Building Mental Fitness

Mental Fitness is analogous to physical fitness.

Building your mind to not only withstand stress but also grow from it like your muscles in a gym. The benefits of mental fitness range from: better awareness and confidence to more positive attitude and ability to respond.

Like many of us reading this newsletter, we have many interests so it’s inevitable we’ll be overwhelmed and stressed out. Here are strategies for improving mental health, mindfulness, and stress management.

I thought about doing 3 separate emails for each topic, but mental fitness is too important to be separated and lost in the void of the inbox. Everything you need to get started is below.

4 Key Components for Any Mindfulness Practice

1. Regular meditation practice

2. Appreciations/gratefulness

3. Mini meditations throughout the day

4. Managing thought distortions/reframing negative thoughts

To get the best results from mindfulness, set a small amount of time each day to practice it. 1 min & 5 minutes. Any amount of time is good.

Lessons from Bruce Lee & Taoism

Tip 1: 4-7-8 Breathing Pattern

• Breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds.

• Hold for 7 seconds.

• Breathe out through your mouth making a woosh sound for 8 seconds.

• Repeat.

Surgeons, pilots, people struggling with insomnia use this technique for calming the nervous system. Some people have gotten so good with this technique that they use it and fall fast asleep within 60 seconds.

Tip 2: Tai-Chi

Meditation in motion. Simple movements to help build muscle, breath control, and a calm mind. I spent a few months learning the basic moves on YouTube to incorporate into my workouts at the end as a cooldown.

Tips from College Students, Apollo Mision Astronauts, & Termites

Tip 1: If you can’t avoid it, learn from it.

We’ve all done this at some point. Cram at the last minute. Mine was finishing an engineering homework assignment & submitting it 1 minute before the deadline.

I couldn’t avoid cramming it. It takes days to understand what the problem is asking and even longer to work out a solution.

During the cramming session, I learned I need 3 criteria meet to be focused.

1. Clear Goal & Deadline

2. Knowing how to start

3. Knowing what’s considered done.

Using the 3 criteria, I avoided cramming & focused my efforts to satisfying the 3 criteria. I later realized this is how you also achieve the Flow State.

Tip 2: “We don’t have to go to the Moon today.”

In the 1960s, the engineers for the Apollo program were rushing to build & test their shuttles. Each mission is expensive and risky.

This is new technology and a new application of mathematics. Each step was in new territory.

One day, they were behind on a deadline & scrapped together a test mission. Everyone felt the social & political pressure mounting as they prepared to launch a duct-taped version of a shuttle.

Flight Director, Gene Kranz, stopped them with 1 sentence.

“We don’t have to go to the Moon today.”

This removed any pressure the engineers put on themselves. Yes it was important to get to the Moon, but it’s more important to get there alive.

Most decisions don’t need to happen in the moment. Take your time.

Tip 3: Build a System to adapt to the Stress.

Termite mounds adapt to their environment.

If winds chip off parts of the mound, the termites rebuild the mound to accommodate for the wind by constructing wind tunnels and curves to allow the wind to pass through the mound without damaging it.

Stress is inevitable but we can adapt to it by building systems to accommodate the stress.

Instead of being bogged down by tasks, prioritize using the Eisenhower Matrix or create a running list.