Understanding and Improving Your Mental Fitness for Better Well-being

Stress. Trauma. People pleasing. Anxiety. Fear. Procrastination. Overcommitting. The list could go on but I will stop here.

Many of us find ourselves managing one or more of these in our lives at one point or another. But what if we could manage them with ease and grace and not let them ruin our health? I am truly afraid for the physical health of the women I see who postpone their self care without a thought. You know who I am talking about, maybe that’s you. Have you ever asked yourself what that postponement costs?

According to the CDC, the leading causes of death for women in the US are heart disease, cancer, and stroke. The World Health Organization names heart disease as the leading cause of death for women globally. And I think mental and physical fitness can decrease both of those numbers. But today I only want to focus on mental fitness.

What is Mental Fitness?

Mental fitness is taking care of our mental well-being and being mindful of our thoughts, actions, and emotions. Just like being physically fit helps us tackle the physical demands of our lives, being mentally fit works in a similar way. It gives us the ability to choose how we react to different situations, whether they’re something we’ve planned for or something unexpected. This helps us to avoid getting hurt emotionally and minimizes our chances of causing harm to ourselves and others.

Whether you realize it or not your entire affect changes when you are not in a good space. Think about the last time you were upset with someone or about something. Chances are you thought some not so nice things. Maybe you even said some of them out loud. And based on what you thought or said, it created a reaction that was probably not helpful, whether explicitly or implicitly. And even if no one realized it, it caused a reaction in your body. Sometimes our heart rate speeds up, our muscles tense, our eyes become blurry and our tummy aches. Those are physical responses to a thought pattern. Too many of those physical responses causes harm to our bodies.

But when your mind is in good shape, you choose how to handle a mean comment or a disagreement. Being mentally fit gives you the freedom to take a breath and reply the way you prefer, instead of getting all worked up and stressing your body. It’s like having the benefit of hindsight in the present moment. Just think about being less on edge in the countless interactions we go through each week and the benefits to our bodies and minds. Instead of being dysregulated from moment to moment which eventually puts a strain on your body, you control your emotions and reactions which minimizes the stress on your organs so that your physical health is positively impacted.

Why is it Important?

Our habits determine how we show up each day, and our days are what create our lives so what we do every day in important to our overall wellbeing. Pathways in the brain are like the tracks our thoughts make when they run on repeat. When we do something over and over, the connections between our brain cells shift to make it easier to keep doing that thing. It’s like creating a well-worn path in our minds. They’re like familiar roads that get stronger the more we use them. Like when you take the same route to work every day and can almost do it with your eyes closed. When we keep focusing on the same type of thoughts, we’re essentially reinforcing those thought highways, and our thinking becomes automatic.

The thing about automatic thinking is that it can make us react in ways that aren’t really helpful. Our reactions come from automatic thinking based on past feelings or triggers. The good news is that if we want to try something new, we can carve out new paths by doing it regularly, embracing new beliefs, and picturing a great result.

How do I do it?

One way to work on improving your mental fitness is to maintain your awareness about why you think the way you do. Asking yourself where it comes from so that you act instead of reacting. Ask yourself questions like, What do I really want to happen here? Where do I wanna go? This helps to avoid doing, saying, and thinking negative things without even realizing it, or understanding the impact it has on you and others.

Automatic thinking affects all of us, it’s not just you. It originated from our survival brain, the limbic system. It stays vigilant, always looking for potential threats. This wasn’t a problem early in our development, but when we becoming overly focused on threats our automatic thinking becomes attuned to defense which keeps us in a negative head space always ready to fight or escape danger. Imagine how that impacts your heart?

The good news is that we can re-program this part of our brain so that our thinking is focused on positive thoughts and behaviors that serve us. It’s like working out for our brains to rewire them to work better for us and improve our lives. That’s what mental fitness training is all about.

So what now?

My charge to you as you read this is to really start thinking about your mental fitness. How can you create the conditions to increase your positive thinking and emotional regulation? How can you investigate the origins of your thoughts to determine when and how to change them? I will share more on how to increase your mental fitness in next week’s post. In the interim, tell me what you think, subscribe if you like this content, share this with someone who could use it, and follow me on Instagram.