“Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.” – Alex Karras

Building football mental toughness is about regulating your emotions, managing your thoughts, and behaving in a positive manner, despite your circumstances.

Mental toughness involves more than just willpower; it requires hard work and commitment.

Growing stronger requires you to establish healthy habits, while also giving up the unhealthy habits that could hold you back from becoming better.

Mental toughness is not so much about constantly finding motivation and sheer willpower. It is about developing habits that enable you to consistently overcome obstacles and meet your goals.

Mental toughness is not about being more courageous, it’s about being more consistent.

Although it’s easier to feel mentally strong when life seems simple — often, true mental toughness becomes most apparent in the midst of adversity.

Choosing to build mental muscle is the best way to prepare for the inevitable obstacles in a game of football.

Boiled down to its most basic elements, football mental toughness comes down to two choices: to control your football mind, or to let your football mind control you.

This is nothing more than the ability to direct your mind, use conscious control of your thinking and not let your mind run you.

You can easily outperform others if you have an amazing ability to focus.

While spending time thinking about the potential outcome just diverts your focus and fill your head with unimportant, distracting thoughts.

The remedy is to be present in the moment and let nature take its course.

Focus only on the things you actually control: your approach and your attitude.

What happens after the next point or after the game doesn’t matter. Eventually, this approach will help you have better football confidence, focus and performance at the key moments.

The next big thing is you have to be relentless about improvement a good example is Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning essentially had a career-ending neck injury and then came back and had a good season.

The key to being mentally tough is to stay disciplined in your pursuit of excellence. If things are going well for you, it may be even more challenging to try your hardest every single day. You can do it by setting small goals every day that will continually move you toward the next big goal you want to achieve.

Developing mental toughness is an ongoing process and there is always room for improvement.

Reflecting upon your progress can reinforce your ability to reach your definition of success while living according to your values.

Today’s competitive world doesn’t lend itself to making much time available for quiet reflection. Create time to reflect upon your progress toward developing your mental game in football. At the end of each day, ask yourself what you’ve learned about your thoughts, emotions and behavior. Consider what you hope to improve upon or accomplish tomorrow.

A goal may seem very far away when you think about what it takes to reach it. It will be hard, it will make you tired, but it is the only way to reach that goal.

The process is inevitable, so find a way to enjoy it.

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