The Law Of Mental Toughness

So far, this next chapter from Gary Mack’s The Mind Gym has been one of our favorites—so much so that we’ve decided to incorporate it into our own regime and rule book as one of our laws. When you put “the law of” in our search bar, you can find everything we subscribe to as a high-performance brand. Mental toughness will come as no surprise.

To Gary Mack, mental toughness was a critical component of finding success as an elite athlete, but really, this law can help any human become the best version of themselves. There are seven characteristics of mental toughness. Having one is great. Having a few is better. Having seven makes you unstoppable. Of course, the ones you’re missing can be learned through instruction, practice, and motivation.

“Nothing stands between us and success but our will to win.” —Mariel Margaret Hamm

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What Is Mental Toughness?

Mack defines mental toughness as a set of behaviors and self-beliefs about work, your sport, and how you interact with the world around you. A person who is mentally tough views competition as a challenge to rise up to rather than a threat (this is similar to the Pressure Principle).

The Seven C’s of Mental Toughness

1. Competitive

You have to want it. That’s what this first characteristic comes down to. Those who are mentally tough simply want to compete—against themselves or others. They have that intrinsic drive that keeps them going no matter what because they want to compete and win. It is like how MJ took a swing at a major-league baseball career. He was already the greatest basketball player in history, and yet he wanted to compete in something new just to see if he could do it. He refused to stop trying.

Professional golfer Nancy Lopez says it best, as quoted by Mack: “A competitor will find a way to win. Competitors take bad breaks and use them to drive themselves just that much harder. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up.”

2. Confident

Mentally tough athletes need to believe in themselves and their ability to handle anything that comes their way. When you’re truly mentally tough, you will rarely fall victim to detrimental thoughts and beliefs about yourself.

Tiger Woods said that whenever he played, he was his own favorite player on the course. “Belief before ability” was another lesson we took from the Founders podcast about Michael Jordan, and Mack references it in his book, too. MJ went into every game believing he was the best player on the court until someone proved him otherwise, and very few ever did.

3. Control

This doesn’t refer to controlling variables like arenas, weather, crowds, and equipment. Control refers to having control over your own emotions and behaviors without allowing the elements outside of your control to affect you. All mentally tough athletes are a portrait of poise, concentration, and emotional calm under pressure and challenging situations.

A great sport to look at for this is tennis, which is a massively mental game. When a player’s control slips, you often see it in their performance. They don’t lose because they’re not as good at the game. They lose because there was a crack in their mental control, and it undermined their performance.

4. Committed

Athletes with real mental toughness also possess commitment to their goals, training, and dreams. What makes for a committed athlete? High motivation and self-direction. That commitment is what separates good from great. Back to Tennis, John McEnroe talks about what separates the players who make it into a Grand Slam and those who don’t.

“Those who make it are there because they are mentally tougher. They wanted it more.”

True mental toughness and commitment mean that even when you fall from the top, you rededicate yourself, double down, and keep going to rise again.

5. Composure

Control and composure are similar, but while control refers to emotions, composure refers to an athlete’s ability to stay focused and deal with adversity. Let’s switch gears to a new sport. In hockey, players who retaliate are generally the ones who get time in the box. Great hockey players need to learn to keep their composure, even if someone is trying to provoke a reaction.

Managing your emotions and maintaining composure can determine whether you win or lose. As Mack liked to put it, “Keep your cool when the heat is on.”

6. Courage

This one might sound counterintuitive at first, but a mentally resilient athlete is one who isn’t afraid to take a risk. It’s how peak performers manage to achieve great new heights. Believing you can do something (confidence) is one thing, but it’s another thing entirely to try to do it at a critical moment.

Take Olympic freestyle skiers and snowboarders, for example. When you’re tied for that gold medal on the last run and need to pull something exceptional out of the bag to get the top position on the podium, you need to have the courage to give something less comfortable your best shot. That’s what separates the gold from the silver.

7. Consistency

Finally, it takes a certain type of strength and mental toughness to remain calm and perform consistently no matter what. It comes back to that ability to push through adversity, control your emotions, and maintain your composure to continually show up.

Consistency doesn’t just refer to performance, however. It also refers to things like getting to practice, eating well, and giving your all to training, not just games. Mentally tough athletes have the inner strength to keep going no matter what, even sometimes performing their best when feeling their worst.

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Where Do You Lack?

How do you line up with the 7 c’s of mental toughness? While some might be intrinsic to you, others might require diligent practice and mental training—and that’s totally okay. No athlete ever has them all naturally. The rest takes training and tactics to hone that mental edge.

For example, to train for courage, you could try visualization. Visit your mind gym and picture yourself doing that thing that you need to try on the field under pressure perfectly. See yourself doing it over and over again, across conditions. Struggling with confidence? Practice, practice, practice until you trust your body and your mind to pull through. Control; meditate. Composure? Also, meditate.

Mental toughness is a combination of different mind-training mechanisms that will ultimately make you a fierce competitor and resilient athlete. That’s why we’ve made it one of our laws and are wholly committed to honing all seven Cs for our own lives (and games). Those who keep going win.

“Competition is won or lost on the six-inch playing field between the ears.” —Gary Mack