It’s easy to think of your brain as a physical organ, but it’s more like a muscle. Just like the rest of your body needs exercise to stay healthy, so does your mind. In this article, we’ll share with you four exercises to increase your mental fitness to help you reach your goals in life.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a gym membership or special equipment to improve your mental fitness. You can do these exercises anywhere—in your home, at work, on the bus, and any place else you can squeeze in a few minutes to yourself.
These small habits are easy to incorporate into our daily lives: they’re simple tasks that require minimal time and energy but will yield huge results in no time!
Exercise 1: Mindful Breathing
Mental Fitness: This exercise is simple, but it can have a huge impact on your mental fitness. Breathing exercises are one of the easiest ways to calm yourself down and clear your mind after a stressful day or event.
You may think that breathing exercises are only useful for relaxation, but they can also be used as an effective stress management technique. When you’re feeling stressed out, try taking three slow breaths in through your nose and then exhale slowly through pursed lips (exhale for twice as long as you inhaled). Try doing this exercise throughout the day when you start to feel anxious or stressed out so that it becomes easier to calm yourself down when those feelings arise again in the future.
This form of mindfulness practice has been shown to lower blood pressure, heart rate, and anxiety levels; improve sleep quality; reduce pain perception; boost immune system function; decrease chronic stress-related health issues such as depression and insomnia; increase overall well-being; improve overall productivity levels at work or school.
Exercise 2: The Body Scan
Mental Fitness: The body scan is a practice of mindfulness, which means being aware of what you’re doing in the moment. To do a body scan, you must be able to focus all of your attention on one thing without getting distracted by other thoughts. If this is hard for you, think back to the last time that you were completely focused on one thing without getting distracted by other thoughts. It could have been when you were reading this article or finishing an important task at work or school.
The next time that happens again (and it will), recognize how good it feels when your mind isn’t jumping around from thought to thought. These feelings are called happiness and peace; they’re different but go hand-in-hand because both are achieved through stillness and silence in our minds—which can only happen if we practice mindfulness.
The benefits of practicing mindfulness include:
- Improved memory
- Reduced stress levels
- Better sleep quality
Exercise 3: The Self-Esteem Booster
Mental Fitness: Self-esteem is an important part of mental fitness. It’s one of the most vital factors in your overall well-being. When you have high self-esteem, you’re more likely to be able to handle stress better and bounce back from challenges. That’s why we all must work on our self-esteem—and luckily there are many different ways we can do so!
One of the more popular activities for increasing self-esteem is taking time each day to reflect on what you’re grateful for. For example, I’ll go through a list of things that I’m grateful for (like waking up this morning) and then think about how those things apply to me as a person. It helps me feel better mentally because it reminds me that today is a new day of new opportunities; this makes me more confident in my abilities and gives me the motivation needed to try new things or face challenges head-on without fear or hesitation.
Exercise 4: Positive Visualization
- How to do Positive Visualization:
a. In the morning, visualize yourself going through your day and feeling great about everything you accomplish or complete. You can even dreamily see yourself, like on a beach or in some other relaxing setting.
b. At night before you go to sleep, visualize yourself waking up tomorrow with an alert mind and feeling refreshed and ready for all of today’s challenges.
c. Throughout the day when you feel stressed out or are having a difficult time focusing on what needs to be done, take a few moments to imagine yourself back in that dreamy place where everything seems easier than it really is (or maybe even better than it is). Your mind will immediately relax once again into focus mode so that you can get back on track to completing whatever task is at hand without any further fussing around over details such as “what ifs” or “could haves”.
You can increase your mental fitness by doing small exercises every day.
If you want to increase your mental fitness, it’s important to realize that you can do these exercises anywhere and anytime. You don’t need any special equipment, so there are no excuses! If you’re feeling stuck and don’t know where to start, try doing the exercises with a friend or family member for added support. Just make sure you set aside just a few minutes each day.
We hope you enjoyed learning about these four exercises. If you try one of them, let us know how it goes! We’d love to hear about your experiences with mental fitness and the exercises that help you improve it.
Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!
