June 4, 2025 • 31 mins
Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt like you just wanted to pull the covers over your head and give up? That feeling of surrender to life's difficulties affects us all, but how you respond to it makes all the difference in your life. Ready to discover how to access your inner strength when life feels overwhelming? Listen now to transform your approach to life's challenges and unlock the power that's always been within you.
Mental toughness isn't what most people think. It's not about gritting your teeth and powering through by sheer force of will. In this profound exploration of inner resilience, join me, Linton Bergsen, as I reveal the counterintuitive truth that real mental toughness often begins with surrender—not to defeat, but to something greater working within you.
This episode takes a fascinating dive into how your nervous system affects your ability to persevere. When faced with challenges, you have two potential responses: feed your sympathetic nervous system (creating anxiety, fear, and worry) or engage your parasympathetic nervous system (promoting calm, clarity, and intuitive solutions). The choice between these two paths represents the foundation of mental toughness.
What makes this approach revolutionary is the understanding that solutions to your most pressing problems often come not from frantic problem-solving, but from slowing down, breathing deeply, and creating space for intuitive guidance. Through concrete examples and practical advice, I demonstrate how this shift in perspective can transform your response to everything from relationship breakups to health concerns.
The most powerful message resonates beyond mere motivation: you have unlimited resources within yourself to overcome any challenge. By developing the resilience to resist negative self-talk and the wisdom to trust your inner guidance, you open doors to possibilities you might never have imagined. Mental toughness becomes a daily practice of mindfulness—a conscious choice to invest in yourself rather than giving up when things get difficult.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Linton Bergsen (00:01):
We lcome to the Self-Realized Podcast with
Linton Bergsen, where you willshatter your limits.
I am not much into theself-help industry as much as
I'm into the self-realizedindividual, which is you, what
matters most to you, how you getthere and the obstacles that
may be in your way.
If you would like to be part ofthis podcast and part of that
(00:22):
discussion, I welcome you herewith an open heart, open mind
and open arms.
So, without further ado, let'sget on with the podcast.
Welcome to episode number 102of the Self-Realized Shatter
(00:47):
Your Limits Podcast.
Don't Give Up On Yourself (00:49):
How to Build Mental Toughness and R
esilience.
Life sometimes can be difficult.
It's difficult at times to keepgoing, to get up, motivated and
wanting to continue on.
Ask yourself this question haveyou ever just felt like turning
over in bed in the morning whenyou wake up?
(01:09):
Pull the covers back over yourhead and stay exactly where you
are.
I know I have.
I know that is something we allexperience.
One of the questions that wewould have to ask ourselves is
this how do we build mentaltoughness and resilience?
How do we not give up onourselves when we feel that is
(01:31):
exactly what we would like to do?
Answering that question isgoing to give you some keys to
opening the doors to manifestingwhat you want on an ongoing
basis, when the going gets tough.
As the saying goes, when thegoing gets tough, the tough get
going, and the only way that youcan do that is to build up
(01:55):
mental toughness and resilienceto external circumstances.
It is something that isrequired as a tool for you to
have on an ongoing basis foryour everyday existence.
One of the mantras that you maywant to have and keep in your
mind is I am not going to giveup on myself, now or ever,
(02:21):
because your life literallydepends on it.
The reason this episode is namedDon't Give Up On Yourself: How
to Build Mental Toughness andResilience is because the first
and the most important thoughtthat you need to have as a
self-realized individual movingforward in this life, especially
(02:43):
when adversity hits, is never,never give up on yourself.
It doesn't matter what anyonesays about you, your past or
what difficult situations may bepresenting themselves to you
now.
Because it's easier,obviously, to keep going when
(03:03):
everything is going well, whenyou want to give up, when you
don't want to continue on.
It's when things areparticularly tough.
Maybe you are going through, orhave gone through the breakup
of a relationship, you've lost ajob, you have financial
situations, a health concern haspresented itself to you.
These are the times in all ofour lives that we feel we want
(03:27):
to give up on ourselves andmoving forward.
Don't give up on yourself,because the only person that can
keep you going is you.
It is fine to have friends, itis fine to have motivating
people around you.
Ultimately, it is your innervoice, and it is you that is
(03:48):
going to be the major force thatis going to ignite the spark
within you to keep that fireburning no matter what.
So how do you build mentaltoughness?
How do you keep that fire going?
How do you keep moving forwardwhen everything in you says I
want to stop.
I just want to scream, I wantto give up, I want to let go, I
(04:10):
am done here.
We've been there, I've beenthere, you've been there,
everybody has been there.
But there is a key.
There's a key to unlock thedoor within yourself of
unlimited internal energy thatallows you to find the answers
(04:33):
that you're looking for, for anysituation that you may find
yourself in, and that energy isignited and is built by the
inner conviction and I meanconviction, I don't mean a light
, maybe I can, perhaps I will,no an inner conviction that you
(04:59):
always have within youeverything that you will ever
need to overcome anything thatis presented to you.
It is the faith within yourselfand the faith within the energy
that is working within you as aself-realized individual that
(05:19):
you are going to call upon totake you through the difficult
times in your life and createmomentum and motivation to
sustain you.
