The Mental Fitness Toolkit

The Five Pillars of Well-being | The Mental Fitness Framework

Resilience Agenda’s Mental Fitness Toolkit brings together the some of the most useful distinctions, ideas and insights from positive psychology, practical philosophy and behavioural science into one easily accessible place.

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The Mental Fitness Toolkit is an ideal personal development companion whether you are seeking to optimize your well-being, pick yourself up from a setback, or to help others find their way through tough times.

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Learn more about Mental Fitness and developing your resilience in the 2020 Resilience Agenda Mental Fitness Diary.

Resilience Agenda

The Five Pillars Of

We all know that we need to exercise for optimal well-being, but often we don’t.

A focus on movement instead allows us to think differently about what we mean by exercise and how to benefit from it.

That means things like stretching, yoga or getting up regularly make a difference.

We are learning more and more each year that what and how we eat affects not just our bodies, but also how we feel, think and act.

It’s not about this diet or that diet but instead giving new meaning to how and why we eat.

Great nutrition means food is not an end in itself, but a component of living ‘the good life.’

Getting enough rest in our 24/7 world seems harder than ever, partly because there’s so much to do.

However, by skillfully integrating technology, work and responsibilities, we can learn to prioritise what we do each day, rest smarter and get better sleep, not simply more of it. 

Creating meaningful relationships requires effort, time and empathy because the quality of our relationships with partners, friends and colleagues is one of the key determinants of our well-being.

Plus, with everything that’s going on often we don’t prioritize relationships because we assume other things matter more. Connection is more than just fun and having a good time, it’s a crucial component of our mental health and well-being.

The way we engage with and interpret our world is another of the major impacts on our wellbeing.

Our outlook, attitude and approach determine our reality as well as how we experience each moment of the day.

A positive and growth mindset allows us to see life as an opportunity rather than a drag.

The central skill of optimism is the ability find meaning, purpose and hope in our life situation, despite the challenges we might face.

Optimism is about building a solution-focus to the future, compartmentalizing areas of our lives (such as family, work or health) where we do experience setbacks, and internalizing the idea that most things aren’t permanent and that “this too shall pass.” 

The ability to observe our thoughts and manage how we feel without getting overwhelmed is the key skill of mindfulness.

It means developing the ability to respond thoughtfully to things rather than simply react.

This allows us to make more strategic decisions for how to think, feel and act, rather than letting every thought, worry or comment take us down the path of rumination.

The art of appreciation is all about being genuinely thankful for what we have, despite everything that we don’t have or that might be going wrong for us.

When things get tough, gratitude gives us a bank full of positive memories that things aren’t totally hopeless.

It’s not enough to think of ourselves as grateful, we have to do gratitude regularly, meaning we need to find ways to action it.

That could be writing things down that go well, actively appreciating others in person, or imagining losing something we value.

The essence of re-framing is the ability to wrestle with our thoughts and accurately assess whether they are true, helpful or encouraging.

It’s about not getting lost in a vortex of worry, but instead having a systematic way to re-interpret negative thoughts and events so that we determine what things mean and what matters.

This means focusing on what we can control rather than getting hung up on things outside our circle of influence.

As we become more emotionally aware, we realize life is less and less about us and our ego and more about where we fit into the world around us.

Perspective is all about building empathy and understanding for others, seeing the bigger picture so we don’t get lost in the ocean of our own problems, and appreciating that there might be other ways of thinking, acting and living that we haven’t quite discovered yet.

Resilience Agenda

The Mental Fitness Framework