Wellbeing

Personal development: Boost Your Emotional Fitness

Feeling under par? Try top personal coach Paul Bird’s seven steps to discover a stronger, sunnier outlook on life

Feeling under par? Try top personal coach Paul Bird’s seven steps to discover a stronger, sunnier outlook on life
For the last two decades physical fitness has dominated the health agenda. Now, with over quarter of us reportedly suffering from anxiety, stress or depression, attention is fast turning to the importance of boosting our mental fitness. And it’s not as difficult as it sounds.
Emotional Fitness is a new approach to feeling good developed by Paul Bird, renowned personal and business coach, and author of

Emotional Fitness…Changing The Way You Think and Feel

(£9.99, Amazon).

His programme supports the belief that, in the same way that we need to maintain our physical strength, developing positive mental strategies to cope with the rigors of modern life – as well as tackling bad habits, negative thinking and stress – is a must.

So limber up and read ahead for his top seven steps to boost your emotional health. By practising these simple exercises, you’ll be ready to take on the world in no time!

PAUL’S 7 STEPS TO EMOTIONAL FITNESS

“Emotions are a wonderful part of being human, but they can be extremely destructive and few of us are taught how to understand and deal with them,” says Paul.

“I have traced the origin of so many of today’s mental health problems back to six of our most basic needs, survival, engagement, achievement, reward, control and harmony; and looked at how emotions motivate us to satisfy our needs, but how they can also overwhelm us when our needs are not met.

“A key outcome from my research is that the secret to achieving happiness lies not, as many suggest, in seeking ‘happiness’, but in developing the ability to choose how we feel and think so that we can satisfy our instinctive needs in positive rather than destructive ways. I call this ability emotional fitness.

“Like any workouts, results will increase over time and achieving emotional fitness needs to be built up through regular exercise. Here are my tips to help you change the way you think and feel… for the better.”

1. Build positive relationships

Our engagement instinct motivates us to move towards other people in order to survive, but an important element of being emotionally fit is to build positive twoway relationships and not be dependent.

FOR ONE DAY:

STOP: focusing on what you want in all your relationships

START: finding out what other people want from you and do everything you can to provide it. If unsure what they want, ask them how you can help them.

2. Strengthen your RADAR

A common mistake people make when they feel overwhelmed is trying to fight the symptoms that accompany it. These symptoms occur because when our brain senses that our physical or psychological needs are not being satisfied it triggers our fight or flight response, which also stimulates the front right of our brain causing irrational DART thinking (Defend, Attack, Run away, Tolerate).

The secret of emotional fitness is to accept rather than fight the symptoms of emotional overwhelm. Gradually regaining physical calm restores use of the front left of our brain, which allows us to make more rational choices.

Accepting the symptoms can be achieved using the RADAR technique:

Recognise the physical symptoms

Accept them

Don’t try to fight them

Apply neutral (don’t analyse your thoughts)

Restore choice when you feel calm

The RADAR technique should be applied whilst reducing your breathing rate. Try breathing in slowly (ideally through the nose) for a count of 5 and out slowly (ideally blowing out slowly through the mouth) for a count of 10 (out breaths being longer to allow air to exist the lungs). By repeating this simple technique for between five and 10 minutes following the onslaught of an emotional attack, calm and rational choice can be quickly restored and irrational thinking and behaviour avoided.

3. Develop a positive sense of self

If we feel good about ourselves tackling life’s challenges is easy, but if we don’t it’s not. So building a positive “sense of self” and maintaining it is a key part of emotional fitness.

Feelings and thoughts are a bi product of our brain’s activity and are NOT always an accurate reflection of who we really are. Developing a positive sense of self therefore does not require wholesale personal change, simply the removal of negative self reflection so that more

positive thoughts can emerge naturally.

FOR ONE DAY:

STOP: thinking self critical or negative thoughts (or expressing such thoughts out loud to others). If you start thinking negatively simply say “No” to your thoughts.

START: focusing on what’s good about you. Write down three things you have achieved in your life, three strengths, skills or talents that you have, three virtues you uphold in your life, three positive things people say about you. Write these down and read them to yourself at the start of the day and least six times throughout the day.

4. Develop the ‘doing’ habit

When we feel we are doing our best we feel pride, but when we feel that we have no sense of purpose we feel apathetic. In the latter case our thoughts can become destructive and we find excuses for not fulfilling our potential. In the emotional fitness approach we tackle feelings of apathy, find a purpose in our life and develop the habit of taking action rather than procrastinating.

FOR ONE DAY:

STOP: putting things off, making excuses, moaning about your life and focusing on what you don’t want or haven’t got.

START: setting yourself one positive goal for the day and take action to achieve it. Make it a realistic but meaningful goal that will require some effort on your part and add value to your life for example joining a gym, sorting out something you have been putting off or solving a problem you have not yet solved.

5. Practice self-discipline

Our reward instinct conditions us to feel pain when our needs are not satisfied (and pleasure when they are). Often psychological needs are not easy to satisfy and cause pain that creates a desire for satisfaction or relief. This can overwhelm our ability to think rationally and we turn to short-term relief. Such behaviour can quickly become habitual leading to pleasure-based addictions like alcoholism, over eating, drug abuse and even forms of physical or sexual abuse.

Practise resisting short-term pleasure so that we can address our real needs.

FOR ONE DAY:

STOP: one negative habit that you have for the whole of today. Maybe give up smoking, drinking alcohol, habitual television watching or any other pleasure driven habit to which you have become accustomed.

START: exercising gently for 30 minutes today or spend 20 to 30 minutes in quiet meditation.

6. Learn to let go

Control allows us to take ownership of our life and make our own decisions, but in excess it can make us compulsive control freaks, obsessed with controlling others and getting our own way.

Try this workout that helps us resist over-control by accepting that we can only control ourselves and that other people have a right to be themselves rather than the objects of our bidding.

FOR ONE DAY:

STOP: judging other people today or imposing your ideas, rules or expectations on others.

START: listening carefully and attentively to other people today. Speak last in your conversations and avoid talking about yourself.

7. Live in the present

A natural process called “homeostasis” allows our body to self regulate, cooling itself when hot, heating itself when cold, and healing itself through the operation of our immune system, which fights off disease.

Homeostasis helps us to restore the natural harmony within our body, but that harmony is seriously undermined when we worry, especially about past events we cannot change and future events we cannot control. Physical harmony can only be achieved in each moment and so living in and appreciating the present moment is key to achieving emotional fitness.

FOR ONE DAY:

STOP: rushing around, telling yourself you are too busy and filling your time with irrelevant “stuff”.

START: taking time to notice what is going on around you rather than rushing past everything. Become aware of details you have never noticed before, by taking a closer look at everything you touch, everywhere you go and everyone you meet. And do something fun TODAY, something you enjoy alone or something with your family or friends

Paul’s book and free-to-join online gym explains emotional fitness in more detail and provides more than 40 mental workouts people can use to positively satisfy their needs and strengthen their mental agility. It’s available from Amazon or emotionalfitnessgym.co.uk priced at £9.99 or £5.99 for the ebook (£7.99 for Kindle version).

Article by

Paul Bird

Personal and Business Coach

Paul Bird is a renowned personal and business coach and author of Emotional Fitness… changing the way you think and feel.

Discover more

Article by

Paul Bird

Personal and Business Coach

Paul Bird is a renowned personal and business coach and author of Emotional Fitness… changing the way you think and feel.

Discover more