No sane person would wait to be hit by a truck before learning how to avoid being hit by a truck. Would they?
Yet our collective approach to mental health is exactly that: we wait until vast numbers of people (1 in 4 of the population) have a mental health crisis before helping them to become mentally healthy.
Every serious athlete understands the concept of physical training. They don’t wait for their muscles to atrophy before developing their capability; they train proactively to build strength, endurance, technique and resilience. They also know that if their mental fitness lets them down, their physical fitness doesn’t matter. Advanced athletes always train at elite levels for mental fitness, too.
Yet, as a society, our approach to psychological well-being remains completely mad. We ignore the mind until it breaks, and then we wonder why the clinical clean-up crew is overwhelmed. Overwhelmed to the point where they have a FAILURE rate of between 70% and 90%. That is, only 10% to 30% can be helped, after the truck has hit.
Mental ill health, is seen, at a societal level, as a passive lottery. It might happen to you it might not. And if it does, good luck getting better with such a high failure rate from so called mental health “professionals.”
Having provided therapy and coaching to thousands of people, I have noted that maintaining good mental health is an active capability; a learned skill. If you want to survive life’s inevitable adversities without being mentally flattened, you must deliberately develop your mental fitness before the truck hits.
Some people have their mental fitness forged, involuntarily, on in the anvil of adversity; others develop mental fitness by choosing to put themselves in the line of fire. Everyone can choose to build their mental fitness, if they wish.
The following evidence-based approaches enable you to develop the mental fitness necessary to avoid the speeding truck.
Guard your mind
Your brain is an extraordinary filtering mechanism. However, if it is left unguarded, it drifts into patterns that actively harm your emotional well-being. That all too human tendency is known as negative drift. To attain and maintain mental fitness, you must become the active gatekeeper of your mind; you must take control of your thoughts.
Stop rumination
For each of us, when we are subjected to a harm, a professional setback, or a personal betrayal, our immediate impulse is to engage in what is known as rumination. Rumination is the destructive process of looping negative thoughts over and over in our minds, replaying the harm that has been done to us, in all sorts of destructive ways.
Rumination is a trap; it is a vicious, downward mental spiral. Once started our worry feeds on and reinforces itself. When we are mentally fit, we learn and grown from our setbacks; we do not perpetually re-live in them.
That does not mean rational individuals should ignore emerging, or real and present dangers. It means we must plan for them rationally, rather than living in dread of them. The moment a thought shifts from practical problem-solving to passive, circular despair, address it head on.
That is not to say that all adversities are recoverable. There are many irrecoverable adversities. Once the damage from any such adversity has been done, the most constructive approach is to acknowledge that damage and minimise it as best as possible.
Live in the “here and now”
Countless generations of thinkers, going back millennia, have encouraged us to focus on the present moment. Why? Because the only time any of us exist, and can do anything, is right here and right now.
Dragging up and dwelling on the failures of the past can only harm us. Doing so repeatedly, harms us repeatedly.
Pulling imagined, catastrophic events from future into the present does exactly the same. The more catastrophising of the future we do, the more we harm ourselves right here, right now.
Even mentally fit people have regrets from the past, and dreads of some aspects of the future. What they do, that the mentally unfit do not, is when panic or anxiety begins to mount, they immediately change their mental focus. Mentally fit people can and do use the experience of regret or dread constructively.
You can, too. If, for example, you experience panic, use it constructively. The experience of panic is sending you a clear and useful signal that you still have room to develop your ability to master your thoughts and emotions in stressful situations. It is telling you to improve your mental fitness methods.
Say no more often
Most modern stress is entirely self-inflicted. Many of us, without question, adopt the expectations that society places on us. We treat our stressful workload as a badge of honour, and in so doing, we failing to recognise it as a psychological hazard.
The power of no
Saying “no” is not an act of selfishness; it is a necessary tool for mental fitness; a means of self-preservation. When you turn down low-priority obligations or unreasonable demands, even the way in which you do it can enhance your mental fitness. How?
Avoid, offering any long, defensive justifications or manufactured excuses. A clear, polite, and absolute refusal, such as “I appreciate your request, but I have a lot on my plate right now” is entirely sufficient. You don’t have to justify yourself.
Dump what doesn’t help
Your mental energy is limited. If you allow external demands to munch on your time and mental energy, burnout is the all too inevitable outcome. Mentally fit people remove unnecessary burdens to keep their mental energy for what really matters to them. You can, too.
Create a mental fitness network
As a social species, we humans do not function well in isolation. We operate best in small, strong groups where individuals know, respect, and actively look out for one another.
The phrase “a problem shared is a problem halved” has entered common language because it reflects a deep truth. When we take time to talk about our problems, external or internal, with a trusted peer, we unblock and harness our shared mental problem-solving resources. Talking helps change our perceptions and interpretations of a crisis. Sometimes that shift in perspective is all that is need to redefine the problem in a way that makes it fixable.
