Most of us understand the concept of retraining our bodies: you’re out of shape and therefore do exercises to get fitter. According to Mental Fitness: Train Your Mind Like You Train Your Body, we can use the same concept for our minds. 

The article defines mental fitness as “the ability to maintain a healthy, resilient and adaptable mindset that helps you navigate challenges, manage stress and perform at your best in everyday life. At its core, mental fitness is about strengthening the brain’s ability to focus, stay positive, regulate emotions and recover from setbacks.”

Consider your aptitude in each of these mental fitness categories and you’ll know which ones require attention. Let’s start with your ability to focus. If you have Attention Deficit Disorder, staying focused may be especially difficult. That’s just the way your brain works, and it has strengths those without ADD may not have. Don’t get stuck on your mind being easily distracted. Instead, value the positive ways it works and read books and blogs, find apps, and listen to podcasts that will help improve your focus. 

Staying positive is another component of mental fitness. This doesn’t mean you say you’re fine when you’re not or avoid and push away uncomfortable emotions. It involves feeling confident that you’ll still survive and thrive by being as optimistic as possible, believing and finding positive attributes in yourself and others, and having an unshakable belief that you’ll be okay no matter what happens in your life.

Regulating emotions means just that: experiencing and managing them so they make your life better, not worse. I have oodles of blogs on this subject and suggest that if regulating emotions is not your strong suit you read them and learn more about why regulation is difficult for you and may mean investing in psychotherapy to teach you how to regulate emotions effectively (yes, this is teachable and learnable).

Recovering effectively from setbacks (aka being resilient) is crucial to mental fitness. Many dysregulated eaters were crushed with setbacks as children and had no one to guide them in rebounding from them. If their parents lacked such skills, they couldn’t teach them to their children. So, when challenges occur in adulthood (as they always do), people become overwhelmed and don’t have the skills to meet challenges head on.

You can retrain your brain with effective tools and ongoing practice. Believe you can, and you will. It won’t happen overnight, but it will reset over time. And then, no matter what your age, you’ll get to spend the rest of your life as a mentally fit person.

Best,

Karen