Mental Fitness

What Is Mental Fitness?

Most of what we learn about mental health starts once something has already gone wrong. Mental Fitness is different.

It's a practical, preventative and empowering approach built on daily habits you can learn and repeat. And it works whether you're doing great or you're struggling.

We like to call Mental Fitness the mindset, tools and habits that help you protect and improve your mental health. It's the 'how-to' for building your resilience, in advance.

Because just as we can improve our physical health through physical fitness, so too can we improve our mental health with the daily habits and rituals of Mental Fitness.

The best part is that you don't need to have a 'problem' to start working on your mental health. It's open to anyone. Just like we can go to the gym and get fitter and stronger when we're already healthy, we can take the exact same approach to our mental health as well.

Imagine if you could think about your
Mental Fitness just like your physical fitness.

Why Mental Fitness Matters

Mental ill-health is one of the defining challenges of our time. Increasing numbers of people are being diagnosed with anxiety or depression, while many more people are struggling under the weight of burnout and chronic everyday stress and uncertainty.

Mental Fitness is about equipping people with the tools and skills to manage and be at their best throughout difficult circumstances, and equipping them with the confidence and energy to take action to change things.

We’ve taken an idea that most people can understand - fitness - and applied the same principles for improving it to our mental health. As we build our Mental Fitness over time, we become more prepared and equipped to handle life's disappointments, setbacks and failures with more calm, clarity and resilience.

Mental Fitness helps you discover what 'good mental health' looks like and how to get there. It's grounded in science, and helps you think, feel, act and relate to others with more skill and intention.

Most importantly, the Mental Fitness approach is open to everyone, whether you have a pre-existing mental diagnosis or not. Because we all have mental health.

Mental Fitness:
The 'how-to guide' for building your resilience and protecting your mental health.

The Mental Health Continuum

We all have mental health? Really?

Picture the whole population spread along a line. At one end is a small group who are diagnosed and mentally unwell. At the other end is a small group who are mentally fit. Most of us sit somewhere in the middle, struggling some of the time and moderately well the rest.

What moves you along that line is your psychological resources, meaning the habits and skills you draw on when life gets hard. Pressure uses them up and practice builds them back. Where you sit today isn't fixed. It depends on what life is throwing at you and on how much you've built up in advance.

Just because you've built your Mental Fitness doesn't make your problems go away. But it does mean you'll be more equipped to deal with them. They will be less likely to overwhelm you and put at risk the things you value.

Mental Fitness is how you build those resources. Wherever you start, the aim is to move right and stay there, so that when you're having a tough time, you've got more tools and options to draw on. We think that's pretty cool.

The Mental Fitness Toolkit

So what should we do if we want to train and improve our Mental Fitness?

What practices and habits should we incorporate into our lives in advance? And what skills and tools should we turn to when we're under pressure or having a tough time?

The Mental Fitness Toolkit turns the latest research from the science of wellbeing into practical skills you can apply every day to feel calmer, stronger and more focused. It narrows down the often-overwhelming array of wellbeing tips and hacks down to a common-sense series of actionable, science-backed principles.

Helping you discover and apply these to your life is what we do at Resilience Agenda.