The way you do that is notrelying necessarily on your own
human energy.
There is a place that resideswithin us all resides within you
(05:43):
that, if you access it, defiesany explanation as to how it
works, but it does work.
Let me explain that to you.
You may be at a time right nowwhere you don't have an answer
to anything that is going on inyour life, so you may feel like
giving up on yourself.
(06:04):
That is not the answer, ormental toughness.
That is not how you buildresilience to situations that
are going to continue to occurin your life that you can do
nothing about.
Today's episode is called Don'tGive Up On Yourself: How to
(06:24):
Build Mental Toughness andResilience.
The how-to is what you want toknow, so I'm going to give you
some pointers right now on how Ihave maintained mental
toughness and resilience and howit has worked in my life and
how it can work for you.
When I have reached points in mylife that I don't have an
(06:48):
answer to anything and I'mbeginning to have these negative
thoughts that we all have as asituation or situations evolve
that are not working out for usin the way we would like and we
really don't feel that we havethe ability to cope.
So we may turn, unfortunately,to different methods of coping,
(07:13):
which can be another spiral downin our life which we really
don't want, to go down, roads ofdependency or roads of
negativity that don't lead toany real solutions, because what
you and I really want is asolution to what is going on now
, a positive, impactful solutionthat will positively impact our
(07:37):
lives, ongoing how we can beginto feel better now about
situations that we may want togive up on, now this sounds
counterintuitive, but I'm goingto give you a solution.
Stop trying so hard to find theanswer to your situation, your
(07:59):
problem, your current adversity,whatever you may be going
through, that's making you feelthat you want to give up on
yourself.
Begin to let go, begin to relax, begin to stop looking for the
(08:20):
answers to your situationyourself, relying totally on
your own human thinking andabilities to resolve anything.
Relax and let go.
Allow forces bigger than you tocome in and guide you.
This sounds counterintuitive,but it is, in fact, the key to
(08:44):
building mental toughness andresilience, allowing yourself to
have faith in what will come asyou move yourself out the way.
That is tough.
That is a tough mental attitudeto take because it removes you
(09:09):
out of the way and allowssomething that is working within
you.
Call it God, call it spirit,call it consciousness, call it
cosmic consciousness.
However you would like to termwhat is working within you.
Call whatever is working in youto guide you in the right
(09:32):
direction.
Now contemplate on that for amoment.
Would you agree that that ismental toughness at its highest
understanding?
That you have decided tomentally allow yourself to give
(09:53):
up control of the currentsituation and allow that which
created you through faith andsurrender, calmness and some
solitude and stillness to revealto you the pathway that you
need to go down.
And I will suggest to you that,if you do this, the pathway
(10:16):
that is revealed to you and thesolution that is given to you is
much better and more profoundthan you could have ever come up
with yourself.
Once you allow this to begin tooccur and you remain mentally
tough to stay there, yoursolutions will begin to arrive.
(10:41):
Not the way that you expectthem, not the way that you may
even like them, not even the waythat you may want to will them,
so to speak, into manifestation, but the way you allow them to
manifest because of your ownsurrender, faith in yourself and
(11:03):
faith in something bigger thanyou to work through and in you
to bring about the solutionsthat you want.
That is mental toughness,because your mind is going to
fight that.
Your mental mind is going towant to revert to oh, my
(11:25):
goodness, what am I going to do?
I have to do this.
I have to do that.
Anxiety, depression, fear,because when you feel you don't
have an answer, all you can comeup with within yourself is
anxiety, fear and depression,which leads into that downward
spiral of you believing that youare the source and have to come
(11:46):
up with everything for thesolution that you are seeking.
It is not possible for youmentally to come up with
everything that you would needto to solve what it is that you
need to get an answer to.
There has to be a commitment tosomething bigger than yourself,
on an intuitive level, thatwill allow you to have an answer
(12:11):
that you don't have right now,in a calm, collected, quiet way,
which, again, is not reallywhat we are designed to do.
Part of the answer to today'sepisode how to build mental
toughness means that you aregoing to have to rework what it
(12:38):
is that you have been told, howyou need to solve things, or how
you have had habits andbehaviors in the past to solve
problems and issues that youfind yourself in now.
My suggestion is you would haveto go from wanting to maintain
(12:59):
control and perpetuating, asI've mentioned before, that
cycle of fear, anxiety and worry.
It is human nature to go downthat road when we are left to
our own devices.
Or just become mentally toughin a new way of thinking.
Use more of our spiritualnature and open the door to
(13:24):
building your life in a newpathway that you can then begin
to build as a tool, which issurrender, faith, calm, quiet,
which are very important andnecessary for you to cultivate
so you can have the receptivityto the inner guidance and
(13:54):
answers that will come to you ifyou allow them.
So this is the back and forth,isn't it?
This is the mental toughnessthat I am suggesting that you
begin to use today.
Which one are you going tochoose?
The anxiety, the fear, theuncertainty, the what if all
(14:18):
those mental self-talk, negativeconversations that you can have
?
Or are you going to decidewhich I strongly suggest just to
get quiet for a moment, take awalk, sit down, control your
(14:39):
breath, slow down.
