“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn’t they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise.”
– Don DeLillo, White Noise
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“Healthy is lack of disease. I always think that “dis-ease” would be a better way to write the word because it is literally the lack of ease in moving blood, waste materials, food, and yourself around that is the problem…
…I use Darwin’s definition of fitness: the ability to do a task.
That’s it.”
– Dan John, The Basics Will Never Fail You
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There’s a lot of talk about mental health but what about mental fitness?
If mental health is the optimal interplay of the neurons, better said perhaps as a sense of optimism and wellbeing, then what is mental fitness?
The ability to do a task.
Some of us may suffer from poor mental health, yet excellent mental fitness.
We are good at getting tasks done by the method of compartmentalisation.
I can complete the basics of getting up, getting to work on time, performing a job and interacting with others. They are achieved using mental fitness.
How I talk to myself just after my alarm goes off, my internal dialogue and reactions throughout the day, the little self talk before going to sleep, that is mental health.
You can fake mental fitness, practice doing a task, but mental health is not so easily boosted by bravado.
Mental fitness is just focusing on performing a series of actions that yield results.
I can put on a mask. But what if it slips?
Mental fitness requires diligence and action. I’ve got that squared away.
Where do I start with the universe inside my head?
Conversations With Quotations 