EmotionalFitness

It’s amazing how much our moods and emotions impact our wellbeing and motivation to do anything. Anecdotal evidence alone tells us that one of the secrets to longevity is having a positive attitude. People who don’t see the glass half full are more likely fall prey to the negative effects of chronic stress and anxiety. Why? Because they can’t cope so well with life’s misgivings, especially the inevitable ones.

• Life is so much easier to navigate when you can turn any bad situation into a good one, see a silver lining however small, or at least be able to put optimism before pessimism. There’s something to be said, after all, for happiness.
• Emotional fitness entails lots of things. And it can go far beyond an emotional state at any given moment or your general level of contentment. An emotionally fit person has trusty coping skills at hand to deal with the unexpected, and to have faith that a certain challenge will meet an end that can hold tremendous life lessons.
• What’s interesting is the fact stress is something we handle better with age. All of us react differently to stressful events, but on average, studies show that we become better equipped to handle stress the older we get. According to the National Study of Health & Well Being done by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute on Aging, older men and women (ages 60 to 75) reported fewer daily stressors than their younger counterparts. And compared to people ages 25 to 59, older adults say their stress is not nearly as disruptive and unpleasant.
• This is probably true for several reasons. With age comes the experience of dealing with a variety of situations that don’t seem as unique and new as they were when we were younger. Problem solving gets easier, and we learn to take certain things less seriously in life. Put simply, adapting to whatever life brings becomes second nature, which then helps us to take on even greater challenges and aim for higher dreams that we could not have fathomed before now.
• Emotional fitness, like any other kind of fitness, requires routine care and attention. But there is no magic formula, as there are a variety of ways in which we can nourish our emotional selves. Making sure we spend quality time with loved ones and people who can contribute to our happiness is essential. Taking time-outs from the rigors of everyday life to enjoy our hobbies, journal writing, or just the pull of a good book can also fuel our emotional fitness.
• Everyone’s personal regimen to sustaining emotional fitness will be different. What activities make you feel alive and content? If you had NO obligations tomorrow, what would you do? The answers to those questions will get you started on planning for getting your emotional self into shape.

For access to more information and resources about emotional fitness, see below.

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You may also want to view the other DreamFitness pages:

• PhysicalFitness
• SpiritualFitness
• FinancialFitness