ourselves for what we lost, we choose to feel grateful for what we had."

"When you notice self-pity creeping into your life, make a conscious effort to do something contrary to how you feel. You
don’t have to jump out of a plane to ward off feelings of self-pity. Sometimes, small behavioral changes can make a big
difference."

"Volunteer to help a worthy cause. It will take your mind off your problems and you can feel good that you’ve helped support
someone else. It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself when you’re serving hungry people in a soup kitchen or spending time
with elderly residents in a nursing home." 

"If what you’re doing now isn’t working, try something new. If you never take a step in the right direction, you’ll stay right where you are."

"What’s another way I could view my situation? This is where the “glass half empty or glass half full” thinking comes
in. If you’re looking at it from the glasshalf- empty angle, take a moment to think about how someone looking from a glasshalf- full perspective might view the same situation."

Contributed by Amy Morin
Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do

Motivating Quotes

More Motivational Quotes:

• Carol S. Dweck

Those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving. And this is exactly what we find in the champions.
 
• John Bird

We have to be careful not to fall under the spell of what we read and hear. To keep your sanity in this crazy world you need to stay focused on your own life.
 
• Newt Gingrich and Jackie Gingrich Cushman

It was not enough for Disney to dream simply of owning his own studio; he also dreamed of—and achieved—major advances in the art and impact of animation by doing things no one else was doing.
 
• Dr. Henry Cloud

There is an order to the ways that things work. Life was created with laws that govern how it works. There are laws that
govern success just as gravity governs falling. If we can learn to follow these laws, we can live better lives.
 
• David Niven

The setbacks you experience are wonderful opportunities to learn. Not only can you learn, in a critical sense, what you might have done wrong, but you also can come to understand what has led you to make the choices you’ve made.