Trying to Become Mentally Stronger

I’ve been giving more attention to how my mind handles stress and where it struggles. Recognizing that I still had space for improvement was the first step. These are the ideas that have helped me so far to better understand and manage my mind.

#Our Brain Is Running Outdated Software

Our nervous system’s main job is to keep us alive, so it’s constantly scanning for threats. That was useful when the wrong decision meant getting eaten by a predator. Today the same system fires over a vague email, because biologically it can’t tell the difference between an email and a hungry lion. I think this system fires even more often than it should because we live in a world of constant stimulation and information.

We can’t override that system. It’s carved into our biology for a good reason. But we can try to pause a little and then ask one question: is this actually dangerous and does it need immediate attention, or does it just feel that way because my mind is overreacting? It’s a small shift, but it helps a lot. I’m still learning to do this pause for myself.

Our brain’s alarm triggers often, but it’s not always right.

#The Trap of Overthinking

Rereading the same message, the same memory, the same thought, trying to extract meaning and looking for significance that in reality isn’t there. Something happens on Monday and we suffer through it. Fair enough. Then we replay it on Tuesday, analyze it on Wednesday, talk about it on Thursday, imagine it again on Friday. Sometimes we even replay it from months or years ago. Our mind has a remarkable ability to drag the past into the present, making old wounds feel fresh and new. Every replay makes our body react as if it was happening again. Sometimes I catch myself falling into this trap and I end up suffering more from my thoughts than from reality itself.

It gets worse when someone says something that sounds wrong. Our brain starts writing the sequel: what we should have said, what they would say back, our perfect closing line. We get angry shadow boxing someone who isn’t there, while the other person has already moved on and probably forgot what they said.

What I am trying to do instead is take the lesson, if there is one, and move on. We are not museums. Our past is important, but it isn’t an exhibition to keep revisiting and get stuck in.

Stop overthinking. If there’s an action to take, take it. If not, let it go.

#“Calm Down” Doesn’t Work

Telling ourselves or other people to calm down almost never works. The body hears it and replies: absolutely not. Then we get more stressed about being stressed.

Anxiety and excitement feel almost identical in the body: racing heart, fast breathing, a burst of energy. Going from that straight to “calm” is a jump the body can’t make on command. I read somewhere that people who said “I am excited” before a stressful speech did better than people who said “I am calm”. Lying to ourselves won’t work, but if we acknowledge the energy and give it a name, it can help us manage it.

And when speaking to our mind doesn’t work, we can use our body: breathe out longer than we breathe in. A long exhale is one of the few direct messages we can send to our nervous system that says “we’re safe”.

Don’t fight the energy. Rename it and breathe out slowly.

#Stop Arguing With Reality

Picture two people stuck in the same car traffic. One spirals through worst-case scenarios and imagines losing everything in life because they will arrive late at their destination. The other turns up the music, mildly annoyed, and accepts there’s nothing to be done about it. Both arrive at exactly the same time. The only difference is that one of them suffered through it and the other didn’t. Mental strength is refusing to suffer twice: once for the event and again for our imagination of it.

The same happens with bigger things. “This shouldn’t have happened.”, “I shouldn’t have been fired.”, “Why is this happening to me?”… Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it happened. Self-pity is strangely comfortable: if it’s all someone else’s fault, we don’t have to change anything. Sometimes life really is unfair. But feeling sorry for ourselves doesn’t change the situation, it only delays what we do next. We don’t have to like it. We just stop spending energy on a fight we can’t win and ask a smaller, more boring question: “Okay, now what?”

Accepting reality isn’t giving up. It’s saving energy for what we can change.

#Don’t Stack Your Emotions

Most of our stress doesn’t come from reality, it comes from the story we attach to reality. Our minds make associations automatically, linking the current situation to past experiences and emotions.

Something small happens, like a canceled dinner, and our brain starts stacking it onto every past disappointment until we’ve gone from a canceled dinner to questioning whether anyone likes us at all. That stacking makes us go from mild annoyance to full-blown emotional breakdown very fast.

A calmer approach deals only with what’s in front of us, the real situation. It’s asking the right question at the right time:

• Wrong: What does this plus every other thing that has ever happened to me mean?
• Right: This thing happened, what does this mean?

Choose to respond to the present situation, not the accumulated weight of past disappointments.

