Have you ever felt like you were struggling to stay on top of things in your life?  It’s so incredibly frustrating to feel as though you’re capable of more, but you’re holding yourself back because you’ve lost your mental edge. Lots of people strive for years before figuring out what works for them, and that’s precious time wasted. That’s why today we’re going to talk through five tips that you can begin using today to develop your mental edge!

Developing a mental edge is more than just learning how to exercise our willpower and remain disciplined. It requires ongoing work and commitment to practicing certain skills every single day. These skills include establishing habits that enable us to engage in regular self-improvement and personal development. All of these skills give us a mental edge.

These habits will serve you well. Because everyone is going to experience challenges throughout their life that they will have to cope with and overcome. Developing a mental edge and mental strength is the best way for you to prepare yourself to triumph over these challenges. When obstacles inevitably arise you’ll have a mental edge over everyone else that will allow you to continue thriving through difficult times.

There are many ways that we can begin practicing mental strength and developing a strong mental edge. I’ve listed five strategies that will help you begin developing a mental edge that will put you in a position to succeed!

Before We Go Any Further Excellence Addiction Team!

Imagine a life where you finally weren’t being held back by your self-limiting beliefs? Imagine if you unleashed the full potential of your mind!

If that idea lights a fire inside of you then pick up your FREE copy of the “Mindset Development Workbook”. As you work through it you’ll begin developing a winning mindset to unleash your full potential. It’ll walk you through how to get a quick win and show you how to begin building your unbreakable mind!

All you have to do is let me know where you want me to send it!

Additionally, you’ll get free access to our monthly newsletter that will help you continually strive for excellence in your life!

Mental Edge Development Tips

1. Evaluate & Align with Your Core Beliefs

As we grow up we all inevitably develop a core set of beliefs about ourselves, our lives, our surroundings, and the world we live in. The ones that we hold closest to us as being our most important beliefs are our core beliefs. Often these depend on the past experiences that we’ve gone through in our past.

Whether you’re aware of this or not, our core beliefs influence us in many ways every single day. They influence our thoughts, the emotions we tend to feel, and how we respond to the situations we’re exposed to in our lives.

Unfortunately, these core beliefs aren’t always productive. For example, say that we believe we are not smart enough to succeed in life. The more we reinforce and internalize this belief the more likely it will come to dictate our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

We may stop trying new things, or stop pushing ourselves entirely because we don’t think we have what it takes to be successful. That belief will abolish any mental edge you may have had previously.

So, if we want to develop a strong mental edge, we need to create productive core beliefs. This will require you to self-reflect on what’s important to you and what resonates with you.

Then, if you previously had negative core beliefs, you will have to do some serious restructuring.

Maybe you shift that negative belief to something like, “Ok, I’m not where I want to be right now. But I have the capabilities and determination to get myself where I want to be.”

That will require a great deal of effort on your part. But I promise that effort will be worth it. It could completely change your life.

2. Use Your Mental Energy Wisely

If you want to retain a mental edge throughout the day, then you can’t waste your mental energy.

This is why you need to learn how to focus your energy on the things you can control. The more you waste fixating on things you can’t control, the less energy you’ll have to dedicate to the things in your life that you actually can control.

For example, know sitting around worried that winter is coming won’t prevent it from coming. But you can take the necessary steps to prepare yourself for it. By not wasting energy worrying about the fact that something negative is coming, you free yourself up to generate effective solutions.

It will help you save your mental energy for productive tasks such as problem-solving. And the more you begin practicing expending your mental energy wisely the more likely that it’s going to become a habit for you.

This habit will help you make an impact on the areas of your life you have the most control over. It’s going to help you to retain a mental edge in the areas that matter most.

3. Replace Negative Thoughts with Productive Ones

Most of us never take the time to self-examine our thoughts and how we talk to ourselves. Increasing our self-awareness in this respect is highly useful for retaining a mental edge.

