Is Mind Fit a Theory?
Mind Fit is about performing at your best in whatever you are doing – and improving that performance where possible. In the technical sense it is a theory, however it’s not the way we use it when helping people and organisations improve their performance. As our focus is to make improvements to the current situation the theory really isn’t important. What is important is to everyone is the Mind Fit process and how people change negative attitudes into positive ones linked to actions that impact personal or business imperatives.
With each new client we are not testing or exploring a theory. We want people to take action and not focus on learning.
However, this is our pragmatic client facing rationale, as we want people to use the intuitively right aspect of the Mind Fit Map® to identify attitudes and behaviours in different context that makes it unique to them. This in turn leads to negative behaviours being stopped that cause poor performance.
We describe Mind Fitness as ‘choosing to use our natural abilities to perform to our optimum in different situations, through ‘can do attitude and a ‘winning mind’’. Exploring this description, alongside the Mind Fit Map, enables people to quickly identify their own, others and the culture of the organisations in a simple but meaningful way. This easily recognizable form allows people to choose to change their own negative attitudes and behaviours.
Why we avoid the theory route?
If we were to move into the world of science then it would be argued that Mind Fit is a theory as it presents a concept or idea that is testable. In fact, that has been done by Graham Williams and by various Masters students and academics. The Mind Fit Map does provide a model for understanding humans, through emotions and behaviours. Whilst there is a place and a need for Knowledge learning, it generally leads people to ‘learn’ but not ‘do’. Becoming Mind Fit is about doing.
It is an interesting area for exploration and for those of you who like to know the sources here is a list of some of the key theories to be found:
- Flow – Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi 1990
- Deliberate Practice – K Anders Ericsson 1993
- Optimal Performance – Williams & Kane 2000
- Learned Helplessness – Martin Seligman
- Self Efficacy – Albert Bandura
- Locus of Control – Rotter 1966
- Attention Style – Nideffer 1978
- Implicit learning – Berry 1997
- Distraction – Tipper 2005
- Emotional Intelligence – Mayer & Salovey 1997
So if push came to shove we would have to acknowledge that Mind Fit is a theory however; we do not use it as such in the ‘real’ world and we want to avoid people getting sucked into the world of knowledge seeking which as we know does not easily transfer into desired behaviours or business results.