Mental Fitness versus Mental Health

The legal services industry has a notorious reputation for having a negative impact on our mental health.

So many lawyers are tired, stressed, overworked, anxious or depressed.

Despite our recognition of 'mental health' as a problem in our industry, I do not see many lawyers putting their hand up saying 'yep, thats me' I have experienced mental 'ill health'.

When people ask 'how are you?' no one answers with 'I'm feeling anxious today' or 'I'm struggling' because we are afraid of judgement or rejection by our peers if our emotions are exposed.

Instead, we respond with 'I'm fine' or 'I'm good' or 'I'm ok' to avoid being vulnerable to others about how we really feel.

The reality is however that the walls we put up to protect ourselves often turn into a prison instead by suppressing or ignoring our emotions and keeping them hidden away.

Sharing of our feelings and vulnerable experiences not only allows us to connect with others, but it allows us to process them in an effective way.

Sharing our emotions with others therefore fosters good mental health.

If you hide your feelings associated with traumas you have experienced in your life, and you fail to address them by talking to someone, the reality is that those feelings will eventually bubble up to the surface in your life.

Think of your mind and your emotional wellbeing as being a rubbish bin. You need to empty the bin regularly and if you fail to do so, the bin fills up and eventually, when the bin is full the lid pops open and your emotional welbeing suffers because you have reached your limit as to how much rubbish you can fit in the bin.

The flow on effect of hiding our 'negative' emotions from those around us, not processing our feelings and not expressing our needs is that our relationships suffer.

How many of you have felt the need to suppress, deny or ignore your emotions and hide them from others because they are perceived as negative and the opposite of mental health?

I have news for you. Having negative emotions is normal and it does not correlate with poor mental health unless it impacts on our ability to live our day to day lives.

'Mental Health' is therefore not the absence of emotional discomfort, it is the ability to use those feelings to manage through hardship. It means processing our emotions in an effective way.

So how do we preserve and maintain our mental health?

Maintaining good mental health is a journey not a destination.

What if we talked about MENTAL FITNESS instead, like we do for physical, fitness?

We know the importance of physical fitness and we have many options to develop it by going to the gym, walking, running or doing exercise routines. When we are physically fit we can manage more, run longer distances and lift more weight without damaging our body.

The result being that we develop a stronger, leaner body and have more energy and endurance, we are less prone to accidents and injury and we live longer.

When have good 'fitness' we function better in our day to day lives and we are better able to enjoy life, enjoy more positive emotions and less stress.

Just as physical fitness helps us with an increased ability to enjoy life, so does mental fitness.

But what does it mean to exercise your mind and to be mentally 'fit'?

Mental Fitness is having and maintaining a state of welbeing that allows us to have self awareness of how we think, behave and feel. It allows us to put space between how we think, feel and how we act in any given situation and as a result we are less likely to sustain emotional harm.

I correlate mental fitness and emotional welbeing with the following quote:

"Between stimulus and response there lies a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

The power to choose our response in any given situation we are experiencing is the essence of emotional intelligence and it is at the forefront of mental fitness.

So, what are the benefits of mental fitness?

1. You are more present (you are in the moment and you are depressed about the past or anxious about the future all the time);
2. You have an ability to respond, not react (space between stimulus and response - I call this emotional intelligence);
3. You have improved cognitive function (better focus, memory, concentration and better communication and relationships with others);
4. You have increased positive emotions;
5. You have greater self confidence;
6. You have improved sleep;
7. You have a better mindset;
8. You have the ability to develop more positive habits in all areas of your life.

But as with physical fitness, to maintain mental fitness, there is no shiny end goal. You may aim to lose 20 kilos but when you get to the destination you need to maintain it, and so the journey of mental fitness and physical fitness is an endless one, a process of constantly working to train our mind and body, to maintain wellness and to manage difficulty without suffering physical or emotional harm.

Back to 'negative emotions.' These pesky things that we try and ignore or hide from those around us.

I encourage you to rethink how you label your emotions and to stop labeling them in the negative.

We all experience emotions. They are a normal when we experience stress, trauma or challenges in our life. They are nothing to be ashamed of. These emotions do not need to be pushed down and shielded from those around us.

Anxiety or any 'negative emotion' is not a problem unless the emotion gets in the way of how we live our lives.

