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A new approach to emotional fitness

Mental health matters just as much as physical health. After all, what’s the point of a strong body if our brain is too stressed or burned out to enjoy life?



The good news is your brain worksa lot like your muscles—different brain areas have distinct roles and all of them are trainable.

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Advances in neuroscience show that happiness and emotional strength can be built over time

That’s where emotional fitness comes in. Like physical fitness targeting specific muscles and cardiorespiratory functions, emotional fitness is about targeting specific areas of the brain responsible for your positive emotions.

When we get better at understanding where our happiness comes from, we build the ability to bounce back from setbacks, adapt to change, and increasingly live a fuller, richer life.

At the Matter Club, instead of training muscle groups, we focus on training distinct brain areas and ten core skills, including:

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BRAIN composition

Love and take care of your hardware

Brain composition represents structural and functional aspects that define the basic brain functions: anatomy, vascularization, absence of brain or mental diseases, acute or chronic inflammation, limited risk of vascular incidents. In addition, it defines improving and superior structures of functionality in distinct brain regions.

Physical analog: The ratio of fat mass to lean mass (muscle, bone, and water) in the body.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • A healthy brain is represented by healthy human cognitive intelligence (logic and reasoning, memory, problem-solving, abstract reasoning, working memory, verbal and non-verbal skills, processing speed), emotional intelligence and personality.
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PRIMARY ENDURANCE: TOTAL MEMORY CAPACITY

Be calm and ready

The primary foundation for living a great life is the total capacity of your memories. They provide you with your factual and emotional knowledge and the optionality to react to novel things and embrace any uncertainty instead of getting worried or scared.

Physical analog: Cardiorespiratory endurance.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • With a high memory capacity, you appear alert and motivated, while being calm and content.
  • Anxiety is absent.
  • High life satisfaction as you try, see and learn a lot.
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SECONDARY ENDURANCE: MEMORY RICHNESS

Be aware

The secondary foundation for living a great life is the breadth and depth of your memories, your memory richness. They provide you with your knowledge across a wide qualitative and quantitative range of emotions. It adds to your optionality to react to novel things by creatively integrating different types of responses to uncertainty.

Physical analog: Muscular endurance.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • With a high memory richness, you appear extremely emotionally flexible and intelligent.
  • You are fun to hang out with because you fully understand the positive and the negative dimensions of emotions, how you influence yourself, and that happiness is a practice.
  • Fully aware that your wellbeing is fundamentally dependent on other people contributing.
  • Very high level of emotional awareness, continuousness and gratitude when something good happens in life.
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STRENGTH: MAXIMUM EMOTIONAL INTENSITY

Feel free to push your limits

Neuroplasticity correlates directly with mental health, subjective wellbeing, and a longer life expectation. Formation of new levels of neuroplasticity requires neural stimulation above a certain hurdle. Positive peak experiences on a regular basis can build such “brain muscle.”

Physical analog: Maximum muscular strength of a single muscle or a functional group of muscles.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • Performing at a high level of emotional intensity, you display interest, positive surprise, and adrenaline.
  • You enjoy testing new things, and new highs, and can easily and fully emotionally immerse in moments with emerging and increasing intensity.
  • You are an effective catalyst of such moments, in particular in a group setting.
  • You embrace these peaks to a very high intensity.
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EMOTIONAL FLEXIBILITY

Play all positive emotions loud and well

Activation of a certain emotion or the respective brain region and neurotransmitters can make it difficult to exit certain emotional states fast and effectively. Emotional flexibility means that a person can move between different distinct emotions and emotional intensities, and has the power and control to leave negative emotional states quickly and effectively.

Physical analog: All-body joint flexibility allowing full range of motion with optimal muscle performance.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • High emotional flexibility and you can actively move between positive emotional states.
  • You feel when a positive emotional state is saturated and the intensity starts to decline.
  • The ability to actively move to new emotional states that are undersaturated.
  • This is crucial for emotion clusters that are inhibiting each other, e.g. sexual desire and excitement vs family love or contentment, pleasure (passive enjoyment) vs excitement (action and active creation).
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EMOTIONAL BALANCE

Live a neurotransmitter-balanced life

Similar to how muscles are located at particular positions in the body to have full effectiveness, our emotions and their underlying neurotransmitter have distinct areas in the brain that can be trained. A holistically performing mind requires a balanced training of all these areas. This is represented by living a neurotransmitter-balanced life.

Physical analog: The perfect, physical athlete. High levels of VO2max, overall muscle endurance and muscle strength, highest decile in muscle mass, lowest decile in fat percentage.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • With a high emotional balance, you have the awareness that all areas of life and their roles are equally important.
  • Live life like a decathlon.
  • You desire to be great as a friend, as a partner, as a father/mother, as a son/daughter, as a brother/sister, as a teammate, as a lover, as an artist, an athlete.
  • You strive to be good at life and to be a good human.
  • The understanding that you can only be your best when everyone around you, ideally all humans, strive.
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EMOTIONAL SPEED

Grab and enjoy any good moment immediately

The ability to move quickly into a distinct emotion, including acceleration and maximum intensity.

Physical analog: Top-decile performance in sprint, long jump and high jump (from stand).

How does it represent itself every day?

  • The steady state of the brain does not have positive emotions switched on—our environment rather drives a factual, functional brain activity.
  • With a high emotional speed, you can switch on any positive emotions and immerse with it instantly at high intensity levels without any hesitation.
  • Similar to a hunter, you are on very high alert for every good moment that comes around, and are able to immerse and engage with them emotionally at a very high level.
  • In environments with a bad mood or negativity, you move on very quickly and don’t get frustrated.
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EMOTIONAL AGILITY

Fast precision-jumper between emotions

The ability to move quickly and change direction while maintaining balance and control.

Physical analog: Various agility tests in all ball sports, e.g. football, soccer, badminton.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • The foundation of being emotionally agile is a factor of high emotional flexibility, emotional speed and a very high emotional intelligence.
  • With high emotional agility, you can read changing emotional environments very early and can adapt instantly, e.g. from enhancing excitement of the kid/teammate to the need to hug and provide the feeling of belonging in the case of a team defeat in split seconds.
  • Usain Bolt was a master in emotional agility: he could entertain and be friendly with everyone until two seconds before his runs—then beating the world record with full focus and excitement on himself.
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EMOTIONAL COORDINATION

Be the master of emotional design and experience

The ability to maintain equilibrium and perform complex movements between emotions, with mixtures of emotions—positive and negative—smoothly.

Physical analog: Various coordination tests in all sport disciplines and music.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • The foundation of having a high emotional coordination is a high emotional flexibility, emotional agility and a very high emotional intelligence.
  • With high emotional coordination ability, you can experience and reflect complex mixtures of emotions such as friendship love and sadness (missing a friend); sadness, anger, and sexual desire (your romantic partner left you); anger, amusement, and nurturant love (your kids painted on your new car).
  • Very high performers can keep control on which emotions should dominate.
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LIGHTSEEDING

Be the master of making others happy

The ability and motivation to dedicate your life to make others sustainably happy by understanding their strengths, gaps, and blockers.

Physical analog: Being a physical fitness coach, being a conductor, being a teacher, doing community service.

How does it represent itself every day?

  • The foundation for light seeding is a deep understanding of the science of happiness, your own happiness and wellbeing, and a very high emotional intelligence.
  • You are able to read behavioral patterns and link them to neurotransmitter strengths or gaps.
  • You have the motivation to silently seed light in others, particularly other community members.
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Train in the Matter app

Strengthen these skills and see how the levels of emotional fitness unfold.

Download on the App Store