These days, it’s easy to feel scattered and unfocused. Your phone buzzes and lights up with messages and alerts. There doesn’t seem to be a free moment in your schedule. And it feels like you’re adding things to your to-do list faster than you can check them off.
Mental fitness can help. Mental fitness is about keeping your brain strong, sharp and healthy, just like physical fitness keeps your body in shape. It’s more important now than ever.
When your mind is working well, you can handle stress more easily, concentrate better, learn faster, be more present and enjoy your daily life more.
What is mental fitness and how is it different from mental health?
Think of mental fitness like a workout for your brain. It helps you:
- Deal with stress
- Stay focused
- Solve problems
- Remember things
Mental health, on the other hand, deals with emotions and how you feel overall. While mental fitness and mental health are different, they’re connected. Caring for one helps the other.
“Mental health generally refers to the state of our mental, psychological and emotional health at any given time or over a period of time. Mental fitness refers to skills, practices and strategies that people can take part in to support and strengthen their mental health and well-being,” said Brendon Comer, a licensed clinical social worker with Banner Health.
What are the benefits of improving mental fitness?
Just like exercise strengthens muscles, your brain gets better when you challenge and care for it. Mental fitness helps you:
- Build mental and emotional strength and resilience: “Mental fitness can give you an opportunity to have more choice in how you manage life’s inevitable stress,” Comer said.
- Sharpen focus: Improve your attention and ignore distractions more easily.
- Boost memory: Remember names, tasks and ideas more easily.
- Enhance creativity: Think in new ways.
- Support long-term brain health: Lower the risk of memory problems.
Our connected world can make mental fitness harder. Too much screen time, multitasking and stress can wear your brain down. That’s why building strong mental habits matters.
“Mental fitness practices offer healthier ways to engage with life’s challenges than numbing or distraction, which many people use to try to calm or avoid the stress and distress that life brings,” Comer said.
What’s a simple way to improve mental fitness?
“We live in stressful times in which many people feel as though they don’t have the time or energy to engage in any type of self-care,” Comer said.
One simple step to begin improving mental fitness is to practice “attending and befriending” our emotions. Attending and befriending involves thanking your emotion for its concerns and inviting it to join you in another part of your life.
Here’s an example: You’re stressed about a work project and the anxiety connected to it won’t stop, even though you’ve pulled into the driveway and are at home now. “That anxiety has the best of intentions and just wants that project to be successfully finished,” Comer said.
These attending and befriending steps can help:
- Pause while you’re still in the car and take three deep breaths.
- Don’t push away that part of you that does not want to move away from this work project. Instead, offer gratitude and support for its diligence and responsibility.
- Invite this internal energy to join you in engaging your home life, with a promise that the work project will be a top priority tomorrow.
“Through this practice, we can maybe more regularly set healthy and compassionate boundaries with ourselves,” Comer said.
What are some everyday ways to boost mental fitness?
If you have the bandwidth to spend more time on mental fitness, these strategies may help.
Improve focus and attention
- Try mindfulness: Just a few minutes of breathing exercises can train your brain to slow down and focus.
- Use tools like the Pomodoro technique: Work for 25 minutes, then take a short break.
- Cut back on multitasking: Doing one thing at a time helps your brain perform better.
Boost creativity and problem-solving
- Get creative: Paint, write or play music, whatever sparks joy for you.
- Take short breaks: Your brain processes ideas better with downtime.
Strengthen memory and learning
- Play brain games: Puzzles and logic games may sharpen problem-solving skills. Crossword puzzles, memory apps or Sudoku can all help.
- Keep learning: Take an online class, try a new recipe or pick up a few words in another language.
Support your brain with healthy habits
- Eat well: Include omega-3 fats (like salmon), leafy greens, berries and nuts. The Mediterranean diet is a good option for many people.
- Exercise regularly: Movement boosts blood flow and brain function.
- Stay socially connected: Spending time with people you care about keeps your mind engaged.
- Practice good sleep habits: Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. Deep sleep helps your brain store and organize information.
How can you overcome mental fitness challenges?
“As we all know, life is often unpredictable and can be very hard. Practicing strategies for improving mental fitness can offer more opportunities to respond rather than react to life’s inevitable curve balls,” Comer said. It can help to:
- Manage screen time: Set limits and take breaks from social media.
- Reduce stress: Try stretching, journaling or deep breathing.
- Build a mental fitness routine: Even 10 minutes a day doing something mindful can make a difference.
The bottom line
Start small for a stronger, sharper mind. You don’t have to make big changes overnight. Mental fitness grows with small, consistent habits. Play a brain game, take a walk or call a friend. Each simple step helps you think more clearly, feel better and supports your long-term brain health.
For more mental fitness support, reach out to your health care provider or an expert at Banner Health for guidance.
