Mentally tough is a training program based on positive thinking but it gives you the underpinning scientifically of what positive thinking and positive emotions do for you physiologically, neurologically and biochemically to help make you a better performer. There is a peak performance state which is a mixture of biological and psychological aspects. This program helps you perform better under pressure. Positive as well as negative emotions can change every cell in your body. When you are at your best you are at a specific emotional state, chemically and physically different than at any other time. This program teaches you a range of proven techniques for altering your emotional states and body physiology and allowing you to choose and use the techniques that put you in the ideal performance state for any performance situation. Mental toughness is really an emotional skill. It is an acquired skill in the area of emotional control. This program teaches you how to utilize energy more effectively and to improve your capacity for energy recovery. You learn about energy recovery mechanism and how to train during non-work periods so that optimal performance is achievable during work periods. Stress is, in fact, a reaction to an event. It is a biochemical event that takes place in your body that is a reaction to things you see around you. We have to understand that stress is a part of our lives.
Physical exercise helps us to stabilize our mood so much that exercise is called a mood elevator. For those people who struggle with mood problems, stress, and emotional roller coasters, exercise serves to be very helpful. It stimulates mood and energy production and helps to eliminate a lot of problems associated with depression. Exercise considerably increases a person’s energy reserves. This will lead to a greater capacity for work, a greater capacity for stress as you deal with your energy demands better. You will have the capacity for longer work hours, your concentration, focus, ability to tackle those tasks will increase and you will not fade out as you will have the capacity for longer work hours. Exercise builds self-image. Self-image and self-esteem are at the core of Mental Toughness. Exercise gives you a new and improved image of start believing in yourself. There is a high you get from exercise that is really addictive once you get used to it. It is said that the high you get is good for you as compared to other addictions. Many researchers and psychologists believe that this addiction is caused by the endorphin response.
Exercise is a controlled dose for a particular kind of work stimulus. In this case, we mean a controlled dose of stress. We can teach our body how to manage stress efficiently. We can use the stress of exercise to teach us what stress actually is. When your heart rate come up, it is the same as when you are feeling nervous, angry or in an arousal cycle due to the pressure or emotional cycle of stress. When you go through a recovery cycle in exercise, you are recovery from a specific dose of stress. So basically when you go through the exercise cycle you have practiced a stress management skill. The more cycles of arousal and cycles of recovery we got rough during exercise, the more opportunities we have for managing stress effectively. When you are in a relaxation stage during recovery on a run or a stationary bicycle or swimming you are going through a relaxation response. You are teaching your body how to relax. Your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension rate are dropping and all these factors are critical is being an effective manager of energy, emotion, fear and all those parameters the body is involved with when the body enters a stress cycle. We as individuals need to structure our diet so that we learn better and feel better. We call this the food and mood connection. From the mentally tough perspective, humor, joy and all the positive emotions are essential tools. Humor is a weapon for building and maintaining positive energy. It is an energy recovery strategy. When breaking the cycles of stress, this is the best tool and gives us a sense that we are in control.
This program is accessing your ideal performance state by simply adjusting energy expenditure, energy recovery level, exercise activities, dietary habits, patterns of thinking and visualizing. The training requires commitment, effort, and understanding.