How to Build Mental Strength | Mental Toughness

Mental strength, in the context of this video, is the ability to overcome a psychological stressor, such as the loss of a job or the death of a loved one. And I’m going to explain it in a way that you’ve probably never heard of before. I’m going to use words that sound familiar, like memory and strength, but these words aren’t going to have the same definitions as they do in the dictionary. To really understand what I’m saying, you have to approach this video with an open and philosophical mindset. With that said, let’s get into it.

One of my main arguments is that physical and mental strength work the same way. Physical strength is our ability to deal with a physical stressor, such as lifting a heavy weight or performing a sudden sprint. Mental strength, on the other hand, is our ability to deal with psychological stresses. So you can think about strength like this. Imagine a circle on a line. The circle is you, and the line represents a state of balance. Now let’s say something stressful happens, either you lose a job or lift a heavy weight. In other words, you encounter a stressor. We can indicate the magnitude of a stressor with the size of the arrow—the bigger the arrow, the bigger the stressor. And the bigger the stressor, the further you move away from the line (or the more you’re knocked off balance). Your strength then is a measure of how far you can move away from this line and still recover. And building strength, whether physical or mental, is about improving your ability to recover from greater states of stress.

So where does strength come from? Your current strength is a function of your memory, but be careful, I’m using memory in a different way here than you might be used to. Your physical strength for example, how much weight you can lift or how far you can run, is a byproduct of the weights you’ve lifted, or the distances you’ve run, in the past. Your current strength is a function of the stressors you did or didn’t overcome in the past. Mental strength works in the same way. If you’ve done a lot of public speaking in the past, it might be really easy for you now, and you feel very little stress doing it. That’s because you’ve become someone who can easily lift that psychological weight.

You can think about memory like this. Let’s place me in the middle of the screen. Right now I’m in a specific State of Memory. What do I mean by that? My eyes are damaged due to various factors such as the stress I place on them, my diet, and my genetics. I have a certain amount of muscle mass based on my DNA, how I use them, and what I eat. I have certain values, ideas, and worldviews based on my experience with life. In other words, I’m saying that I’m a collection of information, and I’m combining all of this information—the totality of my entire being, my hormone levels, eye strength, muscle mass, cardiovascular health, so on and so forth—into a single term: Memory State. Let’s call my current state Memory State 1.

Now imagine two circles, one on the left and a larger one on the right. Let’s call the one on the left Memory State 1 and the one on the right Memory State 2. Both are a combination of physical and psychological memory. Memory State 2, the larger circle on the right, is in a greater state of memory, and this provides greater strength. State 2 is where I have bigger muscles, a better cardiovascular system, or a more powerful worldview that helps me deal with the difficulties of life. So how do we go from State 1 to State 2? Obviously, if the circle is growing, something is being added. Well, what’s being added? I believe it’s knowledge.

But what is knowledge? Knowledge is a special type of information. There’s a lot of different kinds of information in the universe, perhaps even infinite. You can find out how many species of bird there are in the world, or how many grains of sand there are on a beach, but I wouldn’t necessarily call any of that knowledge. Knowledge, in the sense that I’m using it, improves your state of memory, improves your strength, or in other words, knowledge helps you deal with stressors.

So where does knowledge come from? I believe experience is the ground of knowledge, but what kind of experience produces the knowledge I’m talking about (knowledge that gives you more strength)? I believe the creative experience is the one that produces knowledge, or to use popular terminology, turning chaos into order. Let me demonstrate what I mean with an example.

Johnny begins lifting weights. He’s squatting 135lbs, which is a reasonably difficult weight for him. It’s not easy to the point where it will have no effect, but it’s not so heavy that it’ll injure him. So Johnny definitely feels some fear in trying to lift the weight. He knows he’ll struggle with it. And in fact, the last few reps, the most difficult and the most fear-inducing, will be the most transformative ones. The last few reps will introduce the most chaos, the most potential for transformation, into his system. But once the chaos is introduced, it needs to be transformed into order. One of the main ways we deal with internal chaos is diet. When Johnny eats an adequate amount of protein, the chaos turns into order, the potential for transformation is actualized, his muscles grow, and the weight begins to feel lighter.

So here’s what the transformation looks like. Johnny is in Memory State 1. He introduces chaos into his system by lifting heavy weights. He turns this chaos into order, into knowledge, by eating a proper diet. Now he’s in Memory State 2, a greater state of memory with greater strength. So that’s physical strength, but what about mental? Mental strength works the same way, but instead of a physical weight, we lift a psychological one. Psychological weights, such as the loss of a job, introduce chaos into our system. How do we turn this chaos into order? By constructing a worldview. And just as some people don’t prepare their own food, many people don’t construct their own worldview.

This is where literature, art, philosophy, pop culture, and religion come into play. They aid us in building worldviews and dealing with psychological weights. Even talking about our problems with friends is a way of constructing worldview. We often look to them for another perspective or a new way of seeing. Mental strength is best summarized by this Nietzschean quote: “If we have our own ‘why’ of life we shall get along with almost any ‘how’.” Mental strength comes from being able to construct there “why’s” for ourselves.

One of my favourite ways to build mental strength is by reading literature. I recently finished The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, and one thing he does in that novel, which I believe all great writers do, is make you look at difficult things you don’t want to look at. He introduces the problem of evil so well in that book that it creates a lot of disorder inside of you. But by the end, at least for me, he was somehow able to turn that disorder into order, into a new worldview, transforming me as a person. Reading literature, at its best, is like lifting a heavy weight and eating a proper diet at the same time—it strengthens your mind.

But just as one should take responsibility over their diet to meet their physical needs, one should take responsibility over their intellectual diet to meet their psychological needs. So here’s a summary. Strength comes from our State of Memory. Our State of Memory is enhanced by new Knowledge. New Knowledge comes from the Experience of turning Chaos into Order. And chaos enters our system when we encounter a stressor, and turning chaos into order is often a matter of diet or nutrition, whether that be our physical diet or our intellectual one.

Another way to say all of this, a more visceral way, is that strength comes from conquering fear. Or more poetically, strength comes from creating comfort where we once felt danger, peace where there was once war, or light where there was once darkness.