Ambitious people shouldn’t be focusing on their mental health. It’s almost always a lack of mental fitness, not a mental health problem that keeps them stuck.
The difference between health and fitness is one of aims. To be healthy is to be free from disease or infirmity, and to be “well”. To be fit, is being able to meet the demands of life.
Just meeting the normal level of mental health is fine for many. But if you’re looking to maximise your time on earth — to do something meaningful, challenging and worthwhile — mental fitness is essential. Mental fitness is what allows you to stop merely existing and start fully living your singular and precious life.
The difference is like being deemed healthy by the NHS, compared to being fit enough to complete an Ironman. For most, health is adequate. For the ambitious, fitness is compulsory.
Why business owners think they struggle with mental health (but they may not)
Our culture’s obsession with mental health harms the ambitious more than it helps.
Inherent in the suggestion that we should aim only for mental health is an upper limit of what we expect from ourselves. By aiming to be merely healthy, rather than fit, we put an upper boundary in place.
For the individual too, building their identity around their mental health limits them. If they focused on building their mental fitness instead of identifying with their problems, they would create the life they were looking for.
A focus on a lack of mental health is a recipe for suffering — you’ll always be focusing on the pain you experience, not your ability to adapt and grow. Thought and attention nurture what they’re focused on. Obsess over your anxiety, and anxiety is what you build.
Rest your attention on what brings you joy, and you’ll bring more of that into your life. This is harder to do than to say with mental health becoming more of a status game every day.
The Mental Fitness Revolution: Increase Your Capacity For Growth
Just as physical fitness went through a revolution and became a staple of so many people’s lives, mental fitness needs to do the same. Training mental fitness should be part of everyone’s life, but the ambitious lead the charge as they will change culture.
When we aim for mental fitness, we hope to build our capacity to handle the demands that ambition and the desire to live fully create. Stress, fear, anxiety, limiting beliefs, challenge, hardship, logistical limits, and the rest all become manageable, not derailing.
With a trained level of mental fitness, we increase our capacity to do, and improve our tolerance of mental discomfort. Without robust mental fitness, we are constantly performing at our limit. We are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually gasping for breath.
A 5k run for the average person on the street, and 5k run for an athlete are two very different experiences. A demanding day in business, family, training, and personal development, is worlds apart for those who have no mental fitness, compared to those who have trained that capacity.
How To Change Your Mental Health vs. Mental Fitness Perspective
The change of perspective I suggest, as a mental fitness coach, is to stop seeing your mental state as something that you are at the mercy of. Begin realising that mental fitness is a trainable capacity that allows you to handle the challenges life throws you and come out on top.
Mental fitness lets you live a free, successful and adventurous life filled with meaning; a life of play, joy and creation, not merely getting by.
As you develop your mental fitness you increase your capacity to achieve difficult things which solves your worldly problems. Your business moves forward. Your running times improve. Your skill set develops.
Training your mental fitness relies on doing 3 things:
Building your physical and mental resilience so you positively adapt to stress and hardship. In other words so you can deal with more of it without crumbling
Developing clarity of mind, thought, and action so you don’t live out limiting beliefs. So you aren’t your own biggest limit.
Training your character so you become the type of person you’re meant to be, not a lesser version of yourself.
How To Train Mental Fitness For Business Owners
Becoming more mentally fit moves you along a continuum from mental sickness, through wellness, to fitness. This progression not only improves your capacity to achieve, but also builds a buffer of fitness that can protect you from mental decline.
Just as we saw that it was the physically unhealthy who suffered most intensely and frequently with Covid-19, we see that it’s the mentally unfit who struggle most with the inevitable hardships life entails: bereavement, career stresses and the like.
Good mental fitness creates a buffer between you and the tipping point of mental illness that inevitably gets worn away through misfortune.
To summarise, by switching your focus to training your mental fitness you do the following:
Create a far more optimistic world to live in. No longer is your mind on what causes you pain, but rather on what liberates you
Increase your ability to achieve real world success through improving your ability to handle challenge, stress, and threat.
Build a buffer of mental fitness that protects you against a slide into mental illness.
Develop the capacity to show up as who you want to be in your business, family and fitness.
If you’re looking to find out how you can train your mental fitness, shoot me a message on Instagram and I’ll help you discover what process you need to train it in just 7 questions and 5 minutes.
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