Why aren't there mental gyms yet?
I’ve been thinking about the kind of person I have to become in order to do the things I want to do.
My answer: A person who consistently takes action with chutzpah, resiliency, and outrageousness. A person who delivers WOW!
I thought about how exactly I’m going to train myself to become that person. Is there a faster way than just, say, getting over myself when I have to get on a sales call?
And I realized mindfulness meditation is the only proactive exercise I know to do.
In physical fitness, we train, i.e. go to the gym everyday, so we can sweat more in training to bleed less in battle.
But in mental fitness… Outside of meditation, we just go about our day, wait for things to happen to us, then try to resist our impulses.
This is like working really hard to last longer while climbing the Great Wall of China instead of training for it!
It’s crazy and very ineffective. But that’s how we deal with mental and emotional challenges. We wait ’til we get in the battle to do our mental training:
- Think positive before the sales call!
- Resist the cheese cake!
- Just write a really shitty draft when you face the blank paper!
There’s got to be a better way.
I think designing a mental gym where you can train daily and proactively in mental gymnastics such as overcoming fear, developing resiliency, and building mental toughness is a very good idea.
Some important characteristics would be:
- There’s a schedule — You go to the gym 4x/week
- There’s a program — 3 main exercises (e.g. purposefully get rejected, publish a shitty blog post, perform an activity you don’t enjoy) 5 sets x 5 reps
- There’s a way to track progress and measure results
I’d love for something like this to exist. Or even create it. Maybe I’m not just aware?
Do you do proactive training in mental toughness? If so, please share in the comments.