What is fortitude – what is it like and how to develop it in yourself?

All sorts of situations happen in life. Not every one of them gives a person positive and pleasant emotions. From time to time we are faced with the pressing question of how to increase our moral strength. There are special exercises that will not only allow you to renounce problems and vanity, but also increase your self-confidence.

Pain

Strength is generated only through pain . In the gym, in life – it doesn’t matter. It’s as if you are fighting with yourself, forcing yourself to do something or resist. This is a standard growth indicator that all athletes strive for. They understand that pain is a sieve through which the weak are eliminated and the strong rise.

Pain appears due to the fault of the brain. It is difficult for him to break an ingrained habit and choose the difficult path instead of the easy one. This causes dissonance, a state of reluctance and apathy.

accept this state like a champion and learn to use it for development. Below we will look at 3 ways to cause and overcome pain in yourself.

1 Act without sparing yourself

When you feel sorry for yourself, you reinforce the habit of giving up. Your body acquires power, you indulge its desires. The next time you have a choice - to do or not to do - you will be guided by past behavior. This means that your piggy bank will gradually be replenished with negative experiences and excuses. The feeling of guilt will dull accordingly, you will allow yourself to be a rag and will not give your best.

• “Okay, I’m not ready yet...”
• “Oh, weakling, it didn’t work out again. Okay, this is all because of......"
• “It’s okay, it’ll work out next time”

Don't feel sorry for yourself, fight habits. Love the process of overcoming. The more often you act in accordance with your inner voice (conscience, soul), the more you develop fortitude. Remember that you are only as happy with yourself as you can control your life.

2 Run into problems

Instead of a shameful and negative experience, it is better to put your victories . You can overcome habits and develop as much as possible, or you can artificially create discomfort. This way you will quickly start moving and develop arguments to increase your self-esteem.

If you have accumulated anger and no longer have the strength to tolerate your weaknesses, this is the ideal way to release energy. Place yourself in extreme conditions, start doing at least something. As soon as you move, strength will come, and the desire to live and develop will return.

You can try for example:

• Start with the little things. Watch your posture, stop “carrying pieces,” and clean up your speech.
• Continue with average. Read 4 books in a month (1 per week), go to the gym for six months, meet ten people.
• Extreme. Sit on a fast, get up at 6 am, run 3 km every evening, open your own business.

After such feats, you will be able to focus on your victories . They will give you the confidence to further develop your fortitude.

3 Start over with a clean slate

Sometimes you just don't have the courage to take a decisive step. You seem to understand the destructiveness of the problem, but any endeavors quickly end. Little energy, little torque to get moving.

In such cases, you need to make a small revolution with yourself. Ruthlessly break down everything old and start building something new in its place. In this way, you will instantly burst into real life and feel the pleasant pain of change.

If you do it conscientiously, it will be painful and difficult. But there are a number of advantages:

• Massiveness of changes
• Instant release of energy and anger towards yourself
• Feeling full of life
• Increasing confidence in your abilities
• Feeding changes from each other (for example, running in the morning - getting up at 6:00)

Don't wait for the moment , live here and now, as the Pepsi advertisement says. Your life is not a rehearsal for something important, so don’t be afraid to change and release your reserves of strength. It is at such moments that strength of spirit and strength of character are trained.

Films about fortitude

When there is no one around in difficult moments of trials, you can watch films about willpower and spirit, and this will be an excellent motivation to move on in life and not lose heart, but to nurture it. The heroes of these films know from their own experience what fortitude is:

1. " Pollyanna / Pollyanna
   ". This girl Polianna faced a lot of challenges. But her loving heart and fortitude melted the hearts of the small town and its callous inhabitants.
2. " Three Days to Escape / The Next Three Days
   " His wife is guilty of murder, but he does not believe it and tries in every possible way to get her out of prison. A film about the power of love and fortitude in the face of vicissitudes of fate.
3. " Favourite/Seabiscuit
   ". In this drama there are victories and defeats, love of life and despair, and the horse Sukhari, homely and not stately, an extension of his master, together they are one powerful force of spirit. The film helps you feel the taste of life again when it’s bad and hard.
4. " Soul Surfer
   ". This is the true story of the famous American surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm due to a shark attack while training. But Bethany did not give in to the circumstances and continued training and participating in competitions.
5. " Wild
   ". True stories always motivate, this wonderful film is based on the biography of Cheryl Strayed, an American writer and screenwriter. During a difficult period in her life, Sharyl decides to go on a difficult journey on foot and return a different person.

Goals

To develop fortitude, you must have a motive . Without a strong reason, you will use only willpower, at some point you will break down and reproach yourself more than before. Therefore, the first priority will be to set goals.

We hear about this from every word, but we write them reluctantly. A piece of paper with goals lies in some nightstand for months and forgets what its owner looks like. But this is bad: we are like an airplane that flies as long as there is kerosene, and does not know its direction. Someday the kerosene (motivation) will run out and it will fall down.

At least now write again why you need all the changes . This small investment of time will help you “lock in” the desired result so that there is no opportunity to slip away. When you write down what you want, you will receive documented evidence of your real priorities. It will “tell” how to direct events so as not to succumb to them as before.

Tattoo meaning fortitude

Tattoo artists claim that one of the most popular tattoos among male and female clients is the fortitude tattoo with an image of a dragon on the shoulder or back. Why dragon? In Chinese mythology, this is a mythical animal with power over two worlds: the above-ground and underground. It carries magic, spirituality, nobility and strength. The victory of the spirit over the physicality is the dragon. The owner of a dragon tattoo receives its qualities: fortitude, endurance, magic, perseverance in achieving their goals.