Your central nervous systemcannot take the amount of abuse
that you or I or anybody wantsto continually give it,
bombarded with the stress andthe noise that we put onto it.
And when we do continually,there's a term for that, called
(15:04):
a nervous breakdown.
Your central nervous system hastwo responses, essentially
fight or flight, which is asympathetic response, or the
parasympathetic response, whichis more relaxing.
Your breath is slower and so isyour heart rate.
(15:26):
When you think about how you'regoing to respond in life and
you work on your mentaltoughness, you can simply decide
am I going to feed mysympathetic nervous system or am
I going to feed myparasympathetic nervous system?
Sympathetic, fight or flight,anxiety, fear, worry,
(15:51):
parasympathetic relax, meditate,breathe.
This is how you begin todevelop mental toughness and how
you don't give up on yourself.
You begin to consciously beaware of which part of your
central nervous system you wantto constantly feed.
(16:15):
You cannot get information thatis useful to you and intuitive
information if you areconstantly in the sympathetic,
fight or flight, fear and worrymindset, because your mind is
going to drive your centralnervous system.
If you calm your mind with theright type of thoughts and you
(16:37):
build mental toughness on anongoing basis to do so, then you
go into the parasympatheticnervous system, which allows you
to be in a more calm,meditative state, slowing your
heart rate, and you do makebetter decisions and come up
with better solutions when youare in that state, not only do
(16:57):
you come up with betterdecisions and better suggestions
as how you move forward, thereis a deep spiritual component to
this.
In the parasympathetic mode,you're also allowing a greater
spiritual awareness to occurwithin you, to communicate with
you.
That's why, in meditation, youwouldn't be in a sympathetic
(17:17):
state in your nervous system.
You'd be more in a slow down,parasympathetic state.
Your mental toughness is goingto drive those two states of
being.
Your thoughts, the minute youhave them are going to drive
that fork in the road.
You can decide this.
(17:39):
Oh my goodness, what am I goingto do?
My life is falling apart.
I don't want to get out of bed.
This is terrible.
Just think of the pace.
Just think of how that pace ofthought, that pace of inner
dialogue, is already amping upyour central nervous system and
your breathing.
Or you could do this.
I'm going to slow my speechdown in my mind and think at
(18:03):
this rate, with these words,this self-talk.
You know, I don't have theanswers right now, but I'm going
to take some time to take awalk.
Let things be, slow my heartrate down and allow my mind to
be still and my central nervoussystem to relax.
(18:27):
That is mental toughness.
You are consciously choosing totake a different mental approach
to the situation.
You are seeking out a placewithin yourself that is more
beneficial to your well-being,your health, and solutions that
you're trying to seek at pointswhere you may want to give up on
(18:50):
yourself.
Giving up on yourself is not anoption.
It's just desperation.
It's anxiety, fear and worrytaking over your mind.
When you begin to slow thingsdown, you won't want to give up
on yourself.
You will begin to feel so muchbetter and there will be a
(19:11):
spiritual intervention, so tospeak, an intuitive intervention
, a surrender, a feeling withinyou that simply says this to you
on a mental level, withoutexplanation.
If you persist with doing this,I don't know what I'm going to
do, but I do know that somethingis going to turn up, it's going
(19:37):
to work out for me.
Now, why would you say this toyourself?
Let me suggest to you why.
Because you can feel it.
You can feel it.
You don't know why you feelsomething's coming up, something
is going to work out for you.
I know we've all had thoseunexplainable feelings, but it
(19:58):
will come up and you'll walk andyou'll talk and you'll present
yourself differently from thisplace of centered calmness, as
opposed to hyper fear and worry.
And therefore, when you presentyourself differently, the
(20:19):
universe responds differentlyand things begin to appear for
you.
They cannot appear for you inan intuitive sense or manifest
into reality as an unforeseenoffer, or someone coming up to
you and saying have you everthought about this?
(20:42):
Or I have this going on.
Maybe you want to be a part ofit, or a health problem that you
have, that someone had before,and you met someone and they can
help you with.
There's a myriad of things thathappen when you are in a calmer
state.
So how do you not give up onyourself?
That is the title of today'sepisode.
Simply choose to be in a calmerstate of mind.
(21:05):
You will feel physically,mentally and emotionally better,
and it will allow you toreceive answers from so many
different parts of yourself thatthere is no other way that you
can.
Answers, inwardly and outwardly, for you to act upon, from
(21:27):
forces that you may not entirelyunderstand.
That is how intuition works,giving you answers that are not
always logical.
That is mental toughness,because your old habits and this
world, the way it is set up,will want you to remain in a
(21:50):
sympathetic state.
Me, me, me, I, I, I.
I have to come up with, I haveto get crazy, I have to get
myself in a worried, fearfulstate in order for me to find
solutions.
That is not true.
You can only create moredetriment to yourself by living
in that space.
The truth, the real mentaltoughness, the real decision
(22:12):
within you is this.
Surrender, calm, faith, developthat, or worry, fear and
anxiety.
Develop that sympathetic,parasympathetic.
Your body is designed to actupon whatever you decide to feed
it mentally.
