According to Healthline, mental fitness is about keeping your brain and emotional health in tip-top shape. 

It doesn’t mean training for “brain Olympics” or acing an IQ test. It refers to a series of exercises that help you slow down, decompress, and operate at your highest potential. 

Mental fitness is something that is often overlooked in today’s society; a cultural blindspot if you will.

Sam Harris puts it best: “Your mind is the basis of everything that you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.”

The best part is many of the things you can do to get started on mental fitness are very simple.

Here are 3 that you can do today!

Move Your Body 

Everyone knows that you feel better after physical activity. Scientific studies show that even light-intensity movements, such as walking or simply sitting less, have large impacts on your brain and mental health.

If exercising is your thing, then by all means keep it up. 

If not, that is ok! Start by creating the habit of going for an evening walk. Even if it’s only 10 minutes. This is the easiest way to start to work on your mental fitness. 

Try Meditation

Trust us, you don’t need to be a zen master to benefit from meditation. 

We wrote an entire article on the scientifically proven benefits of practicing meditation just once a day. 

We mentioned Sam Harris above; he has an amazing app called Waking Up that will walk you through an introductory course on meditation. 

The app is free to download and start. Eventually, there is a subscription, but Sam offers the entire app for free if you simply email them and tell them you can’t afford it. 

Practice Gratitude

Another simple and effective way to boost your mental fitness; gratitude. 

We’ve been doing gratitude exercises every day for months, and it is simply amazing how the brain automatically adapts the habit. 

The science backs up this practice as well; check out this article for all the reasons why you should practice this simple exercise every single day. 

Working on your mental fitness benefits you and everyone else around you. It’s something that has gone unrecognized for too long. It’s time to shed light on our cultural blindspot, we need it now more than ever.