HOME • MENTAL FITNESS
Mental Fitness
Mental fitness is how well we can think, feel, and act so we can thrive, overcome challenges, adapt to change, and connect with others.
Unlike mental health, which describes the condition we experience day to day, mental fitness is the proactive training that helps us optimise it. The challenge is that, as a society, we’ve never trained our minds the way we train our bodies. We don’t have systems or processes to deliberately build these mental fitness skills, and mental health has often been approached from a reactive lens, waiting for crisis before taking action. Mental fitness changes that by making the training of our mind practical, proactive, and accessible for everyone.
No one is born knowing how to regulate emotions, unhook from negative thoughts, or repair relationships. These are not fixed traits. They are trainable skills, just like learning to read, to swim, or to strengthen a muscle through repetition. They are skills every human deserves to carry through life. With practice, these skills become second nature not only in calm moments but also under pressure and in the face of challenge, so we can thrive, connect, and live in line with our values.
The 7 Core Skills
Self-Regulation
The skill of shifting the state of your mind and body to calm or energise yourself when you need it.
Self-Awareness
The skill of noticing your thoughts, feelings, and body signals as they arise in real time.
Attention & Focus
The skill of directing and sustaining your attention on what’s important.
Self-Compassion
The skill of showing yourself care, empathy and kindness, like you would to a friend.
Strengthening Connections
The skill of building, maintaining, and repairing healthy, trusting, and supportive connections.
Flexible Thinking
The skill of adapting your thoughts by shifting perspective and adjusting to change.
Purposeful Action
The skill of consistently taking actions that align with what matters most, even when it’s easier not to.
The Framework
The MFC Framework is the foundation of how we train mental fitness, turning scientific research into a practical system anyone can follow. It has been developed in collaboration with professionals in neuroscience, psychology, counselling and high performance sports coaching and is built on seven core mental fitness skills. This includes: self-awareness, self-regulation, flexible thinking, attention and focus, self-compassion, strengthening connections and purposeful action.
Our Clinical Definition
Mental fitness is your trainable capacity to think, feel, and act in ways that help you thrive, handle challenges, and stay true to your values. Through regular and intentional skill training, you can strengthen your mind, rewire your brain, and improve your mental health.
Why Capacity Matters
We use the word capacity deliberately. Capacity is not fixed. It rises and falls depending on the situation you are in. It reflects not just whether you know a skill, but how much of it you can apply in real time, whether during calm moments, under pressure, or in the face of challenge.
This matters because life rarely happens in controlled conditions. It is not enough to know what the skills look like in theory, what shapes outcomes is your capacity to apply them when you need them most.
Neuroscience shows that capacity is shaped by neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and strengthen pathways through repeated practice. Repeated behaviours and thought patterns reinforce these pathways, making them easier to access over time. This is why intentional practice matters, by deliberately training skills that serve us, we strengthen helpful pathways and reduce reliance on unhelpful ones. Over time, with consistent practice, the brain rewires itself, making it easier to access and apply these skills consistently in everyday life and under pressure.
Making It Practical
To make skill training accessible, we developed the The Daily 1% model, a short daily practice which is only 14 minutes a day. It was designed to build familiarity with the seven core skills through a low-barrier, high-impact entry point. Even small amounts of practice can create meaningful change, and consistent repetition is what produces long-term adaptation.
We have deliberately chosen practices that people are already familiar with, because it is important that training feels accessible while still delivering high impact. These practices are backed by science and provide immediate benefits which are widely known, while also building the long-term skills that underpin mental fitness. What is often missing is the skill-building lens, which is what our framework provides.
While the The Daily 1% model offers a simple starting point, the full depth of our framework will be delivered through our programmes and our upcoming digital product, which we hope to launch in 2026/27. This will enable people to train systematically, track their progress, and be assessed on these skills at scale.
Where We're Heading
The framework is designed to evolve as our research and practice grow. One area of ongoing development is the Human Operating System model, a way of simplifying complex neuroscience so that people can understand how the brain and body work together. These models will continue to be introduced as part of our program and digital tools, making mental fitness not only trainable and measurable but also understandable for everyone.
Mental Reps
A Mental Rep is a single, intentional action designed to build mental fitness skills.
Just as physical fitness is built through physical reps, for example a push-up, mental fitness is built through Mental Reps.
Through regular and intentional practice, Mental Reps build these skills over time, strengthening the mind, rewiring the brain, and improving overall mental health.
The Neuroscience
When you repeat a skill, the connections inside your brain make it easier for you to practice this skill later on, and that’s what neuroscience defines as neuroplasticity. When skills go unused, those pathways weaken through another process called synaptic pruning. In simple terms, what you practice, you strengthen, and what you don’t, you lose.
This same principle applies to mental fitness. Each time you perform a mental skill, the neural pathways behind it are reinforced. With repeated practice, those pathways become stronger and more efficient, but if we want to use a skill under pressure or in daily life, we first need to build it through consistent training.
How to Explain it to a Friend
One of the best ways to understand mental fitness is to think about it like mental muscles. We do Mental Reps to build our mental muscles, and those muscles grow into skills.
The good news is we all have these muscles, and we can all build them. If you have a brain, you have mental health, which means you can build your mental fitness.
What are the benefits of building mental fitness?
For Individuals
Lower Stress and Greater Calm
Regulation skills help you steady your body and mind so stress feels easier to manage, leaving you calmer and more in control.
Less Overthinking and Anxiety
By building self-awareness and flexible thinking, you can step back from spirals, ease worry, and think with clearer perspective.
Better Health and Longer Life
Strong social connection, purpose, and reduced stress are proven to support healthier ageing and longer lives.
Stronger, Safer Relationships
Compassion and communication skills strengthen trust, repair conflict, and help you feel more connected.
Living True to Yourself
Purposeful action helps you build the confidence to make choices that reflect your values, instead of being driven by external pressures. It's well known that one of the biggest regrets of the dying is not living a life true to themselves.
For Society
Fewer Mental Health Struggles
When people build regulation, awareness, and compassion, communities can reduce the impact of anxiety, depression, and burnout.
Greater Health and Longevity
Communities with stronger connection and lower chronic stress live healthier, longer lives.
Stronger Communities
Empathy and compassion create workplaces, families, and neighbourhoods that feel closer and safer.
Greater Collective Resilience
Shared skills in regulation, adaptability, and connection help societies respond more effectively to crises and uncertainty.
A Better Future for Everyone
By equipping people of all ages with lifelong skills, we create a culture where thriving, connection, and purpose are the norm.
Start Building Your
Mental Fitness
You can begin building your mental fitness today. Through our Daily 1% Model, just 14 minutes of practice helps strengthen the skills to help you thrive, overcome challenges, adapt to change, and connect with others. This November, join thousands of people taking part in Mental Fitness Month to train together.
In 2026, we will have dedicated programs, keynotes and workshops for workplaces, schools, and communities, embedding mental fitness into culture and giving people the tools to practice and strengthen these skills every day.