I came across a great TEDx talk by Amy Morin this week on The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong. She describes mentally strong people as having healthy habits and being able to manage their thoughts and behaviours.
**Spoiler alert** Amy’s secret to being mentally strong is really about building habits or rather, reducing the bad habits we’ve accumulated over our lifetime: the unhealthy beliefs we have about ourselves and the world we live in. Such as feeling sorry for ourselves, being a victim of circumstances out of our control, fear of risks, the need to please others etc. I’m guilty of plenty of those.
I’d like to consider myself as being strong mentally. But it does feel quite subjective and how does one measure their mental strength?
Then I came across an article she wrote before her talk titled 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do (which turns out she published a book about it!) and thought I could use this as a way to approximate how mentally strong I am. I converted each of the things into a question which the response can be on a numbered scale:
For each of the questions below, respond with a number on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “Always”, and 5 being “Never” as your response) and record your scores to add them up in the end.
- You have felt sorry for yourself about circumstances or how others have treated you
- You are affected by how others treat you (Eg. feel intimidated or bad when criticised by others)
- You enjoy established routines over change and unpredictability
- You get upset and tend to dwell on things out of your control (Eg. lost luggage or traffic jams)
- You tend to please everyone and try to avoid upsetting anyone
- You think of risks as gambling
- You tend to dwell on the past (Eg. relive bad experiences or fantasize about the glory days)
- You find yourself making repeated mistakes or bad decisions in life which you can’t seem to break from
- You are affected by other people’s success (Eg. being hard on yourself or envious of others’ success)
- You lose motivation when experiencing failure. (Eg. Likely to give up if things don’t work out on the first try)
- You fear being alone with your thoughts and are dependent on others for companionship and entertainment
- You feel you deserve more than what you currently got
- You enjoy seeing the fruit of your labour instantly rather than waiting around
Now add up your scores!
The measure is simple: the higher your score, the stronger your mentality. 💪 The maximum number of points you can get is 65 points (that’s 13 questions at max 5 points each). I just tried it myself and got 57. I’d say (arbitrarily) that above 52 points (average of 4 on each response), would indicate your mental strength being reasonably strong and an average strength would be from above 39 points (if we say one tends to fall in the middle for most of the questions).
Of course, this is mainly a fun exercise based on the points Amy mentioned. If we were to measure mental strength more properly, we’d need to assess if those 13 criteria are appropriate measures and then randomise the questions as well as how they’re being presented (currently they take on a very predictable question and response format that is toned in a way that you’re mentally weak).
Nonetheless, doing this exercise makes the gauging of mental strength slightly less arbitrary and it does make one think more about the qualities to avoid and foster if we want to strengthen our mental abilities. =)