(22:35):
Now, of course, there is a partof resilience that comes up in
this, which I've mentioned intoday's title Don't Give Up on
Yourself (22:43):
How to Build Mental Toughness and Resilience.
You have to build resilience inanything you do, because when
you first start, what happensis, is that it is too hard
sometimes and you want to giveup.
Now I talk about in episodenumber 96, how to discover the
(23:08):
power of resilience in moredetail.
If you would like to listen tothat episode.
What resilience basically is isthis when you feel that you
want to give up, you resist it.
You have the resilience to sayI'm going to keep moving forward
.
You keep going.
(23:30):
You resist the temptation.
You resist that voice withinyour head that says this is too
hard, I don't want to do thisanymore.
That is what resilience is.
Anybody who has done anythinghas mastered resilience.
When they reach a point thatthey can break through and get
(23:53):
to victory, it's because they'reat that point where they are
resilient enough and have acombination of mental toughness
and resilience to push forward.
Look at an athlete, for example.
When an athlete is at thatpoint of breaking through, match
point.
Whatever is going on, we canall relate at that moment of
(24:16):
truth.
You see them going to a statemental toughness it's
concentration.
Everything has come to thispoint of.
Can I push through at thispoint and get my mental
toughness in place where itneeds to be and resist the
negative self-talk that mightcome up at this moment and say,
(24:40):
oh, match point, I am going tofail, I can't do this.
No, because they've taughtthemselves to be mentally tough
and resist negative talk comingin at the most important moments
of their life and theirperformance, and that is what
(25:00):
you can do and are going to do .
You are going to have mentaltoughness by choosing to remain
calm, going to faith andsurrender and work with the
parasympathetic part of yournervous system.
You're going to have enoughresilience within yourself to
keep moving forward, even whenthe going gets tough, and you
(25:25):
start on this new pathway of notgiving up on yourself, building
mental toughness and beingresilient enough to keep going.
One of the things aboutresilience is this when you
start to try something new,which this could be for you in
different areas of your mind,not allowing yourself to get
(25:47):
into that fear and anxiety andbe more calm.
As I've mentioned, you're goingto have to resist the old
behavior.
That's it in a nutshell.
So when you listen to thisepisode and you think about
giving up on yourself, justremember this you have a choice.
(26:10):
Either the way you're set up asa human being, you can get into
the sympathetic nervous systemfear, worry and anxiety or the
parasympathetic nervous system,which is surrender, faith,
letting go, watch your breathing, walk in nature, remain calm,
(26:30):
surrender, work with faith andintuition to help you come up
with solutions and have theresilience and resistance to
stay in that place so you canget the results that you want
and you can begin to make thistype of thinking a behavior
change, a mental behavior change, a mental toughness that you
(26:52):
are now beginning to develop, soyou can use it, ongoing every
day in your life, to shape yourlife in any way that you would
like.
When you contemplate mentaltoughness and resilience, it is
an everyday, practicalapplication that you are
consciously using, whether yourecognize it as such or not.
(27:15):
For example, if you decided youwanted to go on a diet, there
is a mental toughness that goesalong with that.
There's a choice between whatyou choose to eat and what you
choose not to, if you want to goto the gym or you don't go to
the gym.
That mental toughness is goingto determine the results that
(27:38):
you receive.
Your resilience to fight offany negative thoughts and
distractions that may come up.
People want you to do certainthings, go certain places,
perhaps even get you off yourdiet and exercise regimen.
You have to resist that.
(27:59):
You have to be resilient.
Mental toughness is a fabric ofyour everyday life and if you
use the example of the diet thatI'm giving you now, are you
going to choose to give up onyourself and go back to your old
way of eating, your old way ofthinking.
Maybe I'll just have this onepiece of pizza or will you
(28:23):
continue to invest in yourself,not give up on yourself and say
no to that piece of pizza?
Go the extra mile in the gym,because if you do, you will
understand that your life isdependent on you never giving up
on yourself, building thatmental toughness and being
(28:46):
resilient in everything you do.
It's simply a way of life.
It's simply the way you chooseto live your life, because
giving up on yourself meansyou're giving up on your goals.
Not being mentally tough meansyou don't have the ability to
choose your own self-talk andwhat it is that you're telling
(29:07):
yourself you're capable of.
And not being resilient meansthat with every distraction that
comes up, you are going to fallprey to it.
So, looking at the title oftoday's episode Don't Give Up On
How to Build Mental Toughness and Resilience really
(29:27):
means to you by investing inyourself and the state of your
mind, which is reallymindfulness.
Mental toughness is truthfullymindfulness.
Being mindful about how youfeel and think about yourself,
(29:50):
and then going forward withconviction and resilience to
achieve whatever it is that youset out to accomplish in your
life is a cornerstone, a veryimportant foundation for you to
own and have for you to have asuccessful life.
Go forward with strength, goforward with resilience.
Never give up on yourself.
(30:11):
Never give up on your dreams,because the only person
ultimately, that can bringanything about is you.
And when you understand that,you have to ask yourself this
question.
Why would you ever give up onyou?
Never get to the point whereyou feel defeated.
