Invisible Strength: Why Your Mental Fitness Matters So Much

Jul 14, 2024

Last year, I realised I was not particularly present during my workouts. I would blast music at full volume, charge around the gym and complete my sets while being obliviously unengaged. My phone would accompany me, and I would scroll social media and text friends.

But I’m not the only one. The following sequence of events is not uncommon for the majority of people who go to the gym:

Finish an exercise
Pick up their phone and see if they received any notifications
Open Instagram and doom scroll - not really interacting with anything just scrolling to pass the time.
Go on Spotify and select a new song
Put phone down
Perform next set
Repeat

We exercise for different reasons. Some people use exercise as a means to improve their physical health or boost their energy levels throughout the day. While others strive to enhance their body image and self-confidence. After all, the exterior is visible to everyone around us.

Regardless of the reasons we exercise, humans tend to prioritise the physical over the mental. The exterior over the interior. The seen over the unseen.

It is to their bodies that individuals pay the most heed, and their soul takes second place. However, it is the spirit that rules and directs them.
~ Nietzsche

We exert physical energy in the gym, but simultaneously ignore our minds. Sure, technology has connected people and transformed our lives. Nonetheless, I would struggle to confidently conclude that technology has made our lives simpler.

Our time must be filled with constant doing, and the ‘doing‘ doesn’t even need to be meaningful. It’s extremely uncomfortable to sit still and do absolutely nothing. Even for 60 seconds, it’s a struggle. Discomfort is not something we want in our lives. Comfort is our home, it’s what we know and we do our best to remain there as frequently as we can.

All of our problems arise because we cannot sit in a room quietly by ourselves.
~ Blaise Pascal

This year, I have made a more conscious decision to spend as little time as possible on my phone, and there is a clear correlation between my happiness and how little time I spend on my phone.

The big question is, why do we prioritise the physical over the mental? Our mind is a muscle, and it should be exercised.

You know the saying, either use it or lose it…

The visible and the invisible

The physical, our bodies and muscles, are always visible.

If you are in particularly good shape, you invariably have eyes on you. Sure, people say they workout for themselves. That’s not entirely true. We work out because we desire to look good for others, and external validation boosts our confidence and makes us feel good.

In contrast, the human mind is invisible. You can’t see it immediately.

You must spend time with someone and interact with them for extended periods to gauge their mental strength. Far too many people neglect their minds because the external world can’t see it.

What’s the implication?

That the physical takes precedence over the mental. The external is more important than the internal. It’s concerning, frightening, and depressing that society neglect to train their minds.

Ultimately it comes down to our priorities and choices

No man is free who is not master of himself ~ Seneca

There are many ways to train the mind: meditation, books, podcasts, limiting negative influence, a healthy diet, and doing things that cause discomfort.

Ultimately, it is about choices. When I ask someone if they read, the most common answer is `I would like to, but I don’t have time`. Yes, you do have time, reading just isn’t a priority for you and that’s also okay.

A Pew Research Centre survey from 2021 found that roughly 25% of American adults hadn't read a book in the last year, whether in print, electronic or audio form.

We decide how we spend every millisecond of our day. And we only have a certain number of brain points available to us each day.

Protect your brain points and use them wisely

Assume you begin your day with 100 Brain Points. Everything you do costs you brain points. You start your day with a clear mind, ready to tackle the most important tasks and make meaningful decisions. The right intentions are there.

As you roll out of bed, you decide to check your social media and spend the first 15 minutes of your day scrolling mindlessly. You’re already down to 80 brain points. Later, during your lunch break at work you decide to watch stupid videos on YouTube instead of going for a mindful walk. 70 points. Throughout the day, you pick your phone up over 100 times to check notifications (you can check your ´pick-ups´ under screen time on the iPhone), respond to messages, and interact with people online. 50 points. In the afternoon, you attend a meeting which could’ve been solved over email, but ends up taking 2 hours. 35 points.

