# The case for "mental strength"

Recently, I was thinking about the differences between physical health
and physical fitness, and wondering if there is an analogous
distinction on the mental side. Googling, I found that the term
"mental strength" is often used for the mental counterpart to physical
fitness; "mental fitness" is tied too heavily to a narrower conception
focused on intelligence and cognition.

I found [this Verywell Mind
article](https://www.verywellmind.com/the-difference-between-mental-strength-and-mental-health-5078284)
to be a good overview (and I recommend reading it though I don't
assume it as a prerequisite). It identifies three broad components to
mental strength: cognitive (thinking), emotional (feeling), and
behavioral (acting).

I expect that most of the rest of what I write will be fairly obvious
to many LessWrong readers, though I am not absolutely sure. I am still
going to say them, for [reasons Grognor
articulated](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6phFYpNQH9SmWL9Jt/on-saying-the-obvious).

The post makes the most sense when read sequentially, but you can skim
it or read whatever parts interest you based on the table of
contents. The first section provides a few angles from which to think
about mental strength. In the second section, I talk a little more
about what I like about the "mental strength" concept and some of its
implications. The third section talks about the relationship between
mental strength and the LessWrong/rationality cluster.

## Relation between mental strength and other concepts

### Mental strength versus mental health

The [Verywell Mind
article](https://www.verywellmind.com/the-difference-between-mental-strength-and-mental-health-5078284)
includes a good comparison of the two concepts that I recommend
reading. I will try to summarize it in my own words, with slightly
different emphases.

Mental health is about your current mental state, or your average
mental state over time. For instance, do you often feel stress and
anxiety? Do you feel uncontrollable anger? Do you have depressive
thought patterns? Or are you generally satisfied and content with
yourself? Are you able to focus on the tasks that are important to
you?

Mental strength is about the inner capacity and resilience you have
developed (cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally) to be mentally
healthy across a range of life circumstances. Two people with the same
mental strength might have different levels of mental health based on
the circumstances they are in. However, on average, for people in
similar circumstances, greater mental strength is likely to lead to
greater mental health. (This is a bit of a simplification as neither
mental health nor mental strength is one-dimensional, but it's still
useful directionally).

The physical analogy may clarify this: physical exercise builds
physical strength. If you take two people, one of whom has built more
physical strength, and put them through the same physical ordeal, it's
likely that the person with more physical strength will come out of
the ordeal in better shape. But if you compare one person with
physical strength who's going through a physical ordeal, and another
weaker person who's relaxing, the former may be in worse shape!

To put it another way, mental health depends on mental strength *and*
on how stressful the circumstances are. The more stressful the
circumstances, the more mental strength is needed to achieve a given
level of mental health. For instance, if you're living in a war zone
with shooting happening all the time around you, the amount of mental
strength you need to stay mentally healthy is probably higher than if
you're living a relaxed life. In general, mortal danger, poverty,
abuse, and high-stress work can worsen mental health and need more
mental strength.

In a later section, I'll talk specifically of the mental strength
demands placed in rationalist and effective altruist circles.

### Mental strength versus mental toughness

[Mental toughness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_toughness)
seems to be a subset of mental strength focused on resilience and
confidence. The concept was developed in the context of environments
that place high expectations in terms of achievement, most notably
sports.

Mental toughness seems like a important part of mental strength. But I
don't think it covers the whole area; in particular, it seems focused
on resilience and perseverance than on the wider gamut of cognitive,
emotional, and behavioral skills. The development of the concept also
seems heavily tied to sports and gaming where one copes with
["losing"](https://www.hpmor.com/chapter/19) several times.

### Mental strength versus intelligence

Mental strength has a cognitive component to it, and intelligence
seems helpful with executing that cognitive component, that the
Verywell Mind article describes as follows:

> It involves the ability to think realistically. That means knowing
> how to recognize irrational thoughts and replace them with a more
> realistic inner dialogue. It’s also about speaking to yourself with
> kindness. So when you’re tempted to be overly critical of yourself,
> mental strength allows you to respond with self-compassion.

Having intelligence, however, does not seem sufficient to actually
having the strength and skill to use that intelligence in the required
ways. So while intelligence seems helpful it's not the same thing as
even the cognitive component of mental strength.

### Mental strength versus applied rationality

There seems to be a fair amount of overlap between *applied
rationality* and mental strength. Specifically, the cognitive part of
mental strength, and to some extent the emotional and behavioral
parts, seem to overlap closely with the self-directed portions of
applied rationality. Applied rationality can also include several
tactical aspects that aren't tied to mental strength (e.g. insights on
how to manage one's finances).

