Olympic athletes visualize their performance just as they want it to be, over and over in their mind. Phil Jackson, when coaching Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, was known for taking the team through his version of meditation, quieting the mind, relaxing the body in preparation for peak performance. By investing five to 10 minutes in the early morning, sitting upright, concentrating on your breathing and visualizing your upcoming day, you’re preparing yourself for peak performance.

 Most people tend to procrastinate when it comes to activities that they don’t enjoy or that pull them outside their comfort zone. Mental toughness requires discipline to stay on task, despite those little devilish thoughts that might be dancing in your head, or how you might feel about executing a particular task. Creating a daily priority to-do list creates a critical path for you to stay on throughout your day. There are times when you may need to take a break, recharge your batteries and then return to working through your plan.

Developing crocodile skin requires you to experience failure, which is all about taking calculated risks. One of the most effective ways to do this is to identify the activities that make you uncomfortable and commit to executing one a day. Keep a record of this, including the out-of-comfort zone activity, what happened and what you learned.

The human species has a built-in negative bias, which is why there’s so much negative news, so many naysayers and so much complaining. You want to avoid overindulging in the news, destructive conversations and negative people whenever possible. When forced to interact with negative people, play a mind game of thinking the positive counterpoint to their negativity. This will serve as a protective shield.

Most people think too much. Too much thinking leads to negative thinking, which leads to worry and doubt, all of which are cancerous to productivity. We refer to this as the negative programming cycle. The insidious nature of this cycle (it doesn’t start with negative thoughts; it begins by overthinking) often causes it to go undetected. It’s the old analysis-paralysis syndrome. Overthinking will keep you from executing your daily out-of-comfort-zone activity; it will interfere with completing your daily priority to-do list and lead to the negativity you want to avoid.