10 Ways To Improve Your Mental Fitness
Similar to physical fitness, mental fitness is about increasing our stamina and ability to tolerate difficult experiences and move through life effectively. Here are 10 ideas to help you boost your mental fitness today.
It’s important to take care of our mental health. Many mental health services focus on alleviating mental health struggles and illnesses after they’ve developed, yet there’s an alternative which is being embraced by more in the mental health and medicine community: practice preventative medicine by not just treating illness but improving physical and mental wellbeing in general. In short, mental health is not simply about the absence of mental illness. This is where mental fitness comes in.
What Is Mental Fitness?
Mental fitness is about increasing our experiences of positive emotions and building stamina and resilience to help navigate stressors. It includes feeling positive emotions regularly, as well as accepting and navigating uncomfortable or unhelpful emotions that inevitably arise for all of us. Those with higher mental fitness are also more able to work towards important life goals, like relationship and professional goals, and navigate setbacks that occur. Improving our mental fitness can help us roll with stressors and discomfort more easily and effectively to live better lives.
How to Improve Mental Fitness
Here are some ideas to help improve mental fitness. Like physical exercise (spoiler: this is one of the tips!), we want to practice these skills regularly to see benefits. Note that many of these skills are inter-related, with mindfulness being a core feature.
Meditation and mindfulness. Focus on one task at a time and cultivate an awareness and acceptance of what you experience during that activity. This will help improve concentration and memory, and will help increase mental control to help you navigate distressing thought patterns that inevitably arise sometimes.
Positive self-talk. How we talk to and think about ourselves matters. If we’re frequently harsh and self-critical, we’re likely to struggle with shame, anxiety, and low self-esteem. However, if we can practice noticing our positive qualities and contributions and think in more balanced terms, we’ll generally feel better about ourselves and our futures.
Challenge yourself to try new experiences, particularly (somewhat) stressful ones. Stress tolerance is like a muscle and if we work too hard to minimize stress in our lives and don’t use the muscle often, then we can have more challenges coping when a difficult stressor does arise that’s out of our control. Practice working out your stress tolerance muscle consistently by doing things that are somewhat stressful for you.
In moments of high distress, STOP before reacting. The STOP skill (external link) is taken from DBT and involves doing the following in moments of distress:
Stop yourself from reacting when emotions increase intensely.
Take a step back, literally or figuratively, by walking away or taking a brief break.
Observe mindfully what’s happening inside your body and around you.
Proceed effectively and mindfully in a way that aligns with your values and long-term goals.
Defuse from unhelpful thoughts and emotions. Defusion is a mindful strategy that involves stepping back from unhelpful experiences and putting a layer of distance between yourself and that experience. For example, instead of saying, “I’m anxious,” try saying, “Anxiety is with me in this moment.” Defusion can give you literal and figurative breathing room from your discomfort.
Socialize and connect with others. Building a strong sense of community, in whatever form that may take, is a powerful way to improve mental fitness and our ability to navigate stressors. Community can help increase our experiences of joy as well as help buffer stress.
Cope ahead for difficult experiences. This is another DBT skill in which we anticipate a future difficult experience, develop a plan for how to cope effectively with that experience, and then rehearse that plan mentally before we go into the situation. You can read more about coping ahead here (external link).
Practice gratitude and savour positive experiences. Practice noticing and being thankful for the many positive people and things in your life and try to notice those positive experiences mindfully as they’re happening. Read our blog post on gratitude for more ideas.
Physical exercise. Regular, vigorous physical exercise is a tremendous way to maintain mental wellbeing and fitness.
Develop a flexible routine. Having some degree of consistency and routine in our lives can help us stay on track in working towards important goals and managing stress. One thing we don’t want, though, is to develop such a rigid routine that any surprises or obstacles destabilize us. As with most things that we talk about, aim for that Goldilocks balance: not too little and not too much.
WG Psychology
WG Psychology is a psychology and psychotherapy clinic based in Toronto that helps people live more connected, purposeful lives through compassionate, evidence-based mental health support. Connect with us to see if we’re a fit for you!