I think of the applied rationality approach to developing mental
strength as one school of thought on how to develop mental
strength. [Meditation
practice](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/meditation), particularly
[mindfulness meditation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness),
might be another school of thought (and there may be overlapping ideas
between them).

## What I like about the mental strength formulation

### What I don't like about mental health

Some kinds of actions are risky for one's mental health, just as some
kinds of actions are risky for one's physical health. This risk is
important to bear in mind, but at the same time there could be other
benefits to doing it. For instance, maybe volunteering to provide
medical services in a war zone is bad for one's physical and mental
health, but the benefits it creates for the world make it worthwhile.

When we're stuck with "mental health" we're stuck on a trade-off curve
between mental health and whatever else we are trying to optimize
for. At least intellectually, this means that if we acknowledge and
give importance to mental health, this pushes us away from taking
risks. And to the extent that people who take on more risks and
stresses suffer worse mental health, it just gets seen as them being
less (mentally) healthy. And if we always want to "fix" our mental
health issues, this pushes us to exiting challenging situations.

The "mental strength" concept helps provide the hidden term that
connects mental health with the challenges one undertakes. And
increasing one's mental strength means *pushing out* one's tradeoff
curve. We can thus recognize more that people who take on more stress
and have worse mental health may not be less mentally strong than
others. And we can also think about ways that we can raise our mental
strength to the levels needed for the challenges we want to take on.

Moving from "mental health" to "mental strength" is moving from a
reactive to a proactive approach to helping one's mind thrive.

PS: It seems absolutely ok for somebody to decide that their path to
mental health shall be to stay away from challenges rather than to
build mental strength. And definitely there will be cases where
quitting a challenging situation is the right move to preserve and
restore one's mental health. I also think that working with the mental
strength formulation allows us to explore the tradeoff more
intelligently.

### The (partial) buildability of mental strength

Hopefully, mental strength can be built! As it's multi-dimensional,
the dimensions that are important will depend on the kinds of
challenges one wants to take on.

For instance, if you want to excel in competitive sports or gaming,
mental toughness, that allows you to engage in repeated practice and
experience repeated failure, seems important.

With physical strength, we have several regimens of exercise that
people undertake explicitly with the goal of building that
strength. The general pattern is very standard: expose the body to
stresses in a controlled environment (e.g., by making it lift weights,
or run long distances). Then give the body time to recover. What
doesn't kill it makes it
stronger. [Hormesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis).

### Natural exposure versus deliberate exercise

For many people, "natural" levels of exercise, such as walking around
for their day-to-day activities, constitutes enough exercise to
maintain the level of physical fitness they consider
important. However, people serious about building physical fitness do
not rely on natural exercise -- they engage in deliberate exercise
that stresses the body to unusual levels, and then rest to recover
from it. For instance, people who train for physical sports do
exercise over and above direct practice of the sport, in order to
improve their physical fitness.

I expect something similar to be true in terms of the best methods to
develop mental strength: for many people, "natural" levels of
cognitive, emotional, and behavioral stimulation that day-to-day
activities provide will be enough. But those seeking to achieve
extraordinary feats of mental strength will likely benefit from some
form of deliberate exercise.

However, there is a difference between the physical and mental realms
that calls the above into question. Namely, in the physical realm,
thanks to tremendous technological progress, many of us lead sedentary
lifestyles where "natural" levels of exercise are low. In the mental
realm, the opposite may be true: the average person may be
experiencing a pretty thorough mental workout just from day-to-day
life. So I still expect that *some* people will need deliberate mental
exercise, but the proportion of people who need mental exercise to
build mental strength may be much lower than the proportion of people
who need physical exercise to become physically fit.

But the opposite argument could also be made: mental strength is much
more *instrumentally* useful in modern life than physical fitness, so
there is *more* of a case for deliberate exercises to build mental
strength.

I so happen to think that for the kinds of mental strength I am most
interested in developing, the "natural" work I do is best for
developing that mental strength. However, I think I might change my
mind, and/or move to other activities where building mental strength
ahead of time is important. I think awareness of the concept of mental
strength has made me open to this possibility.

### Deliberate exercises to build mental strength (as opposed to addressing mental health)

While there are a number of exercises designed to build cognitive
skills, there seem to be relatively few that are designed to build
mental strength in a broad way. The biggest cluster I can think of is
*meditation*, and in particular, *mindfulness meditation*.

Most therapeutic approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
seem focused on addressing mental health issues -- solving cognitive,
emotional, and behavioral challenges one has. While the application of
these has some side-effects in terms of improving mental strength, my
sense is that they are not primarily strength-building tools.

Mindfulness meditation techniques, on the other hand, seem more like
the mental equivalent of weight-lifting -- you train your mind to
focus on only one relatively small thing (e.g. your breathing) and to
observe its own thought patterns.

