4 Ways to Stay Mentally Fit

What does it mean to be mentally fit?

We hear these words often, but what are the criteria for mental fitness, and how many of us meet these qualifications?

Each of us strives for at least a level of mental wellness that enables us to cope with everyday stresses in life. Mental wellness makes it possible for us to be productive, contribute to our home and society, and navigate the many obstacles that life will throw our way.

When you are mentally fit, you possess the mental skills to manage the challenges that land in your lap.

Think about what it means to be physically fit. When you are physically fit typically you have a fitness regimen that enables you to easily handle your workouts. When you are not physically fit you may not be able to handle a fitness regimen.

For example, if you regularly run 6 miles a week to run one mile tomorrow, it is highly likely that you can do it with no problem. Your muscles are pre-conditioned for the run. Your heart can withstand the extra work. You have the proper running shoes to complete the task. You can accomplish it without giving it much thought.

The same is true for mental fitness. Being mentally and emotionally fit requires the ability to address issues and emotions head-on. It requires the ability to adapt to various situations and circumstances. It also requires taking those skills and applying them to future challenges and obstacles.

Here are four things you can do to enhance your mental fitness:

1. Practice Self-Care

Mental fitness starts with taking care of yourself. You must learn to express what it is you are feeling. You must learn to be open about both good and bad feelings—but not in a way that is self-destructive or damaging to yourself or others.

Self-care should include the practice of being mindful, or aware of the present. This practice allows you to identify what is important, what has an immediate impact on you, what requires a response, and what is irrelevant and not worth your time.

2. Learn to Manage Your Stress

You hear this a lot, but you must learn to manage your stress. This emotion can destroy your physical and mental fitness. It can also lead you to make poor decisions that contribute to negative outcomes in life.

Therefore, you must learn to develop effective coping strategies that enable you to reign in the emotions that often accompany stress and that can harm your mental wellness. You must never be afraid to get help if your stress is out of control.

3. Identify the Positive Aspects 

Another facet of being mentally fit is having the ability to see the glass as being half full. Mentally fit people can recalibrate their thinking even in the midst of the most challenging situations. They can function optimally without being delusional in their thought processes.

4. Hobbies and Learning New Things

Research suggests that to stay mentally fit, you must help your brain create new patterns. This is similar to the way physical exercise helps us to build new muscles.

Learning a new language, practicing hobbies, or learning a new skill can all help to put you on the path to doing just that.

There you have it! Being mentally fit is not a given and does not just happen by chance. You must put in the work to sustain your mental fitness, in much the same way as you have to put in the work to have a physically fit body.

Some people can achieve mental fitness on their own—but do not be afraid to ask for help if you find that you are struggling to sustain this state of being.

5 Benefits Of Mindfulness And Meditation

1. Helps You to Sleep Better

If you have a difficult time falling asleep or staying asleep at night, you might want to consider adding mindfulness meditation to your daily ritual.

Mindfulness meditation helps you relax the body. This comes from the breathing techniques that allow you to shift your focus and concentration.

Research (Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older Adults With Sleep Disturbances A Randomized Clinical Trial; Black et al) shows that mindfulness meditation improves daytime functioning among adults and that this ultimately improved the overall quality of sleep for older adults at night.

A different study (A low‐dose mindfulness intervention and recovery from work: Effects on psychological detachment, sleep quality, and sleep duration; Ute R. Hulsheger)re-affirmed that mindful meditation—even in low doses—improving the quality and duration of sleep.

2. Lowers Blood Pressure

Mindfulness meditation can help control blood pressure. In one study, (Benefits of mindfulness meditation in reducing blood pressure and stress in patients with arterial hypertension; Ponte Márquez, et al) participants received mindfulness meditation training two hours each week.

They had to blood pressure levels measured before their mindfulness training and then after four weeks, eight weeks, and twenty weeks of training.

After twenty weeks of mindfulness, the participants had blood pressure readings that were statistically lower than people who had not been through the training.

3. Helps to Control Pain

Finding a natural way to relieve chronic pain may seem impossible, but according to Psychology Today, clinical trials have shown that mindfulness meditation can reduce chronic pain by as much as 57%.  Pain impacts us on multiple levels.

4. Boosts Weight Loss

Mindfulness meditation may be the thing you need to help tip the scales in your favor. One study showed that women who regularly engaged in mindfulness meditation were able to sustain their weight.

