Invest in You: Understanding Psychological Fitness
Chapter 1 - Understanding Psychological Fitness What are we building?
Participants explore what psychological fitness means and challenge some common assumptions about resilience.
The chapter introduces resilience as something more human than toughness or simply “bouncing back”. It considers adaptation, connection, learning from mistakes, impulse control and self-efficacy, and explores the relationship between emotional wellbeing, mental resilience and everyday life.
Participants begin to consider psychological fitness as something developmental: not a fixed quality we either possess or lack, but a capacity that can be understood, practised and strengthened.
Learning Outcomes
Outcome 1:
• explain what psychological fitness means and how it can be developed over time;
Outcome 2:
• challenge the idea that resilience is simply toughness or “bouncing back”;
Outcome 3:
• recognise the roles of adaptation, connection, learning from mistakes, impulse control and self-efficacy;
Outcome 4:
• consider how psychological fitness can be practised and strengthened in everyday life.
What's included
A quick look at the classroom-ready resources that come with this lesson.
Available after purchase
Contributing Experts
People who helped produce this lesson.
Lucy Bailey
Lucy Bailey is Founder of Bounce Forward and Healthy Minds for Parents. With two decades of experience in mental resilience and emotional wellbeing, and training 1000s of teachers, parents and other adults around children and young people. Lucy is proud of her early career in youth work and children services. Lucy had a poor experience of school and that has driven her passion to influence UK policy to form a positive system of change with psychological fitness at the core. Lucy has directed national research projects (including the Healthy Minds five year study), is certified by University of Pennsylvania, has an MSc in Practice Based Research, a BSc in Social Policy and Criminology, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education. Her published book Raise Resilience: Teach your teenager well has led to the creation of the Psychological Fitness Nana bridging old school wisdom with modern psychology for parents of the 21st century.
About the Organisation
Bounce Forward is the UK’s psychological-fitness charity.
We help children and young people — and the adults and environments around them — develop the understanding, skills and shared language to regulate, recover and adapt through challenge, change and everyday life.
Our work brings together mental resilience and emotional wellbeing, shifting the focus upstream: building capability before crisis, rather than waiting for something to go wrong. We translate evidence from psychology, resilience research, cognitive behavioural approaches and positive psychology into practical learning that can be taught, modelled and used in real life.
From evidence-informed curricula and staff development to family support and whole-community approaches, our work recognises that young people do not develop in isolation. What happens around a young person shapes what becomes possible within them.
Everything we create is practical, grounded in evidence and designed to build something that lasts — psychologically fit people and communities, better prepared to meet life.