April's Mental Fitness Workouts
Time to take advantage of the warm(ish) weather
What to Expect:
- 3 mental fitness workouts to try in April
Now that spring is here, we can add in some time outside as a boost to our mental fitness. For the month of April, here are 3 practices to try regularly.
Practice 1: 20 Minute Nature Walk
Did you know that 20 minutes of walking outside is enough to reset your stress levels to baseline?
Nature has a powerful effect on our minds, ranging from optic flow to a significant drop in cortisol levels. As a bonus, it also reduces the negative physical health impacts of a sedentary lifestyle. It can also help with sleep and mood!
Aim to get outside and walk for 20-30 minutes at least 3x per week.
The research:
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/a-20-minute-nature-break-relieves-stress#:~:text=Spending%20at%20least%2020%20to,didn't%20affect%20stress%20levels.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2996155/
- Andrew Huberman on Optic Flow
Practice 2: Write a Letter to Someone You Appreciate
We all have some special people in our lives that we wish we could thank, but somehow never seem to work up the courage or conviction to do so.
This is your chance to change that.
Write a letter to someone you wish to thank, expressing things like:
- What you remember about how they helped you, or what they said that impacted you
- What makes them important and special in your story
- What you remember most about them
- What you appreciate about them and what they did for you
Then, take the leap and send the letter.
I know several people that have taken this leap, and nearly all of them have said this is one of the most impactful things they've done to deepen a relationship. Some people have even learned that these letters are framed!
Try this activity at least 2 times during April.
This intervention was enough to significantly increase happiness and reduce symptoms of depression for at least a month.
The research:
Practice 3: Spot Your Self-Talk
The average person thinks somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts per day, 48% of which are either about the past or the future.
Being present is hard.
Because our minds are constantly automatically generating thoughts, it can be difficult to notice how our thinking can influence and obscure our reality and impact our performance.
For this workout, I want you to set an alarm for a specific time on your phone - you choose when. When the timer goes off, I want you to just pause and observe what your mind was thinking about.
Were you present? Distant? Self-supportive? Self-critical?
Our goal here is to get a clearer sense of our mind's default state and how that impacts us. Next month, we'll work more actively on responding effectively to our self-talk, but for now, raising this awareness is a great starting point.
Write down your observations somewhere - whether in a notebook, on a phone, or any place you regularly store notes. This can help you spot some general patterns and reflect on your tendencies, which can further help you notice when your mind is working for you or against you (it happens to all of us) in the future.
Try to practice this daily.
Some research on awareness and self-talk:
- https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/332259.pdf
- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carl-Foster-2/publication/5819333_The_Role_of_Self-Talk_in_the_Awareness_of_Physiological_State_and_Physical_Performance/links/56f450a508ae38d7109f6a18/The-Role-of-Self-Talk-in-the-Awareness-of-Physiological-State-and-Physical-Performance.pdf
- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James-Hardy/publication/278026499_Awareness_and_Motivation_to_Change_Negative_Self-Talk/links/5579b30d08aeacff2003c950/Awareness-and-Motivation-to-Change-Negative-Self-Talk.pdf
Let me know how these are working for you as April progresses.