Experts say the practice of this form of meditation also enables individuals to become more aware of their triggers for overeating, change their eating patterns, and identify the types of food that they are consuming that may contribute to unwanted weight gain.

In addition, mindfulness can help to reduce stress levels and cortisol levels throughout the body that can contribute to adipose fat.

5. Improves Your Mood

Mindfulness meditation improves one’s mood and state of mind. According to the American Psychology Association, research suggests that this may result from the fact that the practice of mindfulness changes the density of brain tissue in various regions.

Experts agree that mindfulness changes the way we focus on feelings and sensations. We examine them at the moment and make better decisions that are non-judgmental.

There are a great many benefits that come from practicing mindfulness meditation regularly. These benefits are not the hype of some fad.

Instead, science is helping us to see that mindfulness meditation is an excellent natural practice that can improve our overall interaction and engagement with others as well as our physical, mental, and emotional health.

How To Become Mindful Of Your Emotions

1. Acknowledge Your Feelings

In order to learn how to manage your emotions, you have to first acknowledge them. Holding onto anger is just a cover-up for intense sadness. Acknowledging that you are hurt because of a certain situation gives you an excellent starting place.

Try stating your feelings out loud or to yourself. This validates your feelings and makes them real. If you have to cry, don’t hold yourself back. The key to this step is avoiding the need to control.

2. Sit With Your Emotions 

When you start feeling sad or anxious, allow the feeling to stay with you. Feel every ounce of that emotion without trying to make it stop. This will further help you to validate how you’re feeling.

3. Pin-Point the Cause of This Emotion

After you’ve gotten to a stable place, it’s time to do some personal digging. Identify what caused this outbreak of emotions. Often times, it’s not the situation itself, but the meaning behind it.

For example, if you’re boyfriend forgot your anniversary, you’re likely not upset that he didn’t purchase you a gift. The emotion goes deeper than face-value. You’re upset because you think he doesn’t value the relationship, and that hurts!

Understand why you’re feeling so strongly about something and address it accordingly. You’ll find that it takes some introspective work to find the source of many emotions.

4. Seek Understanding

After you’ve allowed yourself time to feel and analyze your emotions, it’s time to develop a positive coping strategy.

Ask yourself, “What do I need in this moment right now?” Some options could be to take a break from the situation and move on to something else. Another might be to effectively deal with the problem, so you don’t have to worry about it.

The key here is to have a deep understanding of what your mind and body needs in the moment. This will help you from making rash decisions.

Being mindful of your emotions makes you a happier and balanced person. You aren’t confused as to why you’re feeling a certain way. In addition, you have clarity that can help you make the best decisions moving forward.

Practice being mindful in how you understand yourself and you’ll begin to see major, positive changes.

6 Ways To Clear Your Mind of Stress

Our lives are being bombarded daily with so much more information than our brains can process. And we’re so busy, we often neglect to give it the time it needs to rest and replenish.

This daily battle results in chronic stress which, in turn, causes a whole slew of health problems. One way to beat this is to opt for positive change in your life and learn how to clear your mind.

A focused, controlled mind improves creativity, improves concentration, enhances sleep, and boosts your self-esteem.

These tips can help you learn how to clear your mind with some practice and a bit of patience.

1. Meditation

Numerous studies have shown how beneficial meditation can be for your mental, emotional, and physical health.

This technique of self-reflection requires you to sit in a quiet area, a comfy chair, and maybe light some scented candles - that’s it. Once you’re relaxed, close your eyes and try to release your thoughts.

One way to do this is to control your breathing which helps slow down your thoughts.

Then, imagine your negative emotions and thoughts floating away in the air or down a river. Even if practiced 5 minutes a day, meditation clears neural pathways in your brain which helps boost focus and clears your mind.

2. Mindfulness

When you practice mindfulness, you focus on what’s around you; objects, sounds, smells, colors. The best part about mindfulness is that it doesn’t require you to take off time to practice like meditation.

It’s a process of focusing your energy on the present which gives your negative energy an outlet.  

For example, you can practice this technique while walking down the street, and instead of allowing any disruptive thoughts to take hold of your brain, really try to focus on everything around you.

It brings inner peace and calmness. Mindfulness also provides a clearer mindset and better attentiveness by directing your total effort on the task at hand.

