Written by Jenna Cunneen; Psychologist & Behaviour Analyst

Psychological fitness is the integration and development of mental, emotional and behavioural skills to enhance wellbeing and strengthen your mind. It’s the integration of internal (personal) and external (your environmental) resources, similar to the maintenance of physical fitness and health. Keeping psychologically fit is critical for achieving mind-body balance. There are six core skills that are part of psychological fitness:

• Open your mind. The ability to willingly experience uncomfortable feelings, memories, thoughts and sensations in the service of your values. You can learn more about this skill below.

• Strengthen your mind. The ability to flexibly move your attention to the present moment.

• Free your mind. The ability to unhook from your minds rigid rule book.

• See your mind. The ability to observe your mind and becoming flexible in taking new perspectives.

• Connect your mind. The ability to connect your mind to your true values and motivations.

• Action your mind. The ability to use your mind to take action in the service of your values.

Learning these key skills and the ability to apply them to your unique life is the first step to improving your psychological wellbeing and performance.

Open your mind

Humans don’t like uncomfortable feelings and we learn some very crafty ways of avoiding them. We call this experiential avoidance. Sometimes this avoidance is helpful and other times this avoidance becomes habitual and may only serve us in the short term.

Learning to open your mind is a key skill in psychological fitness. Learning to accept and experience a full range of emotions, memories, thoughts and sensations (especially the uncomfortable ones) in the service of what is important to you, will lead you to a more healthy and vital life.

For example, let’s say you crave unhealthy food, particularly when you are stressed. Consuming unhealthy food is a way of avoiding the difficult and uncomfortable feelings that stress brings. The cake, chocolate, pie or whatever you crave will momentarily make that feeling of stress go away. You avoid the stress (albeit momentarily) and your mind thinks “well done, you did it, you avoided that yucky feeling”. Your mind then thinks this strategy is a great way of dealing and coping with stress. This cycle will likely continue unless you can change either the stress in your life or the way in which you experience the uncomfortable feelings of stress. Stress is certainly something that you should learn to moderate in your life through exercise, self-care and modifications in your lifestyle, however stress is also just part of life, it will always be there. While this specific example may not be something that you do, take a moment and reflect on what you might be doing in your life to avoid experiencing uncomfortable thoughts, memories, emotions and sensations.

Another way to consider the skill of “opening your mind” is that it is like grit. Grit is about perseverance. Persevering in the face of difficult obstacles, failure and uncomfortable feelings. It is the ability to stay committed to your valued direction especially when you are being pulled away (through the forces of experiential avoidance). It’s about letting the uncomfortable experiences come along for the journey instead of spending your time and energy fighting against or avoiding them. Instead you open up to them, as if they are bumps in the road on your way to your destination.

Learning a new way of experiencing uncomfortable feelings, rather than avoiding them is the long game. Practicing opening your mind up to uncomfortable experiences can be hard to start. With practice you can learn this skill and apply it to all your own uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and sensations.

Try this thought activity to begin learning the skill of opening your mind.

Ball in a Pool (By Matthew Jepsen, 2012)

What if what you’re doing with your thoughts, memories, and feelings is like fighting with a ball in a pool? You don’t like these things. You don’t want them, and you want them out of your life. So, you try to push the ball under the water and out of your consciousness. However, the ball keeps popping back up to the surface, so you have to keep pushing it down or holding it under the water. Struggling with the ball in this way keeps it close to you, and it’s tiring and futile. If you were to let go of the ball, it would pop up and float on the surface near you, and you probably wouldn’t like it. But if you let it float there for a while without grabbing it, it could eventually drift away to the other side of the pool. And even if it didn’t, at least you’d be able to use your arms and enjoy your swim, rather than spending your time fighting.

As there are many other skills involved in keeping psychologically fit and it is integral that you develop your abilities across the six core areas. Just like going to the gym, you first learn to use all the equipment and accurately learn the movements in order to start your fitness training, once learned you maintain your fitness by continuing to exercise. Psychological fitness is no different. You must first learn to use the tools and how to “move” the mind and then continue to apply these skills to your life. The best way to learn these skills is by working alongside a Psychologist that has experience in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Training/Therapy). Together you can identify which skills you need to strengthen and how to apply these to your unique context.

References:

Bates, M. J., Bowles, S., Hammermeister, J., Stokes, C., Pinder, E., Moore, M., . . . Burbelo, G. (2010). Psychological fitness. Military Medicine, 175(Suppl 1), 21-38.

Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (New York: Scribner, 2016). 

Stoddard, Jill A.. The Big Book of ACT Metaphors. New Harbinger Publications. Kindle Edition.