How To Build Mental Strength

How to build mental strength kerstinogard.com/2020/04/12/how-to-build-mental-strength/ kerstinogard

The times we are going through now are challenging.

Some years ago I found myself in a situation where I had to learn how to build mental strength, and I found my own tools to do that.

It is important to know how to build mental strength, because life WILL throw us challenges, and if we are mentally resilient, we go through those times with more ease.

These are the techniques I used to build mental strength:

1. Body relaxation exercises.

It might sound strange that my most important tool for building up mental strength, is a physical exercise. But the physical and mental parts of us are interlinked.

In a crisis situation, our body and mind goes into stress-mode, and we might feel overwhelmed with anxiety. Through body relaxation exercises we can learn how to bring down our body’s stress levels, and this in turn will help our minds to function better.

I found soothing guided body relaxation visualizations on YouTube, and was doing them repeatedly. Being guided by someone’s voice made it easier to focus, but Iater I also learned to do my own body relaxation exercises. Bringing stress levels down helps your mind to function in a rational mode, instead of reacting in panic.

Learning how to do this gave me better control over my body’s stress responses, and a sense of being in control overall.

2. Meditation

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This was the second most important tool really. In meditation you quiet your mind and this automatically relaxes your body, since it is often your thoughts of worry that gives you anxiety or overwhelm.

Meditation puts you into contact with your “inner being”, your emotions. It helps you to create contact with your body, to hear your body’s signals better.

It wasn’t easy for me to learn to quiet my mind. I was practicing meditation for a year, before I for the first time experienced a moment of complete quietness inside my head.

I still remember it distinctly, I was coming out of the shower and drying my hair, and for a second there was no thoughts in my head, just emptiness. It felt almost scary, like a big void. But then this void became a safe place. It helped me create a space inside of me where I could go to find peace, no matter what was going on in the outside world.

3. Yoga Yoga played an important part for me in learning how to build mental strength.

Mental health is deeply connected to physical balance. Exercising the body can balance and calm the mind.

Focusing on breathing and yoga postures takes the attention away from rambling thoughts and helps us be present in the body, and simply exist in the moment.

4. Music and dancing I would watch YouTube videos, and some music really moved me. It helped me to connect with and express my emotions, and this was very healing.

Through dance, my body was expressing itself, and releasing trapped emotions, a lot of anger, and grief. It helped me to connect with myself.

Strengthening the connection to ourself and to our bodies, builds up our inner confidence, and this in turn makes us mentally stronger.

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I could also release trapped stress energy. The sheer exercise of dancing was also good for my body, releasing endorphins, and calming down my system.

5. Time in Nature.

Being in nature has a healing effect of us. It calms our nervous system.

In nature we feel that we can just be, and that we are accepted just as we are.

We can be ourselves.

The connection to self is one key element in mental strength. Feeling accepted nurtures and strengthens us.

Developing good habits is how to build mental strength I took on the attitude that what I was doing was a bit like going to the mental gym.

Building mental strength, is like building up physical strength. It takes practice and dedication. You need to hang out at the mental gym and practice, for some time, before you see results.

But if you keep at it, you will see them.

Below is one of my favourite channels for yoga and meditations. Enjoy!

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/AYdQUS7jfPA

I hope you all come out of these trying times mentally stronger!

Kerstin Kerstins Digital Business Buildingsite – https://kerstinogard.com/ Six Figure Mentors (SFM) – https://kerstinogard.com/start/how-itworks

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