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Articles for Entrepreneurs A Few Thoughts About “Mental Toughness” I’ve traveled around the globe but this year I went to Alaska. It moved me so deeply. The most gorgeous place I think I have ever been and I’ve been to some beautiful places. Anyway, I got interested in reading about Alaska. I read about native people who crossed those huge bodies of water in flimsy Kayaks, tying themselves and their children in so that in rough water they would stay in the boat as they rolled over and over. I read about gold miners crossing the Chilkoot and the conditions would have terrified the brave people who crossed the lower 48 in Prairie Schooners. Today, a guy’s complaining if he has to take the bus. These men and women were much, much, much tougher than we are today. These guys were real warriors. Like my aunt who is 97, is a self made millionaire, and in her early twenties during the depression supported her entire huge family – she’s still going strong! But it wasn’t just physical toughness. It was mental toughness. These people stayed 110% focused on their job. Not even being robbed, or thrown in the freezing Yukon or in the case of my aunt, working 12 hours a day, could distract them. They had no need for health clubs as life was physically tough enough. Similarly, some of our great entrepreneurs had mental toughness. If you haven’t done so, get and read some of the accounts of the engineers who built the Trans-America Railway or the magnificent bridges and dams around the world. Today’s “industrialists” single-handedly destroy companies, still take 20 million dollar salaries, and it’s a tough day if their masseuse is late or their croissants are stale. Many big company CEO’s couldn’t carry Henry Ford’s lunchbox. The point of these musings is, just how mentally tough are you? How resilient, how quick to re-focus on productive action when confronted by some kind of adversity? How demanding of yourself and others? How committed to a sense of daily urgency? How determined to push projects through to implementation? How intolerant of incompetence? How able are you to ignore criticism and disapproval of the many whose opinions don’t count, in favor of getting results? How about your work ethic? This brings me to the big secret – it’s not how hard you work, it’s how smart you work. It’s not how many fires you put out, its how many you keep from starting!! Working Hard vs. Working Smart There’s a lot of bunk spewed about this idea, and people interpret it to mean that, if they work smart, that means not working hard. But that’s not how you succeed. Not at all. You succeed by ….working hard on smart things. © 2009 Sharon A. Youngblood. All rights reserved.
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