“Quit? You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I’m sure you have a good reason to quit. So what are you dying of that’s keeping you from the finals?” - Lance Armstrong in “Dodgeball“

By now most of us know the incredible story of Lance Armstrong, the Texas native that came back from cancer to win 7 consecutive Tour de France titles from 1999-2005. He has inspired many and is now busy trying to conquer his next challenge, the sport of running. He ran his first marathon in 2006 finishing in 2:59:36 (if you’re not sure, this is really good). He recently completed this year’s Boston Marathon in 2:50:58. Elite runners, watch your backs.

The story is amazing because it seems so supernatural and unreal. When staring at the list of Armstrong’s achievements the natural question is how? How does a man go from his deathbed to winning one the toughest sporting events in the world 1,2,3….7 times in a row! How does one maintain that much consistency? Lance has told us, “It’s Not About the Bike,” and I would agree — I think the majority of the answer to “how” lies in Lance Armstrong’s mental toughness.

Mental toughness is talked about a lot, but understood by very few. It is the ability to will oneself through less than ideal situations and conditions whether that be battling cancer or simply waking up early to go workout. Mental toughness can come from many sources such as:

• overcoming a difficult childhood
• a deep faith in God
• battling an addiction or disease
• undergoing military training
• consistent physical exertion

I know several people that I would consider mentally tough from WWII veterans to outdoor adventurers to Christian missionaries, but my friend Beau Suder is the first that comes to mind.

Beau has been an incredibly close friend for some time now so I’ve gotten to see his “inner workings,” a bit more than most folks. In high school Beau was an amazing athlete. Was it because he was 6′2” 220lbs with a 50-inch vertical? No, it was because he worked harder and pushed himself more than anyone else on the field. I have several stories I could tell, but I’ll keep this short.

Beau ended up playing football for the Air Force Academy, but struggled with a nagging shoulder injury. One night, while playing UNLV, he made a big hit on a guy and came trotting to the sideline holding his arm which was completely limp - he had dislocated his shoulder. I was on the sidelines and cringed thinking he would be out for the game if not longer. The next thing I saw was him talking to the trainer and the trainer popping his shoulder back in right there on the sidelines. One play later, Beau was trotting back onto the field to play the rest of the game! This is mental toughness, ignoring pain and performing under less than ideal circumstances.

As I began thinking about how one builds mental toughness I realized that while there are many ways it comes about, for the majority of people, consistent and intense physical exertion is the most accessible and common way to build mental toughness. You can’t help if you grew up in a posh suburban environment with loving parents or have never battled cancer, and the majority of people will never undergo the type of training that comes standard in the military, but everyone can go on a long run or work out until their bodies are screaming to stop. With that in mind, here are some keys to building mental toughness that anyone can follow:

1. Show Up - “Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on? ” - Lance Armstrong

What separates a guy like Lance from 99% of the world is the fact that he showed up everyday, when it was raining, when it was hot, when he was sore, when he was tired….he showed up everyday. JUST SHOW UP! What happens after you show up is where the real fun begins, but most people can’t even make it to that point. If it’s working out, tell a friend you’ll meet them at a certain time so you will be less likely to back out. If it’s battling an addiction, make yourself go to a recovery group every time it meets.

2. Hurt Vs. Injured - “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” - Lance Armstrong.

My high school football coach, John Deti, used to always ask players that limped to the sidelines during a game, are you hurt or injured? This may seem trite to some, but he was keying in on a fundamental issue. Soreness, stiffness, bruises…these are just parts of any game or any physically demanding activity, but they should not keep one from continuing. Injuries on the other hand, like muscle tears, broken bones, etc. are a different thing entirely and should be taken care of. One of the best ways to develop mental toughness is extreme physical exertion…if there is no discomfort , you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. This is different from causing injury which hinders you rather than helping.

3. Unfamiliar and Unexpected Are Your Friends - Part of building mental toughness involves being comfortable performing in stressful situations. One of the best ways to develop this trait is by consistently doing things you have never done or trying things a different way. Fear of the unknown keeps many from ever developing mental toughness, but by consistently placing yourself in unfamiliar situations you can learn to deal with stress and fear. Some good ones that I’ve tried include rock climbing, attending the Air Force Academy, swimming (what is recreation for most used to stress me out since I was a terrible swimmer until recently) and mountain biking. You don’t have to do something crazy, just something that you don’t normally do and something that puts a little fear in your heart.

4. What’s Your Motivation - Whenever you find yourself in a tough position you will need something you can focus on to provide motivation. I don’t know exactly what Lance focused on during the hill climbs of the Tour de France, but I’m sure it included a mixture of other cancer patients he had met along the way, yellow jackets and a finish line. Lately, for me it has been my daughter and my desire to have her look at her father’s life someday and say, “Wow, he really pushed himself and accomplished some great things.” I want her to be as proud of me as I am of her. Whatever it is, everyone has to find something to focus on for motivation. If you allow your mind to focus on your pain or your laziness you will have a hard time pushing through any adversity.

