Episode 93 - Mental Fitness

I think I understand the idea of fitness, it’s quite a simple concept. You can only do so much stuff until you can’t do any more. The fitter you are, the more stuff you can do before you need to stop. I particularly understand the idea of physical fitness – it’s easy to grasp because its effects are quite visually apparent. You don’t need to be very fit to walk two minutes to the shop but you need to be extremely fit (and a little insane) to run two marathons back to back. My lack of physical fitness is the reason that I get out of breath if I go up the stairs too quickly. And pushing myself beyond my current fitness level leaves me tired, worn out, achy and needing to rest in order to recover. All of this I understand quite readily. After I was healed I felt like I was completely back to my old self – fitness levels and all, but I wasn’t. However, despite this new found condition, I was not only able to quickly realise this but also able to quickly realise where my fitness levels were and what I needed to do to improve them.

Mentally however, not so much. Physical I understand, it’s something that I was taught in school and that has affected me most of my life. The physical is also something that (for me at least) is much more easily interpreted. The mental and emotional aspects of life are far more complicated to unravel. It all seems kind of airy fairy and cloudy and open to interpretation. As for mental and emotional fitness, well that’s just not a thing is it?

Well as it turns out, yes, it seems it is. After I was healed I felt like I was completely back to my old self – I hadn’t even considered mental and emotional fitness levels because I mean, what’s that? But I wasn’t. Since getter better, I still get mentally and emotionally drained far quicker than I ever did before I was ill. And that’s okay. Just like my physical fitness it will take time to build up again. The trouble is that whilst I understand the paradigm of physical fitness and recognise the signs, this mental and emotional fitness seems like a whole new language to me. And that’s okay too, I’m quite happy to slowly learn the language and learn to look after myself better. But that right there, is the real lesson.

I realise that I haven’t been looking after myself properly. Not just since I got better, but always. I’m used to looking after myself physically – I keep fit, eat healthily, and if I’m ill I go to the doctor. But it’s always been too easy to ignore my mental and emotional welfare. As it happens I’ve so far been very blessed and more by good luck than good management I have for the most part kept very healthy in this aspect of life, but I realise that I should be taking more responsibility for myself and for those around me. Not speaking the language is not a terribly good excuse. So now with my eyes open I will take this opportunity now to learn these things better and pray that God can help me make good use of these lessons throughout the rest of my life.