What is mental fitness?
Several years ago, I was interviewing with a company for what I considered a dream job. The company was located across the country, and I flew out to meet several key company leaders for the final round of interviews. I arrived in town a day early to check out the town, the neighborhoods, schools, etc., and fell in love with everything the town had to offer. The next day, I aced each of the interviews and made final arrangements with the hiring leader on what to expect in the offer package. It was a huge career advancement, with an excellent salary, and an opportunity to move across the country to a new town.
There was only one problem.
After completing the final round of interviews, I never heard from the company again. No salary negotiation, no phone call from the recruiter or hiring leader, no automatic decline email. Nothing. I made a few attempts to contact the company before realizing the dream job was just that — a dream.
Needless to say, I was in a pretty negative state of mind after that frustrating experience. I wish I had known then what I now know about mental fitness.
A quick Google search resulted in the following definitions of mental fitness.
“Having and maintaining a state of well-being and cultivating awareness of how we think, behave and feel.” — Betterup.com
“A state of well-being and having a positive sense of how we feel, think, and act.” — Starling.com
“Your measurable ability to engage constructively in life and work every day, no matter what stressors you encounter. It is your capacity to consistently respond to challenges with optimal performance in the moment and minimal recovery time afterward.” — Forbes.com
A simple definition of mental fitness I have started using, after learning about the Positive Intelligence (Chamine, 2012) framework, is this — the capacity to respond to life’s challenges with a positive rather than negative mindset.
Within the Positive Intelligence framework, mental fitness is made up of three core abilities.
1) Identifying negative emotions.
2) Exercising self-command
3) Accepting all situations as a gift or opportunity
Identifying negative emotions
Our brains are optimized to recognize danger and trigger responses that keep us safe. For our ancestors, this meant keeping us safe from physical dangers (snakes, poisonous berries, saber-toothed tigers, etc.) and our brains evolved to recognize cues in the environment that represent threats to our safety. The architecture of our brain is such that the areas of the brain designed to process these threats activate other parts of our brain (and our bodies) to take action and avoid harm. The same neurological responses are triggered even if the perceived danger is a threat to our emotional or social safety.
Over time, our brains developed a pattern of emotional responses based on how successfully we responded to the threats in our environment. These emotional patterns serve as guideposts to help us navigate the complex world we live in. As the same patterns are repeated, the responses grow stronger, requiring minimal conscious thought. This is a beautifully efficient process if every perceived threat results in actual danger; however, our perceptions do not always reflect reality. Rather than empowering us to be productive, the negative emotions act as a saboteur causing us to potentially focus on the wrong outcomes.
A key part of mental fitness is identifying when our brains are in saboteur mode and labeling the associated emotion. This slows down the automatic mental processes and allows us to evaluate the validity of the emotions we are experiencing.
Self-command
Staying in negative emotion limits our ability to see clearly and respond with empathy, curiosity, creativity, or an orientation towards action. Exercising self-command is how we start the process of shifting from a negative to a positive mindset.
We demonstrate self-command when we choose not to stress out over what we can’t control. When we have self-command, we can confidently push away self-doubts. Self-command helps us quickly recover from disappointments and spend less time dwelling in the aftermath of negative emotions (anger, regret, blame, etc.).
The process of developing self-command is much like the process of developing physical strength or endurance. The brain “muscles” associated with self-command are strengthened when we command ourselves to focus on physical sensations (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch). In as few as 10 seconds focusing on physical sensations, we can start the process of forming new neural pathways. With constant practice over several weeks (about 15 total minutes of focusing on physical sensations each day), the automatic reactions to threatening scenarios that resulted in negative emotions can be changed to anticipate positive outcomes, resulting in positive emotions, improved decision-making, and enhanced well-being.
Accepting all situations as a gift or opportunity
As we slow down the automatic responses associated with negative emotion and start to anticipate positive outcomes, we can view every circumstance we are faced with as a gift or an opportunity. The possible gifts or opportunities can be grouped into three categories: knowledge, power, and inspiration.
Here are some questions to consider when looking for the gift or opportunity of a given situation.
1) What knowledge would I need to gain so that the payoff in the future could be much larger than what this is costing me now?
2) Which mental muscle/power will I need to develop to handle this situation?
3) How will this “bad” situation inspire me to take an action I would not have previously considered?
As you think through the potential answers to these questions, you will start to unlock the attributes associated with a positive mindset. These attributes include empathy, curiosity, creativity, and calm, clear-headed action.
Reflecting back on the missed opportunity to advance my career, I can see multiple gifts. I learned to be patient for the right opportunity (a few months later, I was offered an even better role at a bigger company). Also, had we moved across the country, my family would have missed out on the opportunity to adopt our youngest daughter. Now, as I experience new frustrations while interviewing for jobs, I can maintain a positive mindset because I know something bigger and better may be just around the corner.
Start practicing mental fitness with the Positive Intelligence framework
If you’re feeling negative emotions, STOP. You’re in saboteur mode.
Do some self-command exercises. Focus on physical sensations to shift away from the negative mindset.
Ask yourself how the situation can be converted into a gift and opportunity.
Do you still need more help developing your mental fitness? Ask a question in the comment section and/or check back next week for additional articles on mental fitness.
