Mental Stamina: Staying Long Enough to Let the Seed Grow

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about mental stamina—what it really is, what it looks like in real life, and how often we misunderstand it.

Mental stamina isn’t loud. It isn’t flashy. It’s not about hype or motivation or pushing harder. It’s about the ability to stay—to remain present, committed, and grounded long enough for something meaningful to take shape.

And I’m realizing something important: I need to give myself more credit.

It takes mental stamina to complete thirteen years of school.

It takes mental stamina to earn a PhD.

It takes mental stamina to keep showing up when the outcome isn’t immediate.

For a long time, I told myself I had “just rolled through life,” bouncing from thing to thing without direction. But when I change the lens and look honestly, that story doesn’t hold up.

I wasn’t bouncing aimlessly.

I was going where I felt the pull.

There’s a difference.

Bouncing without intention leads nowhere.

Following a pull—when done consciously—always gives you something.

Every major decision I’ve made in my life, every step in my education and career, was a response to a pull I felt at that moment. I didn’t always have the language for it, but I was moving with intention. And that path led me here: with a doctorate in leadership, teaching others how to move through life with purpose and clarity.

Where things became difficult wasn’t the pull itself.

It was what came after.

I now have language for this part of the journey. I call it B–Y—the space between where you start and where you’re trying to go.

B–Y is the navigation zone.

It’s the stretch where things feel unfinished, uncomfortable, and unclear. Where you’re doing the work, but the results haven’t caught up yet. Where confidence hasn’t fully met effort.

Most people don’t struggle because they chose the wrong direction.

They struggle because they don’t recognize B–Y for what it is.

There were moments when I arrived at something meaningful—something aligned—and then stalled. I felt frustration. Confusion. Loss of vision. That Saturn’s Moons feeling of orbiting possibility without fully landing.

I didn’t quit.

But I didn’t stay long enough, either.

I wasn’t seeing results fast enough. I didn’t yet understand refinement. And instead of building systems and letting the seed grow, I moved on to the next thing that pulled me.

Looking back, I see this clearly now: the pulls weren’t mistakes—and leaving them didn’t erase their value.

Many of them returned.

Financial coaching, for example, showed up early in my life. I stopped actively pursuing it after about a year—but it never disappeared. It resurfaced again and again, and now it’s finding its place inside a much larger vision. The difference is this: had I stayed longer the first time, I would have built systems and structure that could have continued to serve me—even as I moved on to other pursuits.

The pull was right.

What was missing was mental stamina and structure.

Those early pursuits weren’t failures.

They were Minor Zs—important steps along the journey that I didn’t yet know how to sustain.

I followed the pull beautifully.

I just didn’t always know how to stay once I got there.

That’s where mental stamina comes in.

Mental stamina is what allows you to remain in B–Y without assuming something is wrong. Because the feelings that show up there—feeling behind, unsure, unfinished—are expected.

They don’t mean you’re off track.

They mean you’re in transition.

The problem is when we mistake feelings for signals to stop.

When you don’t have language for what you’re experiencing, frustration feels like failure. Uncertainty feels like incompetence. And so you leave—before the structure has a chance to stand on its own.

You move on without locking in systems.

You remove the scaffold too early.

And what you thought you were building collapses—not because it was wrong, but because it wasn’t finished.

Mental stamina is the ability to say:

“I expected this to feel like this. I’m still in it.”

It’s staying long enough to build something solid.

Long enough to practice.

Long enough to get bored.

Long enough to get confident.

This is why I believe so deeply in structure—daily systems, routines, and checklists—not as cages, but as support.

Your to-do list matters. Not as a measure of productivity, but as a promise to yourself.

If you’re not where you want to be in life, start there.

Write things down.

Do the research.

Map the distance between where you are and where you’re going.

And then—honor it.

Honor the version of you who planned it.

Honor the version of you who dreams about what’s next.

Be the foot soldier for your own future.

Your past self and your future self are constantly talking to you. Every daydream, every mental image of a better life, every “what if”—that’s communication.

Mental stamina is respecting that conversation enough to act on it consistently.

Not reinventing the plan every day.

Not starting over every morning.

But showing up again and again to the same work—until it no longer needs scaffolding.

That’s how things become embodied.

That’s how systems replace struggle.

That’s how you move steadily toward your Major Z.

You don’t need to feel motivated every day.

You need to feel anchored.

Mental stamina will carry you when inspiration fades.

And if you stay long enough, the confidence will come