How to develop MENTAL FITNESS — Coaching with Marta

Mental fitness is your capacity to respond to life’s challenges with positive rather than negative mindset. This can be applied to all the areas of life: healing, relationships, and peak performance.

Each of us has a unique way of standing in our own way. In mental fitness we call these ways saboteurs - parts of us that are motivated by negative emotions, stress, anger, guilt, shame and insecurity.

First we have to find out who our saboteurs are. Second step is to start recognizing them in action. Staying in saboteur mode is like keeping our hand on the hot stove. The purpose of pain in our physical body is to alert us of something going wrong. When we feel the pain of the burn we take our hand off the stove. Similarly the purpose of negative emotions is to alert us of something. The thing is we often don’t address what caused the emotion, and instead camp out on the hot stove, suffering immensely. Staying in negative emotion hurts ability to see clearly and respond with empathy, curiosity, creativity, or laser-focused action. Functioning out of saboteur mode can create success in life but not true fulfillment.

The reason so many of our attempts at improving ourselves fail is that they are focussed on insight. Yet pure realization what we need to change is not enough. It takes practice. The muscle needs to be regularly flexed to lift heavy. If you’re not physically fit, you’ll feel physical stress when you climb a steep hill. If you’re not mentally fit, you’ll feel mental stress - anxiety, frustration, or unhappiness - as you handle career, relationship or personal challenges.

Good news is that there are only 3 muscles at the root of mental fitness. This means if we work on these 3 things, our happiness level, peace and performance will drastically improve.

First we have to know our saboteurs. You can take the saboteur test HERE. Knowing our saboteurs means having awareness of how we stand in our way. This one is called Saboteur Interceptor muscle - red flagging our habitual sabotaging thoughts and behaviors.

Secondly we practice self command muscle. We say no to our habitual ways and create new neuro-pathways. This is our mental weightlifting.

The third part is to flex our sage muscle. Sage lives in the part of our brain associated with positive emotions, peace and calm, clear focus and creativity. Sage powers include empathy, curiosity, innovation and laser focus action.

So, what i’m saying is that it’s really possible to shift from Saboteur to Sage response, even in tough challenges, and the speed and depth of the shift depends on one’s mental muscle strength. Success requires intense initial practice. You can’t gain muscle by lifting 5 pounds twice a week.

My Mental fitness group coaching program is designed to build the muscle. It’s a mental fitness training program. The app prompts you to practice 15 minutes/day for 6 weeks, which builds a strong base for your mental fitness, so that the results are strong and lasting.

If the idea of mental fitness speaks to you and you would like to practice, sign up for my program. Your life will never be the same.