With this thinking and understanding, it makes a lot of sense why a
lot of people in high-stress positions (such as CEOs) practice
meditation, even if *they didn't have any noticeable mental health
issues* and even though *the opportunity cost of their time may be
huge*. It's because: (a) they need more mental strength to cope with
the demands of their high-stress position, so (b) they benefit a lot
from general-purpose exercises to build such mental strength, and (c)
meditation is a widely developed cluster of such techniques, with
several benefits such as that it can be practiced alone over a wide
range of places and times. From this perspective, that CEO meditating
for 15 minutes in the evening is just like that football player
lifting weights at the gym.

I wonder if there are large not-yet-popularized sets of mental
strength-building exercises that people are missing out on because
they aren't thinking explicitly in the terms I laid out. I say
"not-yet-popularized" because I'm confident such exercises exist but
they may be limited to specific realms that have extreme requirements
(such as some kinds of military training) and are not part of the broader culture.

Switching for a moment to the physical analogy, imagine that people
didn't have the concept that competitive sports players need to do
physical exercise beyond just doing practice of the sport. If let's
say a soccer player wasn't a fast runner, the solution in that world
would just be to practice more soccer and pay attention to one's
speed. But with running available as a separate exercise, it's
possible to train much more intensively on that front. (I recall
reading somewhere that a few decads ago, deliberate exercise not
directly tied to the sport was much less common for sportspeople, but
over time the benefits of such deliberate exercise for improving
physical fitness were more broadly appreciated. Unfortunately I am
having trouble finding the reference, so take this with a pinch of
salt).

Going back to the mental strength side, what if your problem is that
when you receive criticism, you find it hard to take? Without a
concept of deliberate exercise, the solution would be to just use as
practice whatever occasions life serves up to you of criticism. But
with a concept of deliberate exercise, you may choose to engage in
activities where you'll get a lot of criticism (e.g., write an online
comment on a news site), or even to artificially receive a lot of
criticism at random (e.g., pay somebody to unpredictably start
shouting at you several times a day while you are engaging in an
activity jointly).

## Mental strength and the rationality community

### Saving the world takes mental strength, and a lot of rationalist writing has the building of such mental strength as a goal

The [sequences](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences) were started
by Eliezer Yudkowsky partly to close some of the inferential distance
that others needed to bridge in order to understand the importance of
AI safety. They were also designed to provide people with the tools to
think about and tackle some of the biggest challenges facing us. One
angle to these challenges is the mental strength needed.

If you want to save the world, you need a lot of mental strength. Even
contemplating it requires mental strength. Being willing to face some
of the challenges facing humanity, due to which the world needs
saving, requires mental strength.

I think [Nate Soares' Minding Our Way](https://mindingourway.com/) is
largely about building mental strength.

One way I think of the rationalist flavor of building mental strength
is that it *starts* with the cognitive, and then builds on that to tap
into the emotional (feeling) and behavioral (acting) parts. In
contrast, it seems to me that meditation starts with the behavioral
(acting) parts, and then uses those to delve into the cognitive and
emotional parts.

### The greater challenges of the rationalist, longtermist and effective altruist communities is at least part of the reason for mental health challenges, and highlights the need for greater focus on building mental strength

There are a few closely tied (and mutually reinforcing) ways that
communities of people who intersect heavily with the LessWrong
readership may need more mental strength:

1. The intellectually and emotionally exhausting nature of the search
   for truth, that often involves updating one's previously held
   beliefs one may be attached too
2. Sincere, rational belief that there are a lot of problems and risks
   in the world, possibly including existential risks; examples:
   * Belief in a nontrivial probability of AI foom and doom
   * Belief in a nontrivial probability that there's a large amount of
     morally relevant suffering humans ignore, such as the suffering
     of farmed and wild animals, or the potential suffering of
     *future* sentient beings
3. Resultant desire to act in seemingly weird and difficult ways to
   improve or protect the world (which ties back to 1; if you are
   *actually trying* then you *want* to have access to the truth)
4. Lack of social support and respect for some of these beliefs and for
   the resultant worldviews, and therefore potential social isolation

Others on LessWrong and elsewhere have talked about various angles of
these in more depth. My rough sense (which could be off) is that at
least some of the mental health challenges faced by people in the
rationality community and related communities are tied to these
factors. A lot of these are *intrinsic* to what it means to be a
rationalist, longtermist, or effective altruist, so we *wouldn't want
to fundamentally change* the underlying patterns. The best solution to
the likely mental health impacts, therefore, seems to be to build
mental strength. This could be through some combination of natural
exposure and deliberate exercise.