Helen Jansen is passionate about the Waitaki, the place and the people. Here she has her "people" hat on, as a coach for wellbeing, performance and relationship development, working towards helping the Waitaki community with their mental fitness.

You’ll recall that Mental Fitness is the ability to recognise when negative emotions, like anger, fear, or shame are leading your thinking, rather than positive emotions like compassion, curiosity, love and trust.

So, what is going on in the brain when we have different emotional reactions? 

Very broadly speaking there are two parts of the brain: survival (left side) and thrive (right side, connecting with the frontal cortex). 

Negative emotions cause stress. 

The brain goes into full alert about possible dangers and the bundle of nerves that join the left and right side, the corpus callosum, stop functioning as efficiently as they do when we are relaxed. 

Rather like Tower Bridge in London when big ships go up the river, each side of the bridge goes up and traffic can’t flow from one side to the other. 

This stops the details of a given situation, left brain function, being associated with the big picture, right-brain function, making us subjective, survival orientated, and our mind becomes controlled by those negative emotions. 

Before we know it, we’ve barked at the children, rashly dismissed a colleague or leant on the horn as we drive home. The energy we spread in this state causes more of the same in others.

Neurosciencenews.com

The brain is a complicated net of electrical pathways. Those pathways are protected by a fatty protein, like the plastic around copper wire in our domestic appliances. Every time we repeat an action or reaction the brain reinforces that protective tissue. The thicker the tissue the faster the connection between the stimulus and the reaction. 

So, think of something that gets your back up every time you see it or hear it. You have just reinforced the electrical connection and stimulated a negative emotion.

Mammothmemory.net

Take a breath and smile. We can’t have you staying in that negative state.

With good mental fitness we can identify when those negative emotions are looming and take steps to create a new pathway in the brain that leads to a positive, “thrive” brain response. 

Positiveintelligence.com

Initially it takes conscious effort. As it is repeated, the brain builds stronger networks. 

MRI scans show that after six weeks of diligently practicing for 15 minutes a day, there is evidence of growth in the grey matter that generates positive responses in the right, “thrive” brain and reduction in the grey matter in the left, “survival” brain.

Good mental fitness gives you choice when you meet challenges, with a much greater chance of responding positively than reacting negatively. 

Building that mental fitness involves short interruptions to your day, two minutes, four times a day. Stop and focus on something very intently, thinking only of what you are focusing on.

If you find your mind straying, just acknowledge that and bring yourself back to the focus. It can be your breath, rubbing two finger tips together so gently you can feel the ridges on the skin, listen to the sounds around you, or gaze at an object noticing the colours and tones and the shapes and textures. 

Give it a go, see what happens. It is the regular short interruptions to your day that will build the new mental muscles that give you more choice in your life and your well-being, performance and relationships will all benefit.