The Physical Fitness Pillars

There are three primary pillars in physical fitness: endurance (cardio), strength, and flexibility (mobility).

If you live in a developed Western country, the doctors are calling from the mountaintops: you need to get your cardio in for your heart health, you gotta do your strength training for your muscles, and you gotta keep stretching for your mobility.

The Mental Fitness Pillars

Here's a twist: these pillars have their equivalents in the mind.

There is such a thing as mental endurance, strength, and flexibility. Can our mind endure the discomfort of long-term uncertainty or a challenging workday? Is our mind strong enough, trained enough, to solve problems, speak different languages, and stay quick in social settings? Can our mind be flexible enough to look at things in a different way?

Training Mental Flexibility

I find the most interesting of the three is flexibility of mind. I've personally learned to have mental endurance—meditation sits of two hours—and mental strength—musical training, language learning—but flexibility is its own animal. The first two are almost obvious, easier to approach with training. Mental flexibility is harder to train since it involves creative thinking and perspective shifting.

Mental flexibility is the ability to look at the world through different perspectives, to stretch and bend our perceptions and judgments in ways that serve our betterment and happiness.

A Personal Example of Mental Flexibility

An example from my personal life: a family member of mine is severely mentally ill. That illness is not only a challenge to manage but taxing for the whole family. For a long time, I felt it as a burden that left me feeling angry, resentful, and victimized.

Not great feelings, nor very useful, even if they are justified. I knew that I did not want to approach this situation with that attitude.

With time and persistent reframing, I was able to shift my attitude: this was an opportunity for me to show up for this sick loved one and for my family. It was also an exercise in strengthening my boundaries and learning detachment from outcomes. After going through a lot of it, I've also seen how much more compassion I've developed for others, how much deeper my knowledge of mental illness has become, how much I've learned emotionally and intellectually. Rather than see this as something wrong or unfair, I could see it as a gift.

Of course, that example is a big one, and took years for me to have healthier perspectives.

Building Mental Flexibility Daily

Mental flexibility is a skill. When we're developing this skill, it is best cultivated with smaller, manageable perspective shifts. The key to growing this skill is asking the right questions.

I recently went on an apartment hunt. The options were unappealing at first: I could either pay way too much for a place or live in a unit that I hated waking up in. I was fixated on living in a very specific location. I wanted to be extremely close to a specific gym.

My criteria was initially that I needed to live within 5–10 minutes of walking distance from this gym. The options weren't great. But what if I had a slightly different perspective? Instead of saying to myself that I needed to be so close to the gym, my criteria was that I wanted to be thrilled about my level of fitness at whatever place I live.

Suddenly, there were more options to look at. Instead of living so close to a gym, maybe I could live close to a public pool where I could swim daily; maybe I could live next to a yoga studio where I could practice. Maybe I could find new ways to satisfy this need. This small shift opened me up to seeing new possibilities in my apartment hunt—and also to having a more positive, optimistic perspective that wherever I landed, I could be happy finding a way to meet this need.

Conclusion: Stretching Your Perspective

When you find your mind fixated, inflexible, or frustrated by a situation, ask yourself: why is this right? What can I learn from this? That might just be the stretch you need to find your way.