Mental Balance
Have you ever tried one of those balance balls / domes at the gym? You know that half a rubber ball looking thing? It looks fun for a second and then when you get on you realize you have to use your whole body to just not fall off? You teeter right and left, forward and back until finally all your muscles align and get you to the right spot to stand without falling. Then when you get really good, you can even start doing exercise movements, lifting one leg at a time or even using hand weights all while staying on the half ball.
Imagine having a tool that you can use to create that same strength for your mind as you can for your body. Physical balance is crucial to life. You can’t even simply walk without it. Luckily, we get through this as toddlers wobbling around until we finally strengthened the muscles enough to take those steps and within a few months, possibly running across the room.
Mental balance is equally as important. If you google the words, you will get a variety of definitions.
Vocabulary.com says, “the healthy psychological state of someone with good judgment. synonyms: mental soundness”
This NIH article states it as “Mental balance can be defined as a sense of tranquility that arises from inner peace and harmonious relationships with the external world. A sense of mental balance is experienced when a person feels that the various aspects of their lives are in balance, and they feel at peace with life. Calmness, relaxation, and tranquility are examples of low-arousal feelings that indicate a sense of mental balance and harmony. Mental balance and harmony are multi-faceted constructs.”
And Google AI responds with “Mental balance is a state of psychological, emotional, and social well-being characterized by inner peace, stability, and the ability to manage life's challenges. It involves maintaining equilibrium between work, rest, and relationships,, allowing for healthy functioning. Achieving this requires self-awareness, emotional control, and positive coping mechanisms.”
Regardless of specific definition, it is clear that mental balance has something to do with being able to manage life. So why do we not focus on it enough? Why do we not strengthen it enough?
So part 1 here of this blog post will start with the first thing you need to Balance the Mind.
Physically, what do you need to gain balance? Strength, flexibility, proprioception and vestibular function (space and equilibrium), and vision. So let’s start there for the mental portion.
Let’s start with Strength in Part 1.
If your mind were a muscle, what would it look like?
How strong do you feel yours is today? Let’s use our famous 1 to 7 scale, 1 ‘at all strong’ and 7, ‘extremely strong,’ how strong would you guesstimate it is today?
One, in preparation for your brain strengthening of course… you wouldn’t work out your body with little to no sleep or not having eaten properly so prep… sleep and eat right.
Now, you need time. Time to devote just to the brain strengthening. Put it on your calendar… 30 minutes of learning something new or taking on some other challenge.
Make a list of all the things you’ve ever wanted to know more about or learn to do. Each day, pick one, keep doing it until you are bored and move to the next.
That’s it. Your brain will be one step closer to manage the Balance Dome, i.e. life.