5. Constantly Challenge Yourself - What most people fail to understand is that mental toughness is something that has to be practiced and developed over time. The key to this is placing yourself in challenging situations…constantly doing things that are hard. This is a fundamental principle of military training. Sure, push-ups and sit-ups help develop you physically, but after a couple hundred of them it becomes much more of a mental game than a physical one. The military uses physical training and yelling because it creates a stressful environment that breeds mental toughness and forces one to deal with intense discomfort and anxiety, the fact that it gets you in shape is a side benefit.

6. Surround Yourself with Lance’s and Beau’s - As with most things in life, you will become who you spend time with. So, if you want to get more mentally tough, spend time with people that already are. It’s contagious. I always love working out with Beau because just when I’ve had it and am ready to leave the gym he is just starting…he pushes me by his example. Lately I’ve been pouring myself into training for a marathon. Being as I’ve never run one I have tried to meet and talk to others that have in hopes of gleaning some insight and motivation from them. Whether you are training for a marathon or not, surrounding yourself with other mentally tough people is a sure way to become mentally tough yourself.

Mental toughness isn’t about being macho or cocky, it’s about coping with stress, anxiety and pain. It’s about running another lap when your throat is burning, doing 20 more push-ups after your arms start to shake and doing the things others aren’t willing to do.

This trait is beneficial not just for the Navy SEAL, but for the 9-5 average Joe as well. When one looks at people like Lance, the Ironman triathalete, or the Vietnam POW it is easy to say, “I could never make it through something like that or be as strong as them.” The fact is, they too had to develop their mental toughness just like everyone else, day after day after day. Simple, but not easy.

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This week I was in Pensacola, Florida where I went through the Air Force’s Water Survival course. From the Air Force fact sheet, “The course centers it’s training on aircrews, which utilize parachuting as the primary means of escape. Instruction includes initial academic training, parachute equipment procedures, parachute drag training, post egress and recovery training which includes a deep water landing, and a one to two hour raft familiarization exercise.” Basically, I learned what to do if I ever have to jump out of a plane and parachute into the ocean.

One of the most memorable parts of the course dealt with the story of a Chinese sailor in WWII, named Poon Lim, who survived alone in a life raft for 133 days in the Atlantic after his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The fact that he survived for so long is incredible enough, but what struck me the most was the fact that at the time of his rescue, after more than four months on a 8 ft. square raft, he was quite healthy, having lost only 20lbs and walking away under his own strength. Not only did he live, he lived well!

Aside from the inevitable, “What would I have done?” question, there are a few lessons in skilled living I took away from this incredible survival story:

Things Will Go Wrong, Accept It - I’m sure Lim didn’t wake up that day expecting to get hit by a torpedo, but the unexpected happened and he found himself in a mess. Lim could have easily given up, bitter and hopeless, but he accepted that the world around him had fallen apart and dealt with it.

No matter how well we plan for the future bad things are going to happen, things we are unable to predict. Some people handle these life disasters well, coming out stronger at the other end. Others are completely knocked out, unable to recover. Learn what separates these two types of people and change your life accordingly.

Learn to Adapt - After two hours floating in the sea Lim found a small life raft and climbed aboard onto what would become his new home. On the raft were some biscuits, water, flares and an electric torch. Lim was now alone in the middle of the Atlantic with very few supplies, a situation that could leave many hopeless, but Lim chose to adapt to his new environment.

Poon stayed in shape by swimming laps around his raft, keeping his eyes above water at all times scanning for sharks. He gave himself small rations of biscuits and water each day, but as the supplies ran low he had to change his survival plan.

He used the canvas covering his life jacket to collect rainwater and bent a piece of wire in his electric torch to form a hook to catch fish, using his last pieces of biscuit as bate and a hemp rope as the line. He pried a nail from a plank in the raft to catch larger fish and cut up his empty biscuit tin to make a knife. Lim had very few resources, but he adapted and this enabled him to survive.

Focus On What You Can Control - It would have been easy for Lim to lie on his raft all day thinking about when a rescue boat would pick him up, what he could do if he had more supplies or why this had all happened to him in the first place, but these things were outside his control. Instead Lim focused on the things he could control like catching fish, staying as healthy as possible, keeping his raft clean, etc. In doing so he kept himself occupied and strengthened his will to live.

Know Your Weaknesses and Deal With Them - Lim was a poor swimmer so he would often tie a rope around his wrist connecting him to the raft. Rather than accepting this weakness and moving on, Lim instead swam daily, gradually turning his weakness into a strength.

Being able to identify your weaknesses is much harder than it seems. First, we rarely want to accept that we have weaknesses in the first place and second, its often hard for us to see them even if we want to. Having close friends and mentors in your life to point out your blind spots is a key part of skilled living. Only when your weaknesses are identified do you then have a chance to deal with them.

I watched the incredible movie “300″ tonight and was reminded of the age-old truth that the few must always secure freedom for the many. The line that separates a coward from a hero is thin, yet of the utmost significance. The free man who decides to fight under his own volition for the ideals he holds dear and for the continued freedom of himself, his family and friends will always fight longer, harder and more successfully than the slave man, who has never tasted freedom and fights for someone else’s cause or ambitions. Some people say that we should never go to war, that peace should be had no matter the cost…these people are cowards. It’s a failure of virtue, and I would even say morality, to abandon freedom for the sake of peace. John Stuart Mill, the English economist and philosopher, said it best, a quote I hold very dear:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.