Can't Be Broken
Can't Be Broken
The Four C's of Mental Toughness: Control, Commitment, Challenge, Confidence
Mental toughness isn't born—it's forged through adversity, failure, and the deliberate pursuit of challenge. As I return for Season 4 of the Can't Be Broken podcast, I'm diving headfirst into what truly creates resilience in both athletics and life.
Your mind functions exactly like a muscle. When weightlifters target their biceps, they deliberately create microscopic tears through resistance, allowing the muscle to rebuild stronger. Mental toughness develops through this same mechanism—facing resistance, experiencing setbacks, and growing through recovery. Without these challenges, your mental fortitude remains underdeveloped and unprepared for life's inevitable obstacles.
The four C's framework provides a practical approach to building unbreakable mental strength. Control teaches us to focus exclusively on factors within our influence rather than wasting energy on circumstances beyond our reach. Commitment challenges us to show up consistently regardless of how we feel or what conditions we face. Challenge serves as the essential catalyst for growth—we must either seek out difficult situations or learn from our failures when they naturally occur. Finally, Confidence emerges not from empty affirmations but from thorough preparation and proven resilience. This authentic confidence grows in direct proportion to the work invested and obstacles overcome. Whether you're an athlete, student, business professional, or parent, embracing these principles creates not just temporary success but lasting mental fortitude. After all, a tough mind, like a C - Monsters Mindset, truly can't be broken.
what up, what up, what up, and welcome to a new episode and I'm back for sea monsters, mindset and the can't be broken podcast. I'm so blessed to be back. Thank you so much for allowing me to Seamonstercom, or I wanted to continue this process and this journey and just with a little bit of time off and a little bit of I don't know, just getting away from it felt like I was missing something. And so here I am back, trying to just get back on it, and I just want to say thank you for allowing me to do that, thank you for supporting me and hopefully you guys can uh follow stronger and leave feedback and share and whatnot and we can uh get season four started here in a positive and influential way. Um yeah, the can't be broken podcast, sea monster mindset, coming at you today with mental toughness, is what the topic is. And just remember, look, a lot of the things that I talk about are based on experience, some research and things that I've gone through and things that I've seen as a player, as a coach, as an individual, as father, and so I'm just going to share them. Sometimes they're not pretty and might piss you off. You may not like it, you may not agree, it's okay. We can have dialogue. You can send me feedback. If you choose not to follow me, that's fine, but if you choose to understand and develop and try to grow, then we can grow together. If we want to talk, then we can grow together If we want to talk, and that's how we grow. Communication baby. But today is going to be about mental toughness and for those kiddos listening or the parents listening and want to share this with your kiddos, I'm going to try to keep the cuss words at a minimum and hopefully at none. But this podcast that the Can't Be Broken is about being real and emotional and just being who I am, and so they might slip out. And if it's okay with you, in a positive way, to share with your kiddos, share it, and if you don't think it's not good, then don't share it or share whatever you can and just be honest with them. The kids are going to listen to curse words, whether you try to hide it from them or not, and I never try to hide anything from my daughters or certain things that as they grow up. But the world is hard, it's rough, it's tough, tough and uh, if you start teaching them wide stuff, things that they're going to listen to, things that they're going to run into, bad people curse words and all that stuff, and you educate them. Um, then we're not hiding it from them, and then when they hear it and they're in shock and they don't understand and nobody talked to them about it. But that's my opinion anyways.
Speaker 1:Mental toughness, like what is that? What's mental toughness and how is that defined? Or what are we talking about when it's mental toughness? Well, mental toughness is really the ability to bounce back from setbacks and failures. It's a resilient mindset, it's something that you comprehend, that you can overcome at one point or another. It's a no-give attitude, it's grit, it's just being mentally tough. It's like working a muscle, because your mind is a muscle. But when you work, let's just say, a bicep, and you are lifting weights to grow your biceps, there's going to be tears there and you're going to add weight. There's going to be tears there and you're going to add weight and there's going to be resistance, and with resistance comes tear of muscle fibers and then they grow and they grow bigger. And it's the same thing with your mind. It needs to grow and thus it needs to have setbacks and it needs to have setbacks and needs to have resistance and failures and so many different things and experienced in many ways for you to grow. And there are four C's of mental toughness that I want to share in order to understand it and how we can get more mental toughness and grow into being a better athlete, but a better individual as well. So, whether you want to use that for athletics, student athlete, in your business, in your family life or whatnot, so the four C's for mental toughness are control.
Speaker 1:You can only worry about the things you can control. You can only worry about the things you can control. For example, if you're a hitter, you can't control what the pitcher's going to throw, if he's going to throw a fastball, a curveball, where the pitch is going to be, you can only control your swing and your approach and what you're going to do. You can't control what the teacher is going to put up on a test. You can only control how you study for a test and how much time you're going to put into it. One of the C's is control Only worrying about the things you can control.
Speaker 1:The number two is commitment. Are you committed to change? Are you committed to acceptance? Are you committed to be better and learn and grow. What does that look like to you? Are you just committed on the days that you feel good? Are you committed on the days that are sunny, perfect weather? Are you committed every day to a journey of learning and growing, no matter how hard it is, no matter how bad you feel, no matter of the circumstances? Are you committed to getting better and figuring it out? Three is challenge.
Speaker 1:In order to grow, there must be a challenge. That's how we learn. You must either put yourself intentionally in a challenge, or, when you fail or lose, you grow. It can't be easy all the time. You can't just go through the motions. In order to grow, there must be challenge, there must be adversity, it must be hard. And the last one is confidence. We'll put in all these three together. You will gain confidence, because confidence increases in direct proportion to the amount of preparation put into your endeavor.
Speaker 1:The more and more we do something and the more we fail and challenge ourselves and we worry about the things we can control and we are committed to it, then the more confident we'll become, the more gritty, the more calloused our mind will become to absorb things, to learn and to grow and to create mental toughness. That's what we need. So don't shy away from challenges, from failure, from all these things and worried about things you can't control. Embrace it, learn from it and grow from it. The four C's of mental toughness are control, commitment, challenge and confidence. I wish you nothing but the best. I wish nothing but the best for everybody, but I wish you a challenge life. I wish you a committed life, a life of control and a life of confidence, a mental fortitude, mental grit and mental toughness. Mind to be better. Remember you can't be broken.
