I often talk about exercise from a physical point of view, but not from a mental point of view. I thought I should expand my idea of exercise when I came across this quote from G.K. Chesterton:

It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck.

It is an exercise not of the body but of the mind. Mindfulness is an exercise of the mind too. In both cases we are training our brains to do something different than it normally does, and by doing so, we become more fit and up for the challenges life can throw at us.

Athletes do mental exercises all the time, especially in the area of visualization. We should all do such workouts on the regular.

Quote via this piece which I found on Austin Kleon’s newsletter. Image of Chesterton from Wikipedia.