(30:32):
Always understand that you haveunlimited resources within
yourself that you can access anduse to manifest into reality
any dream, any goal that youwish to accomplish in your life.
Through the power of mentaltoughness and resilience.
(30:54):
Anything and everything isavailable to you because you,
ultimately, are your own majorresource.
Understand that and the key toevery door is open to you.
To walk through and live thelife that you truly want and
(31:16):
deserve.
I sincerely appreciate youlistening to the podcast.
Please subscribe so you do notmiss any upcoming episodes.
Whatever platform you're on,please leave a rating and review
.
I would greatly appreciate it.
Any additional information onme, Linton Bergsen and my
five-star reviewed book,Purposeful Vision, is available
(31:36):
at selfrealized.
com, which is all one word.
You can also leave any commentsor suggestions on the website.
I look forward to connectingwith you very soon and take good
care of yourself.
We lcome to the Self-Realized Podcast with
Linton Bergsen, where you willshatter your limits.
I am not much into theself-help industry as much as
I'm into the self-realizedindividual, which is you, what
matters most to you, how you getthere and the obstacles that
may be in your way.
If you would like to be part ofthis podcast and part of that
(00:22):
discussion, I welcome you herewith an open heart, open mind
and open arms.
So, without further ado, let'sget on with the podcast.
Welcome to episode number 102of the Self-Realized Shatter
(00:47):
Your Limits Podcast.
Don't Give Up On Yourself (00:49):
How to Build Mental Toughness and R
esilience.
Life sometimes can be difficult.
It's difficult at times to keepgoing, to get up, motivated and
wanting to continue on.
Ask yourself this question haveyou ever just felt like turning
over in bed in the morning whenyou wake up?
(01:09):
Pull the covers back over yourhead and stay exactly where you
are.
I know I have.
I know that is something we allexperience.
One of the questions that wewould have to ask ourselves is
this how do we build mentaltoughness and resilience?
How do we not give up onourselves when we feel that is
(01:31):
exactly what we would like to do?
Answering that question isgoing to give you some keys to
opening the doors to manifestingwhat you want on an ongoing
basis, when the going gets tough.
As the saying goes, when thegoing gets tough, the tough get
going, and the only way that youcan do that is to build up
(01:55):
mental toughness and resilienceto external circumstances.
It is something that isrequired as a tool for you to
have on an ongoing basis foryour everyday existence.
One of the mantras that you maywant to have and keep in your
mind is I am not going to giveup on myself, now or ever,
(02:21):
because your life literallydepends on it.
The reason this episode is namedDon't Give Up On Yourself: How
to Build Mental Toughness andResilience is because the first
and the most important thoughtthat you need to have as a
self-realized individual movingforward in this life, especially
(02:43):
when adversity hits, is never,never give up on yourself.
It doesn't matter what anyonesays about you, your past or
what difficult situations may bepresenting themselves to you
now.
Because it's easier,obviously, to keep going when
(03:03):
everything is going well, whenyou want to give up, when you
don't want to continue on.
It's when things areparticularly tough.
Maybe you are going through, orhave gone through the breakup
of a relationship, you've lost ajob, you have financial
situations, a health concern haspresented itself to you.
These are the times in all ofour lives that we feel we want
(03:27):
to give up on ourselves andmoving forward.
Don't give up on yourself,because the only person that can
keep you going is you.
It is fine to have friends, itis fine to have motivating
people around you.
Ultimately, it is your innervoice, and it is you that is
(03:48):
going to be the major force thatis going to ignite the spark
within you to keep that fireburning no matter what.
So how do you build mentaltoughness?
How do you keep that fire going?
How do you keep moving forwardwhen everything in you says I
want to stop.
I just want to scream, I wantto give up, I want to let go, I
(04:10):
am done here.
We've been there, I've beenthere, you've been there,
everybody has been there.
But there is a key.
There's a key to unlock thedoor within yourself of
unlimited internal energy thatallows you to find the answers
(04:33):
that you're looking for, for anysituation that you may find
yourself in, and that energy isignited and is built by the
inner conviction and I meanconviction, I don't mean a light
, maybe I can, perhaps I will,no an inner conviction that you
(04:59):
always have within youeverything that you will ever
need to overcome anything thatis presented to you.
It is the faith within yourselfand the faith within the energy
that is working within you as aself-realized individual that
(05:19):
you are going to call upon totake you through the difficult
times in your life and createmomentum and motivation to
sustain you.
The way you do that is notrelying necessarily on your own
human energy.
There is a place that resideswithin us all resides within you
(05:43):
that, if you access it, defiesany explanation as to how it
works, but it does work.
Let me explain that to you.
You may be at a time right nowwhere you don't have an answer
to anything that is going on inyour life, so you may feel like
giving up on yourself.
(06:04):
That is not the answer, ormental toughness.
That is not how you buildresilience to situations that
are going to continue to occurin your life that you can do
nothing about.
Today's episode is called Don'tGive Up On Yourself: How to
(06:24):
Build Mental Toughness andResilience.
The how-to is what you want toknow, so I'm going to give you
some pointers right now on how Ihave maintained mental
toughness and resilience and howit has worked in my life and
how it can work for you.
