PSY1013: Mental Fitness Introduction

• PSY1013 is titled "The Science of Thriving".
• Week 1 focuses on building mental fitness.
• Melinda McCabe is the Unit Coordinator and can be reached at [email protected].
• This lecture is delivered from Wurundjeri and Bunurong country.

Outline of Key Topics

• Meaning of 'mental fitness' will be covered.
• Comparison of mental and physical fitness is on the agenda.
• The role mental fitness can play in our lives will be addressed.
• Strategies for building mental fitness will be discussed.
• Mindfulness will be explored.

Learning Objectives

• The definition of mental fitness will be covered.
• Similarities and differences between mental and physical fitness will be addressed.
• The impact of mental fitness on performance will be discussed.
• Strategies to improve mental fitness will be presented.
• Impact of mindfulness (or lack of it) on mental fitness will be understood.

Mental Fitness Associations

• Mental fitness is frequently searched with terms such as: mental agility, positive psychology, optimal performance, happiness, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, mindful living, well-being, mental health, grit, resilience, thriving, confidence, self-care, and perseverance.

Defining Mental Fitness

• Mental fitness can be understood by the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness.
• It's a modifiable capacity to use resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving.
• Mental fitness is measurable.
• It's a positive term without illness connotations unlike "mental health" or "mental illness".
• Mental fitness can be improved similarly to physical fitness.

Mental Fitness vs Physical Fitness: The Differences

• Mental Fitness:
• Lacks social awareness and acceptability for dedicating time.
• Understanding its importance is lacking.
• Difficult to observe progress directly.
• Minimal facilities or programs available, often not well-known.
• Tracking progress is difficult, potentially leading to lost motivation.
• Physical Fitness:
• Has societal acceptance for dedicating time and resources.
• Deficits are understood and important from a societal perspective.
• Results are easy to observe.
• Has ample support through dedicated facilities and programs.
• Easy to track and measure growth in various areas.

Mental Fitness vs Physical Fitness: The Similarities

• Mental fitness and physical fitness both enable full potential in coping with demands in life
• Both involve strength, flexibility, and endurance.
• Mental fitness and physical fitness can be improved through a variety of activities.
• Both are strategies for prevention and are associated with positive health outcomes.
• Both are impacted by sleep, nutrition, and lifestyle factors.

Components of Mental Fitness

Training mental strength, flexibility and endurance may allow the mind to become 'fit' (similar to muscular, respiratory and cardiovascular body changes produced by physical training) and help you maximise the performance when dealing with potential negative events.

Mental Fitness and Performance

• Mental fitness is more important than physical fitness allowing you to be sharp and focused.
• Avoiding mistakes is also important to focus on sharpness for a one and half to two hour race.

Strength

• Self-Efficacy: An individual's belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary for specific performance attainments.
• Positive Affect Ratio: The ratio of positive to negative affect is a key predictor of well-being and flourishing.
• Social Support: Provision of assistance/comfort to cope with stressors. (APA, 2023)
• Emotional Management: Alteration of emotional state to meet deemed appropriate criteria by collectivity.

Flexibility

• Cognitive Flexibility: The ability to switch between different concepts or think about multiple concepts at once
• Acceptance: Willing acknowledgment of validity or correctness. (APA, 2023)
• Mindfulness: Being present and fully engaged, free from judgment, aware of thoughts/feelings. (Headspace, 2023)

Endurance

• Hope: Expectation of positive experiences or that negative situations will not materialize or will result in a favorable outcome.
• Purpose: The reason for something, a mental goal guiding actions, or persistence in pursuing a goal.
• Meaning: The cognitive or emotional significance of something (APA, 2023)
• Resilience: Successfully adapting to difficult life experiences through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility.

Mental Fitness vs. Mental Health vs. Mental Illness

• Mental Fitness: The modifiable capacity to utilize resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving.
• Mental Health: A state of mental well-being enabling people to cope with stresses, realize abilities, learn well, work well, and contribute to their community.
• Mental Illness: Clinically significant disturbance in cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, associated with distress or impairment.

The Event/Trigger/Stressor Characteristics

• Events/triggers/stressors can be positive or negative.
• They can be planned or unexpected.
• They can happen all at once or one at a time.
• Events and triggers can happen recently or a long time ago.
• Events and triggers are often life changing.
• They can impact you more or less than others.
• The common factor of all events, triggers and stressors is that they cause stress.

