Developing Your Mental Fitness
Let’s face it - we live in a world of distractions and find it difficult at times to maintain focus on a task for an extended period of time. So many people have found their lives revolving around social media or other attention seeking sources that draw you out from the task at hand. What originally was only supposed to be a small little peak at your phone or little YouTube browsing turns in half an hour (okay, more like an hour yikes..) in no time.
As lifelong learners here at Introspective Musings, we sometimes face these dreaded spells where we lack focus for weeks or months on end. Keeping our brains sharp and fit is a daily task that takes most people years or decades to sustainably develop. It’s an ever-constant quest to continually keep the gears in our brain turning efficiently like a well-oiled machine - well I guess not exactly like a machine since we’re human after all. But how do we develop mental fitness and stamina?
Let’s break down the possible solutions into two separate buckets:
Intrinsic Programming
The simplest way to develop your mental fitness is to devise a strategy to attack what’s in front of you from an intrinsic programming perspective. You’ll commonly hear this method referred to as productivity hacks.
Some of these techniques might include:
The Pomodoro Technique
Writing down two to three goals to accomplish for the day
Using apps/website blockers
The One-and-Done Rule
Batching similar tasks
The list is endless. What all of these methods provide is the ability to intrinsically develop greater focus and clarity on the purpose of your energy in a given environment. This is a great starting point for anyone and everyone who has a tough time building up their mental fitness or are currently going through a rough spot. By focusing small, you’ll be able to build up your mental stamina over time as a result of each small step.
Extrinsic Programming
Once you’ve found a groove and are comfortable with the intrinsic programming techniques, I believe there’s even another level you can reach with your mental fitness. Before, we focused on the specific project that was right in front of us from one moment to the next to develop our mental stamina. Now, we can apply a similar principle to maintain that mental stamina for any task or project that comes our way, regardless of whether we’re familiar with the subject matter or not - this is what I call extrinsic programming.
By looking at a more holistic approach to mental fitness, we can draw on perspectives and activities that can round out our lives. Some of these can include:
Meditation and breathing
Physical exercise
Reading unfamiliar topics/genres
Learning a new skill
Playing brain games (i.e. sudoku, chess, crosswords, etc.)
Notice how these different activities all stimulate the mind in varying ways. The key here is to actively keep your mind on its toes (or I guess on its spinal chord..?) in order to maintain nimble cognitive processing. In doing so, you’ll set up yourself for greater success at taking on any new task.
As a result of going through both intrinsic and extrinsic programming, you will have strengthened the neural pathways in your brain to help feed your thoughts and behavior patterns. While mental fitness was viewed from a purely focused worker perspective from the beginning of this post, mental fitness is much more rooted in the behavioral resilience we as humans can train and build up for the greater good of both our work and non-work lives.
It’s the resilience and neuroplasticity that provide all the difference in life. Some common themes that can help aid in developing greater resilience for your mental fitness include:
Managing your Shortcomings
Things will happen where you’ll let yourself down and feel like the rest of the world is crashing down on you. It’s natural for this to happen for us to experience disappointment, frustration, and sadness. The most important thing to do is to feel out the pain of the moment - this shows that you truly care. But soon after, you get right back after it once the feeling-out period wanes.
Dealing with Uncertainty
We crave security and stability but know that there’s a reward waiting for us on the other side of uncertainty if we’re willing to embrace it. It’s the fear of the unknown and failing that clouds our thought process when handling uncertainty - some thrive on the adrenaline whereas others shiver at the very thought of it. Regardless, we all will have to face some form of uncertainty at some point in our lives. The best thing we can do is control what we can control and learn to grow from the experience no matter what. You can read more about how to manage uncertainty here.
Focusing on the Process
The mantra of the Introspective Musings clan - we all love the process of the journey more so than the end goal. This is the key psychological mindset to cultivate a strong foundation for your mental fitness. Never getting too high nor too low on the outcome but striving for continued growth and learning is the cornerstone to developing resilience.
And here we are. I’m trying to figure out how best to cap things off with this post and am having a tough time to, as they would say, “gut it out”. But I look back above the cursor on my screen as I type and remember that I have to control what I can control and find beauty in the process of this momentary writer’s block.
Harking back to the points on intrinsic and extrinsic programming, I found sources of even greater inspiration to stay focused on this task at hand. It’s amazing to see the benefits of practicing both types of programming in developing my mental fitness. Being just someone who considers himself below average, I assure you all that you’ll be able to see the benefits of intrinsic and extrinsic programming in no time and faster than I did. Speaking of extrinsic programming, it’s time for me to go exercise! Happy developing greater mental fitness everyone!
“There are no dead ends in life, only dead end thinking.” - Orrin Woodward