Internal mood

Strength of spirit is an internal state. If earlier we looked at how to develop it through outside intervention, now we will look at how to synthesize it spiritually. The connection between external and internal influences will quadratically strengthen our inner core.

1 Principles

You don't have to appear super-confident, try to please everyone and be a leader. It is enough to have a firm position in life. When you act in accordance with it, you feel your “backbone”, the presence of character.

To be independent and like yourself you need:

• Be able to say NO (Why should you be afraid of another person’s judgment? Why should you care about his opinion?)
• Be able to refuse
• Be able to defend your positions if they are correct
• Be able to resist the leaders - the “authorities” of your environment
• Be able to take responsibility
• Stick to your views, don’t change your point of view with the breeze

To develop a firm position in life, you need to find your principles. To do this, you need to dig into your head and understand what you would like to do always and what you would never want to do . You can also analyze current behavior and take a couple of examples from there. For example, for me it's:

1. I strive to achieve my goal with all my might.
2. I don’t get lost or embarrassed in front of others
3. I don't touch if they don't touch me
4. I don’t make fun of friends to gain another person’s authority.
5. Other

Find your principles for yourself. They will become a framework for your behavior, a guide for your decisions. They will help you gain understanding of yourself, thereby strengthening your fortitude.

2 Cleansing

Nothing is worthy of your worries. No fear, no emotion should oppress your life. Today you are alive - tomorrow you are not, all this is empty.

While you live, you must give yourself to the fullest, because for infinity it makes no difference whether you die in a day or in 1000 years. Everything will be forgotten, everything will go nowhere. Compared to the Universe, your fear is a small thing, it will not change anything and will not contribute anything. You alone amuse yourself with it at the everyday level, when so many amazing and beautiful things are happening around you.

Get rid of all grievances, forgive, forget about the past. Become a new person who lets go of all the petty issues. Of course, in life it won’t turn out as beautiful as in the text, but at least ease your soul a little . After all, what is inside you will be the material for building strength.

3 Material for construction

As history shows, strength must be based on goodness . All sorts of Hitlers and Mussolinis were convinced of this by their own example. Their fascism could not last long enough and sank into oblivion.

It's the same in our lives. You must become a kind, pleasant and positive person, only then can you fully develop fortitude. Those around you will feel your warmth and dedication and this will help you grow faster. By filling yourself with love for the world, you will provide yourself with the building blocks of a powerful and pleasant character.

A small disclaimer: you don’t have to be gentle to be kind. Be strict, don't let others take advantage of your kindness. Let them know that you know how to give, but only of your own free will.

4 Live life to the fullest

Live the way they show in the movies. Position yourself like superman. Give it your all now.

A weak person locks himself in his closet and lives according to a schedule, when a strong-willed person gives everything he has to achieve results. If there is a Ferrari in the world, then you need to ride it. If there is Paris, then you need to visit it. You were born into this world with a 1 in 400,000,000,000,000,000 chance, and if there is something worthwhile here, you should try it.

When you work at full capacity, self-belief, confidence, and success come. The whole body is excited by the busy rhythm of life, character is tempered by endless problems, and strength of spirit increases from their solutions. Feed your soul with action and strength will come as a side effect.

To become a fully-living person you need:

• Never give up
• Work to the maximum everywhere (training, work)
• Don't be afraid of risk
• Concentrate on your desires, do not look or listen to others
• Know what you want
• Never be afraid of anything
• Find a source of energy - books, a loved one, authority

Act as if you have already gained mental strength. Don’t try to develop it - it takes a long time, try to immediately plunge into the transformation. By changing something today, you will see results faster. Of the 100 people who read the article, be the one who doesn’t just waste time reading, but radically changes their life.

Books about fortitude

They exude confidence and inflexibility, they have gone through many tests and emerged from them with honor, and they know that only through obstacles and overcoming oneself does the strength of the human spirit grow, they are the heroes of books that have become bestsellers. What is power and fortitude in the books of famous writers:

1. “ Wolfhound
   ” by M. Semenov. A series of books about a man nicknamed Wolfhound, he is a warrior who has nothing to lose, because all his relatives were destroyed. He will pass through worlds, time, space, hard labor and wars, and this will only strengthen his fortitude.
2. “ Me Before You
   ” by J. Moyes. The main characters are the girl Lou Clark, who was left without work, and he is Will, a young guy who made the most of life and suddenly became disabled. Lou gets a job as a nurse for Will, but he is sarcastic and constantly makes fun of the girl. But Lou does not despair and strives to arrange Will’s life so that he stops feeling outside of active life. They are both strong-willed individuals, both are beautiful and their love is the most beautiful thing that could happen to them, even if only for a short time.
3. " You changed my life
   ". A. Sellu. The acclaimed film “1+1” was based on this book. Sometimes fate brings together people who seem to be so different and all that remains is to throw up your hands “for what?” Both heroes will learn a lot from each other and both will grow spiritually.
4. " Spark of Life
   ". EM. Remarque. War is the most cruel test of life; it squeezes a person into circumstances where the choice is negligible, and the person is completely vulnerable. But even under these conditions, a person learns, passes tests, and his fortitude grows stronger.
5. “ Notes on Napkins
   ” by G. Callahan. True strength of spirit manifests itself in difficult times for a person. This book is a true story in which the author writes about himself and his family. Garth lived the normal life of an average American until he learned that he had cancer. And every day became like his last. The diagnosis did not break him and several years have passed, and Garth continues to make every day of his life and the lives of his loved ones unforgettable.