Mental Fitness Workouts
November 12th - November 19th
Welcome back and welcome in,
Take a moment to acknowledge where you are at right now: What is your energy level? What are you carrying with you? Are you in a place to learn and train or is this best to come back to another day when you are more open?
Whatever energy that you are bringing in, I am grateful that you are here. My hope is that these exercises encourage growth throughout this upcoming week.
This week we will continue to train our focus through meditation, practice enhancing our positive emotions and acceptance of those experiences that aren’t so positive on a gratitude walk, and destress with some calming guided imagery.
Take a big deep breath in, you deserve it.
Let’s get started!
Weekly Mental Fitness Workouts
Focus Training
For this cycle, we are periodizing focus training similar to how one tries to increase their weight in the gym over several weeks. Our end goal is to do 5 minutes of meditation for 5 days a week.
How it will work:
The Exercise: 3 days x 3 minutes
The Practice: Meditation
You will simply sit or lie down in a comfortable position and focus on your breath for the amount of time that is prescribed.
When a thought pops into your head:
1. Recognize it: “I am thinking about ______.”
2. Release it: attempt to let it float away like a cloud in the sky
3. Refocus your attention back on the task at hand (watching your breath)
The Resource:
You can use whatever meditation app that you like best.
A free option where you can customize your timer will be the UCLA Mindfulness App
Reflection Question:
What positive emotion do you experience the most? How do you ensure that you are experiencing this emotion weekly?
(Joy, Gratitude, Serenity, Interest, Hope, Pride, Amusement, Inspiration, Awe, Love)
Positive Emotions & Acceptance: Gratitude Walk
For this week, we are going to combine the positive psychology exercise and the psychological flexibility exercise.
Acceptance, as you may know, is an allowance for negative experiences to happen. Instead of fighting them, we acknowledge them as natural and unavoidable parts of life.
Intentionally cultivating positive emotions allows us to experience them more. A tried and true method of doing this is engaging with nature and practicing gratitude.
The Exercise:
Plan to set aside 30 minutes to 1 hour to go for an intentional walk in nature
A park, the woods, around a lake, really whatever nature means to you.
Go longer if you like, who am I to tell you when to stop?
Once you set out on your walk:
Move slowly
It’s not about where you are going or how fast you are completing it. It’s simply about being present with where you are at.
As you settle in:
Start to list all of the things big and small that you are grateful for either out loud or in your head.
Taking a break and being outside, the new meal that you tried this week, your friend for calling to check in on you, etc.
Notice your mind trying to pull you away and accept the experience.
Whether it is a thought about the exercise, a distraction on the walk, a reminder about something you have to do later in the day, or a feeling in your body: Accept it. Allow the thought to happen, and then:
Release whatever it is that pulled your attention away from gratitude. Ground yourself in the present moment by engaging in your 5 senses.
After, refocus back on the task at hand of naming the things that you are grateful for.
Stress Training: Guided Imagery
Try this 5-minute Guided Imagery session:
Before we end for this week, I wanted to offer up an opportunity to train utilizing a mental fitness workout software that I am developing. You will get weekly workouts tailored to the goals that you want to accomplish in return for your feedback on the software.
Please reach out to me if you are interested in the opportunity!
Be easy,
Ryan
Great post Ryan! I love the idea of recognize, release, refocus. The releasing is the part I need the most work on. Thanks!