While we are instinctively drawn to enhancing our physical wellbeing through sports and strength training activities, we often overlook the importance of actively cultivating the strength of our mind with the same vigour.

Our minds can be exercised to become stronger in the same way our muscles respond to training. Exercising our minds establishes new connections and neural pathways; this is possible because of neural plasticity, which gives us the ability to enhance our minds and make them stronger and healthier.

We mostly all want a healthy and strong body; however, we often fall short of our intentions and are good at making excuses for not exercising or eating healthily. Unfortunately, this can result in us waiting for symptoms of problems before taking steps to actively improve our health and strength. This neglect of the preventative benefits we know a strong, healthy body provides can also be seen in our healthcare system. Most of the awareness, time and investment in the healthcare industry is directed to dealing with the symptoms of illness, and understandably preventative healthcare will likely always be less profitable. Preventative healthcare for the body seeks to reduce the likelihood of needing treatments and medicines through the effects of good physical health and strength. Mind Callisthenics provides preventative healthcare for your mind.

           Body callisthenics, derived from the Greek words kallos (beautiful) and sthenos (strength), involves performing a variety of bodyweight exercises that exclusively rely on one’s own weight to develop muscular strength, improve functional movement patterns and enhance overall physical resilience, without the need for external equipment.

Mind Callisthenics applies these physical callisthenics concepts to your mind. As with physical callisthenics, mind callisthenics is no one-size-fits-all fitness regimen; different elements of our minds require different exercises, and this varies by individual. However, what is consistent for all of us is that exercising our minds requires effort, in the same way we feel the strain when doing press-ups, for example. We each have full autonomy to choose whether we want a weak mind or, in the same way that we can choose to improve our physical health and fitness, we can use exercises to strengthen our minds.

           Mind Callisthenics deliberately only provides a functional perspective, focused on practical mind strengthening guidance and exercises; it does not dissect the many layers below the concepts covered. In this sense you should consider it as similar to a user guide for a smartphone or to a cookbook, because it is not intended to explore the technical coding in the microchips or the cellular structure of the ingredients. Practising mind callisthenics is suitable for all ages; we can all enjoy the benefits of exercising our minds, building mind strength and relishing the optimal life experiences and real freedom it enables.

Core Concepts

The core concepts of mind callisthenics are centred around the idea that much of our modern world is fundamentally different from that of our ancestors, but our minds have changed little. For example:

·      We are not fully equipped to deal with the deluge of information in which our modern technology immerses us.

·      We have inherited a tendency for fear from our ancestors and, if not managed, it can manifest in anxiety or depression.

·      We are extremely adaptable, which can cause us to quickly take things for granted, from basics to luxuries.

Our minds still work in ways that were once crucial for our ancestors’ survival, but in this modern world, some of these ways of working are not as useful any more. In fact, some of the ways our minds work can lead us to make bad choices, decisions and actions, resulting in negative outcomes for us as individuals or as groups.

           These potential shortcomings in the way our minds work are similar to the weaknesses in our physical bodies. For example, our craving for fats or sugars is now known to be dangerous for our health if it leads to over-consumption, but was likely crucial for our ancestors’ survival. These ‘hangovers’ we have inherited from our ancestors are like tools in our toolbox that no longer work as well, and carrying the tools around without understanding and managing them creates a risk of harm, like a broken hammer or, even worse, a leaking blowtorch.

           We know our physical bodies are predisposed to these types of weaknesses, and we undertake nutritional interventions and challenging physical exercises to control them. In the same way, mind callisthenics helps us do this for our minds by providing insight into potential weaknesses, so we can actively monitor them and build mind strength to manage and control them. These potential weaknesses are like ‘comfort foods’, which feel good but can become extremely unhealthy. Examples include:

·      our deep desire to join groups, teams or tribes

·      irresistible shortcuts that create errors in our interpretation of information, including biases, assumptions, inferences and expectations

·      our discomfort with the unknown

·      our tendency and preference for quick decision-making at the expense of substance and nuance

·      how we notice only a limited number of things in front of us; our attention is selective and narrow

·      our aversion to holding two competing ideas in our minds, our instinct being to rapidly accept one and disregard the other

·      relentlessly seeking out patterns, even where they do not exist

Developing an awareness of, and techniques to manage, these tendencies is important for both our mind health and strength. This is especially true in our modern world, which is characterised by rapidly accelerating change combined with an almost overwhelming information flow. Understanding our potential weaknesses and instead turning them into strengths by exercising our minds is something we all can and should be doing, in the same way we go to the gym, eat a balanced diet or even brush our teeth.

Broader Concepts

Around the core concepts are broader concepts, where we explore how our modern world contrasts with that of our ancestors. Understanding this contrast helps us explore how our minds are working in this modern world context.

Figure 1 illustrates simplistically how knowledge is created in our minds and, in particular, the importance of information in this knowledge creation process. ‘Information flow’ is described as the process of external information entering our minds through our five senses, with the majority of information tending to be visual or auditory, and increasingly, in our modern world, through digital technology devices.

Figure 1

There is no doubt that the information flow in the modern world would be completely unrecognisable to our ancestors, but our minds are essentially the same. We explore the gap between what we have and what is optimal in our modern world and consider solutions to overcome this gap. Importantly, this involves developing an understanding of our personal information flow and how we use it to receive information into our minds, including the various ways in which the information flow and our communication are imperfect. We unpack how we can effectively identify, interpret and challenge these imperfections, and then actively filter and control them, so we are consistently building high-quality knowledge and making optimal decisions, choices and actions.

Another important concept explored is our awareness of overall mind health and how to improve it, together with a deeper understanding of how we relate to the wider world, both through our individual relationships and as part of a global population of over 8 billion minds.

