Mental resilience is a powerful thing. However, it’s important to know that mental resilience isn’t a static trait. This means that it’s something that can either strengthen or weaken over the span of time.
So how exactly does mental resilience coincide with setting goals? At first glance, you may think that setting goals is something that will always strengthen your mental resilience, but that isn’t necessarily true. Within this blog post, we will dive into the relationship between goals and mental resilience and how you could make them coincide with one another in a positive manner.
Why How You Set Goals Matter In Terms Of Mental Resilience
In order to boost your mental resilience, you need to set goals in a certain way. Your goals must be broken down into realistic steps. Here’s why.
When you set broad goals, like “get rich” or “get fit” without breaking them down, you will have the goal in mind, but it’s unlikely that you will take any action.
This lack of action combined with the goal sitting in your head will lead to a lack of confidence. That lack of confidence can actually dwindle your mental resilience due to the fact that you don’t believe in yourself when it comes to setting goals.
However, when you actually sit down and break goals down, the process becomes transformative. By dissecting a broad goal into smaller, actionable steps, you create a clear path towards achievement. This approach makes even ambitious goals seem more attainable and less overwhelming.
Every time you achieve one of those little steps, your confidence increases and your mental resilience grows stronger. This positive reinforcement cycle is crucial. Each small accomplishment serves as proof of your capabilities, reinforcing your self-efficacy. You begin to understand that progress is often incremental, and that patience, persistence, and perseverance are key.
The Science Behind It: Dopamine
Now let’s dive even further into this discussion by talking about dopamine. When we set small, achievable goals, we get hits of dopamine. This could help us in many ways.
When we set a goal and anticipate the reward, our brain releases dopamine. This acts as a motivator, which makes us want to take more and more action towards the goal. Have you ever gotten that excited feeling when we think about reaching a desired outcome? That’s dopamine.
To take things even further, setting small achievable steps within the goal means more frequent dopamine releases. Each time we accomplish one of those little goals, our brain gets an ample dopamine boost.
You may be wondering how exactly this could help with mental resilience. Well, the consistent release of dopamine can help maintain a positive mood and outlook despite what challenges you are faced with. This is a big component of mental resilience.
Conclusion
So, if you’re interested in increasing your mental resilience, you need to focus on not only setting goals, but also breaking them down into realistic, practical steps. Mental resilience won’t happen over night, it’ll happen over a span of time from taking consistent action towards these manageable objectives.
