Mental Fortitude

Mental fortitude

Note: I publish this as what I would consider a draft, I’d rather publish it un-polished than sit on it. Perhaps some open source feedback and commentary will help me learn.

I amended this article on 28/3/2022

Fortitude: strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage (Merriam-Webster)

Opening

Mental fortitude, is the ability to have strength in the face of adversity. When you’re knocked down, to get back up and fight. When you’re struggling, tried, bored to keep your eye on the goal and continue working forward, to show up even when you don’t feel like it. Mental fortitude is to have unwavering self-belief and perpetual motion to the one true goal. I would add that at the highest levels of mental fortitude, it is not simply just strength in adversity but growth, an increase in strength and most critically to not simply endure, but to revel in adversity. Through my journey in cycling and ultra-endurance racing, I have discovered I have a good capacity for mental fortitude and perhaps a more natural stoic. I also realised I had a need to build my brain to be as strong as possible. As I have got stronger and older, I have discovered the cross over between mental fortitude developed for cycling, and real life is high. In this article I want to share with you my own findings, to hopefully help you, either in your athletic endeavors or life, to not just deal with adversity, but revel in it.

I should caveat all of this with the fact; I am not an academic and so can only talk about my experience as a practitioner, I learnt what I know by trial and error in the field, I took different ideas and made some of my own organically. They work for me, but perhaps not you and I am sure there are ideas out there that I do not know that are better than mine. Further my brain isn’t quite wired like most peoples, though I have no idea what normal is – I know it sit further down spectrums that most. I acknowledge mostly my own are of 1st world luxury!

Understanding and defining strength, fitness, resilience and fortitude

Many words are used as descriptor of mental fortitude. Sadly some perhaps have undesired connotations to the considered subject. Personally when I see the word strength in my head, I see a oversized gym gorilla. Mental fortitude is not a toy for small egos, it’s an existential being for enlightened people. One does not build mental fortitude to show it off down the pub. One spends years opening their mind and questioning their entire existence to build fortitude. It could be seen more akin to aerobic athletic endurance, perhaps like a marathon or ultra-runner. When dressed in clothes, a marathon runner would look in reality quite benign, unimposing and unimpressive at rest. However, set them off to the starting gun and you will see just what they can do. At rest, someone with immense mental fortitude would seem like any other individual, you cannot tangibly see their years of effort to build fortitude, their work of frank confrontation with their inner demons. However, unleash this person into the wild, and they don’t just survive, or tolerate discomfort but they thrive. As the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover and often it is the hardest bastards (a technical term for having a high mental fortitude) that are the most unremarkable individuals, who I’d previously written off. These days I know better.

Adversity is a difficult situation, it’s worth noting in the context of a bikepacking event, simply being bored could and should be considered adversity. Being able to continue pushing on when bored, tired, not having fun, is mental fortitude. In many events it has been the first days that have been the greatest test, as my body and mind adapt to the rhythm.

Fortitude is not something we are born with, a bit like muscles or physical fitness. While I have no doubt some individuals are born with a greater propensity for fortitude, a bit like I was born with lungs that can shift more litres of oxygen a minute than most, I truly believe we can all build mental fortitude, some just get an unfair advantage or head start – but life is not fair. It has taken me years of work to get to where I am, and I am still early on in my journey.

Transference of fortitude across life

The benefit with developing mental fortitude in one area is that it transfers into others. Whereas, the fitness I develop on a bicycle is largely redundant in other areas (I can’t run, swim, climb etc.). The mental fortitude I build on, and off a bike, can be used in all areas of life. This is why we can often see very mental strong people (developed elsewhere) finishing events the first time out. The mental difficulty of a bike event pails in comparison to real life difficulties, it’s trivial.  That said, being able to use an elective challenge or event to develop mental fortitude, that you can then deploy when life does throw its inevitable challenges at you will help you immensely to tolerate adversity. Stress is stress. This has perhaps been my biggest gain from bikepacking, that the open-mindedness and fortitude I have spend years developing the be the best I can be on a bike, actually is far more useful for dealing with normal life adversity.

