Many people have the perception that today’s youth are not mentally tough. Some argue that young people have been too protected and, as a result, have not developed adequate skills to deal with adversity. Others point to the disruption and confusion of the past decade and uncertainty of the future as delaying and distracting students from developing effective coping strategies and skills. Still others blame social media and an expectation for immediate gratification. Regardless, it seems that today’s students are more emotionally vulnerable and externally dependent than past generations, and they find it more challenging to deal with life.
Regardless of whether this perception is correct, mental toughness is an important life skill. Helping students to become more resilient and better able to engage in life’s challenges is a worthy endeavor. We need to understand the characteristics of mental toughness in order to nurture it.
To be clear, mental toughness is not about acting tough, denying emotions, or being unkind. Mental toughness involves developing resilience, courage, and confidence to take smart risks, learn from mistakes, and press forward after setbacks. Here are ten ways we can help students to develop mental toughness:
- Reinforce the importance of using effort, strategy, and persistence to overcome challenges. Coach students to experience the benefits of sticking with significant conflicts and problems until they find solutions.
- Give students opportunities to practice solving problems independently. Present dilemmas and situations for students to study, deliberate on, and test strategies for solving before providing answers. Allowing students to struggle gives them more ownership and often generates greater commitment to learning.
- Teach students to set goals. Follow up by coaching them to define discrete steps, establish progress benchmarks, monitor their progress, and celebrate their success.
- Coach students to reflect, examine, and re-engage after successes—and setbacks. The process can help students to understand their strengths and areas in need of improvement.
- Have students practice positive self-talk. Identify useful, meaningful affirmations. Coach students to recognize unhelpful and negative thinking and replace it with positive, productive perspectives. Encourage students to avoid self-deprecation and defeatist thinking.
- Teach students to accept, sort, and learn from feedback. While among the most powerful ways to build new learning and skills, feedback can be difficult to accept. Coach students to listen closely to feedback, examine how they can use it, and apply what is useful as soon as it’s practical.
- Discourage “either/or” thinking. Coach students to examine positions, perspectives, and problems to see variations, variables, and values that contain elements of potential agreement—or at least understanding. There is much that is valuable and worth examining between “all” and “nothing,” “perfect” and “horrible,” and “good” and “evil.”
- Nurture character. Character building does not have to be controversial. There is near-universal agreement on core traits such as honesty, responsibility, empathy, compassion, and fairness.
- Teach and have students practice focusing. Point out that focusing typically involves making thinking connections and resisting mental distractions. Challenge students to engage in deep and extended concentration. Encourage them to set goals to gradually extend the length of their focus.
- Reinforce the value of gratitude. Despite life’s disappointments and frustrations, there almost always remains much for which to be thankful. Developing the practice of noticing what is good in life and celebrating what is positive can help to balance missteps and setbacks with hope and optimism.
Mental toughness is a key skill to generate success in this changing world. Depending on the age and maturity of your students, not all these strategies to help your students develop mental toughness may fit. Feel free to sort and adjust the steps you will take based on what you know about your students. The key is to expose students to challenges, setbacks, and disappointments in a setting that is safe, supportive, and nurturing.
