The first thought that comes to mind when mentioning the word "exercise" is not usually related to mental abilities. Since our brain is one of the most important parts of our body, why not make an effort to train it? The brain is like a muscle. It gets stronger and more flexible the more you train it.
You may be exposed to physical harm if you do not warm up before exercising. The warm-up exercises do not take more than 10-15 minutes, so they protect you from getting injured. Without doing it, you are neglecting a part of your body. Why not make the effort to train our brains like our muscles? Thus, our brains become more flexible the more we train them.
Likewise, when it comes to mental health, the process of treating yourself after symptoms of anxiety, depression, and pressure appear is much more difficult and longer. While it will be easier if you practice mental exercises that will act as preventive procedures, warm-up exercises protect you from these symptoms.
How do our brains work?
According to neuroscience, our brains work through neural impulses, which are trained and accelerated by our experiences and beliefs. These neural impulses are considered as "shortcuts" for behaviors and information that we always use. Whenever we occupy a certain path, the information travels faster through the neural impulse, so the stimulus and the reaction become automatic.
For example, we know when we want to eat food that has just come out of the oven, it will be very hot. Through time and experience, our brain has developed a neural pathway that prevents us from responding to the temptation to eat hot food so we don't burn our mouths. We do not think a lot to make this decision, because the neural pathway is very fast and driven by the feeling associated with this action, which is the feeling of pain.
Our brain is mainly focused on protecting us and keeping us alive. If we believe or experience something and it hurts us, our brain will try to prevent this from happening. Also, because our brain relies on evidence, beliefs and experiences, it can be easily affected if its attention is occupied by depression, anxiety and stress.
These conditions are primarily triggered by emotions and neurochemical imbalances, so this can make our experiences more intense and more real than they are, especially when we are dealing with hypothetical situations.
Most of us asked ourselves what would happen if we reacted differently to things that happened to us in the past or to things that will happen to us in the future. This is not a negative thing at all, but indulging in these theoretical ideas may disturb or frustrate us. Then it gets difficult for our brain to distinguish between imagined scenarios and reality.
Mental exercises and their importance for mental health
Here appears the role of mental exercise and maintaining mental health. Most of us can overcome anxiety and stress by focusing on the present moment. For people who suffer from anxiety and depression, this seems like a confusing idea. They need a lot of time and training to get to this stage.
The benefits of mind exercising and maintaining mental integrity are numerous. It reframes your thinking to be positive so you can see the bright side of difficult situations, and it enables you to focus on one task to avoid overthinking negative things. You can also exercise in nature to activate positive neurochemistry. So, there are many ways to exercise your mind and improve your mental health to be in a good state of mind when a problem arises.
The essence of mind training is to make yourself more flexible constantly.
It has been shown that people who are mentally flexible are happier, less likely to feel depressed and anxious, and are generally more satisfied. They enjoy greater levels of productivity and creativity, as well as better social relationships, whether on a personal or workplace level.
Mental health is primarily a personal responsibility
Working from home and finding a balance between work and other life burdens us, tires our minds with thinking, weakens our reasoning, and makes it difficult to see the future clearly. So, it is normal to suffer from anxiety and depression without having guidelines that help achieve balance in our lives. It makes us tired, afraid, and frustrated.
Science has proven that there are many ways to help us feel better. Companies and organizations are always looking for preventative, action-based solutions when it comes to mental health and general well-being. These solutions are often less costly and time-consuming than other activities.
It can provide employees with the opportunity to learn new strategies and techniques for building mental resilience, and to deal more positively with stressful situations when they arise. For example, there is a new web app "Leafyard Mental Fitness" which motivates your team to take action based on science, and helps them understand that getting better is something at their fingertips.
This kind of work-based mental health and mental fitness training allows you to put in everyone's hands what we all know about how to feel better. It's good to know useful procedures, but if they are not applied, nothing will change.
On a personal level, the individual takes responsibility for their mental health, and discovers that they have the ability to make themselves feel better. This type of self-control cannot be underestimated. In fact, we feel a lot of tension and stress resulting from feeling helpless, or lack of self-control. So, feeling like you have strategies and techniques that you can reach for in times of stress can be a game changer and greatly enhance our mental health.
What does it look like to do mental fitness every day consistently? Well, there are several small tasks that you can incorporate into your daily routine, which gradually work to enhance and strengthen those positive neural pathways, such as exercising, spending time away from your mobile phone, being with others, and trying to be rational and kind to yourself. All of these things accumulate over time to give you a flexible mindset that puts you in a much better condition to deal with life's inevitable difficult situations as well as accept and manage them.
In conclusion
The more you do these tasks, the greater their impact on the neural structure and your behavioral reactions to different scenarios. These small shifts have large and lasting effects, but repetition is the basis.
You cannot do these activities only once and hope that they will make a difference. Repeated actions and experiences reinforce neural pathways. So, building positive habits is crucial to making these behaviors consistent and making lasting and meaningful changes.
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