“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” Mark Twain
We live in a two-way street
To have access to a psychological anchor when we are destabilised, we must act as an anchor for others. To develop mental fitness and have genuine mutual support, the mentally fit have moved past superficial, digital-era connections. They have built real relationships based on genuine mutual empathy and active listening, where each party is committed to being an informal mental fitness coaches for the other. People who have the strongest, mutually nurturing relationships are typically the mentally fittest in the population. If you set up such co-coaching relationship you can improve your mental fitness, too.
Developing mental fitness requires action
“We become what we think about.” Earl Nightingale
How is it possible that we become what we think about? Because, our thoughts lead to our emotions and our behaviours. Thoughts become things. Both emotions and behaviours have a direct effect on our bodily chemistry. When we do things that are good for us, all sorts of beneficial biochemical changes take place in throughout our bodies. I have written about that in other Psychreg.org articles.
Here are some of the behaviours that help develop our mental fitness, how they work, and what outcome you can expect from each.
| Behaviour | Psychological Mechanism | Expected Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Learning | Crowds out negative, circular cognitions; stimulates neuroplasticity. | Enhanced brain fitness and reduced anxiety. |
| Giving, Altruistically | Elevates self-worth when there is no expectation of payback or reciprocity. | Internal validation and moral clarity. Boosted self-worth. |
| Time in Nature | Lowers physical stress markers; interrupts urban cognitive fatigue. | Measurable drops in cortisol levels. |
| Intentional Gratitude | Filters out “the end is neigh” thinking; constructively changes focus. | Release of dopamine and serotonin. |
| Humour and Laughter | Disrupts physiological panic; builds interpersonal resilience. | Instant reduction in acute stress response. Great for social bonding. People who laugh together stay together. |
Whether you are mastering a new skill, engaging in a demanding hobby, or developing an existing ability, intensive mental focus leaves no room for speculative anxieties to take root. Singing or learning to play a musical instrument, learning a new language, are known to be great for mental fitness: they are all absorbing.
Harness your mind-body link
Most people know about physical illnesses that can be caused in the mind. That is known as psychosomatic illness. Fewer people are aware of the opposite, somatopsychic illnesses. Somatopsychic is, where problems in the body impede mental fitness. How do you harness that knowledge to stay mentally fit? Here are some of the known, and beneficial techniques.
Sleep
Sleep is one of the non-negotiable elements of mental fitness. When sleep is disturbed or impeded, emotional dysregulation follows immediately. Longer-term, sleep disturbance is hugely predictive of poor mental health. The opposite is also true; when a person gets good, regular sleep their mental fitness is almost always better than those who do not.
Exercise in the sweet spot
The evidence is strong, people who engage in moderate, well-balanced physical activity are consistently healthier than sedentary individuals; couch potatoes. Our bodies operate best within the optimal zones.
Too little exercise leaves many of our bodily systems sluggish and under-stimulated, leading to poor mental fitness.
Too much exercise, by way of obsessive over-training, induces severe physical stress that also leads to poor mental fitness. For each of us finding that sweet spot is a personal journey. We can experiment to find the amount and frequency of exercise that gives us our optimum mental fitness.
Avoid self-medication
Thousands of years ago, humans discovered that alcohol, and many other natural chemicals, could rapidly and dramatically alter our psychological states. Billions of people still use them as a short-term coping mechanism for mental health challenges. They engage in self-medication.
Whether any given form of self-medication is legal or illegal, almost all are either “uppers” or “downers.” Alcohol and cannabis are both nervous system depressants. Alcohol also damages our immune system and cannabis damages our short-term memory.
People also use food as self-medication. You have seen some people who are morbidly obese from comfort eating. Others are rendered disabled by the weight of their own obesity from comfort eating, usually processed junk food.
Self-medication almost always damages our mental fitness, either directly or indirectly, immediately or long-term.
When people choose self-medication it is almost always to deal with adversity or trauma. Fortunately, there are many mentally healthy ways to deal with trauma.
Mental fitness is your choice
We live in a culture that waits until the mental ill health truck has hit before trying, and, in 70-90% of cases failing, to fix the damage. That is not smart.
You can make another choice. You can improve your mental fitness by controlling your thoughts, emotions and behaviours. You can make yourself much more resistant to mental health crises than the majority of the population. Treat your mind with the respect a high-performance athlete treats their mind. They form mental fitness habits that serve them in times of competitive crisis. Athletes have a short career. Your mental fitness is much more important than any sports competition. Your mental fitness programme can keep you mentally fit for life, if you start, continue, and turn your actions into habits.
The mental ill-health truck is heading down the road. Eventually something hits every one of us. You can choose to stand in the middle of the road, entirely unprepared, or you can develop the skills to step out of its path.
Dr Nigel MacLennan is the author of The Belief Diet.
