A vital part of being healthy is not just having a strong, fit body, you also need to have a strong, tough mind, one capable of withstanding tough times and maintaining a sense of balance and perspective. Building a tough body takes time and a lot of hard work. Building a tough mind is easy. Just support the England football (soccer) team.

Another day, another defeat for England's World Cup team

When you are exercising muscles you develop strength by stressing the muscle; as it recovers the muscle adds extra fibres to get bigger and stronger. It is the stressing of the muscle that helps build it up. It is the same with mental toughness. You need to stress the brain, to go through tough times, endure hardships and adversity to be able to develop the inner strength you need for god mental health.

Now no one in their right mind – and this is all about creating a right mind – would deliberately put themself through pain and suffering and anguish even if the end result was a healthier, more durable mind. But the good news is you don’t have to work hard to get that. It all comes naturally to supporters of the England football team.

Every World Cup that comes around the England team – if they even qualify – go in to the competition confident of their chances to win the whole thing. It’s not surprising really. The English invented the game, the English Premier League is the best in the world, and English teams often dominate European competitions. The problem is, many of the best players on those teams are not English and the best English players have consistently shown they are not good enough when faced by the best of the rest of the world.

End Result; Heartbreak

Every time English fans go into a World Cup game thinking ‘this time it will be different’. By the time the referee blows the whistle for the end of the match they have come to the sad realization that it’s exactly the same as it’s always been. Defeat. Pain. Frustration.

On the bright side that constant sense of frustration helps you develop the mental equivalent of a tough hide and that can be really useful in all walks of life.

Tough Times Breed Tough People

A few years ago a friend of mine was doing an in-depth series of studies on mental health in South East Asia as part of a Fellowship he won with the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism program. His Fellowship coincided with the 2004 tragic tsunami that killed an estimated quarter of a million people. In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami there was lots of speculation that there would be tremendous levels of mental health problems in the months and years to come with people suffering from the equivalent of post traumatic stress disorder.

Village destroyed by tsunami

Several months after the tsunami Greg traveled to Thailand to see what kind of impact the event had on the mental health of people living in the hardest hit areas. To everyone’s surprise there wasn’t that much evidence to suggest people were suffering at dramatically higher levels than usual. It turns out that people in those communities devastated by the tsunami already had such a tough life that they were better able to cope with the tragedy. It’s not that they were emotionally unaffected by the loss of so many friends and family, it’s just that the day-to-day hardships of their lives had prepared them to endure something that would have left most of us a wreck.

An Easier Route To Toughness

The vast majority of people in the US, Europe and other developed countries don’t have any such hardships on a regular basis to toughen us up so we have to find other ways.

English fans have a cross to bear

That’s why supporting England is so useful. It will guarantee you heartbreak on almost every occasion and leave you better equipped for anything life can throw at you.

But just in case England one day surprises me and does win something I’ve taken out extra insurance. Since moving to San Francisco I have supported the Giants baseball team. They haven’t won the World Series since 1954. And while England only disappoint every four years, the Giants do so every year. It’s like having a refresher course every summer.

So even if England let me down by winning one day, I know my faithful Giants will take up the slack and keep me mentally strong.

I love Shirley, but sometimes she does things that are not just rotten, they pretty much amount to cruel and unusual punishment. She is always singing or humming songs. Sometimes it’s a wonderful classic, but sometimes it’s a trite commercial that she grew up listening to. And sometimes it’s something as awful as a Captain and Tennille song (and if you don’t know who they are think yourself fortunate).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEh7_Ez9TfA

On those days I end up walking around with that darn song stuck in my head, reverberating endlessly. “Muskrat Suzie, Muskrat Sam, Do the jitterbug at a Muskrat land.” What the hell does that mean anyway.

Now she’s gone one worse. She recently gave me a book called “One Minute Brainteasers“. It’s a collection of puzzles and problems to test your IQ. It’s like crack cocaine for the brain. Once you start it’s hard to put it down. And even if you do, the teasers that you weren’t able to solve keep running through your brain every day. It drives you crazy.

For instance, there’s one section that has sentences with a blank in them and you have to find a food word to fill in the gap. But the catch is the food word ends up as a bad pun. For instance the sentence “Is — the list of the top ten Italian cities” is completed by putting in the food word ‘venison’. So when you say it out loud it sounds like “Is Venice On (geddit) the list etc”. Nasty eh!

That’s what I’ve been going through for weeks now since she gave me the book. It is supposed to be good for your brain but it’s driving me mad.

I mean, check out these sentences and see if you can come up with food words that complete them. Just to put you out of your misery the answers are at the bottom of the page.

1) The witness saw the —-- up to the victim and stab him

2) The dog tried to —-- his bone

3) Her Grandparents always used to give up meat from —-- Easter Sunday

4) Even though Tom Hanks often acts like a —— Ryan always enjoys co-starring with him

5) If Rocky Balboa saw Alice B. Toklas’s significant other he’d probably yell “——--”

ANSWERS

1 -- Mango (man go)

2 -- Berry (bury)

3 -- Lentil (Lent till)

4 -- Nutmeg (nut meg)

5 -- Yogurt (“Yo, Gert!”