The KEY to the highest plane of fortitude: Tolerating is not enough

Fortitude is the ability to cope with tough situations. However I feel this is not enough, one should not simply be able to cope, to manage, to sustain. One should have the ability to revel, to grow, to suck in the energy from the tough situation as use it to power their own engine. Perhaps this is best demonstrated with an example. A good few years ago now when I was racing The Transcontinental Race in 2017, it was my third edition - I was still very much learning. Weather can have a profound effect on you and the situation, this time is was not rain, but heat. The heatwave lucifer was terrorising eastern Europe, my GPS was reading 52 C, so it was really mid 40’s, hot enough to feel like I was in a sauna and melting into the road. I had been going in this heat for a few hours and it started to wear me down, I paused under a shaded tree as the clock reached near midday. While I breathed for a minute of respite a thought came through my head. I had two choices at this point, I could continue to suffer, but tolerate this heat, find it unenjoyable and let it wear me down. Or I could make another choice. A choice that would allow me to draw strength over a situation I could not control but needed to endure. I was in a race, I wanted to get to the finish as fast as I could, as did many others. They too were out in this heat, perhaps they would suffer, find it un-fun and let it wear them down. If instead, I chose to embrace this heat, let it fire my engine and drive me forward, in the knowledge that I could make the most of this tough situation by internalising it while my competitors could perhaps not. For every pedal stroke I took, for every thought they might be suffering I found more energy to keep going long into the heat. This is the day I learned if we really want to reach the next level of mental strength, merely surviving is not enough, we must become at one with our suffering, and rather than tolerate it, use it to drive us.

If you have not read David Coggings book you should; In it he gives a good example of a similar epiphany when on selection. We really can be in charge of our mind, but finding the key is hard.

So, how do you build fortitude?

There are many simple tricks for improving your psychological state, mantras, preparation, visualisations, music, goal-setting, perspective etc. You should know about these, a good place to start would be Josephine Perry’s book: Performing Under Pressure. I do feel that you can know all the tricks in all the books, but unless you are at peace with yourself they will be less effective. Simply tools you can use to mask your flaws, perhaps sometimes with effect. Rather you should address your flaws, either first or in conjunction with the use of performance tools.

Mental fortitude isn’t a tangential thing, you can’t read a book and suddenly have fortitude, it’s a internalised intangible fire that exists in your soul. It’s not a simply a toolkit you can whip out when things get tough, it’s deeper than that, it’s existential, earnt though trial.

Mental fortitude isn’t built over night, it’s built over years, with incrementally increasing challenges and learnings along the way. Don’t run before you can walk, set yourself a challenge that you have a passion for and can commit to work towards, and graft. Note: I do not measure success solely by the eventual outcome, I measure it by the work I put in on the journey and the outcome. Sometimes the result is out of hand, but the input is what we control and how we gauge our mental fortitude. I personally dislike the term failure and find it hard to conceptualise. If I don’t win a race, it is not a failure. I could have done the best performance possible under the conditions and that is what matters. Measure yourself against your own ability and work.

Know your “Why?”

We must know our why, and remind ourselves – some like a mantra to do this. In the darkest moments we must draw upon this why, consciously or unconsciously. Mental fortitude is built from a pure passion, for when we have passion we have total commitment. I love to ride my bike and to push myself, to see what I am really capable of, to see where I can take my mind – the physical fitness I build is solely to allow myself to go on mental journeys. So when it gets hard, I remind myself I chose this, I wanted this moment, it’s a privilege and it is in this moment that I can open myself up and get to the crux of who I am.

If you have a why, a passion and a goal, you have long term commitment, a place you want to get to and thus adversities on the way to the goal can be dealt with as short term troubles. Keeping an eye on the long term drives us through these short terms.

You need to understand yourself

If you want to build mental fortitude you must know yourself, your weaknesses, flaws, strengths and crucially the way your brain works. It’s not as simple as just getting on a bike and riding to build physical fitness. If you are an anxious person, you will need to address this. If you are arrogant, you will need to address this, and so on for different personality traits. This is why building mental fortitude is so hard, it requires us to look in the mirror and make a critical assessment and understanding of ourselves. Yes it would be possible to learn some skills and tools to be mentally stronger without doing this, but I truly believe that to access the next level one must be at peace with oneself. One must be open. One must be humble.

How do you understand ourselves?

I won’t apologise from jumping on the bandwagon, but I am going to talk about meditation. A book (Wherever you go, there you are) I once read on meditation had a rule, a lot like Fight Club, don’t talk about meditation – I paraphrase. But I do like the rule, I despise preachers, sure give people information if they’re interested, but don’t preach to them. I am assuming by reading this you’re interested by default! So I will simply talk of my experience. I too was once ignorant and intolerant to the idea of meditation – what use does this have? How will sitting around thinking make me go faster? How will thinking about my problems help me on a bike?

Upon reflection, I realised that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of what meditation is and does. Meditation is not strictly thinking about your problems, rather, it is the practice of cultivating conscious mental awareness. Having this awareness allows you to notice when negative, or positive, thoughts arise in the mind and gives you the ability to stop and assess them, before they develop further, preventing negative though process from taking hold. The impact and benefit of this mental awareness are so profound that they really cannot be overstated.

When I began to think on meditation more, I had been doing it for years. I would ride my bike for hours and no time had passed at all. Time would cease to exist and I was simply present. I personally feel this is why so many people will extol the virtue of cycling, and other sports, for mental health, yes the physical activity has benefits but the mental too. However it was once I understood this connection between what I was already doing, and meditation that I really got it, it made sense. Meditation comes in many forms, and we must find what works for us as an individual. Personally I have never been a follower of anyone else and their methods, I don’t use an app, or fixed practice. I prefer the act to be more free and open.

If we really want to know ourselves, to have conscious awareness, meditation is the tool for this – or at least in my own experience.

If you are still wondering how this would benefit you, imagine the scenario when things are going wrong, or your having a bad day, and before you realise it’s spiralled in your mind. If you have cultivated mental awareness you will be able to interject and address this situation, reframing and preventing it going further.

Have fun - make your own music to revel in adversity

Making your own music, could be taken literally or metaphorically. But the premise is to have fun. If you’re able to access your mind and make something unenjoyably enjoyable then you have reached a higher plane. This theory links back to my epiphany of embracing the adversity and revelling in it. I made my own music that day, and others. I did not need picking up by plugging in my earphones, I picked myself up by altering my state of mind.

My greatest performances, have been when I have been in pure joy – even under the most testing of conditions, I’ve been able to make my own music. And interestingly, my none of my greatest physical performances have resulted in a notable performance (by notable I mean wins), but are where I have revelled in adverse conditions that have been thrown at me.

Experience brings confidence which brings mental calm under adversity

It’s worth reading my writing on building confidence if you have not, I discussed building confidence for events there. Confidence can seem like borderline arrogance when in full swing. It is an unwavering belief in oneself. I really do feel that in order to find this self-belief we must learn to dismiss others and their thoughts. That is not to say we cannot engage in talk and consider others opinions, but only when they are critically useful and constructive – I sent this essay to several people I believe of strong fortitude to critique. This challenged my anxieties on writing, which allowed me to grow, and thankfully for you improved the final output.

Many people will do themselves down, either by deflating their abilities, self-sabotaging their efforts or else. Often this is done even while others are at the side lines trying to cheer them on. Personally this is not an issue I have, though I am realistically honest about my abilities, rather than arrogant. If I have put in the work, then I believe in myself, it’s that simple. If we are going to have mental fortitude, we must have confidence as assuredness in our abilities, because it is this confidence that will help fire us.

There are different ways to address a lack of confidence, and they answer will depend on the cause, however I feel we must again understand ourselves to get to the root cause. This comes back to open-mindedness, the awareness of ones personality flaws and being able to deal with them.

Unwavering self-belief gives us the power to withstand adversity

A cornerstone of building mental fortitude is unwavering self-confidence. No doubt, no questions, not for a moment. It’s this unwavering self-belief that has given me the power to pick myself up from rock bottom, dust off and try again. I have never not believed in myself. Sure I have had low moments, and sometimes it can take me a few weeks to get up off the floor after a heavyweight knockout, but I get up and fight back. I think this unwavering self-belief stems from passion, hard work and a drive to get the most from my life.

Passion: You can’t force yourself to be driven and positive, you need an internal fire

Motivation comes and goes, but commitment is solid. You need passion for your goal so you have unwavering commitment. It’s through this passion and resulting commitment that drive is ingrained. A bit like you can’t tell a depressed person to be happy, without passion there is not positivity and you cannot force it to exist. Passion is what gets us out of bed every day to grind towards the goal, motivation is for dreamers, it comes and goes.

