16d • General discussion
A Model For Mental Toughness - Alex Hermozi
I was watching a video from Alex Hormozi recently, where he talks about mental toughness, which he defines as:
“The chance that a bad thing changes how you act in a way that goes against your goals.”
So it’s not “you have it or you don’t.” It’s: How much do you have?
And from there, he breaks mental toughness into four components:
- Tolerance
- Fortitude
- Resilience
- Adaptability
I want to walk through each one in simple terms, with real-life style examples, and then connect this to emotional resiliency and where I see we tend to become emotionally reactive.
1. Tolerance – How Long Before You Snap?
Tolerance is:
How much hardship you can take on (or how long it can last) before your behavior changes.
In Hormozi’s words, this is your fuse. How much can you tolerate before you diverge from how you normally act?
- If you have high tolerance: it takes a lot to rock your boat.
- If you have low tolerance: small things can set you off.
Example:
- High tolerance:Your day goes sideways—traffic, a rude email, plans get canceled. You’re annoyed, you feel it, but you still show up to your commitments. You might vent a little, but you don’t start snapping at everyone or abandoning what mattered to you.
- Low tolerance:One small thing goes wrong—someone doesn’t text back, a coworker makes a comment—and suddenly your whole day is “ruined.” You shut down, cancel things, or lash out at people who had nothing to do with it.
Tolerance is about that first moment where discomfort hits. Do we immediately react, or do we have some space before we do?
2. Fortitude – How Far Down Do You Go?
Fortitude is:
How intense your behavior change is once your tolerance has been passed.
In other words: Once you’re over the edge, how far do you fall?
- High fortitude: Your behavior doesn’t get that extreme, even when you’re upset.
- Low fortitude: When you’re triggered, you don’t just step off the path—you jump off the cliff.
Example:
- High fortitude:You get into an argument with your partner. You’re hurt, you’re mad, maybe you raise your voice a bit. Then you decide to step outside, breathe, and come back to talk it through. You veered off, but not that far.
- Low fortitude:Same argument. This time, in the heat of it, you say something cruel you can’t take back, slam doors, threaten to leave, or go do something self-destructive (binge eating, drinking, doomscrolling, etc.). One trigger turns into a full spiral.
Fortitude is about how big the reaction becomes once we’re already triggered. This is where “I’m upset” turns into “I made everything worse.”
3. Resilience – How Fast Do You Come Back?
Resilience is:
How long it takes you to return to a stable baseline after your behavior has changed.
Once you’ve reacted, how long do you stay off your center?
- High resilience: You bounce back quickly.
- Low resilience: You stay down for a long time.
Example:
- High resilience:You mess up at work and feel embarrassed. You’re upset for an hours, maybe a few minutes, then you refocus, correct what you can, and move on. You still feel a bit tender, but your behavior comes back to normal pretty fast.
- Low resilience:Same mistake—but you replay it in your head for weeks. You keep bringing it up, withdrawing, or sabotaging yourself because you “don’t feel like it.” The original event is long over, but emotionally and behaviorally, you’re still in it.
Resilience is where we learn to uncouple how we feel from how we act. We can hurt deeply and still slowly choose behaviors that support our life, not destroy it.
4. Adaptability – Who Do You Become After?
Adaptability is:
Where your new “normal” lands compared to your old normal.
After you’ve gone through something hard and stabilized again:
- Are you better than before?
- Are you the same?
- Or are you worse off long-term?
Example:
- High adaptability:You go through a breakup. It hurts. You grieve, you cry, you feel lost for a while. But over time, you use it to learn about your patterns, your needs, your boundaries. You come out with more self-respect, clarity, and standards. The experience permanently changes you for the better.
- Medium adaptability:You go through the breakup, you hurt, and eventually you return to who you were before. No huge growth, but you also don’t lose yourself long term.
- Low adaptability:The breakup crushes you. Months or years later, you’re still closed off, less trusting, less hopeful. You don’t put yourself out there, and your life shrinks. The experience permanently changes you for the worse.
Adaptability is the long game. It’s about the story we tell ourselves afterward — and whether we let hard things shape us into more grounded, wise, compassionate versions of ourselves… or smaller, more fearful ones.
Using This Framework for Emotional Reactivity
What I like about this model is that it turns “mental toughness” from a vague idea into four specific levers we can actually work on:
- Tolerance: When do I first start to get reactive?
- Fortitude: Once I cross that line, how extreme do I get?
- Resilience: How long do I stay there?
- Adaptability: Who am I becoming because of this?
Instead of “I need to be tougher” , we can ask:
- Am I easily set off? (low tolerance)
- Do I overreact big once I’m triggered? (low fortitude)
- Do I stay stuck for a long time? (low resilience)
- Do I come out of this smaller than I was before? (low adaptability)
From an emotional resiliency standpoint, this gives us a way to pinpoint where we get emotionally reactive:
- Maybe your trigger point is early (low tolerance), but once you’re triggered, you don’t actually blow things up.
- Maybe you rarely react (high tolerance), but when you do, you really go off the rails (low fortitude).
- Maybe your reactions aren’t huge, but you linger in them for weeks or months (low resilience).
- Or maybe you move on behaviorally, but inside you’ve quietly lowered your expectations for life, love, or yourself (low adaptability).
Each of those is a different “training area” for emotional resiliency.
Bringing It Back to Us
For me, this model is less about “being tough” and more about being intentional:
- I can feel everything I feel.
- I don’t have to act out everything I feel.
- And I can practice shortening the gap between feeling something and choosing a response that aligns with who I want to be.
If we see mental toughness as a set of skills instead of a fixed trait, then emotional resiliency becomes trainable, too. We can notice:
- Where am I giving my emotions full control of my behavior?
- Which of these four areas (tolerance, fortitude, resilience, adaptability) is my weakest link right now?
- What small behavior could I practice to strengthen that one area?
Your Turn
I’m curious how this lands for you.
- When you look at these four components, which one feels like your strongest?
- Which one feels like your growth edge when it comes to emotional resiliency and reactivity?
- Can you think of a recent situation where you can see this model playing out?
Drop your reflections below 👇
I’ll share where I have the hardest time in the 1st comment!
I’d love to hear how you see yourself in this and where you want to build more emotional resiliency.
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A Model For Mental Toughness - Alex Hermozi
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