{"id":23682,"date":"2014-04-24T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/are-you-mentally-tough-your-b-school-preparation-requires-it\/"},"modified":"2014-04-24T07:00:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T14:00:31","slug":"are-you-mentally-tough-your-b-school-preparation-requires-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/are-you-mentally-tough-your-b-school-preparation-requires-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Mentally Tough? Your B-School Preparation Requires It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\"Are<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Like many MBAs who are naturally filled with ambition and competitiveness, I would love to be an elite athlete, but like so many of us mere mortals (MBA or otherwise), I am not.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty good at some things (e.g., I love to get my yah-yahs out on the ski slopes, or tooling around at questionable speeds on my motorcycle), but when it comes to high-performance sports, I know I will never be a Michael Jordan or a Tom Brady.\u00a0 However, a recent article from Scientific American<\/i><\/a>\u00a0caught my eye in its discussion of the notion concerning Mental Toughness, a concept described by, among others, sports psychologist James Loehrer<\/a>, and I realized how applicable the concept is to that competitive sport known as taking the GMAT.<\/i><\/p>\n

The article describes 12 key attributes of mental toughness, identified from a series of interviews with highly-accomplished athletes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Unshakeable self-belief in your ability to achieve goals.<\/li>\n
  2. Ability to bounce back from performance set-backs as a result of an increased determination to succeed.<\/li>\n
  3. Unshakeable self-belief that you possess unique qualities and abilities that make you better than your competition.<\/li>\n
  4. Insatiable desire and internalized motives to succeed.<\/li>\n
  5. Remaining fully focused on the task at hand in the face of distraction.<\/li>\n
  6. Regaining psychological control following unexpected, uncontrollable events.<\/li>\n
  7. Pushing back the boundaries of physical and emotional pain, while still maintaining technique and effort under distress during training and competition.<\/li>\n
  8. Accepting that competition anxiety is inevitable and knowing that you can cope with it.<\/li>\n
  9. Not being adversely affected by other\u2019s good and bad performances.<\/li>\n
  10. Thriving on the pressure of competition.<\/li>\n
  11. Remaining fully focused in the face of distractions.<\/li>\n
  12. Switching competition focus on and off as required.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As I read through the article, I was struck by how closely parallel these attributes are to those that elite performers on the GMAT must employ for success on Test Day.\u00a0 If we investigate this list a bit more closely, it becomes clear that they can be distilled down to four main aspects of mental toughness:<\/p>\n