Events You (as a Uni Student) Might Experience

• Transitioning from high school to university
• Academic pressures such as assignments or exams
• Issues with Housing and living alone for the first time
• New friends
• Learning how to budget money
• Working part time casually to get by
• Managing commitments
• Managing cost of living
• Taking control of your own schedule
• Living away from family and friends
• Cooking and cleaning
• The new responsibilities that come with adulthood
• Barriers in language when moving somewhere new
• Coping with the new world and way of living after Covid-19
• Caring or relationship responsibilities

Maintaining Mental Health

• The modifiable capacity to utilise resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving.
• Leads to mental wellbeing.

Building/Upgrading Your Mental Fitness

• You can extend your health bar
• You can upgrade your armor

Extending Your Health Bar

• Sleep: 7-9 hours per night, consistency is important.
• Sleep changes are linked to poor mental health.
• Too little sleep impacts mood, health, and cognition for a prolonged time.
• Excessive amounts of sleep may impact health and mood.
• Functioning well with less than 5-6 hours each night is unheard of for someone.
• Exercise
• At least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week is recommended by the World Health Organisation
• Moderate exercise impacts your physical health which impacts your mental health
• Moderate exercise means any exercise or leisure, that you dedicate your time to that increases your heart rate or breaks a sweat.
• EXAMPLE: 20 minutes of moderate to fast walking per day
• Nutrition
• There are no distinct instructions or requirements that stem from the inherent difficulty of nutrition research
• A varied diet where energy is balanced with energy intake.
• Diet: Balanced with nutrients (protein, carbs, fat, vitamins, minerals, water).
• Personalised consultations with health professional is recommended.
• Social Connections:* Humans are social creatures.
• Humans are by nature social creatures
• Maintaining healthy social connections are necessary for
• Support and safety for ourselves from our own group
• developing well and building social skills and promoting our functioning and wellbeing
• protect us against loneliness and associated poor mental health
• A network healthy and strong relationships with family and friends that we can trust (Beyond Blue)
• Having a social network is enough, they need to be supportive with health and stable relationships
• They don't need to have health or mental health training, just someone to listen and provide support
• “We look at the strength of our group and ourselves as a member of the group”

Upgrading Your Armour

• Faith, Hope, and Optimism: Helpful for processing difficult situations, used for centuries to understand and cope.
  • Spirituality plays a role in coping, support, acceptance and healing
• (Unantenne, N., Warren, N., Canaway, R., & Manderson, L. (2013). The Strength to Cope: Spirituality and Faith in Chronic Disease. Journal of Religion and Health,
• We often mis-assign 'faith' with a religion but it is the complete belief and trust in something or someone.52(4), 1147–1161. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24485124)
• In literature we focus on those with no other option for support (e.g. lacking health care and support, and chronic or
• However faith can support our ability to cope with things we aren't able to fix or controluntreatable illness)
• Humour
• Hand in hand with optimism, it is commonly used to cope with stressful or fearful situations
• • Many think to inject humour as a way of injecting happiness as (a contrast to sadness or fear) especially in stressful situations
• Humour can be used effectively to cope with situations make sure it isn't being used to avoid seeking help
• (Martin RA. The Psychology of Humor : An Integrative Approach. Burlington, MA:Elsvier Academic Press (2007))
• Introspection and Problem Solving:
• Coping as a concept Psychology is often broken down into either avoidance, emotion focused or problem focused
• (Carver, 1997)
• Problem solving can be useful in consideration but there are some cases where it's not a useful method of coping
• "Problem focused explores ways to work through problems (or stressful events)and plan or implement a solution”
• Introspection is used as the analysis and understanding of a situation
• “Problem focused coping is a tas
• oriented coping style that attempts to alter stressful situations with active efforts to solve the problem or reduce its negative impacts” (Wu, Y., Yu, W., Wu, X. et al. Psychological resilience and positive coping styles among Chinese undergraduate students: a cross-sectional study. BMC Psychol 8, 79 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00444-y)
• Mindfulness**:
• *This often *misunderstood concept is used in pre clinical/clinical psychology as a skill to apply”
• It’s the quality of being fully engaged with whatever we're doing at the moment.
• Mindfulness is the quality of being present and fully engaged with whatever we're doing at the moment; free from distraction, judgements and awareness of or thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in them (Headspace)
• “Mindfulness is a tra trained skill the skill of orienting your thoughts in the present moment leaving behind the regrets of the past and fears for the future.

Mindfulness vs Lack Of

• Being mindful can assist with athletes to push past barriers and perceived limitations to create new goals
• If participating in a sport the following are important.
• When participating in a sport try to assess what it is you tend to think about in The moment is it something in the passed to the future, or is it the present.
• Push yourself to remain in The moment do not think about anything other than the activity happening before you and take note of helpful for to may impact the performance