Someone doesn’t reply to a message, our brain says: “they’re upset with me”. We make a mistake in a meeting, our brain says: “everyone thinks I’m incompetent”. Our brain is an amazing machine, but it can also produce complete nonsense with incredible confidence. These aren’t facts, they’re interpretations built on incomplete information.

A small trick that helps: add a few words in front of the thought. Instead of “they’re upset with me”, say “I’m having the thought that they’re upset with me”. It creates a bit of distance. Then ask: what evidence actually supports this?

Notice the thought before believing it. Try to engage in rational thinking.

#Feelings Are Signals, Not Commands

A feeling shows up (anger, insecurity, fear) and most of us treat it like an order to obey. But feelings are temporary, they pass through our mind and then leave.

The feelings don’t define us and we should not feel guilty for having them. We can feel angry and choose not to react, feel afraid and move forward anyway.

This is the difference between reacting and responding.

• Reacting is instant and automatic.
• Responding has a gap in it, a breath between the trigger and the choice.

That small gap is where we get to choose what to do.

We tend to think composed people were born with ice in their veins, but they feel the heat and the pounding heart exactly like we do. When Captain Sullenberger landed the plane on the Hudson, he later said his blood pressure shot up and his pulse spiked. What got him through was 42 years of small, regular deposits in what he called a “bank of experience, education and training”. On that day, the balance was enough for a very large withdrawal. Composure works more like a savings account than a personality trait, and we fill it on ordinary days. Try to fill it with small deposits: a hard conversation, a task we keep postponing, or a workout that pushes us.

We can notice a feeling and still decide what to do with it.

#Ask What Is Actually Missing

When we feel bad, the instinct is to ask the biggest question possible: “What’s wrong with my life?” A better question is smaller: “What exactly is missing right now?” Maybe we’re not unhappy, we’re tired. Or lonely. Or bored. Or overstimulated. Or we’ve spent the whole day doing things for other people. The feeling is real, but the explanation we give it can be wrong. And the wrong diagnosis leads to the wrong fix: if we’re lonely, another hour of doomscrolling won’t help. If we’re exhausted, a new productivity routine won’t help.

Before trying to fix everything, figure out what is actually missing.

#This Too Shall Pass

Think about what was eating your brain alive six months ago. Can you even remember it clearly? Some things will stay with you, but even those lose some of their intensity over time.

A coin held in front of your eye blocks out the entire sky. Move it an arm’s length away and it’s just a coin. Most of our problems aren’t big, they just feel big because we keep staring at them from too close. A good test: if the same thing happened to a stranger, would we think it was a big deal? Probably not.

Now think of a moment when you honestly believed you would never get over something. And yet here you are. Every hard thing we got through is evidence that we can get through hard things. We just tend to replay the pain and forget the part where we survived it.

There’s an old story about a king who asked his wise men for a sentence that would keep him grounded in good times and bad. They gave him four words: “This too shall pass.” It works both ways, which is what makes it good: the bad moments pass, and so do the good ones, so we should enjoy them.

Our minds exaggerate the present. Remember the survival, not just the pain.

#When the Ego Gets Hurt

A rude comment hurts because our ego’s job is to make us feel important, respected and correct. So instead of thinking about what was said, we usually want to hit back, and harder. The urge is to deliver the perfect comeback.

I am trying to ask myself now, before rushing to answer: “what response would I respect tomorrow?” Usually that’s a different answer from the one that would feel right in the first two seconds. Sometimes it means confronting them, sometimes leaving and sometimes realizing it isn’t worth it. The strongest response is rarely the fastest one.

Learn to tell the difference between a real issue and an ego issue.

#Be a Thermostat, Not a Thermometer

Stress is contagious. Just by being near others who are experiencing stress, our own stress hormone levels rise.

A thermometer just reflects the temperature around it. The room heats up, it rises. A thermostat senses the temperature too, but instead of copying it, it sets it. Most of us live as thermometers. Someone raises their voice, we raise ours. Someone panics, we panic.

Every room has an emotional temperature, usually set by the most reactive person in it. We can choose not to copy that temperature and instead set our own.

We can’t control the temperature of every room, but we can stop copying it.

#Discomfort Is Training

The mind adapts to whatever we feed it. If we keep running from discomfort, our mind starts treating every bit of it as danger, and small problems start to feel overwhelming.

Think about what reacting got us over the years. We snapped and the uncomfortable conversation ended faster. We shut down and the pressure went away. Every time a reaction or an avoidance gave us quick relief, our nervous system filed it as a solution. We weren’t born reactive, we were trained by relief.

