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.

So, what is mental fitness? Do you have enough to pay the bills this month? Will you get that deadline met? How well did you handle that conflict?

When you can respond to the challenges of life without flinching, with a positive mindset and can sustain that over time, you have mental fitness. 

Mental fitness is about having and maintaining peaceful wellbeing, high performance and quality relationships. 

We are all familiar with physical fitness: it is about having stamina and having strong enough muscles to participate fully in life with some energy in reserve. When we are physically fit there is a physical resilience to activity and recovery rates are rapid.

Mental fitness is about having the mental muscles to participate fully in life with a positive mindset and, when negative emotions strike, having the resilience to recognise them and avoid them, or to bounce back rapidly when they take over.

To gain physical fitness, time has to be put aside for regular, sustained physical activity which challenges the muscle fibres and system at an appropriate level. This has to be done over a period of time, weeks at least, and results are measurable.

The gym is a popular way of improving fitness. The amount of time spent, and the loads lifted, increase over time. Once a level of fitness is arrived at, maintenance is required to keep the fitness level.

Gaining mental fitness has a similar pattern. Certain fibres in the brain need to be regularly used to strengthen and choice points rewired. Time has to be put aside to train. 

The mental fitness gym however, is not a physical space, but an inner space. The weights are conscious moments of mindfulness that interrupt the day, wherever you are, for a couple of minutes on a reasonably regular basis.

Like physical muscle, mental fitness requires “reps” for each activity, increasing in number and frequency. The length of the mindful moments determine how many “reps” you score. A mindful moment is a period of time where your attention is focused utterly on one thing, with no thought.

Have a go . . . Pay attention to how you are thinking and how your body feels right now. Then close your eyes and, for half a minute, rub two fingers together so gently that you can feel the ridges in the skin. Only focus on that feeling. 

Then feel the weight of your body in your chair and focus only on that, and then focus on your breathing, feel the temperature of the air as it goes into your nose, and then again as it leaves your nose. A minute and a half of focus. 

Check in, how are you thinking and how does your body feel now? How would you rate your mental fitness? Do you get consumed by negative emotions? How quickly do you bounce back?

Helen Jansen

Coaching for wellbeing, performance

and relationship development

[email protected]