Mental Toughness

When it comes to winning gold medals, we know the mental game is as important as the physical. Many research hours have been poured into understanding the psychology behind athletic performance, but the research findings may reach further than elite sport.

In this episode, David and Associate Professor Gucciardi discuss the concepts of mental toughness and resilience, and how they may apply not only to sports stars, but also the workplace and even the battlefield.

Associate Professor Gucciardi is currently involved in several projects spanning topics such as doping in sport, mental toughness, life skills development, resilience, workplace well-being and stress.

• What is mental toughness? (2:17)
• The difference between mental toughness and resilience (3:23)
• Mental toughness in sport (5:45)
• Mental toughness and stress at work (7:49)
• Improving performance in the workplace (9:55)
• Creating the right environment for resilience (13:19)
• Changing culture to foster mental toughness (16:59)
• Future research on resilience in the army (18:25)

Learn more 

• Team resilience: A scoping review of conceptual and empirical work
• Strengthening resilience in military officer cadets: a group-randomised controlled trial of coping and emotional regulatory self-reflection training
• A qualitative exploration of mentally tough behaviour in Australian football
• Commentary: Mental toughness and individual differences in learning, education and work performance, psychological wellbeing and personality: a systematic review
• What is high performance?

Got any questions or suggestions for future topics?

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Music: OKAY by 13ounce Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 Music promoted by Audio Library

You can read the full transcript of the episode here.