Mental Fitness is more than the absence of suffering and symptoms; it is the Presence of Joy, Love, Connection, Creativity, and Contribution
It starts with a sense of humor. Then we get serious. If you keep messing around thinking you are going to finally "get" happy once it "all works out" you are going to end up in the worst place you can be: on your deathbed with regrets.
These are some "Top-10" thoughts to grab your attention.
This isn't watered-down Insta-jargon, this is hard-earned wisdom from decades of personal and professional growth. Thinking about this stuff won't get you much farther than anything else you've accomplished on your Feed, there are maps, tools, and instructions for how to DO this stuff, but without further ado:
- Recognize Pain as a Catalyst for Growth - Pain, whether emotional or physical, often feels insurmountable. But what if it could be seen as a springboard for transformation? Personal accounts shared by those who’ve endured chronic illness, depression, or emotional distress reveal that pain can ignite a passion for self-discovery. Suffering isn't just a burden, but a call to action. Symptoms are wisdom and so often we miss out by numbing, avoiding, or trying to get rid of stuff that is just the doorway to a profound opportunity. This is especially true when you are in the midst of a "sacred challenge." When you reframe pain as a teacher, it becomes a powerful tool for growth.
- Commit to Self-Care as if Your Life Depends on it - because it does. At least any life worth loving. Too many people, most people, are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, "stressed out" about this or that. Don't you know it is IMPOSSIBLE to be happy if your nervous system is in survival mode? You are using the wrong tools for the job. Nothing worthwhile changes on the outside until you change on the inside. Stop messing around and thinking your other world will result in your inner happiness. That's nonsense.
- Learn how to go from Survival Mode to Thriving Mode. Survival Mode is the Origin of ALL Disease and Suffering. Thriving Mode is the harbinger of health and happiness. It's that simple. If you are in Survival Mode even if you are on the proverbial or literal beach in Hawaii, you will find something to be upset about and you will keep reacting the same patterns over and over again. If you are in Thriving Mode, even if tough stuff is happening you will be centered, have access to joy, feel the love that supports you, and you will be able to think, feel, and act creatively and resourcefully. There are practical, actionable tools you can use every day to turn off the Survival Mode and turn on the Thriving mode. You just have to make it a priority.
Take the 30-Day Reset From Surviving to Thriving
I hope you enjoyed this free blog. If you want to take these concepts to action you can explore more real talk, real tools, and real results with this 30-day online course. In about 10-minutes a day, you can reset and refresh.
4. Know thyself - The Reactive-iWAS, your Primary Negative, the Creative-IAM. The Reactive-iWAS is the counterfeit personality filter that you mistake for who you really are, but which is really an amalgamation of the predominant stories you've made up in reaction to everything and anything that's ever happened to you. This reactive personality filter is the default mode and all human beings are living out its dictates until they learn to outgrow it. Being a natural development of the aforementioned Survival Mode, this personality filter has a built "negativity bias", and operates as our autopilot. Its most insidious and deeply rooted aspects are our "Primary Negative", which, if not resolved, becomes "the bane of our existence. The Creative-IAM is the conscious-created personality structure we both discover and build in order to navigate and express a life based on our values and choices.
5. Embrace the need, speed, and joy of a communal support system. Isolation is a cultural sickness. Thinking we can (and should) do it on our own and pull ourselves up from our bootstraps are symptoms. We created our community mental fitness gym membership - JEM, The Joyful Excellence Mastermind. I know there are grifters everywhere these days and people are rightly skeptical of marketing pitches, so I'm not even putting in a link to that here, but just going to say if you are going it alone you are slowing yourself down, limiting your possibilities, and stewing in your own suck. We are communal beings. Together, we go farther, and faster, with fewer obstacles and more fun. Together, we thrive.
6. Use Practical Tools to Feel Better Today - we are either waiting or creating and if we are waiting we will be waiting... forever. You can feel better, today, easily, without any gimmicks, in a totally sustainable way that makes perfect sense if you follow what I call "the Grace & Ease question": "What is the next, easiest thing I am willing to do right now in the direction I value and choose?" Contrary to popular belief the smaller and easier the step the better. Why? Because we change better by feeling better. If you do the next, easiest thing you are willing to do you will feel a little better, when you feel a little more better, you naturally want to feel "more better" and you now have intrinsic motivation to do the next, easiest thing you are willing to do, which would have been harder or something you thought you "should" do before you had done the previous easy thing. When we should and shame ourselves into changing, we end up with resistance. Resistance multiplies suffering and drains our batteries, and we end up "self-sabotaging" and feeling worse. I go into this in-depth in the 30-Day Reset from Surviving to Thriving which is, non-shamefully, linked above.
7. Focusing on solutions works better than fixing problems - It is important to understand the neuroscience concept of sprouting and pruning, which I explained in more detail in this article, Why Lots of Therapy Doesn't Work. Essentially, what we focus on, grows - for better and for worse. If we are trying to get rid of a problem we are unwittingly activating the neural network of that problem. As that neural network grows more tentacles and takes up more real estate in our nervous system we experience this as being "triggered" by a wider range of stimulation. However, when we pivot and focus on creating solutions and expressing our values, we inadvertently "prune" the networks that we are no longer investing our attention towards. Some fear that this is akin to denial, minimizing, avoidance, or gaslighting. FAR from it, this is looking at the beast square in the eyes, seeing it exactly for what it is, and realizing the only way to not get eaten by this monster is to stop feeding it.
8. Understand: 1. That happiness is a skill, 2. That like any skill, it can be cultivated, 3. Also like any skill, if it is not cultivated, we won't get good at it, and, 4. If we stop cultivating it, the skill will atrophy. You are in a fight for your quality of life and entropy and atrophy will win the day if you are not exercising your capacity to thrive even if, aside from, and especially because tough stuff happens. Like Robin Williams's character told Good Will Hunting, it's not your fault. You didn't know you were designed to be unhappy. "Say what?" Yes, you heard me correctly. Why are you surprised? Look around. How many people do you know that are truly happy and really have it ALL Together for the most part? Exactly. The default mode we were all born with is programmed to prioritize survival, which means our nervous system focuses on, remembers, exaggerates, and gives more attention to the bad, nasty, and harmful stuff. It takes a significant, deliberate, consistent dedicated effort to not fall prey to the NORMAL default Survival Mode and to cultivate and create thriving conditions in our body, mind, spirit, families, communities, world, and life.
9. There is no personal happiness disconnected from contribution to a greater good. You don't need to be Mother Theresa, a therapist like me, or work at a homeless shelter, but there is no getting around that we are neurobiologically designed to be healthiest and happiest when we are advancing the well-being of the tribe. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are quite simply not possible if disconnected from values and actions toward a common good. Even our “mental health” approach has been co-opted by the Me-Me movement and fails to recognize the imperative of WE-consciousness. No amount of fixing, more, or better will ever satisfy the “me”. True happiness (or whatever we want to call it) is only discovered in the context of WE, and the creative pursuit of the "win-win." Our ability to benefit others radiates from our highest self, but that can only be authentic when we paradoxically cultivate our best self unselfishly - that is: for the express purpose of being more well-equipped to act skillfully in ways that also benefit others and ALL. We are designed to feel better and best when we have an AIM based on values towards which we CONTRIBUTE through ongoing active PARTICIPATION.
10. There are maps, tools, and instructions - Thank goodness! There's a way out of this tangled mess. You CAN have your cake and eat it too. You can rewire your nervous system to default to thriving mode even if bad stuff happens. You can "prune" the Reactive-iWAS and spit out the poison of your Primary Negative. You can establish your Creative-IAM and explore, discover, learn, grow, and create your very own Neurological Roadmap to the Future (NRF) you value and choose. You can do more than paste paper wings on your broken-down caterpillar self and hope it will take flight. You can become a butterfly. Keep doing the next, easiest thing you are willing to do, and if someday that happens to be reaching out to join us in our JEM gym, you will nowhere to find me: practicing what I teach, cultivating the only skill that matters most. Joyful Excellence by Design.
