Lifestyle

APT – India’s first mental gym for every future leader

A vision that became a reality during the pandemic, APT (Aspire Perform Transform) mental gym is designed with a singular objective – to make India mentally fit. The gym is designed to gamify mental fitness without any labels or tags. It aims to increase your productivity by 10x. Throughout the pandemic, most working professionals struggled with mental fitness as they felt overwhelmed facing unfamiliar situations. Aditi Surana, more often than less was a witness to several people reaching out to her and sharing their dilemmas through messages.

‘Mental illness may be turning into a bigger crisis than covid?’ – Headline of an article in a mainstream newspaper. Why do they say that we are in a mental pandemic? Look around you. Everything looks normal.

Sure it does!

As it did before the pandemic. We are just so used to ignoring all the possible signals of mental & emotional fatigue. From feeling burnout, stressed, disengaged, and overwhelmed to feeling helpless with anxiety. Thankfully now, we cannot hide behind ‘I am fine’ anymore.

During the pandemic, we started a social project called ‘Wellness Warriors .’We created training modules for people to be emotionally and mentally stable enough to help the people around them. A community of people who will be taking care of themselves and the people they come in contact with. As a high-performance coach and a behavioral analyst, I have been coaching leaders to thrive under pressure for almost 19 years now. I thought it was only natural for all of us to build a thriving mindset in those testing times. In the 2.5 years of the pandemic, more than 20,000 people became a part of this project. They stood steady through the storm, supporting their parents, kids, friends, and even strangers.

Needless to say, this overwhelming response got me thinking. I started wondering why we waited for the feeling of helplessness to hit us! Like physical muscles, is it possible to build our emotional and mental muscles? How about using the techniques, hacks, and routines of high performers in everyday stressful situations. This revolutionary thought gave birth to India’s only mental gym for high performance.

The discussion on mental health is treated with a huge degree of stigma. Celebrities like Deepika Padukone and many others have made it easier for people to accept and embrace the problem. However, we are far from being open and accepting of it. We thought of solving this biggest challenge by making mental fitness a lifestyle and aspirational choice.

Like physical workouts, our members took pride in doing their regular mental workouts. We gamified mental fitness through interactive games and paired people with one another to have a buddy or companion to discuss their experiences and learnings. The gym had retention of 93-95% month on month in the last 12 months.

In theory, most people know what to do to take care of their mental fitness. They have read books, watched videos, or attended a workshop or two, but the problem is that they do not take action. They get stuck in the loop of either finding the perfect solution or procrastination. The global community of APT mental gym solves that challenge by simply celebrating everyday incremental improvements. Here are a few things you can try to reduce stress and enhance productivity.

TIL-Do you know what it means? TIL – Today, I learnt. Find a person or a group of friends to share your TIL moments with. We catch up with friends and discuss our problems or discuss the ‘people’ responsible for that problem. How about changing your focus? Every day take some time out to share your #TIL moment. In our mental gym community, people share small little things, from learning a new word and trying a new recipe to a shortcut to an excel formula. They share whatever they learn that day. What is your #TIL moment?

Calm sutra sssss stroke -What happens when you are stressed? Your mind builds a story that is repeated over and over again. Your body stores those stressful emotions as if it is responding to a fight or flight situation. Your brain activates survival mode, and you start preparing for the worst possible situation. Being under pressure and feeling these emotions become daunting for your nervous system. Calm sutra sssss stroke is one of the most effective solutions there is. I call it ‘Handwriting Yoga’. This zen movement kind of formation is practiced with a deeper breathing pattern. This creates a tremendous amount of calmness in the body and allows the mind to follow the lead. Remember, everything that you think is not true. ‘Lead from your mind when your body is helpless. Lead with your body when your mind is useless!’
Commit to a mental fitness routine -As part of gamifying mental fitness, I started a bite-sized podcast called ‘Daily mental fit bit .’Every episode is just 3 mins. Many of our community members start their day with an inspiring and thought-provoking episode. Learning new things every day builds a high-performance mindset. Any sort of mindset building takes time. Repetition or consistency is the key. If you want to change anything about your behavior, then make small repetitive changes. Break it into a small routine.
The pandemic was an eye-opener for me. I had never received so many suicidal and helpless messages asking for help until then. I founded APT mental gym with a vision of making India mentally fit. It’s a humongous task. We use simple, playful, Bollywood-inspired content to carry our message across. We have managed to initiate so many serious & much-needed dialogues in a playful manner just by providing a correct platform. It is high time that we dare to talk about our issues and take action to solve the problem at hand.
This article is drafted by Prittle Prattle News in the form of an Interview.
Must Read – Thomas Cook
Follow Us: Facebook Instagram | Twitter YouTube | LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr

Related Posts

1 of 219