Lessons from Simone Biles' decision to withdraw from the team competition during the Olympics: Building Mental Fitness to Improve Mental Health

In my first article of this series I discussed the importance of having more widespread and open conversations about mental health issues broadly and on a personal level to bring it out of the shadows where it is the most dangerous.

It’s great that Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, and Naomi Osaka have openly shared about their struggles with mental health during the 2021 Olympic games. And although the focus has been on how so many athletes (especially top-level) struggle with this issue, it’s not unique to them.

A study that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association in Sept. 2020 (at the height of the pandemic), depression tripled in U.S. adults amid Covid-19 concerns. And according to the “State of Mental Health in America” 2021 Report, the number of people taking an anxiety assessments increased a whopping 93% from 2019 and 62% for depression screenings.

This is unmistakably an indication of a mental health crisis!

So what can be done to tackle this big issue?

It’s not an easy or fast fix, and it does require finding more effective and faster ways of helping people heal the emotional (and sometimes physical) origins that go beyond prescription medications and even traditional counseling methods, many of which I use with and teach my coaching clients.

Yet it is also crucial that we begin creating healthy mental health BEFORE it becomes unhealthy. This is about preventative care. And this is where building MENTAL FITNESS comes in.

Just as we wouldn’t expect someone who has never lifted anything very heavy to be able to lift a 100# weight or hold it up if you suddenly handed it to them, neither should we expect someone to handle a highly challenging or stressful situation if they haven’t had much experience or training dealing with minor challenges first.

The person who CAN handle a 100# weight as easily as someone else can handle a 20# weight didn’t start off at that higher weight. They had to build up to it by lifting lower weights to start and gradually increasing the weight over time.?That’s building Physical Fitness.

Just as strengthening Physical Fitness over time through certain reps (habits/practices) and tools (weights, stretches, movement, foods, sleep, etc.) leads to greater overall Physical Health, strengthening Mental Fitness over time through certain reps (mental and body habits/practices) and tools (mental weights, stretches, movement, food) leads to greater overall Mental Health.

Positive Intelligence is leading the way in providing simple but powerful and proven neuroscience-based tools and training to increase mental fitness measurably in individuals (adults and children), teams and organizations in as little as 6 weeks.

The New York Times best-selling book, Positive Intelligence, by Shirzad Chamine shares about the Positive Intelligence operating system and why only 80% of teams and individuals achieve their true potential. Research with over 500,000 participants (CEO’s, athletes, groups) in 50 countries has shown PQ to be the best predictor of how happy you are and how well you perform relative to your potential.

Positive Intelligence refers to Mental Fitness as a measure of the strength and dominance of your positive mental muscles (Sage) versus the negative (Saboteur). This measure of your Mental Fitness is called PQ (Positive Intelligence Quotient).

PQ is different from EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), and actually leads to greater EQ as a result of the 3 pillars used to build Mental Fitness—Identifying and counteracting your main Saboteur (the Judge) and its 9 Accomplice Saboteurs (such as Stickler, Avoider, Pleaser and HyperAchiever), strengthening the Self Command muscle (gaining mastery over your thoughts and emotions) and developing the Sage Perspective and 5 Sage Powers.

I love the simplicity of the PQ model and practices, which can be incorporated into anything and everything you do throughout your day to not only strengthen your mental fitness muscle daily but also respond better to whatever is occurring during your day that might sabotage your efforts, relationships and happiness.

Teaching people easily-learned and immediately-applied tools such as Positive Intelligence to build mental fitness is a simple, highly impactful and long-lasting tactic to build greater mental health. And the earlier we can teach them (e.g., in childhood), the healthier our families, societies, workplaces and world will be.

p.s.--If you're curious to find out what your dominant Saboteurs are and your current PQ score (ratio of positivity to negativity), click here to take the assessments .

In the next article of this series, I’ll discuss Lesson #3 from Simone’s withdrawal: The importance of becoming self aware, practicing self care, and setting healthy boundaries