For example, what do you think happens when you continually reinforce the ideas such as, “I could never accomplish that” or “I can’t do anything right”? They eventually become a part of what you believe is your identity and will influence our actions. These types of beliefs will hold you back from realizing your full potential.

This is why it’s important to learn to spot these negative thought patterns.

Once you’ve spotted the negative thought, you need to stop it in its tracks. Don’t let yourself put yourself down just for the purpose of self-degradation.

Then, finally, once you’ve stopped the negative thought you need to replace it with something more productive. This doesn’t mean it needs to be unrealistically positive or optimistic, but it should be productive and realistic.

Shifting “I can’t do anything right” to “I made a mistake, but I can learn from it and get it right next time” is an example of this.

Changing your thoughts will require you to learn how to monitor them on a nearly continual basis. That may be tiring at first, but long-term this strategy will help you become your best self. And through that process, you will develop a mental edge of the vast majority of people.

4. Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

A lot of people get mental strength confused with stoicism and believe they need to ignore their emotions. That’s flat out wrong.

You need to become incredibly self-aware of your emotions to achieve mental strength. That awareness will provide you with the mental edge to make the best decisions. It’s going to help you regain control and avoid letting your emotions dictate your responses.

That control will help you to decide when to go with your emotions as well as when to go against them.

For instance, if you’re struggling to make a tough decision, it will help you to go with your gut and live without regret. However, it will also help you identify situations where you’re limiting yourself because you’re afraid to step outside your comfort zone.

Developing comfort with some discomfort will serve you well and provide you with a mental edge in these situations. You’ll learn that most decisions are accompanied by at least a small degree of uncertainty and that your success is dependent on your ability to accept that and move forward.

Additionally, you’ll also learn that growth doesn’t occur within your comfort zone. So you’ll also gain a mental edge over those who restrict themselves to their comfort zones.

In some situations, a good way to practice this is to begin acting like the person you want to become. Behaving in ways that resemble the person it is that you want to become will force you to go through certain transitions, and that may be uncomfortable at times.

But that discomfort is often necessary for long-term gains and learning to tolerate that discomfort will give you a serious mental edge!

Learning to tolerate uncomfortable emotions takes practice but it’ll get easier as your confidence grows.

5. Engage in Regular Self-Reflection

In a busy world, sometimes it’s hard to engage in self-reflection regularly. However, the feedback we get from this practice is key to our success.

Creating time for self-reflection will provide us with a serious mental edge over people who don’t engage in this practice.

This could be as simple as taking a few minutes at the end of the day to as yourself questions such as:

“How did I perform today?”

“What could have gone better? Why didn’t it go well?”

“What went well? Why did it go well?”

“How can I improve for tomorrow?”

I’m sure you get the idea.

If you don’t want to do it every day that’s fine. I personally engage in self-reflection every Sunday. I ask myself very similar questions to the ones above regarding how my week went. The feedback and lessons I’ve learned about myself through that process have been invaluable.

I have no doubt it has been one of the key strategies I’ve used to develop and retain my mental edge over the years.

Mental Edge Development Summary

Now that you know a few good strategies, I want you to pick a few and apply them to your life. This is how you’ll begin developing mental strength and gain your mental edge.

I’d just like to quickly remind you now that developing mental strength takes time. I believe that we’re always works in progress and that there is always room for improvement.

You’re going to face challenges at times. You may even want to quit. But remember, nobody because mentally tough by giving up and quitting on their path to success!

Stay Excellent!

Want More Free Content & Resources!?

Don’t forget follow me over on Instagram Community and/or join the Facebook Group. Here you’ll be able to interact directly with me. You’ll also meet tons of other people who are also interested in learning to master their minds and develop mental strength and resiliency!

Also, if you want to take things even further, join the Excellence Addiction email list (it’s completely free). It’s where I let you know about the resources I’m giving out to my community so you don’t miss out on anything: