As the cornerstone to your mental toughness personality trait, your self-belief is the important foundation to you achieving a successful career and life. Self-belief can be measured through the Control sub trait in the MTQ48 psychometric measure.

Your self-belief reflects your own evaluation of your own self worth and it is critically influential in determining short and long-term outcomes and situations. As such it becomes essential for you to bullet proof your self-belief so that it remains consistently positive, no matter the circumstances, setbacks or criticisms by others.

If you rely on someone else’s praise recognition or reaffirmation for your self-belief, you risk a bad mental knock when you can’t deliver and you let them down or for whatever reason they become critical, distracted or distant of your efforts.

Whilst approval, praise and recognition from others is nice to receive, it is unsustainable to rely on them for your self-belief because they won’t always be there. Therefore it is vital that you can rely on yourself for building and replenishing your own self-belief. By having control over your emotions and the way you respond when something negative happens you can bullet proof your self-belief and become a much stronger and mentally tougher person.

The key is being very clear on your “purpose” – the “why you are doing what you are doing” and also be clear on “who you are” and “what you stand for”. This longer-term perspective helps you to weather the storm of the ‘here and now’ by looking beyond to the longer-term horizon and continually reinforcing to yourself its importance. Also, if you judge your success through your progress in achieving this purpose and in relation to the standards you set, and not the praise of others, you remain in control of your self-belief and your destiny.

This longer-term perspective is also a useful aid to maintaining your emotional control in potentially volatile situations that can disrupt your progress. If you learn to put these situations that trigger your emotional responses of anger or frustration into a longer-term ‘frame’, or perspective, you reduce the chances of such a situation derailing your progress.

In summary, developing your own life and career purpose and feeling very comfortable with your own ethical and operating standards means that you control your path. You can bullet proof your self-belief by not needing to rely on the praise of others.

For further information and assistance on how to develop your purpose using mental toughness and the MTQ48 measure contact us at Mental Toughness Partners.

Paul Lyons is an experienced CEO, Coach, Speaker, NED and MTQ48 accredited.  As CEO of Mental Toughness Partners, he assists individuals and organisations to develop their mental toughness to improve performance, behaviour and wellbeing.  You can find him at paullyons.com and mentaltoughness.partners