The Five Major Lifts of Mental Fitness

Mental Fitness Part Three

"A positive mindset alone in the absence of hard work will get you nowhere."
— Ken Poirot

You are now functioning better, able to keep yourself from returning to your old painful behavior patterns and your Self-Command has become second nature.  It is now to time for the five major lifts.

Empathize

This is the Deadlift of Mental Fitness.  If you had to choose just one exercise to bring about the greatest change, empathy is it.  The first form of empathy you need to learn is empathy for yourself. Not recognizing the hardships you’ve experienced and constantly punishing yourself for past failures, may be expressed through greater judgement of those around you.  If you want to silence your judge (FYI you actually have a panel of three), then you need to strengthen your empathy.  When you hear that internal critic in your head, stop and ask would you ever say such a thing to your best friend or loved one?  Once you allow for you to be the gloriously flawed individual you are, you’ll move through obstacles with greater ease and improve your relationships with others.

Navigate

The Farmers Walk, with obstacles of course. Before you take hold of the weights, start looking at the direction you’re heading.  Is that really where you want to end up, and if it is, what obstacles can you plan for, and how will you get around them?  If after surveying the map you realize, maybe that’s not the best path for you, etch out a new one, pick up your weights and go.

Innovate

The TRX…show me whatcha got.  Yes, the TRX is basically a long rope with adjustable handles, and yet, you can come up with so many variations of exercises with this one piece of simple equipment.  When something unexpected happens, maybe a perspective client ends up not signing up, instead of going into your judge mode you can try to determine if changing your client attraction process will reduce the likelihood of this in the future.   A playful approach allows for free-flowing innovation to happen.  To properly execute this exercise your judge needs to be silenced, there is no good or bad, it’s about trying anything out and seeing what happens.  Coming up with new ideas and approaches can be fun and staying in that spirited state will allow for greater innovation.

Explore

Let’s get some Rows in. Sometimes the best way for you to be open to others is by pulling yourself back.  Often times when we’re listening to others speak, we have a tendency to fill in the blanks in a way.   This can lead to misinterpretation, confusion and possibly harm the relationship. Get authentically curious, stop pushing your ideas on others and start pulling their ideas out of them.  Making sure you truly understand who a person is, what they’re saying and their perspective before you offer yours, if even still needed.

Activate

The Back Squat of Mental Fitness.   When you are trying to avoid something, either because of its unappealing nature or your concerns of failing that’s when you need to just take action.  Straighten your spine, roll your shoulders down and back, and walk in to that rack. Position the bar and take on the full weight of action.  Most times action just needs to be taken, and the avoidance of it does more harm than good.   Once you’ve step into action, you become laser focused on the task at hand with no thoughts of anything but what you’re doing in the present moment.  When you re-rack the weights, you smirk wondering why in the hell were you even trying to avoid it in the first place.

As you become stronger with these five major lifts you are actually becoming stronger in the neural pathways associated with the Prefrontal Cortex, the Empathy Circuit and parts of the Right Hemisphere.  These areas allow for greater connection, creativity, peak performance, risk taking and happiness. 

The Strength & Grace Mental Fitness Gym will be opening soon, with a limited number of founding memberships available.  If you’re interested in learning about the benefits of being a founding member, please contact me (CLICK HERE) with subject line: Mental Fitness Membership.  

This is all done with Dr. Shirzad Chamine of Stanford University, supported by his research studies (CLICK HERE) presented in his book Positive Intelligence. Your membership will include access to the audiobook, the six-week program, the gym app, pre and post coaching sessions, along with weekly coaching check-ins with your Mental Fitness Coach (ME!!) and so much more.