When I have reached points in mylife that I don't have an
(06:48):
answer to anything and I'mbeginning to have these negative
thoughts that we all have as asituation or situations evolve
that are not working out for usin the way we would like and we
really don't feel that we havethe ability to cope.
So we may turn, unfortunately,to different methods of coping,
(07:13):
which can be another spiral downin our life which we really
don't want, to go down, roads ofdependency or roads of
negativity that don't lead toany real solutions, because what
you and I really want is asolution to what is going on now
, a positive, impactful solutionthat will positively impact our
(07:37):
lives, ongoing how we can beginto feel better now about
situations that we may want togive up on, now this sounds
counterintuitive, but I'm goingto give you a solution.
Stop trying so hard to find theanswer to your situation, your
(07:59):
problem, your current adversity,whatever you may be going
through, that's making you feelthat you want to give up on
yourself.
Begin to let go, begin to relax, begin to stop looking for the
(08:20):
answers to your situationyourself, relying totally on
your own human thinking andabilities to resolve anything.
Relax and let go.
Allow forces bigger than you tocome in and guide you.
This sounds counterintuitive,but it is, in fact, the key to
(08:44):
building mental toughness andresilience, allowing yourself to
have faith in what will come asyou move yourself out the way.
That is tough.
That is a tough mental attitudeto take because it removes you
(09:09):
out of the way and allowssomething that is working within
you.
Call it God, call it spirit,call it consciousness, call it
cosmic consciousness.
However you would like to termwhat is working within you.
Call whatever is working in youto guide you in the right
(09:32):
direction.
Now contemplate on that for amoment.
Would you agree that that ismental toughness at its highest
understanding?
That you have decided tomentally allow yourself to give
(09:53):
up control of the currentsituation and allow that which
created you through faith andsurrender, calmness and some
solitude and stillness to revealto you the pathway that you
need to go down.
And I will suggest to you that,if you do this, the pathway
(10:16):
that is revealed to you and thesolution that is given to you is
much better and more profoundthan you could have ever come up
with yourself.
Once you allow this to begin tooccur and you remain mentally
tough to stay there, yoursolutions will begin to arrive.
(10:41):
Not the way that you expectthem, not the way that you may
even like them, not even the waythat you may want to will them,
so to speak, into manifestation, but the way you allow them to
manifest because of your ownsurrender, faith in yourself and
(11:03):
faith in something bigger thanyou to work through and in you
to bring about the solutionsthat you want.
That is mental toughness,because your mind is going to
fight that.
Your mental mind is going towant to revert to oh, my
(11:25):
goodness, what am I going to do?
I have to do this.
I have to do that.
Anxiety, depression, fear,because when you feel you don't
have an answer, all you can comeup with within yourself is
anxiety, fear and depression,which leads into that downward
spiral of you believing that youare the source and have to come
(11:46):
up with everything for thesolution that you are seeking.
It is not possible for youmentally to come up with
everything that you would needto to solve what it is that you
need to get an answer to.
There has to be a commitment tosomething bigger than yourself,
on an intuitive level, thatwill allow you to have an answer
(12:11):
that you don't have right now,in a calm, collected, quiet way,
which, again, is not reallywhat we are designed to do.
Part of the answer to today'sepisode how to build mental
toughness means that you aregoing to have to rework what it
(12:38):
is that you have been told, howyou need to solve things, or how
you have had habits andbehaviors in the past to solve
problems and issues that youfind yourself in now.
My suggestion is you would haveto go from wanting to maintain
(12:59):
control and perpetuating, asI've mentioned before, that
cycle of fear, anxiety and worry.
It is human nature to go downthat road when we are left to
our own devices.
Or just become mentally toughin a new way of thinking.
Use more of our spiritualnature and open the door to
(13:24):
building your life in a newpathway that you can then begin
to build as a tool, which issurrender, faith, calm, quiet,
which are very important andnecessary for you to cultivate
so you can have the receptivityto the inner guidance and
(13:54):
answers that will come to you ifyou allow them.
So this is the back and forth,isn't it?
This is the mental toughnessthat I am suggesting that you
begin to use today.
Which one are you going tochoose?
The anxiety, the fear, theuncertainty, the what if all
(14:18):
those mental self-talk, negativeconversations that you can have
?
Or are you going to decidewhich I strongly suggest just to
get quiet for a moment, take awalk, sit down, control your
(14:39):
breath, slow down.
Your central nervous systemcannot take the amount of abuse
that you or I or anybody wantsto continually give it,
bombarded with the stress andthe noise that we put onto it.
And when we do continually,there's a term for that, called
(15:04):
a nervous breakdown.
Your central nervous system hastwo responses, essentially
fight or flight, which is asympathetic response, or the
parasympathetic response, whichis more relaxing.
Your breath is slower and so isyour heart rate.
(15:26):
When you think about how you'regoing to respond in life and
you work on your mentaltoughness, you can simply decide
am I going to feed mysympathetic nervous system or am
I going to feed myparasympathetic nervous system?
Sympathetic, fight or flight,anxiety, fear, worry,
(15:51):
parasympathetic relax, meditate,breathe.
This is how you begin todevelop mental toughness and how
you don't give up on yourself.
