18 Ways to Build Mental Strength... Without Being Told to “Man Up”

The key to an easier life isn’t thick skin or preternatural talent. It’s grit. But mental resilience isn’t merely a matter of suppressing your emotions. It’s about understanding them, and giving them their due. Whatever you’re up against, our experts are on hand to help you navigate life with patience and insight. Consider this a mental endurance programme—with feeling.

- By Tom Ward

01 I HATE FAILING: IS THERE ANY WAY TO MAKE IT STING LESS?

Michael Jordan considers himself a failure: by his count, he's missed more than 9,000 shots. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed, he says. I've failed over and over and over again. The mentally strong harness that energy to drive them forward. How you respond to failure is up to you, says Elizabeth Day, creator of the How to Fail podcast and author of Failosophy. One way of draining the emotion from failure is to think of it as data acquisition. You're gaining valuable info about what doesn't work. Applied correctly, it will bring you closer to the thing that does.

02 I CAN'T SHAKE MY IMPOSTER SYNDROME. I SHOULD JUST FAKE IT TILL I MAKE IT, RIGHT?

Not all platitudes are useful. True self-confidence means trusting in yourself, which is not something you can fake, explains environmental psychologist Lee Chambers. Think less about your current status and more about your ambitions, then focus on keeping your actions in line with your wished-for future identity. Having a clear goal and a sense of purpose will propel you to take action, then give you the resilience to keep going when things get tough.

3 I'M DOING AN ULTRA-MARATHON. IS IT TRUE THEY'RE MIND OVER MUSCLE?