What Is Mental Fitness - How To Train Your Brain?

 What Is Mental Fitness - How To Train Your Brain?

Just like physical fitness, mental fitness has far-reaching benefits. But what is meant by training the mind? Can the brain do crunches?

We know the importance of physical fitness. There are many options for developing it: in the gym with a trainer, in a HIIT class, or outdoors with a walk or run. Each of us has our own unique mix of activities to maintain our health and well-being.

Result? As your muscles grow, you can perform better in everyday life. You are stronger, leaner, have more energy and endurance, and are less likely to crash and injure yourself.

When you function in a state of higher health, you are "healthy." Whether it's carrying shopping bags or chasing after your pet or child, it can meet your daily needs and make your life more enjoyable. Maintaining optimal health leads to more positive emotions, less stress, and a sense of accomplishment.

The good news is that you can reap the same benefits by improving your mental fitness.

How can mental preparation help me?

Mental fitness can be defined as maintaining and maintaining health and developing awareness of how we think, act, and feel.

Just as physical fitness increases our ability to deal with life's abundance, so does mental fitness. This gives us more freedom to choose how to react to a situation, whether it's a prophecy, an external stimulus, or an emotion. As a result, we are less likely to experience (or cause) emotional and relational damage.

Think about what would happen if you had a fight with your spouse. Your spouse is angry and says hurtful things. When we become resilient, we fight directly from the heart of that wound. When your arrow lands, your partner will also react. And so on and so forth, making each other uncontrollable and tense.

As I become more mentally healthy, I know that I have a choice when the first angry comment hits me. Mental fitness allows you to pause and react in the moment without needing to reset or mend fences. In a way, it's like gaining the wisdom of foresight in the present moment.

How can fitness help my mental health?

 Being mentally healthy changes the way you interact with the world. It's not just an interaction with your spouse. It has a cumulative effect on our mental health. Imagine being less responsive to the hundreds of interactions we have every week. As the example above shows, instead of ping-ponging from one reaction to another, we choose what to be and how to react. Over time, stress and negative emotions are greatly reduced.

Just as physical health affects mental health, mental health ultimately affects physical health and well-being.

How does mental preparation work?

Our brain transmits thoughts through neural pathways. These tracks are like grooves that have been built and strengthened over time. If you always take the same route to work, you may find that you can get to your destination on "autopilot." Repeating a particular thought pattern over and over strengthens that neural pathway and makes the thinking automatic.

Daily routines are a good thing, but when it comes to thought patterns, you need to know what your routines are and which pathways are being wrongly reinforced.

The problem with automatic thoughts (or what Daniel Kahneman calls rapid thinking) is that they react in a way that doesn't help the current situation. Our reactions are based on past emotions and worn pathways to stimuli.

Building mental preparedness gives you the awareness, mental strength, and agility to identify options and choose alternative paths. What do you want to happen here? where do you want to go? Often we act, speak, and think automatically or unconsciously.

Automatic thoughts come from our survival brain, the limbic system. It constantly scans your environment for threats and continues to evolve. We inherited the limbic system from chimpanzees and it protects us. But in the modern world, it can also create thoughts and actions that harm us.

This is the part of the human brain that we can develop and reprogram. With the same intention of strengthening specific muscles or fine-tuning movements, we can create neural pathways that work better and benefit our lives. This is the essence of practicing mental preparation.

What are the benefits of mental preparation?

Developing skills is beneficial for improving your mental fitness and that of everyone around you.

get out In a mindful state, we are better able to retain, listen, and understand information, but we are not blocked by distractions. The result is a more enjoyable life, better relationships, and a greater ability to connect with others.

Ability to respond rather than react. As you gain more control over your automatic thoughts, you can respond in a more rational and less emotional way. It improves our relationships and the way we think about the world, ensuring more choices in every environment.

Cognitive function is improved. Improving concentration, processing speed, memory, concentration, time management, and communication has positive personal and professional effects. Remembering information about friends, family, and important events and being punctual improves relationships.

Increasing positive emotions: optimism. Increased awareness increases your ability to understand and reframe thoughts in more useful ways. Kind thoughts and compassion form an optimistic mindset that leads to more positive actions.

Be more confident. When you are optimistic, your relationship with yourself becomes stronger. Your self-esteem and self-efficacy, or belief in your abilities, will increase, allowing you to focus more on your strengths. Practicing mindfulness increases self-compassion and empathy.

The ability to create positive habits in all areas of life. The need to form new and more adaptive habits never stops. Self-efficacy, focus, and time management improve your ability to create habits.

For what reason is it vital to deal with your psychological health?

