As you can assume, your mind is a powerful tool and it helps you through each step of your day. It controls the way that you perform each action, the way that you see life and it controls all of those little things like breathing and your heart pumping that you don’t think about. Yet, there are many ways that your mind’s fitness may not be the right level that it should be.
In fact, for many people living in today’s hectic lifestyle, it’s anything but easy to make it through the day without dealing with some type of stress or pressure. The mind’s health is quite an important aspect and, believe it or not, plays a significant role in the quality of life and the longevity that you have in your life. When you are emotionally or mentally unfit, your body’s health is directly related.
There are many different ways that this can happen, including the simple fact that you may have to battle illnesses more often and with greater intensity. Although you may be wondering just how you can control fitness of your mind, the good news is that this can be one of the easier steps to take in total health and wellness if you allow it to be.
Let’s get started by learning what exactly is healthy and what may not be the best choice for your overall health and well being.
What’s Healthy?
For your mind to be in a healthy state, several key things must play a role. First, you need to be fully capable of thinking clearly; performing mental tasks and you need to be able to conquer problems effectively. In addition, you need to tame those other things that happen throughout your life that limit you or otherwise affect the quality of your mind and lifestyle.
A Healthy Brain
With the onset of Alzheimer’s happening to more and more people, the importance of having a healthy brain is very evident. Whether or not you can stop this disease or other debilitating diseases from happening to you is yet to be seen, there is evidence that says that you can actually push off the onset by some time if you do the right things.
For this particular battle, you need to exercise your mind. Keeping your mind active, challenged and attentive is essential to your well being and this fight.
Emotional Health
Another aspect that you probably don’t want to talk about is that of emotional well being. While life affects each one of us, the way that you handle the problems that happen to fall into your lap are critical in maintaining a healthy life. For example, should something emotionally troubling happen to you, such as a death or deception, you need to be able to effectively deal with it and then to move on.
Emotional health is an important battle that everyone must strive to improve. There are many various ways that you can improve your emotional state by learning how to react to critical situations. Indeed, the right social activity is one way to improve your emotional health.
Stress Management
Yet another factor that plays a significant role in the well being of your mind is that of stress. Not only does it pull you down through causing large amounts of emotional trauma, but it also causes all types of physical problems for those struggling with it. It can lead to various health issues physically, too.
While you can’t take away everything in your life that causes stress, learning to effectively manage stress is important. It can help you to tackle even challenging tasks with more ease and with success. Sometimes it may be important to remove the stressors from your life, but that’s not a common occurrence.
Spiritual Well Being
Spiritual well being is yet another consideration that you need to take. While there isn’t always a need to be religious or spiritual, it can often play a role in the way that you see your life as well as in your emotional state of mind. For those that do believe in a Higher Power, the need for spiritual well being is even more evident because it places a significant role in your self esteem and your outlook on your own life.
Spiritual well being is a critical factor in maintaining your health, too. Those that are spiritually fit, feel good about themselves which allows them to be more likely to improve and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
This is a personal decision, of course, but aren’t all of these aspects of fitness personal decisions that you need to commit to? Spiritual health is something to think about.
Where Are You Now?
When it comes to determining how mentally fit you are, you may think that you have nothing to worry about. After all, you do all that you need to do and there’s nothing limiting you. But, have you actually reached the highest level that you can?
Usually people struggle with this aspect because of the vast number of disbeliefs about mental and emotional well being. Believe it or not, most people go through stages of depression, mental turmoil and even times when they are so stressed that they can not function properly. During these times, you can consider them, and you, mentally unstable and unfit.
Yes, it hurts to hear but just like your body goes through illness, your mind can be struggling at the same time, although you may not realize it. To determine where you stand in mind fitness, ask yourself these questions. Be honest, now, there’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about but a lot to be gained when you can improving your mind’s fitness.
1. Do you have physical pain that is not the result of an injury? This could be stress related!
2. Do you struggle with remembering things from one moment to the next? Do you find yourself struggling to remember why you walked into a room?
3. Do you struggle to make the goals that you set for yourself?
4. Do you feel anxiety, stress and angry often? What does it feel like and how intense does it get?
5. Do you hate the life that you are leading, are you unhappy with your lifestyle or do you have regrets about your life?
All of these things play a role in how mentally fit you are. While you may not want to do this, you should schedule a meeting with a psychologist just to talk through some of the feelings that you have. For the most part, working through these issues can be the best way for you to overcome your problems and to find overall benefit in your life.
If you have trouble sleep, or are eating whenever you feel like it, then you should be considering the vast number of mind fitness needs you may have.
Improving the fitness of your mind not only improves your daily life but increases your longevity, too!
Emotional Eating
Emotional eating is eating when things go bad, when you are stressed or when you are in the mood for a certain feeling that you can’t get from the world around you.
For many millions of people, this is one of the prime reasons that they are overweight or unhealthy in their diets. While food never used to be so readily available, today it’s easy to have a pantry full of food and a refrigerator that’s stocked to the brim. It’s easy to go to the food to get the satisfaction that you need.
Yet, this is a dangerous situation. Those that use food to fight their emotional instability are most likely to fall deeper into a path of self destruction. For example, consider this scenario that happens over the span of time.
You begin by getting stressed at work. You find yourself reaching for a candy bar to get the extra rush that you need to get through the tasks at hand. You then find yourself dealing with pressure from the boss; you didn’t do the job right. You decide you need a big, fatty lunch.
Soon, the pounds are creeping onto your hips. There’s no time to exercise and to meet deadlines you increase the amount of bad foods you are eating. Soon, you are not fitting well into your clothing. You become upset at yourself, your self esteem drops.
As your self esteem drops, you find yourself in even more problems. Now, you hate your job so much that the only thing that makes it feel better is eating something bad for you. In fact, you almost purposely make the situation worse by eating bad. You aren’t any good. You are a failure. You can’t make the right decisions. Just look at you….these are all things that people end up saying to themselves when they are emotionally depleted.
Emotional eating is one of the hardest cycles to break, yet if left intact, it’s also one of the worst things you can do for both your physical and your mental health state.
In just a bit I may put up some suggestions in the forthcoming post that you can have good mind fitness, which includes emotional eating.
Be Happy – Keep Yourself Physically and Mentally Fit.