You find yourself struggling to concentrate on meaningful tasks and the mental fatigue from wasting brain points is taking its toll. By evening, you feel drained and unaccomplished despite starting your day with a full quota of brain points. I do think a large proportion of people spend their day like this.

You won’t realise how detrimental something is until you make a conscious effort to live opposite to this.

What’s your anti-vision?

We choose how we spend our time each day. It’s all down to us. What do we want from life, and what don’t we want?

To help, you can have an anti-vision, I took this from Dan Koe. It’s meant to make clear the things you definitely do not want from your life. By doing this, you can identify patterns and habits that will lead to the fulfilment of the anti-vision.

Here’s mine:

I don’t want to be fat and out of shape.
I don’t want to be broke because I didn’t manage my finances.
I don’t want to work until I’m 50 because I didn’t create my own income streams.
I don’t want to be in the 9-5 hamster wheel my whole life.
I don’t want to be on my death bed and reflect on all the things I didn’t do because I was lazy or scared of failing.
I don’t want to grow old and be alone because I wasn’t vulnerable with people and was scared to love fully.
I don’t want to spend more time in the virtual world than the real world.

When we have clarity on what we do not want, identifying patterns and habits that do not serve our purpose becomes blindingly obvious. To do this, we must become the masters of our minds.

Look after your mind, and the rest of your body shall follow

Our minds are numbed when we engage in meaningless activities that serve no purpose.

Everyone is different and we should experiment to see what actually works for us. There is a lot of advice on the internet, and here I am offering my own. Nonetheless, I make an effort to test advice I find online. If it works for me, I incorporate it into my daily routine.

I recently bought a Kindle, and I can confirm it’s my best purchase in the last 5 years. It’s portable, and it makes it easy to read on-the-go. Whenever I have the urge to take out my phone, I replace this urge with reading on my Kindle.

We all invest time improving our bodies, but we neglect the aspects of ourselves that are not visible. We cannot be physically strong and mentally weak.

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.
~ Plato

Reading makes you smarter and more personable. It’s easier to connect with people you usually would have nothing in common with. Last year, I read the book How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes. It’s a little repetitive, but one piece of advice I found particularly useful is the following:

Equip yourself with a bit of knowledge in as many topics as possible. This can be something as simple as an interesting fact. Instead of being the most knowledgeable person about butterflies, it’s better to know a thing about 1,000 different topics.

Why?

You connect with people more easily. Usually, a conversation that doesn’t interest us is one we find boring. We find it boring because we know nothing on the topic and have nothing to contribute. Our inability to contribute to a conversation stems from our ignorance of the subject. To gain knowledge on a subject, we should train our minds and tap into new areas of understanding.

I once read a book about Octopi, and I met someone through work who really likes fish and coral diving. We connected because we discussed the intelligence of Octopi. Whenever I speak to him now, I remember that I recommended this book to him and we formed a connection because of it.

Your mind is a muscle, make the effort to train it.

Final thoughts and key takeaways

This post was a little messy, but it’s okay. I have been writing for 8 weeks and feel like I am improving…

The invisible is usually ignored. What we cannot see usually doesn’t concern us. Our minds must be trained in the same way that we train our muscles.

That has become difficult in today’s society because our attention is pulled in multiple directions. Finding moments of focused mental engagement can be transformative, and we should not ignore the mental over the physical.

Reading is the most powerful tool. It enhances mental stimulation and offers a gateway to knowledge that empowers us in our personal and professional lives. It sets us apart, and enriches our understanding of the world while sharpening our ability to connect with others.

Each book we read becomes a stepping stone towards greater wisdom and deeper connections, and this makes every moment invested in reading a valuable investment in ourselves.

We should continue challenging ourselves to grow intellectually and physically, for it is through this dual enrichment that we truly thrive.

There are five books which have enriched my life I would like to share with you. Here they are if you want to check them out:

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh
Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen and Tim Ferris

I hope you enjoyed reading this! If you have any book recommendations for me, on any topic, please share them in the comments.

- Stefano