Our chimpanzee brain creates a negative bias. We have 1 positive thought for every 3 negative thoughts. This can lead to cognitive errors. Common biases include an "all or nothing" or polarizing mindset that calls situations absolute. Instead of addressing the current situation, we say, He doesn't listen, I'm always late.

This belief is also rooted in the chimpanzee brain. We accumulate unconscious biases here and jump to conclusions without first looking for evidence. Mind reading, or believing that you can infer the feelings and thoughts of others, is another cognitive error. We suspect threats and try to protect ourselves against them. We also enter the language with obligations and guilt, such as "must/must".

These cognitive errors can destroy relationships, work, self-esteem, and all areas of life without attention. Working with a coach can help you spot cognitive errors when they occur. Adopting a regular meditation practice can also increase awareness.

We cannot control the nature of the chimpanzee brain, but we are responsible for learning its tendencies and managing it, just like a dog owner.

How can you train your brain?

Playing games, puzzles, and brain training programs that increase your processing speed can boost your memory and cognitive performance.

But the best training may be mindfulness. Learn how to meditate. As a trained mindfulness teacher and practitioner, I have seen the benefits my coaching clients gain from developing this skill. Showering as much as you do is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and others in your life.

Sit with your eyes closed, or if it's uncomfortable, practice quiet concentration for 10 to 15 minutes each day. You can exercise your attention muscles and stay focused on what you are saying. You learn to observe your thoughts and detach from them. You learn that thoughts are temporary and that you have choices about which thoughts to focus on.

The real skill you are developing is becoming more aware of the distractions your thoughts are creating for you. When you become aware of distractions during meditation, you become more aware of distractions in your everyday life. When you think about something that disables you, you recognize it. You have noticed that the chimpanzee brain makes cognitive errors.

Revisiting the road and path metaphor, it is like more lights and signs on the road that point the way (thoughts) to a better and more positive destination (action). Developing the ability to notice thoughts and reframe them can lead to more conscious responses and new behaviors.

The act of thinking about what we think is called metacognition. 95% of our thoughts are unconscious, so practicing and targeting metacognition is very important. In many cases, automatic thoughts arise and we react too late. This may appear as a habit that you want to break. These incorporate thoughtless eating, stressing over what you read in the news, sending remorseful messages, and spending beyond what you can manage.

Practicing mindfulness regularly increases awareness. This allows us to develop resilience, emotional control, and more positive emotions.

9 ways to improve your mental health starting today

Do some physical exercise. Mind and body are connected. Just like mindfulness relaxes your muscles, exercise can calm your mind and relieve stress. It can also affect the sense of accomplishment that is the basis of Martin Seligman's model of happiness, PERMA.

Eat and drink wisely. Your brain needs water for optimal cognitive function, so make sure you stay hydrated. Eating a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables daily supports gut health and brain health.

Meditate daily. Make a daily chart that works for yourself and focus on it. Just 15 minutes a day is enough to see big changes over time. As with dog training, consistency is key. If you're new to the game, start with the beginner's program on apps like Tripp. Once you've learned the basics, all you need is a timer.

Keep a gratitude journal. This can be as simple as a Word document on your computer or a physical handwritten note. Update it regularly and be visible. Cultivating an attitude of gratitude will help you generate more positive emotions and shift your mindset toward optimism. Many researches show a positive relationship between better health and hopefulness. The mind actually affects our overall health.

Make discovering new things a part of your day. Simply set a goal to realize that you have gone from sitting to standing 3 times during the day. It is much harder than it seems. When we do this, we are almost unconscious in our automatic mind. Exercises brain awareness and increases mindfulness.

Practice tasting. 

Tasting is an applied positive psychology intervention. This includes slowing down at certain moments for 5 days. These moments include cuddling with loved ones, eating a meal, drinking coffee, going outside for your first breath of fresh air, and feeling good about crawling into bed after a long day.

Practice paying attention to your thoughts. Reframe whenever possible. Ask yourself, does this help? what is this like

Practice body awareness. Sit with your eyes closed or sit still and focus for 5 minutes and scan your body. Focus your attention on each part of your body, from the top of your head to your toes. Wherever you notice tension, consciously focus and breathe to release the tension. By doing this every day, you will become more aware of what is going on in your body. What does he want you to know? Train your attention to stay focused on a specific point.

Let the chimpanzee remind you. Keep a list of possible thoughts (new neural pathways) you want to believe in a visible place, such as a post-it. This can be anything from "I'm inspired to take action" to "I'm getting great feedback and I'm confident I can do it." A visible reminder helps ensure that there is evidence in the chimpanzee's brain that it is healthy.