The good news is that training works both ways. It’s like the gym: the first sessions hurt and everything in us wants to quit, but after enough repetitions we adapt. Life will bring discomfort either way. We can choose some of it ourselves, a hard conversation, a cold shower, a task we keep postponing, or wait for life to choose it for us at a worse moment. We can also turn a fear into an experiment: write down what we think will happen, do the thing and compare it with reality. Most of the time, what we feared doesn’t happen, and reality gets a chance to correct our imagination.

That said, not every painful experience makes us stronger. Staying in a toxic relationship isn’t resilience. Ignoring an injury or body signals isn’t mental toughness.

Discomfort we choose is practice. The relief of avoiding something is what keeps the fear alive.

#Identity Is the Real Trap

It’s easy to unknowingly build an identity around our problems. Like the person who always gets let down, the person who can’t catch a break. It feels safe because at least we know what to expect, but it turns us into curators of our own suffering, dismissing the good and archiving the bad.

There’s a lot more to us than the problems we’re going through. Everyone has a story, but we don’t have to let the bad chapters define the whole book. We can fill our lives with experiences that make us feel alive, not just the ones that make us feel hurt. Engage in hobbies, spend time with people who make us feel good, and do things that make us proud of ourselves.

Our identity is not defined by our problems.

#Stop Chasing Perfection

We tell ourselves we’re trying to do something well, but underneath that, we’re often trying to avoid making mistakes, disappointing people, or producing something that isn’t good enough.

A simple task becomes a massive project and a small mistake feels like evidence of failure. But there is a big difference between improving something and endlessly polishing it because we’re afraid to let it exist. This doesn’t mean lowering our standards, just learning where they matter. Some things deserve our absolute best, while others deserve 30 minutes and a peaceful goodbye.

Stop chasing perfect. Aim for good enough and save our best effort for what matters.

#Talk to Yourself Like a Friend (Or Like a Coach)

If a kid falls off a bike while learning, we don’t stand over them yelling “you’re hopeless”. Yet after one mistake, that’s exactly how many of us talk to ourselves. “I’m an idiot.” “I always mess things up.” Harsh self-criticism feels like discipline, but it mostly just attacks our identity and gives us nothing to fix. A good coach is honest and supportive at the same time: “that didn’t work, what should I do differently?”

There’s a strange trick that helps: using our own name. In a study by psychologist Ethan Cross, people who coached themselves with their name (“Gonçalo, you’ve done this before”) instead of “I” felt less anxious and performed better. We’re bad at calming ourselves down, but surprisingly good at calming down a friend. Our name turns us into one.

Speak to yourself in a way that makes improvement possible.

#Rest Before Exhaustion and Take Care of Your Body

Constantly pushing through every warning sign doesn’t make us stronger, it just leaves us more depleted.

Mental strength also includes knowing when to stop before we reach absolute exhaustion. Our brain isn’t a machine we can squeeze for maximum output every day, it needs rest and quiet too. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is admit we’re tired before our body forces us to stop.

Our mind and body are connected. How we eat, move and sleep changes how well we handle stress. I’m taking 3g of creatine per day, which is a supplement that helps with energy production in the body, and research suggests it can improve cognitive function. I don’t know if it’s placebo or not, but I feel more alert and focused since I started taking it. A bad night of sleep can make a small problem feel huge the next day. If possible, take walks in nature and make time for the things you enjoy. Also try to catch some sun, it helps our body produce vitamin D and regulate our circadian rhythm.

Take real breaks and look after your body. Rest shouldn’t be something we have to earn.

#All of Us Already Have It

I believe the strongest and most successful people still feel everything and in similar ways. Our brain is the same, our bodies are the same, and our emotions are the same. They cry, get afraid and have bad days, but they don’t let a bad day turn into a bad life.

None of the ideas I have written are meant to get rid of feelings. They’re about managing them and choosing how we respond.

Being unbreakable sounds good, but anything too rigid eventually cracks. It’s better to be flexible, to bend a bit when life pushes and then come back. Pain is part of life, we just shouldn’t let it make permanent decisions or define us.

Life will keep throwing problems at us, we just need to change our relationship with them and remember that most of them will pass. We all already have the mental strength, we just have to nurture it and try to use it consistently. I am still learning and this is a work in progress, but I hope some of these ideas can help you too.