Mental Fitness Coach Alex Strang on using ‘moments’ to cope with stress
Alex Strang, Moment Company Co-founder and Mental Fitness Coach, joined the grow chapter at the CA Summit to share his experience of mental wellbeing and began by telling his story of burning out, which happened while he was working in advertising and had launched his own tech start-up.
Watch Alex's video or read on to learn more.
Alex described how his mind and body “pushed back” against the stress he was under, resulting in significant and frightening levels of memory loss. It was whilst on his road to recovery that he discovered the importance of mental fitness and launched Moment Co, to teach others to identify and benefit from what he describes as, “mindful micro pauses, or moments.”
The tools to care for your mental health
For Alex, mental fitness, or ensuring people have the tools to care for their mental health as they do their physical health, is extremely beneficial. He said: “When you are mentally fit, you meet challenges feeling positive, you are energised, you feel motivated and you come from a base of control.”
He had realised the fundamental trigger for his own experience with burnout was not having a regular and healthy way in which to release stress; that is where the ‘moments’ come into play.
Moments – the space between stimulus and response
He explained that these ‘moments’ are the space between the external stimulus and our response to it, a space in which we have the freedom to choose how we will react and, in turn, affect whether the outcome will be positive or negative.
In practical terms, these ‘moments’ can be accessed through breathing exercises designed to reduce the physiological stress responses in our bodies and give us the mental space to make conscious choices.
A simple breathing exercise
Alex walked the audience through a breathing exercise to give a practical demonstration of its effects on stress levels and spoke on the benefits of ‘moments’ as a way to work on your mental fitness during the busy and stressful parts of your day. He noted that these skills to improve mental fitness and reduce stress can be learned and practised, becoming a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating part of a person’s routine.
In closing his session, Alex emphasised the importance of mental fitness to counter life’s stresses. He said: “Life will always throw things at us … how mentally fit we are will determine how far we dip down and how quickly we can bounce back up.”