This article focusing on emotional fitness first appeared in ATRA’s winter 2023 quarterly newsletter Trail Times and was written by Samantha Pruitt. Part one in a series: How to train your mind and body for winning your life.
As an athlete, coach, and business leader I have learned a few things — usually the hard way— in the last twenty-five years. Humaning is HARD, right? My personal journey into our beloved outdoor adventure and endurance-filled lifestyle began at age 30.
The back story
A few years prior I began a deep spiral downward in both my mental and physical health. Before getting sick, I carried a lifetime accumulation of poor habits and negative choices trapped in my body and mind. As battle fatigue set in on my 50-pound-overweight-couch potato-body and depressed anxiety-riddled mind, I began to surrender the war for my life.
Without any physical health or the mental-emotional health to navigate out of my life’s toxic trap, I simply crumbled onto the bathroom floor one morning. In total desperation I cried, I clawed then crawled my way out of the house onto my sunshine hope-filled patio. That day I choose to begin actually living and began immediately smashing then sweeping away all the broken pieces of my life in order to rebuild from the ground up.
I had no map or mentor but still I rose up to take back my brain, my body and my life the only way I could possibly grasp… one thought, one action, one day at a time. Here is the simplified version of the re-programming method I used to reinvent my entire body and mind. An everyday human strategy that to this day, allows me and hundreds of others to keep on building this awesome life.
Emotional fitness
What is Emotional fitness? It is the integration and development of your complete emotional and physical self. A way to train your body and your mind daily in order to achieve your dreams. Being emotionally fit allows you to use your body, brain, and soul together to joyfully explore your full potential, then positively empower all the other lives that you touch.
In this three-part series I will impart all three foundational elements for you to explore and develop in your own life. Strength, flexibility, and endurance of the body AND of the mind truly are required by all humans, to not only reach their full potential in sport but additionally to contribute and lead their family, community and business to success.
Physical modalities
Okay, so you probably all know these three physical training modalities and hopefully have developed all three at some point while working towards reaching your athletic goals. Then surely when you have ignored one of these training buckets, you paid a price by falling short of your goals, getting injured or simply not contributing to your team’s victory. The same holds true for developing those same attributes of your mind and emotions. When we are weak in strength, non-compassionate, or lacking resiliency of the mindset we are emotionally vulnerable as well.
The world relates STRENGTH building to gym life, where we use our muscles to lift heavy weights. FLEXIBILITY is viewed as a product of regular stretching, yoga practice or mobility sessions. ENDURANCE (our favorite jam) generates results like increased VO2max and variable cardiovascular fitness through a variety of progressive running workouts, geared towards our key races. At thirty I finally started to learn about all of this myself, before I lost 50 pounds and became a personal trainer, coach, and then race director. I was shocked to understand how nutrition, sleep and stress were contributing to my body and brain break down. But freedom from suffering often requires radical change.
Over the next two years I sweated through the painstaking process of working out, eating differently, rebooting my sleep routine and most challenging of all…walking away from the toxic work and relationship stress I was buried alive under. All of these Herculean tasks felt monumental in size and weight. I could barely carry myself around each day, so every new thought, choice and action took an enormous amount of emotional determination. I was not only building STRENGTH in my body each day, but I was in fact building up power and strength in my mind.
Emotional muscles
I quickly realized that to build your best life you will need muscles! Not to look good in a swimsuit or on Instagram, but strong mental emotional muscles for doing the work. By going to the gym and challenging my body I gained muscle, lost fat and became a more physically fit person. By going to the gym and challenging my thoughts and emotions I became a more emotionally fit person. I developed strength in all areas of my life and in fact I value even more the MENTAL STRENGTH I have built from these last twenty-five years of pushing, lifting, pulling, carrying and challenging myself.
I became very aware that my interlinked weaknesses of body, mind and of character were showing up in the world and holding me back from my dreams. Negative self-talk, judgement of how my body looked instead of felt, and years of placing my personal value outside of me into others’ hands were weak mindset muscles. In order for any of us to build the lives that we want, while withstanding the challenges from living, we have to each get strong in our minds. Strong minds change and inspire our thoughts that then power the positive actions from our bodies.
I lived with negative disempowering thoughts the first thirty years of my life and that created the actions that produced physical illness and mental suffering. The lack of strength in my emotional body drove me to unhealthy relationships, unfulfilling jobs, cycles of self-abuse and a feeling of unworthiness. It was pure magic once I understood that by exercising my physical body, I was changing my brain structure and body chemistry as well. Linking how I felt in my body to how I was thinking and feeling inside my brain was a game changer. The more strength and power I built each day at the gym, the more self-empowerment muscles and inner confidence I developed to navigate the world.
Strong mind
STRENGTH is one of the three foundational life pillars of Emotional Fitness. Strength in your emotional mind flexes self-love, tenacity, empowerment, inner wisdom and intrinsic motivation. Now that is sexy! While building a strong body has obvious benefits that I do not need to sell all of you on;) building a strong mind is critical in order to live an awesome life. Training the two together will unlock your potential and bring you not only better performance in life, but a deeper love of self and higher joy for living. I support you in exploring this aspect of your own Emotional Fitness and look forward to continuing this personal growth conversation.
Please circle back to hear more about Emotional Fitness in parts 2 and 3 of the series. Meanwhile contact me to share your own story and come join our Everyday Awesome Project movement.
Remember my beautiful humans, how your life FEELS is more important than how your life LOOKS.
About Samantha
Coach Sam just launched a new podcast and transformational program for communities, teams and organizations full of beautiful humans who are ready to build healthier brains and bodies! Learning from her own ex-couch potato to Ironwoman then Ultra Woman transformation, Sam deeply believes each person has massive untapped potential and that by training their mindset and physical health simultaneously, they will build not only an awesome life, but go on to create empowered communities and thriving companies. Learn more here.
Editor’s Note: You can read some more articles about Pruitt and her past events here.
