Mind Gym summary

Do you consider yourself a winner or a loser? Sure, you might not think yourself a winner right now, perhaps because you haven’t performed so well competitively, or because you feel your skills aren’t quite there yet. But if you really want to increase your chances of success, it’s time to put that all aside. If you think of yourself as a winner, it’ll make you more likely to become one.

Self-consistency theory explains that the way we think about ourselves is powerful enough to impact our actions. This is why those with a negative self-image struggle to achieve top performances. Put simply, you can’t win if you see yourself as a loser.

We all know that in many sports, the physically strongest and toughest have an advantage. The strong, tough wrestler has a considerable advantage over an opponent weaker in body. And yet, toughness isn’t all about bulging biceps: mental toughness is just as important as physical toughness.

In order to develop mental toughness, you need to train yourself in seven areas – the seven C’s of mental toughness.

Now that we’ve spent some time investigating how you can work your way to success, it’s time to take a closer look at success itself. What is it? We often consider success, excellence and top performance as quantifiable, in the form of records, medals and prizes. And yet, there’s a form of excellence that can’t be measured – and it also happens to be the most worthwhile.

Great athletes will benefit from aspiring to inner excellence. This is a reflective state of mind in which you are accountable for your thoughts, feelings and actions, no matter how much you want to give up. Here, competitions become challenges that kick your drive to succeed into gear, with no fear of failure to hold you back. It’s in this state that you’ll allow yourself to shine.

When it comes to judging your success, whose opinion should you trust? Should you ask your colleagues? Friends? Maybe even your rivals? Well, when it comes to deciding how worthy your achievements have been, the only person you should ask is yourself. Only you can tell whether you’ve given your all.

When judging yourself, take a look at a few of the areas considered by Harvard researchers to make up the metrics of a successful life.