Mental Fitness: The Game Changer

Episode #302 with Dr. Jackie Kinley

People exercise to improve their physical fitness. But how often do people exercise their brain for mental health? To teach you how to build psychological resilience, Kirk Behrendt brings in Dr. Jackie Kinley, author of Mental Fitness: The Game Changer, to share a framework to help you adapt to and tolerate stress in a more positive way. Your brain is like any other muscle — keep it healthy with exercise! To begin developing your mental muscles, listen to Episode 302 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

Stress can wear you down physically and psychologically.

Like physical illness, mental illness can occur in anyone if we’re not careful.

There are mental habits you can build and develop to stay healthy through stressful times.

People aren’t broken, they just haven't developed the skills to tolerate and cope with stress.

Psychological strength needs to be built and maintained.

It’s not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling.

Quotes:

“When we first started to speak about this, everybody thought that this pandemic was going to be a sprint, that we just had to hunker down, we had to deal with things, we had to just buckle down and get through it. And what's become really clear is it’s a marathon. So, the stress has persisted. And as stress persists, it has a significant impact on us. Not just physically, our physical bodies, but psychologically, stress can really wear us down.” (05:22—05:51)

“Your brain is like any other muscle, and we have to develop skills to be able to deal with stress.” (06:23—06:29)

“Mental illness can occur in any of us if we’re not careful and if we don't take care of ourselves, just like physical illness can happen.” (06:47—06:54)

“I talk about four mental muscle groups. If you can see fit, which is perspective; if you can think fit, which is keep your thinking brain calmed down and focused; if you can feel fit, which is deal with all those emotions that come up — anxiety and panic happen when emotion starts — and then the last one is act fit, is if you can reach out to other people, stay connected. And so, these are skills, these are habits of mind. You can learn these things. You can make connections in your brain and you can strengthen those through exercises so that it becomes second nature. You can build the muscle memory so when you're under stress, you know how to respond in a positive and adaptive way.” (09:09—09:56)

“People aren’t broken; people just haven't developed skills. So, these are capacities that you can develop. When you don't have those capacities, if you get stretched and strained, then you can certainly develop symptoms — anybody can. Any of us can. Any of us can get anxious, depressed, even psychotic. Any of us can if our capacity is breached. And so, it’s not about judging people, it’s about understanding what resources individuals have, psychologically, and helping them to develop the skills they need. These aren't character flaws; these are skills deficits.” (10:50—11:26)

“We have a lot of beliefs, ‘Anger is not safe. Anger is dangerous. Anger means I did something wrong, if somebody gets angry with me. Sadness is weak,’ all of those things. There's so much misinformation about emotions. And emotions are actually adaptive. They're empowering. They're very, very helpful. But like the truth, they can be used for good and evil. Anger can be used for advocacy and ambition and perseverance. It can also be used to be nasty and mean.” (13:12—13:42)

“When we can't deal with anger, when we can't deal with sadness, when we can't deal with fear, and when we get stuck in emotions, that's when we get sick. So, stuck fear leads to anxiety. Stuck sadness leads to depression. Stuck...