The First Best Step in Improving Your Mental and Emotional Fitness

Do you focus as much attention and energy on improving your mental and emotional fitness? WHAT, you may be asking, is mental and emotional fitness.

Emotional fitness is your emotional relationship and response to the world around you. Mental fitness is how you use your mind and tune in to the world around you. With the amount of stress and burnout exhibited in our world today, these two components of your overall health and well-being are vitally important, impacting every facet of your life.

Often the first signs of mental and emotional fatigue are feelings of loss of control or lack of daily connection to your values. Over time, you may begin to exhibit signs of a poor attitude, denial of what you are experiencing, or ignoring the signs completely until significant damage is done to your health. Does this sound familiar? This decline in your mental and emotional fitness common when you feel overextended, find you are faced with too many demands and are trying to be all things to all people. What happens when you wake up one morning discontent, bored, experience failing health or simply find you are neglecting those relationships most important to you? These are signs that your level of mental and emotional fitness is waning and in need of some attention.

Would you believe that strengthening your mental and emotional resiliency is simply a fundamental shift in how you look at your first, best step? Yes, just as with adopting any new healthy behaviors improves your level of physical fitness, the same is true for improving your mental and emotional fitness.

Whether you believe your first best step is to improve the quality of your sleep, the quality and quantity of what you eat, the amount of motion you incorporate into your day, or even just eliminating the amount of decisions you make in a day, you will be right. The best first step is the healthy behavior change you are ready to begin, today!

As you consistently adhere to the new behavior, you will find each additional new behavior you add to get easier to implement. Your confidence, competence, and self-efficacy will increase exponentially as you add to one new behavior at a time. You are creating your own strategy, specific to your needs. This too is the question you ask to determine your best first step. In a moment of mental or emotional fatigue, ask yourself, “What do I most need at this moment?”

What is your first step, today, in strengthening your mental and emotional fitness?