Mental Fitness

Jesus told us that part of the greatest commandment was to love God with our minds. (Matt 22:37-38 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God … with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”) When we neglect our mental health we can’t possibly love God with all our mind because our minds fall short of their potential.

Mental health is tied to physical fitness, so keeping your body fit through diet, exercise, and proper rest contributes to loving God with your mind. But the mind is like a muscle—it needs focused mental exercise to stay strong. The man who works out every day building huge, bulging muscles while neglecting or abusing his brain demonstrates great foolishness. He’s neglecting to care for the most important “muscle” in his body.

Avoiding substances that damage or inhibit the brain (such as addictive drugs) is important for all personalities. Adequate nourishment and sleep are vital too. Even spiritual health affects mental wellbeing through emotional changes and the mental benefits of prayer, meditation, and Bible study. But right now I want to focus on mental exercise and its close connections with our personality preferences.

The most prevalent gymnasiums for our minds are our schools. Unfortunately most people don’t like school. We tend to dislike school for the same reasons most people don’t like to exercise—it’s hard work that requires persistent discipline. But there’s another reason. The way schools are structured favors some personality types over others. I talk about this a little in the first chapter of my book while introducing the S/N dichotomy.

Elementary school favors students with the SJ temperament. Sensing judgers more readily embrace the routine and structure of elementary school and the concrete, fact-based knowledge being taught at that level. Elementary teachers overwhelmingly favor the SJ temperament too.

There could also be an E/I bias in school, but this varies from classroom to classroom. Teachers who use a lot of active, socially interactive learning techniques favor the extroverts in the class. Teachers who use a lot of quite, individual work favor the introverts. Most public school teachers aim for some level of balance in this area.

As we advance to high school and especially on to college the intuitive (N) preference takes over. The theoretical content fits well with the N learning style. Also, as students mature, the enforced structure and routine loosens up, reducing the advantage SJs had in elementary school. Group activities diminish giving introverts a greater advantage.

(You’ve probably heard that some people excel in school but can’t succeed when they have to apply themselves on the job in the real world. I’ve seen a few cases of this where very intelligent introverts failed after college because they were forced to work in a social setting where their personality reduced their ability to apply themselves. Their extroverted social skills were stunted.)

Even if you’ve finished all the degree programs you need, continuing your education with college courses can improve your mental health, but there are many other choices. Anything that challenges your mental abilities, pressing you to think, reason, or remember details provides exercise for the brain. Solving riddles, piecing puzzles together, and playing games of strategy are examples of fun ways to give your mind a workout.

Deliberate periods of mental exercise aren’t the only way to keep your mind sharp. Just like leading a physically active lifestyle will improve your physical fitness, leading a mentally stimulating lifestyle will improve your mental health. But the success of mental stimulation is much more tightly connected to your personality than physical activity since your personality preferences directly shape the way you habitually use your mind.

To improve your mental fitness you want to choose a lifestyle that feeds your mental energy. Introverts prefer a private reflective world, so a private, reflective lifestyle can keep their minds energized. Reading, writing, doing research, putting puzzles together, solving crossword puzzles, playing solitary games, and similar activities will help keep their minds sharp. Extroverts need mental challenges that involve interaction with the world around them—participating in team sports, playing group games, training animals, or anything else that requires concentration while interacting with people or things in the physical environment.

There are many activities suitable to both E’s and I’s such as gardening, painting, sculpting, farm work, etc. These activities tend to be done alone, allowing reflective time for introverts, but they involve enough activity and interaction with the outer world to mentally energize extroverts too. These dual E/I activities can be done in groups to further stimulate extroverts.

The S/N dichotomy might have the greatest influence on what types of activities provide the best exercise for your mind. Mental challenges require taking in and processing as much information as your mind can handle, which requires heavy use of your perceiving function, either sensing or intuiting.

My wife and I both enjoy playing cards, but our preferences drive us to favor different games. My intuition preference leads me to games with complex connections and strategies such as rummy, euchre, and hearts. My sensing wife enjoys games that require quick and thorough attention to detail such as double solitaire. We both enjoy Skip-Bo because it has plenty of both aspects. When Amanda and I play Skip-Bo together I put a lot of mental energy into analyzing the cards I need and all the possible connections I could make combining the cards on the table with the cards in my hand and the cards I might draw. I spend so much time analyzing these possibilities that I sometimes overlook cards that are visible on the table. Amanda plays with an unchanging strategy that frequently wins and focuses on keeping track of all the cards so she never misses a detail.

People with different preferences approach mental challenges differently, even when faced with the same challenge. This is particularly true for the J/P dichotomy. Judgers quickly focus in on a specific strategy or goal in solving mental challenges. When playing rummy they may decide which sets and runs to collect as soon as they see their starting hand and refuse to change their strategy regardless of the cards exposed during the game. Perceivers will see many options in their hand and may change their minds many times in response to new cards revealed. They’ll keep as many run and set options open as possible and become frustrated when forced to choose as they discard.

When making decisions most games, puzzles and riddles push us toward thinking decisions. Feelers tend to grow impatient or bored with these activities unless they can express their feeling function in the way they communicate during the activity. Even introverted feelers may prefer group games over solitary activities so they can express their feeling function though interactions.

I enjoy chess and Othello. Both games are reflective enough to satisfy my preference for introversion. They are also full of complex connections and interactions with a huge range of possibilities leading from each play, a perfect match for my NP preferences. I don’t need to talk a lot while playing these games, but when I do I tend to use my feeling function by communicating encouragement to my opponent. I enjoy winning, but I don’t like to see my opponent lose. Which leads to another T/F difference.

Thinkers thrive more in competitive environments, feelers look more for cooperation. Mental challenges involving teams can satisfy both preferences. Feelers focus on harmony and cooperation within their team while thinkers enjoy defeating the other team.

Try putting all 4 of your preferences together to discover the most stimulating exercise for your mind. Most INTJ’s would enjoy timed chess matches. Their I preferences enjoys privately reflecting on the game. Analyzing the complex choices of moves stimulates the dominant N function. The T function relishes making competitive decisions. And the J function thrives under pressure to make moves quickly. An INTP would enjoy chess more without the short time limit because they like to consider so many possibilities before making a decision. The pressure to decide quickly is stressful.

Whatever your preferences are, you can find activities to stimulate your mind, especially if you modify the way you do it to match your personality, such as the J/P preference on time limits in a chess game. You can also experiment with challenges outside your normal preferences to stretch your mind and develop your non-preferred functions.

Developing your non-preferred personality functions is like cross training in physical fitness. It improves your overall health as long as you don’t over train. Keep your mental cross training in balance and it makes you more mentally flexible, improves your mental abilities, allows you to function with mental alertness in a wider range of situations, etc. Too much time outside your personality preferences causes stress which wears your brain down, so keep it in balance.

I focused a lot on recreational mental challenges in this discussion, but the same concepts apply to work and the routine tasks of our lives. One key to mental fitness is finding and choosing mentally stimulating activities that fit your personality preferences throughout your day, at work, at home, and at play.