The Mental Toughness Pyramid

How do the super-successful separate themselves from the rest? The average?


I'll let The Don answer this one...

“Creative people rarely need to be motivated – they have their own drive that refuses to be bored. They refuse to be complacent. They live on the edge, which is precisely what is needed to be successful and remain successful.”



Ya see... The average live their lives on cruise control, resisting change and avoiding risk. They have the same talent and opportunity but they choose to play it safe to avoid the pain of failure and the agony (temporary) defeat.

At Next Level S&C, we use the Mental Toughness Pyramid as a tool we use to help you determine which stage of the pyramid you are performing.

At the first stage you are Playing Not to Lose, which is doing just enough to avoid getting fired, benched, or cut. The next level up you are Playing To Cruise, which is just going through to motions without really engaging in any serious thought or action. The next level is Playing to Improve, which is when you begin to actively engage their mind and body to the task of getting better. The level above this is Playing to Compete, which is when you begin to believe you are capable of beating the competition and being the best. Sadly, at this level you can find success and power, but since this stage is highly ego driven people are sometime left felling empty wondering if “this is all there is?”

The highest level is Playing to Win, which occurs when you move from just competing to creating, where the primary goal of you performance is to be the best that you can be. At this stage you are competing only with yourself with the objective of being better than you were yesterday. Your competition is with yourself, not the person next to you.

If you have never challenged yourself beyond your known limits, either physically or mentally, I suggest you find an area you desire to push yourself in and set a goal in that area that will stretch you for an extended period of time.

Whatever goal you set, if it is high enough and hard enough, by definition, you must question yourself somewhere along the way: “Do I really want to do this? Is the reward that great?” You will rationalize how little you want the reward, and you must think about how much easier it would be if you were to rest, if only for a little while. If you do that, you are pushing yourself. If you quit, you quit; you lose for now. If you continue to try, you are among the minority. If you continue to quit, you are part of the majority. It does not matter what excuse you make. They all have the same result—failure. If you continue to try and you succeed, you are part of the elite, a winner.