You begin to consciously beaware of which part of your
central nervous system you wantto constantly feed.
(16:15):
You cannot get information thatis useful to you and intuitive
information if you areconstantly in the sympathetic,
fight or flight, fear and worrymindset, because your mind is
going to drive your centralnervous system.
If you calm your mind with theright type of thoughts and you
(16:37):
build mental toughness on anongoing basis to do so, then you
go into the parasympatheticnervous system, which allows you
to be in a more calm,meditative state, slowing your
heart rate, and you do makebetter decisions and come up
with better solutions when youare in that state, not only do
(16:57):
you come up with betterdecisions and better suggestions
as how you move forward, thereis a deep spiritual component to
this.
In the parasympathetic mode,you're also allowing a greater
spiritual awareness to occurwithin you, to communicate with
you.
That's why, in meditation, youwouldn't be in a sympathetic
(17:17):
state in your nervous system.
You'd be more in a slow down,parasympathetic state.
Your mental toughness is goingto drive those two states of
being.
Your thoughts, the minute youhave them are going to drive
that fork in the road.
You can decide this.
(17:39):
Oh my goodness, what am I goingto do?
My life is falling apart.
I don't want to get out of bed.
This is terrible.
Just think of the pace.
Just think of how that pace ofthought, that pace of inner
dialogue, is already amping upyour central nervous system and
your breathing.
Or you could do this.
I'm going to slow my speechdown in my mind and think at
(18:03):
this rate, with these words,this self-talk.
You know, I don't have theanswers right now, but I'm going
to take some time to take awalk.
Let things be, slow my heartrate down and allow my mind to
be still and my central nervoussystem to relax.
(18:27):
That is mental toughness.
You are consciously choosing totake a different mental approach
to the situation.
You are seeking out a placewithin yourself that is more
beneficial to your well-being,your health, and solutions that
you're trying to seek at pointswhere you may want to give up on
(18:50):
yourself.
Giving up on yourself is not anoption.
It's just desperation.
It's anxiety, fear and worrytaking over your mind.
When you begin to slow thingsdown, you won't want to give up
on yourself.
You will begin to feel so muchbetter and there will be a
(19:11):
spiritual intervention, so tospeak, an intuitive intervention
, a surrender, a feeling withinyou that simply says this to you
on a mental level, withoutexplanation.
If you persist with doing this,I don't know what I'm going to
do, but I do know that somethingis going to turn up, it's going
(19:37):
to work out for me.
Now, why would you say this toyourself?
Let me suggest to you why.
Because you can feel it.
You can feel it.
You don't know why you feelsomething's coming up, something
is going to work out for you.
I know we've all had thoseunexplainable feelings, but it
(19:58):
will come up and you'll walk andyou'll talk and you'll present
yourself differently from thisplace of centered calmness, as
opposed to hyper fear and worry.
And therefore, when you presentyourself differently, the
(20:19):
universe responds differentlyand things begin to appear for
you.
They cannot appear for you inan intuitive sense or manifest
into reality as an unforeseenoffer, or someone coming up to
you and saying have you everthought about this?
(20:42):
Or I have this going on.
Maybe you want to be a part ofit, or a health problem that you
have, that someone had before,and you met someone and they can
help you with.
There's a myriad of things thathappen when you are in a calmer
state.
So how do you not give up onyourself?
That is the title of today'sepisode.
Simply choose to be in a calmerstate of mind.
(21:05):
You will feel physically,mentally and emotionally better,
and it will allow you toreceive answers from so many
different parts of yourself thatthere is no other way that you
can.
Answers, inwardly and outwardly, for you to act upon, from
(21:27):
forces that you may not entirelyunderstand.
That is how intuition works,giving you answers that are not
always logical.
That is mental toughness,because your old habits and this
world, the way it is set up,will want you to remain in a
(21:50):
sympathetic state.
Me, me, me, I, I, I.
I have to come up with, I haveto get crazy, I have to get
myself in a worried, fearfulstate in order for me to find
solutions.
That is not true.
You can only create moredetriment to yourself by living
in that space.
The truth, the real mentaltoughness, the real decision
(22:12):
within you is this.
Surrender, calm, faith, developthat, or worry, fear and
anxiety.
Develop that sympathetic,parasympathetic.
Your body is designed to actupon whatever you decide to feed
it mentally.
(22:35):
Now, of course, there is a partof resilience that comes up in
this, which I've mentioned intoday's title Don't Give Up on
Yourself (22:43):
How to Build Mental Toughness and Resilience.
You have to build resilience inanything you do, because when
you first start, what happensis, is that it is too hard
sometimes and you want to giveup.
Now I talk about in episodenumber 96, how to discover the
(23:08):
power of resilience in moredetail.
If you would like to listen tothat episode.
What resilience basically is isthis when you feel that you
want to give up, you resist it.
You have the resilience to sayI'm going to keep moving forward
.
You keep going.
(23:30):
You resist the temptation.
You resist that voice withinyour head that says this is too
hard, I don't want to do thisanymore.
That is what resilience is.
Anybody who has done anythinghas mastered resilience.
