Get your mind match fit for life
What is good for the body is good for the mind. Karen Nimmo has a guide to get your brain fighting fit.
Is your mind in good shape? I am talking about being ripped and toned mentally – building emotional strength and fitness – to arm you for life’s inevitable challenges in a world that constantly tests us.
Emotional fitness is about training our minds to manage our thoughts and emotions in healthy, adaptable ways. We all have wayward (and dark) thoughts and difficult emotions. But being emotionally fit means you have a sharp radar for your thoughts and feelings that you can latch on to, and manage those that matter, and let the rest go.
Are some people more emotionally fit? Just as some people have more natural physical strength and fitness, some people have a headstart psychologically. Some are advantaged through their biology, sound parenting and early environments, and the things that happened to them (or did not happen).
And some people are disadvantaged by all of the same things. The good news is that emotional muscle can be built. Anyone can get mentally fitter and stronger. But just like physical fitness, you can’t reach peak state in a week. When you join the Emotional Fitness Gym, you are signing on for life. Here are the skills most worth working on.
Many people struggle to differentiate their feelings. When asked in therapy to describe them, they will often lump everything under ‘‘frustration’’ or ‘‘anger’’. Even sadness can be difficult to identify and express. Learning to recognise and label emotions accurately reduces the fear of being overwhelmed by them, and enables us to cope better. When people talk about emotions, they often focus on difficult or negative ones. It is important to recognise and feel positive emotion.
Do wet towels on the bedroom floor drive you wild? Do you flip out when taken for granted, or get defensive at minor criticism? Do trust issues dial up your anxiety? Maybe alcohol is a weakness? Or a lack of sleep sets you off? We all have hot buttons. Knowing yours is a key to regulating or managing your emotions. It gives you some control over your behaviour, and helps you avoid saying or doing things you regret or that will get you into trouble.
Also known as self control. It is about developing a pause button. We can train ourselves to sit with distressing or uncomfortable emotions before we react. It teaches us that emotions are not out to get us, we don’t have to do anything with them, and that they will pass.
When we get into emotionally challenging situations, our reactions can escalate the problem, making it worse. When we are emotionally fit, we are better able to see and accept the reality of situations that can’t be changed.
Emotionally fit people deal well with stress. They are not derailed, or shut down, by their feelings. They are still able to think clearly and function well, and they don’t rely wholly on others to soothe them. They have at least one reliable way of calming themselves down and picking themselves up.
It is almost impossible to float through life immune to the judgments of others, unless you never interact with anyone. But the difficulty comes when we take things too much to heart, when we let the opinions of others pierce our emotional skins, superficially or right to the core of who we are. We all get hurt, but we don’t have to draw the pain inside us, buy a bed for it and give it its own room. Being able to detach from others’ negative opinions or being able to see them as a reflection of them is an invaluable skill.
How much time do you spend on your phone around others? How vacant are you in your relationships? In a world of constant distraction, it is a ‘‘work-on’’ for everyone. Emotional fitness helps us to be fully present for the people and things that truly matter.
In our third pandemic year, many yearn to get back to ‘‘some sort of normality’’. But here is the thing: it is not coming. The world is ever-changing, and the ability to adapt has become a survival skill.
Being adaptable means we can jump to the left, pivot, or even dance when we need to.
Karen Nimmo is a Wellington-based clinical psychologist.