How to Use Mind Callisthenics

Our minds are similar to a muscle in the sense that the more we exercise them, the stronger they become. Mind callisthenics is a set of tools that provide exercises for our minds. The process of thinking through, digesting and challenging the concepts and the exercises in each chapter, strengthens our minds. Like physical callisthenics exercises, we don’t need lots of equipment, and primarily use our own bodies to build physical strength. With mind callisthenics, we are building strength using our own minds.

           A significant amount of our mind activity happens automatically in our subconscious. While we cannot directly control this, we can influence and shape our subconscious through what we do with our conscious mind. We can do this in the moment, through active awareness and iterative interventions, and also over the medium and long term, through more consistent practice and habit forming. Ultimately, the most effective way to influence our subconscious is to resonate with its main motivators; these are the drive for happiness and avoidance of suffering, and fight or flight in the more extreme short term.

           Monitoring and awareness of what our subconscious does and how it does it provides us with clarity on the things it does well and where it has weaknesses. This self-awareness provides us with the opportunity to make interventions using the conscious elements of our minds to ensure we are arriving at optimal outcomes; this is a crucial element of mind strengthening. As we reinforce these interventions – for example, by performing the exercises – they permeate back into our subconscious as part of an iterative improvement and strengthening of our minds.

Exercising Our Minds

Each chapter concludes with exercises that enable you to build your mind strength in relation to the topics covered. Actively thinking and wrestling with the key concepts and pathway-triggering questions will develop and boost your neural pathways and cognitive capability, and will even enable you to self-identify areas for further development. The outcome is very similar to exercising your muscles; that is, your noticeably stronger muscles and your stronger mind.

While thinking through the exercises, consider writing or drawing, known as sensorimotor engagement. The coordination of sensory and motor systems, together with the tactile feedback of a pen, can enhance your cognitive processing.

Another a useful approach when exercising your mind is ‘see one, do one, teach one’. This three-step model is a well-established and proven technique to build neural pathways. While the technique was developed for learning surgical techniques, the concept applies just as well to any domain and is an exceptionally reliable way to enhance our minds’ capacity and capabilities.

Finally, making analogies and using metaphors is a very effective technique to build neural pathways. It is particularly powerful since it requires us to forge connections between unrelated ideas or concepts, often through lateral thought processes. Whether we are creating our own analogies and metaphors or exploring those that already exist, it is great exercise for your mind. The activity challenges us to get to the key element or concept, while we try to map on to a different context. While doing this it can feel like we are ‘stretching’ our minds, which is often an indication we are creating new neural pathways – the mind strength equivalent of muscles. Being forced to think deeply to get to the core of the knowledge or concept, and then trying to map this on to a different context, is a highly effective and satisfying mind exercise technique.

You can build the exercises into a regular routine covering the range of topics on a rolling basis, or pick up a specific area of focus, for example, if you are triggered by an event in your life. The exercises can be revisited as often as you like and can be performed in any order. Investing time and effort to perform each exercise deeply will provide significantly better mind strengthening results, but will inevitably be tiring. As with physical exercises, be careful not to overtrain, space out your exercise sessions and ensure you give yourself appropriate recovery time, recognising the insights covered in Chapter 6, Optimising Overall Mind Health. Determining how to perform the exercises most effectively will depend on you, so whether it is actively thinking and wrestling with the key concepts, using pathway-triggering questions, sensorimotor engagement, ‘see one, do one, teach one’, creating analogies or metaphors or something else, embrace what works best for you as you travel the journey to a strong mind. To borrow a quote from cycling[i]: the road never gets easier, you just get stronger.

The Journey Ahead

1. Modern World, Old Brains

The context in which our brains operate has changed drastically over the last 20 years, and this rate of change is significantly higher than during any other period of human history. This chapter explores the challenges these changes have created, and continue to create, and how you can be aware, adapt and navigate them effectively.

2. Core Mind Strength

This chapter explores the core components of mind strength, helping us understand how elements of our mind work and providing insight into potential weaknesses. This is similar to having a basic understanding of how key parts of our bodies work, which we might learn in school. There are also practical suggestions for improvement through mind exercises.

3. Building Your Foundation

Building a strong mind requires a solid foundation, and the most fundamental concept in our foundation is knowledge. This chapter helps with our understanding of how knowledge is created and operates in our minds. We also explore the concept that there are different levels of certainty for each of the elements of knowledge in our minds, and why that is important.

4. Tuning Your Mind’s Ear

This chapter helps you build awareness of the many types of issues that can exist with the deluge of information flowing into our minds in the context of our modern world. We explore how we filter, interpret and process information flow, why this creates challenges, and solutions to address these challenges.

5. The Problem With Words

Transferring the vast complexity of some knowledge or meaning, unique to your mind’s network of neurons and synapses, into someone else’s mind, is subject to significant noise and interference. We tend to think of words as conveying meaning with the precision of a fine paintbrush, but in practice, they can be more similar to throwing an open tin of paint. This chapter helps us understand what can potentially go wrong with our communication and how we can mitigate these issues.

6. Optimising Overall Mind Health

The focus of this book is on mind strength; however, without a good level of mind health, your mind strength is almost irrelevant. This chapter explores factors that contribute to mind health and how you can strive to maintain them at an optimal level. We know the health of our bodies is at the foundation of any strength we have in our muscles and bones, and this is the same for strength in our minds.

7. Who Are the Other 8 Billion People?

The focus of this chapter is understanding why we tend to obsessively focus on our differences, given our minds are overwhelmingly more similar than different to one another’s. We explore how this tendency skews the reality we perceive, and the wonderful benefits, and some downsides, of empathy in helping us navigate these challenges.

[i] Greg LeMond, Mark Hom (2014). “The Science of Fitness: Power, Performance, and Endurance”, p.122, Academic Press