When they reach a point thatthey can break through and get
(23:53):
to victory, it's because they'reat that point where they are
resilient enough and have acombination of mental toughness
and resilience to push forward.
Look at an athlete, for example.
When an athlete is at thatpoint of breaking through, match
point.
Whatever is going on, we canall relate at that moment of
(24:16):
truth.
You see them going to a statemental toughness it's
concentration.
Everything has come to thispoint of.
Can I push through at thispoint and get my mental
toughness in place where itneeds to be and resist the
negative self-talk that mightcome up at this moment and say,
(24:40):
oh, match point, I am going tofail, I can't do this.
No, because they've taughtthemselves to be mentally tough
and resist negative talk comingin at the most important moments
of their life and theirperformance, and that is what
(25:00):
you can do and are going to do .
You are going to have mentaltoughness by choosing to remain
calm, going to faith andsurrender and work with the
parasympathetic part of yournervous system.
You're going to have enoughresilience within yourself to
keep moving forward, even whenthe going gets tough, and you
(25:25):
start on this new pathway of notgiving up on yourself, building
mental toughness and beingresilient enough to keep going.
One of the things aboutresilience is this when you
start to try something new,which this could be for you in
different areas of your mind,not allowing yourself to get
(25:47):
into that fear and anxiety andbe more calm.
As I've mentioned, you're goingto have to resist the old
behavior.
That's it in a nutshell.
So when you listen to thisepisode and you think about
giving up on yourself, justremember this you have a choice.
(26:10):
Either the way you're set up asa human being, you can get into
the sympathetic nervous systemfear, worry and anxiety or the
parasympathetic nervous system,which is surrender, faith,
letting go, watch your breathing, walk in nature, remain calm,
(26:30):
surrender, work with faith andintuition to help you come up
with solutions and have theresilience and resistance to
stay in that place so you canget the results that you want
and you can begin to make thistype of thinking a behavior
change, a mental behavior change, a mental toughness that you
(26:52):
are now beginning to develop, soyou can use it, ongoing every
day in your life, to shape yourlife in any way that you would
like.
When you contemplate mentaltoughness and resilience, it is
an everyday, practicalapplication that you are
consciously using, whether yourecognize it as such or not.
(27:15):
For example, if you decided youwanted to go on a diet, there
is a mental toughness that goesalong with that.
There's a choice between whatyou choose to eat and what you
choose not to, if you want to goto the gym or you don't go to
the gym.
That mental toughness is goingto determine the results that
(27:38):
you receive.
Your resilience to fight offany negative thoughts and
distractions that may come up.
People want you to do certainthings, go certain places,
perhaps even get you off yourdiet and exercise regimen.
You have to resist that.
(27:59):
You have to be resilient.
Mental toughness is a fabric ofyour everyday life and if you
use the example of the diet thatI'm giving you now, are you
going to choose to give up onyourself and go back to your old
way of eating, your old way ofthinking.
Maybe I'll just have this onepiece of pizza or will you
(28:23):
continue to invest in yourself,not give up on yourself and say
no to that piece of pizza?
Go the extra mile in the gym,because if you do, you will
understand that your life isdependent on you never giving up
on yourself, building thatmental toughness and being
(28:46):
resilient in everything you do.
It's simply a way of life.
It's simply the way you chooseto live your life, because
giving up on yourself meansyou're giving up on your goals.
Not being mentally tough meansyou don't have the ability to
choose your own self-talk andwhat it is that you're telling
(29:07):
yourself you're capable of.
And not being resilient meansthat with every distraction that
comes up, you are going to fallprey to it.
So, looking at the title oftoday's episode Don't Give Up On
How to Build Mental Toughness and Resilience really
(29:27):
means to you by investing inyourself and the state of your
mind, which is reallymindfulness.
Mental toughness is truthfullymindfulness.
Being mindful about how youfeel and think about yourself,
(29:50):
and then going forward withconviction and resilience to
achieve whatever it is that youset out to accomplish in your
life is a cornerstone, a veryimportant foundation for you to
own and have for you to have asuccessful life.
Go forward with strength, goforward with resilience.
Never give up on yourself.
(30:11):
Never give up on your dreams,because the only person
ultimately, that can bringanything about is you.
And when you understand that,you have to ask yourself this
question.
Why would you ever give up onyou?
Never get to the point whereyou feel defeated.
(30:32):
Always understand that you haveunlimited resources within
yourself that you can access anduse to manifest into reality
any dream, any goal that youwish to accomplish in your life.
Through the power of mentaltoughness and resilience.
(30:54):
Anything and everything isavailable to you because you,
ultimately, are your own majorresource.
Understand that and the key toevery door is open to you.
To walk through and live thelife that you truly want and
(31:16):
deserve.
I sincerely appreciate youlistening to the podcast.
Please subscribe so you do notmiss any upcoming episodes.
Whatever platform you're on,please leave a rating and review
.
I would greatly appreciate it.
Any additional information onme, Linton Bergsen and my
five-star reviewed book,Purposeful Vision, is available
(31:36):
at selfrealized.
com, which is all one word.
You can also leave any commentsor suggestions on the website.
I look forward to connectingwith you very soon and take good
care of yourself.
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