Mental Fitness Coaching

What mental fitness means in practice

Mental fitness is your ability to respond to challenges with a positive, clear mind rather than a reactive one. In the Positive Intelligence® framework developed by Shirzad Chamine, it rests on three capacities that improve with practice, much like muscles. You can read the framework’s own description on the Positive Intelligence website.

For a plain-language definition of the term, see what mental fitness is. On this page I focus on how I coach it.

• ✦Recognising your saboteurs: noticing the familiar inner voices, such as harsh self-judgement, perfectionism or the need to control, as they appear.
• ✦Strengthening the Sage: the calmer, wiser part of your mind that can explore, empathise, create options and act decisively.
• ✦Building self-command: using brief shifts of attention to step out of a reactive state and choose your response.

Where mental fitness shows up in a leader’s week

Mental fitness is not abstract. It shows up in small moments that add up to how you lead.

• ✦Pausing before replying to the email that made you angry, and sending a better reply.
• ✦Answering a hard question from the board without defending or over-explaining.
• ✦Staying curious when a team member pushes back, instead of shutting the discussion down.
• ✦Making a decision you have been circling for days.
• ✦Leaving work at work for an evening, without replaying the meeting.
• ✦Noticing that your inner critic is speaking, and choosing not to follow it.

Mental fitness coaching and the six-week programme are different routes

I offer mental fitness in two ways. Mental fitness coaching weaves Positive Intelligence® tools into ongoing one-to-one leadership coaching. The Positive Intelligence Program with a coach is a structured six-week programme with daily app practice. Some clients do one; some do both.

Practice between sessions takes seconds, many times a day

Mental fitness grows through repetition, not insight alone. Between sessions you practise very short exercises that shift your attention to physical sensation, such as your breath or the feel of your feet on the floor, for a few seconds at a time.

Those small repetitions build the habit of interrupting a reactive state before it takes over. We also attach practice to existing moments in your day: before a meeting, after a difficult call, at the start of your drive home. For more ideas, read daily mental fitness habits for leaders.

Mental fitness coaching is not therapy

Mental fitness coaching is not therapy or medical treatment. It works with performance, thinking habits and behaviour in people who are functioning well and want to function better.

If you are struggling with your mental health, for example with persistent anxiety, low mood or exhaustion, please speak to a doctor or a licensed mental health professional. Coaching can sit alongside that care, but it does not replace it.

Your first session starts with a recent moment of pressure

In our first session I ask you to describe a recent moment when pressure got the better of you, and one when you handled it well. We look at what your mind was telling you in each, and what was different.

You may also take the free saboteur assessment on the Positive Intelligence website before or after we meet, so we have shared language for your patterns. Then we agree one simple practice to try before our next conversation.

Why I trained in mental fitness

Early in my career, one leader challenged everything I believed about myself. Working with a coach helped me see my own blind spots and triggers, and it showed me how much of leadership happens inside before it happens in the room.

I am an ICF Professional Certified Coach with more than 4,500 coaching hours, a Positive Intelligence® coach and an NLP Master Practitioner. Growth begins within, and mental fitness coaching gives that idea a daily practice.