The New Mental Fitness Toolkit

At Resilience Agenda, we know that we need more than inspiring quotes on Instagram to protect and improve our resilience and mental health (although we are big fans of them too).

Learning the skills of Mental Fitness is one of the most important things you can do to make good mental health a sustainable way of life. Instead of letting our circumstances or past dictate how we think, feel and act, with Mental Fitness, we get to be the author of our own life story.

We come to learn that its helpful to have the right habits in place for when life gets overwhelming. It’s also helpful to have the right thoughts in our heads for when our minds inevitably start to look for what’s going wrong in our lives. But we need more than just ‘positive thinking.’

Developing our Mental Fitness is a process, and a skill, and it takes a little bit of effort and planning. Incorporating these skills into our routines and daily schedules is the missing link for many people who want to manage and improve their wellbeing.

Many of you will be familiar with the Resilience Agenda Mental Fitness Toolkit. This is our core idea at Resilience Agenda - these are the most impact activities and insights from psychology, neuroscience and behavioral science that help us protect our wellbeing. These are the things under our influence that can help us stay calm, focused and productive. They are tools we can learn and apply to different situations in our lives to help us cope and overcome. Just like any toolkit, there’s a right tool for the job. We find it helpful to think of the Toolkit like this.

The Foundations of Mental Fitness are things that all of us do, but sometimes don’t fully optimize when life gets busy or overwhelming. This includes movement, nutrition, rest, connection and mindset. Knowing how to get back on track helps to prevent us spiraling into despair and burnout. Building great habits in these areas takes time, but its worth it, because our lives are simply the product of what we do repeatedly.

The Skills of Mental Fitness are the ‘extra’ activities that wisdom shows help us handle uncertainty, setbacks and change. These skills include purpose, focus, appreciation, reframing and perspective. You’ll notice that most of these activities happen in our heads, or, as we believe make the most sense - on paper.

These activities aren’t strictly essential in our lives like the foundations - but understanding them is the key to living wisely and handling life’s pressures effectively. You might have also noticed these skills are a little different to last year’s. We’ve updated the language in our Toolkit to include the latest science and also to make sure that as many people as possible feel included in the Mental Fitness message. We’re big believers in the power of language and wouldn’t want misconceptions or pre-conceived notions to get in the way. Let us explain.

Here’s What the 2025 Toolkit Brings to Your Routine:

• The Five Foundations of Mental Fitness: These foundational skills offer a solid framework for resilience, energy, and wellbeing.
• The Five Daily Habits of Mental Fitness: Simple daily practices designed to bring balance, purpose, and calm to every day.

The Mental Fitness Toolkit:

The Evolution of the Toolkit: A 2025 Update

This year, we’ve also introduced or expanded four of the tools – each designed to build on your current routine and make Mental Fitness more accessible:

• Rest replaces Sleep: Sleep is important for energy recovery, feeling good, and good mental health. But we also now know that rest throughout the day is just as important. This means planning our time in advance, taking breaks, and not going 110% for too long. Often we blame our sleep for how we feel, when we simply aren’t handling pressure through the day well enough.
• Purpose replaces Optimism: Having a sense of purpose and meaning in life is one of the most powerful predictors of mental health. We felt that purpose was not covered sufficiently by the concept of optimism, the idea that things can get better over time. We moved the concept of optimism into our foundations under mindset, and have placed purpose in the Exercises to connect you with your values and aspirations, creating a strong sense of direction.
• Focus amplifies Mindfulness: We know that mindfulness has become a bit of a buzzword. Some people think the concept of mindfulness is ‘woo-woo.’ As a result, they overlook it because of a poor experience at work, or they find its ‘Eastern origins’ mystifying. This is a shame, because the scientific evidence for mindfulness principles is growing. Nevertheless, we now incorporate mindfulness under ‘focus’ - because that’s what it helps us do, and that’s something that most people want more of. How we allocate our attention is how we experience the world, and the good news is that its a skill that can be learnt.
• Appreciation amplifies Gratitude: Another term that gets a bad rap is gratitude. Often people say: “how can I be grateful when I’ve got this and this problem?” We get it. It’s hard. The key is to be really specific in what what is going well, even if we feel like most things or indeed everything are not. Also, it’s not enough just to ‘be grateful’, we have to do it. That’s why we’re now using the term appreciation. Appreciation is bigger than gratitude, and includes the idea of noticing what’s going well, telling others that we’re grateful to - or for - them, but also savoring and taking the time to slow down and actually experience the good moments that we work so hard to create in our lives.

Integrating Mental Fitness into Everyday Life

Many people understand the importance of mental health but don’t know where to start. The key lies in small, consistent actions that integrate Mental Fitness into your daily life. This is where the 2025 Mental Fitness Diary & Planner becomes invaluable.

Designed as more than a simple diary, this tool helps you plan, prioritize, and reflect on the activities that improve your wellbeing. Whether you’re scheduling a walk in nature, blocking time for self-reflection, or noting moments of appreciation, this diary & planner ensures your wellbeing stays at the forefront of your life.

Why Mental Fitness Matters Now More Than Ever

In today’s fast-paced world, the pressures of work, family, and life’s unpredictability make Mental Fitness a necessity, not a luxury. Resilience Agenda’s mission is to inspire and empower individuals to take control of their mental health in practical, sustainable ways.

By incorporating the practices of the Mental Fitness Toolkit into your life, you can build resilience, cultivate calm, and create a life aligned with your values and aspirations.

Start your journey today. Make Mental Fitness not just a goal, but a way of life.