What does it mean to be a tough person?
What does it mean to be too soft?
I've been accused of all different kinds of adjectives.
I've been accused in the past of being too tough,
Too aggressive in my approach.
I've also been accused about being too soft,
Too soft as a parent,
Too soft as a person.
And I'd like to just share my thoughts on what it means to be tough.
A lot of us think that a tough person is someone that acts ferociously with power,
With dominance,
With aggression.
A tough person is the loud-mouthed fighter who doesn't take any nonsense from anyone.
And this may be semantics,
But I wouldn't call such a person tough.
I would call such a person assertive.
I would call such a person a strong boundary setter.
I would call such a person powerful,
Or energetic,
Or short-tempered,
Or enthusiastic,
But not tough.
And the reason why is because,
To me,
Toughness is not something you do.
It's a way of being in response to the world.
If we think of a tough metal,
We think of that metal as durable,
Resilient,
Hard,
Difficult to bend,
Not very malleable,
Hard to scratch.
That is a tough material.
The metal doesn't need to jump out at us,
Doesn't need to talk to us for it to be tough.
Conversely,
A soft metal is the type of metal that can be poked,
And prodded,
And bent out of shape.
In other words,
The environment can assert a force on that metal,
And change the characteristics,
Or the form.
So this is how I like to think of toughness and softness in people.
If you're a tough person,
Your form doesn't change in response to the environment.
You get a big compliment.
You get a big rejection.
You have something nice happen to you.
You get insulted.
You have good news,
You have bad news,
But the form remains the same.
That is toughness.
Softness,
On the other hand,
Is closely associated with neuroticism and the big five personality traits,
A sensitivity to negative emotion.
You can be a very assertive person.
You can be a forceful person.
But if the compliment of someone you care about affects you strongly emotionally,
If an insult from an enemy affects you emotionally,
You are,
By definition,
Soft.
You are not made out of hard stuff.
Many people think that anger is a sign of toughness.
Anger is a sign of being strong.
But the Stoics would disagree with this.
They would say that anger is actually a sign of weakness,
Of softness.
It's not a tough quality.
Because anger comes from being ruffled and upset by the world around you.
It means the material,
The stuff that you are made from is changing in its form in response to how other people and how the world affects you.
I think it's good to reflect on this because sometimes we think that we're not tough for some reason.
Maybe we think that we don't stand up for ourselves enough.
Maybe we're not the loudest person in the room.
But in my opinion,
If you can hold your form,
If you can stay grounded in a storm,
You are as tough as they come.
And the loudest,
Most popular person who gets upset by a little comment,
To me,
They show their fragility in that moment,
Their vulnerability.
They are not tough.
Now,
In an ideal world,
We can be assertive and compassionate and tough and tender,
Balanced and whole when the time suits.
That is practical wisdom,
Knowing what to do in the right measure and when.
So the next question then is,
Well,
How do you increase your toughness?
Well,
Meditation is a really good way to practice cultivating strength because you realize that you aren't your thoughts.
The storyline you are telling yourself about how that person has upset you,
You soon realize after meditating enough that that's not necessarily the whole story.
And in fact,
You can let that story go.
The mind and the thoughts,
Sometimes they think themselves and you are not the one making it.
When we spend enough time in meditation,
It can be almost amusing to see what the mind comes up with rather than triggering.
This is a good sign of progress,
By the way,
When you start to have this sense of play.
And also,
Of course,
Stoicism,
Stoic philosophy or any type of ancient philosophy where they encourage reason and wisdom and a philosophy of life.
Learning who you are,
Learning how your perceptions and your emotions work,
Developing a system for how to think and act in life will stop you from being affected by the world around you.
I hope you've enjoyed me talking about this distinction between toughness and softness and I encourage you to look out for these traits as you go through the world.
