Unlock Your Potential: Getting Strategic with your Successful Mental Fitness Practice

The Strategy for a Better You

Imagine building an extension on your house without a plan. Chaos, right?

The same applies to upgrading ourselves. But strategy? Change takes work, work needs a plan and a plan starts with a strategy. 

“Me Version 2.0” is the result of a well executed “Plan v2.0”

Going from concept to concrete strategy.

Here’s my top 10 considerations for building your strategy that worked for me.  When I didn’t do these, my change initiatives failed.

Understand the Solution

Lets put it out there: a Mental Fitness Practice (MFP) is the Answer if your questions include:

-       What do I do about feeling flat all the time?

-       How do I stop procrastinating  and get things done?

-       How do I actually do something about feeling sluggish in my body?

-       How do I actually sleep better? What do I do

-       How can I per form at a level high enough to hold and maintain a job promotion?

-       How do I deal with the frustration and annoyance I feel?

-       Why don’t self help books actually seem to make a difference to me?

-       How do I find the energy to be a good parent and a good provider?

Practice?  Because you have to try new things and get better at them.

Mental fitness means a resilient mind that thrives in chaos, maintaining focus and emotional balance. It’s like a 24/7 bootcamp for your mind, body, and spirit, addressing mindfulness, nutrition, resistance training, and recovery.

The science says it again and again.  An MFP will have you moving better, sleeping better, thinking with greater clarity, living more in the moment and relating better to those around you. 

Can you think about any of your problems in life, personal or professional, would not be managed better with these sorts of improvements?

Simplify the Problem

What is really at the core of the issues of the modern degradation of the analogue human?

We are being conspired against!

Sustainable change is a product of daily, incremental efforts where old habits are replaced with new, more beneficial ones. It’s not limited to physical actions but extends to work, study, and particularly to the realm of our thoughts, which often operate on autopilot.

If our automatic thought processes and internal dialogues are not uplifting and motivational, they become barriers to productivity and achieving our goals.

The essence of transformation lies in our ability to recognize and intervene in these automatic habits. By replacing self-doubt with affirmations of competence, choosing exercise over unhealthy snacking, or foregoing counterproductive actions in favor of purposeful activity, we dramatically alter our life's trajectory.

The journey involves learning, making, breaking, and stacking habits in a way that fosters a cycle of continuous self-improvement. Through this process, we not only change our behaviors but also how we perceive and interact with the world, highlighting the profound influence of our habits on personal and professional success.

How strong does your “why” need to be?

Think of the days when our hard work is yet to show results. On the day when you feel like staying in bed, scrolling on insta, when you cant be arsed doing what needs to be done.  Its our “why” that gets us over the line by whelping us win the decisional balance game, more days than we lose it.

Survey the Landscape and Find your Tools

What is it exactly you need to do?  Where do you do it?  How?  Who helps? Where do you spend most of your time?  Who are spending it with?  What do you really know? What else do you need?

Where will you “express” your improvement?  At home? At work? Sporting Field? Career? Study?

Commitment: A Mental Fitness Practice is Kaizen in Action

Kaizen – continual improvement.  How?  Through practice in action.  Continuous practice leads to elevation of skill and execution. If life was karate (it’s a bit part of my life) , our belt of life blackens through a consistent deliberate practice of wanting to be better.

You don’t earn a blackbelt by watching reels on instagram.  Just saying.

You want sustainable change and improvement in anything?  It comes through kaizen. Doing.

Actioning a Vision a Season at a Time

What works best for any project?  3 months is optimal to plan in detail.  Sustainable change or action takes time, structure and alignment to our vision.

Fuel is more than just food

Pro tip : consider “fuel” beyond food and extend that to everything that we consume, that we need to process,  to move on with our day. In a MPF, the simpler the food, the better. Learn about ultra processed foods.  Be horrified.  Then eat less of them.

How do we fuel our minds? This comes from what we read, what we watch and who we spend time with.

Starting a good day doesn’t involve doom scrolling all of the evils in the world and discussing it with a complaining colleague at work.

Our meat sack is our vehicle

If life is a journey, our physical body is the car. We live in it, we breathe through it, it’s a big part of what tells other people what we think of ourselves.

When we look good, move well and feel good, the energy we give off is positive or inspirational to those around us and it reflects back in their reactions and interactions.

Want to be smarter? Get fitter. Want to be better at your job? Get fitter. Everything relies on a healthy body and our body relies upon everything else.

Want to get really smart? Listen to the thing you are trying to learn on a treadmill.

Any aspect of a thriving life involves a healthy body. It feels good to feel good.

Draft Your Blueprint For Success

The inner game

Eat well, exercise, fresh air, feet on the ground…. It’s half the equation, the other half is the inside job. The inner game is the never-ending conversation we have with our self .  It sounds mad until we realize the only person we listen to is ourselves.

If what we are listening to in our mind is anything less than inspirational it gets in the way of us being our very best. The inner game is at our core and we are at the centre of our lives. Limiting beliefs have no place at the core of our success.

Meditation, breath work, reading and journalling are all tools in the inner game toolbox.