3. Writing

Putting your thoughts and feelings down on paper is a wonderful way to calm your racing mind. Start with simple things, like your daily goals or how you feel.

When you read your own words, your way of looking at your own life will shift, and you’ll be able to see things more clearly.

You can take it a step further and destroy your written thoughts. This will give you the chance to unburden yourself from the confinement these thoughts can have over you. It also provides you with mental clarity and a fresh perspective.

4. Connect with friends

Meeting up with friends helps lift your spirits and gets rid of cluttered, disruptive thoughts. Pick a friend you trust and discuss with them any hard times you’re facing.

It’s a great way to find emotional support, reduce stress, and you’ll realize that the situation isn’t as hopeless as you had initially believed when you were rehashing it time and again in your mind.

Even if they don’t provide you with any real solutions, just knowing you have someone you can trust is a great confidence booster and can put your mind at ease. 

5. Have fun

As a form of distraction, try finding a fun hobby where you can do something you enjoy while learning something new and meeting new people.

Your mind can only focus on one thing at a time, so use that to your advantage and pick something you enjoy doing.

When you focus on something that distracts you in a positive way, you’re engaging your brain to purposefully ignore other things.

6. Other things you can try are:

• Coloring (there are many adult coloring books available)

• Drawing (just doodling with a pencil and paper can do wonders for your mental health)

• Be one with nature (the smell and all the colors of nature can reduce anxiety and clear away disruptive thoughts)

• Read a book (or join a book club)

• Exercise (preferably outdoors)

• Try some tai chi

• Join a class (choose a subject you’re interested in and go for it)

These above steps can also help to prevent brain fog and clutter so that you can increase your energy, focus, and productivity.

5 Mindful Attitudes That Reduce Stress And Anxiety

1. Gratitude

Many mindfulness exercises or practitioners focus on the concept of gratitude. This often involves remaining focused on the positives.

This helps you to avoid dwelling too much on the negatives in the moment, but it also trains you to being more open to seeing the positive things in your life.

This can enhance your mood, but it can also make you more successful in relationships and carries a number of other benefits.

2. Being In The Moment

Mindfulness is very much about being in the moment. This can be a calming but also a very practical mindset to develop. The past is out of your control and the future is unpredictable.

Focusing on the present as part of a mindfulness outlook isn’t about ignoring the past or the future – it's more about realizing that the present is really the only time that you have any control over.

Look at it this way: suppose that there was a death or illness in the family, and you took time off of work and are now behind on bills. Focusing on the things that set you back won’t help you.

Worrying about what will happen if you can’t pay your bills won’t help you. Working and looking for solutions can help you and you can only do those things while focusing on the present.

3. Empathy

Mindfulness is about you. It’s about understanding yourself. However, by understanding yourself, you may find that you are gaining a better understanding of other people.

As you learn to understand the sources of your own emotions and why you handle them the way that you do, you may start to think more about why other people act the way that they do and what might be going on in their minds.

This understanding doesn’t always make your situation easier when dealing with a difficult person, but it can help you to understand that the way that someone else treats you may not be your fault.

If you can help the other person to understand this, it just might make things easier for you.

4. The Mind-Body Connection

Another important mindful attitude that you can develop through regular mindfulness practice is what’s called the “mind body connection.” All mindfulness practices involve listening to your body and even controlling it through mental attention and will.

Many of us take our bodies for granted and have lost the ability to listen to and understand them. Paying attention to signals from your body can help you to give it what it needs, from sleep, to water, to a stretch.

Being more comfortable by listening to your body won’t make all of your problems go away but it will improve your mood, clear your head, and may even make you more able to face the challenges of the day.

5. Mindfulness

Mindfulness isn’t just the name of the practice, it’s also the name of what may be the most important attitude that you can foster through mindfulness practice.

As an attitude, mindfulness means being aware of your own thoughts and feelings. This can help you to act on feelings that deserve action and to release and move on from feelings that aren’t.

Sometimes when you are angry or stressed it is because of a situation that deserves your action and attention.

Sometimes, however, these emotions come up because of something that you have no control over, something that happened a long time ago, or something that you worry about but that isn’t actually likely to happen.

Knowing the difference can help you to direct your energies in constructive ways.

Sometimes the attitudes that we learn by practicing mindfulness have practical applications. Other times, they may just help us by changing the way that we understand the world as it is.

Either way, sticking with mindfulness practices that work for you may help you to live a less stressful life.