Anxiety is necessary in our life. The job of anxiety is to help make our life better, but acting as a sign post for something that is going on in our life. That sign post tells us something we need to say or do differently, or to change the way we are thinking and our perspective, in any given situation.

We may not retain power in relation to everything that happens to us, but we retain power in relation to what that event means to us (perspective), and we retain power over our own actions.

Taking a big picture elevated look at your life and developing a higher and wider perspective may help you to stop getting bogged down by the daily struggles of your life.

"Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it."

But how does anxiety improve our life?

Well, when we are vulnerable with others in relation to our pain and anxiety, the sign post to help us to say or do things differently or to think of something in a different way, becomes apparent to us. Having another person look at something in your life with a different lense (perspective) is powerful in helping you to uncover the message on the signpost that you are failing to decipher.

Being vunlerable with others about our feelings therefore is a strength in that it helps us to move through the emotion and to leverage it for a positive purpose.

So, in conclusion, anxiety (or any negative emotion) is not a problem. Supressing, denying or ignoring the anxiety is the problem.

The emotions that we consider negative and that we try to hide from those around us are actually the ones that, when reflected upon with a different lense, help us to grow.

You don't learn when you are happy. You learn when you are pushing your limits or going through hardship.

An easy day at the gym isnt a good day. You push your muscles to failure because that is what helps them to grow.

Your mind is no different.

Being vulnerable with another and sitting in pain together without the need to 'solve' the other person's pain is a powerful way to connect with others and to help that person to manage through their emotions in an effective way, to achieve a positive outcome.

But if you want to be vulnerable with other people you must first become more deeply vulnerable with yourself and look at your emotions as NORMAL not negative or positive.

Here are some other tips as to how you can increase your mental fitness:

1. Exercise your body. Your mind and body are connected. Being physically fit helps to improve your mental fitness, and you are in a better space to combat the hurdles of the day ahead.
2. Eat and drink healthy foods mostly. Staying hydrated and eating nutritious foods supports gut health and therefore brain health. Check out Jim Kwik's podcast, Kwik Brain with Jim Kwik, for more tips on brain health.
3. Meditate regularly. This is one I am trying to work on. It is not easy! I have started by using the calm app and doing 8 minutes a day. I am still trying to manage to stay still for those 10 minutes in order to quiet my brain. The aim for me - not to stop my thoughts, but to focus on merely one thought at time. Controlling overthinking is a superpower.
4. Express gratitude daily. Write what you are grateful for down. Post it. Whatever works for you. Thinking about what you are thankful every day is powerful. You can't be grateful for something and negative at the same time.
5. Practice noticing your thoughts and feelings. Stop and use breathing techniques when you are feeling anxious. Interrupt the emotion with a buffer - whether it be exercise, a long walk, or talking to someone about your feelings.?Reframe wherever possible. Ask yourself: Is this helpful? is it true? Is this kind?
6. Practice body awareness.?Sit with your eyes closed or softly focused for five minutes and scan your body and focus on your breathing and where you are tense.
7. Reprogram your chimp brain.?Keep a list of positive thoughts and use them to combat the negative ones when they crop up. Listen to podcasts, read books and upload information sources into your brain that help you to weed out the negativity and to change your mindset.
8. Set healthy boundaries. When something isn't working for you in a relationship whether at home or at work or with a friend, re-establish the boundary to a more healthy one.
9. Take time to do nothing and practice getting in touch with your emotions. This requires time on your own to reflect.
10. Explore new activities that energize you and help you to feel more calm and less stressed. Everyone has an activity that makes them feel good. Do what works for you.
11. Build social fitness by building and maintaining healthy relationships with people around you who are positive, who share the same values and beliefs and who support and encourage you to grow. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
12. Do things which make you uncomfortable and step outside of your comfort zone. Doing this helps to develop your emotional fitness and to learn and grow through new challenges. Through failures you learn and become more resilient. It is your failures not your successes that help you to grow the most and to become the best version of yourself.

Are you an advocate for mental fitness instead of mental health?

Write down 10 things you did today to support your mental fitness.

If you can't name 10 things, you may need to reconsider your habits, as your habits control your life and have a significant impact on your ability to maintain fitness of your mind.