While most people know they need to work on physical fitness, many forget about mental fitness. Being in shape is the basis for reaching higher levels and living your best life. However, physical fitness is different from mental fitness. People understand the concept of physical cardio, but mental conditioning, or mental cardio, is often misunderstood because you can’t see it. What can you do to be mentally fit? Here are three vital steps you can take to boost your mental fitness.

Mental cardio is not a one-time thing. 

You must be consistent in mental cardio. It is not something you can do when you feel like it. Mental conditioning does not mean the absence of fatigue. Just like bodybuilders need to recover from their exercises, you will also need to recover. There will be different levels of fatigue. A person in shape will need a shorter recovery time. However, you will bounce back faster with stronger mental conditioning, especially when something goes wrong. 

Take control of your unconscious thoughts with mental conditioning. 

Our mind is always active. We have thoughts going through our heads constantly. What we think we are thinking about or what we think we aren’t thing about is still going through our minds. We ask ourselves questions and answer ourselves all the time. The quality of our questions determines our answers. 

Most thoughts are in our subconscious. We can consciously change this when we are aware—making the unconscious conscious. We can borrow from another aspect of our life what is happening and draw a parallel. This is a type of mental conditioning to better prepare you for positive, conscious self-talk.

Start a framework to parallel the areas you are better in. Change your thoughts by having a system of daily statements you say to yourself. Feel the emotion in that thought and keep repeating it. Put these thoughts in your mind on purpose. You need to rise to the level of the challenge to avoid falling to the level of the training.

Eliminate negative thoughts and toxic people. 

• What tools are being used that support you or are a detriment to you? 
• What decisions are you making? 

When we have negative thoughts, we must consciously stop wasting time on them. Toxic elements of life can drag us back from becoming mentally fit. Be conscious of the people you are around and surround yourself with. You can not outthink bad decisions. If your habits are not helping you, you must eliminate them and start practicing better ones.

The Takeaway: Steps to be mentally fit.

To be mentally fit, we must be conscious of our mental conditioning. The quality of the questions we ask ourselves will determine the level of our answers. Mental fitness is critical for higher-level thinking. 

Mental conditioning begins with controlling your thoughts by repeating positive statements and supporting yourself before you can do it from the outside. Get rid of the people, habits, and ideas that aren’t serving you.

It takes work and consistency to train our brains to think differently. We will always have results consistent with our thought pattern.