Mental toughness, resilience, and competitive stamina are traits we want from everyone in our organization, especially the leaders. However, these qualities seem to be increasingly rare and hard to find.
I have just completed Hasard Lee’s excellent new book The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot’s Timeless Rules For Making Tough Decisions. Commander Lee is a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot handpicked to fly the most advanced weapons system in history, the F-35. He is also the Chief of Training Systems at the world’s largest training base. I highly recommend you pick a copy by clicking HERE or on the image provided.
Seeing a great need for mental toughness in washed out fighter pilots, Lee and several others in the Department of Defense developed a formalized syllabus to teach potential candidates this skill. Yes, mental toughness is actually a skill which can be taught and learned. One of my favorite sections of the book was from pages 210 – 216 where he broke down the components of the training.
The following is a quote from page 210 of the book (see the picture below) followed by several statements on developing mental toughness.
“The first concept was that you don’t rise to the level of your expectations but rather fall to the level of your preparation. It’s not enough to just understand the concept of mental toughness; it needs to be practiced until it’s a subconscious reflex. As stress and pressure rise, it’s easy to become consumed with emotions and lost the ability to logically make decisions.”
10 lessons on mental toughness from the paragraph above:
- You cannot will yourself into excellent performance. Performance is directly tied to preparation. As he wrote, “you don’t rise to the level of your expectations but rather fall to the level of your preparation.”
- Mental toughness is both a concept to be learned and a skill to be practiced.
- Mental toughness should be practiced so much it becomes a reflex.
- Stress and pressure are constant companions.
- Stress and pressure are reminders you are doing something important.
- Stress and pressure rise when you are doing something important.
- Emotions can rise so much they become consuming.
- Stress and pressure can cause you to be consumed by your emotions.
- Good decision-making is a skill.
- Being consumed by emotions caused by stress and pressure can make you lose the ability to make good decisions. You must be mentally tough.
Lee goes on to add the following insights in pages 210 – 211:
“Only by practicing a skill thousands of times you able to rely on it when it matters most. While mental-toughness training is an important aspect of high performance, it’s not a substitute for learning the underlying skill. When flying, speaking, or playing a sport, no amount of mental toughness training will make up for a lack of preparation in the execution. The training should be repeated until many of the skills and decisions become routine.”
5 additional lessons on mental toughness we learn from the paragraph above:
- When developing mental toughness, hard work works. You must practice your skill thousands of times.
- A sign of mental toughness is being to rely on your skills when it matters most. Stress and pressure only decrease as a result of the deep practice you have done.
- Mental toughness is an important aspect of high performance.
- Being mentally tough is not a substitute for preparation and lack of execution.
- Mental Toughness + Thorough Preparation = Routine Execution
Are you feeling stress and pressure from an upcoming task or assignment? The antidote to this problem is mental toughness. But mental toughness only comes as a result of deep practice resulting in routine execution. So get to work!
For more on this topic, check out Duke coach Kara Lawson’s Must-See Video Debunking the Myth of “Easy” Leadership.
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