What is mental fitness?
Mental fitness is the process of training your mind to perform at your best, improve and build resilience.
Think of it in the same way as physical fitness. You can develop your mind like a muscle.
Research, published in the International Journal of Wellbeing, set out to define mental fitness and provide four key principles.
“Mental fitness is the modifiable capacity to utilise resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving.”
Let’s break that down. ‘Modifiable capacity’ relates to the idea that you can train your mind, just like you train your body. Many people believe that they are born with fixed personality traits and skills, but that’s not the case.
‘Flexibly adapt to challenges’ means having the self-awareness to call upon appropriate skillsets in response to challenging situations. Mental fitness is not just about preventing mental ill-health, it is about ‘enabling thriving.’
Now, we’ll explore the four principles of mental fitness.
1. "Fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness."
Physical health is know to be the absence of physical illness and there’s no stigma attached to it. Yet with mental health, there exists a stigma of questioning the validity of mental ill-health. This can lead to people not seeking support early, making problems worse.
On the other hand, fitness is a positive term with associations of performance and thriving. That’s why we use mental fitness to talk about training the mind and improving mental health.
2. "Mental fitness could be understood by the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness."
Physical fitness is a popular strategy for reducing the risk of physical ill-health and improving performance. Mental fitness can be thought of in the same way.
3. "Mental fitness is measurable."
For mental fitness to be effective and evidence-based, we need consistent scientific definitions. This is something the academic community is still working on. Without consistent definitions, it is difficult (but not impossible) to compare conclusions across multiple studies. For methods to continue improving, we need consistent definitions.
What this means for mental fitness journey is that there are methods to measure your mental fitness. From psychology-backed testing that can be completed on your phone to neuroimaging devices that can cost less than £200.
As mental fitness continues to develop, the cost will come down and effectiveness will go up in how we measure mental fitness.
4. "Mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness."
When most people sign up to run a marathon, they’re not fit enough to run a marathon. But they know that they can train to build their strength & stamina to be able to run a marathon within a year.
Mental fitness is the same. You might get really nervous about public speaking and feel unable to control your anxiety. With mental training you can reduce those nerves (some nerves are good!) and learn to work with them to improve performance.
Enjoyed that? Then, you’ll love Remap’s next cohort.