Pick your battels as we only have so much energy and fortitude

Mental fortitude isn’t an endless supply, nor (do I find) it can be applied to things you don’t really care about (no passion). It is only when we are truly invested – and should only be – when we spend our fortitude. For example, while I am a professional cyclist, I don’t always go training if it’s raining anymore, frankly I just can’t be bothered. Sure I should, but I don’t. The reason I don’t is that doing so would require me to use some of my fortitude, I also know that it doesn’t really matter if it rains one day and I don’t go out, I’ll make that day up when it’s nice. This might seems trivial, and the hole concept counter intuitive to me having mental fortitude – as having fortitude would be validated by training whatever the conditions. Thus the point should be considered seriously as my income depends of being the best I can be on a bike. I know that when I race, supply of mental fortitude is far more important than one more days physical fitness. It’s for this reason too that in the weeks before a race I will insulate myself, stop being concerned with external factors and to be frank any factors that are not related to the race, I don’t want to waste any energy.

Make life easier don’t waste your energy

Stress is stress, it does not matter where it comes from. If you have a goal and want to drive forward to it, you might well consider reducing other stressors to minimum to allow you the maximum energy for completion of the goal. When I was at university, I had to study and train full time (yeah play your tiny violins it was so tough). When it came around to my exams or during a serious assignment I would drop the amount of cycling I did, allowing me to focus on university for that period – a focus period. We only have so much energy, choose where to spend it, focus on what really matters.

Therapy, counselling, psychology, talking help to understand yourself better

It gets called many things, perhaps there is a stigma on saying you’re going to therapy, so just call it a meeting or whatever you wish if other people ask. I go to therapy. Not all problems can be fixed by ourselves. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy and must seek the help of a professional to guide us. When my car is broken I take it to the garage, it’s just quicker and easier. When I wanted to learn about engineering I went to university and then worked at one of the best design firms in the world. When I want to learn I read books and talk to interesting people – I think the average age of my friends is 55 – older people are interesting! When I want to learn about my head and improve it, I send my head to a therapist – I get out of my own way and let someone that knows what they’re doing fix me up. Why the stigma? If you’re not talking out loud and tuning up your head, you are leaving mental performance on the table – of this I have no doubt.

Don’t make excuses for yourself

We all have flaws, but they don’t excuse us from being better. Don’t let your flaws be an excuse for striving to be better. Being afraid of failure is the first hurdle at which many fall, it’s easier to just not bother trying than to risk failing. However if you choose to dismiss failure as a concept, you become free. If failure is simply not trying at all, then if you decide to try and work towards a goal, you cannot fail and the act putting in the work is success. Sometimes, no matter how hard we work, or how perfect everything goes, the outcome will not be as we would like. If we can uncouple are personal validation solely from the outcome, and instead link our validation to both trying in the first place and putting in the work, we become less afraid and more stable.

Embrace discomfort to begin understanding mental fortitude

To embrace discomfort is to actively seek out things that make you feel uncomfortable, doing so challenges us to overcome ourselves and to become comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. One should not take giant leaps and jump in at the deep end, but start small and build up. If there is something you are shying away from doing because it is difficult, will make you feel awkward, anxious or just produce and feeling of discomfort, do it, embrace that discomfort and own it.

When under periods of discomfort our body will feel stress and it is dealing with this stress that is the beginnings of mental fortitude. You can play around with this to learn to handle the stress response. One fun game I play is taking cold showers, unless you’re deeply odd cold showers are quite unpleasant and naturally unenjoyable, eliciting a stress response. However, if you can use the experience to teach your body to handle the stress response and to find enjoyment in discomfort, you can then use this feeling and lesson in other areas.  

How do you get started in building mental fortitude

I am sure the above is all a bit airy-fairy and un actionable. To build mental strength you need to stress yourself, while developing mentally. It is learnt by doing, but do so in small, safe steps. You need to have a passion for the goal to increase the chance of development and success in the journey. Remember it is not the final outcome with which we measure, but the input along the way. When things get hard, pause and take a breath. It is this breath that will bring us clarity and strength.

Normal mental fortitude

Find a passion – have a why

Embrace discomfort

Work hard

Unwavering self-belief – dismiss others

Fortitude in adversity - breathe

Higher plane of mental fortitude

Improve your mind – therapy & meditation

Find self-peace - contentment

Revel in adversity