North Star Mental Fitness Blog

Get Mentally Fit!

Take Care of You.  Take Control of Your Life.  Take Care of Your Mind.

Practice Mental Fitness.

Life is full of change, risks and challenges.  Mental fitness training will help  you find the strength and confidence to take care of yourself, even during turbulent times.  You can be stronger than your problems.  You can find solutions for any and all of your problems with the North Star Mental Fitness Program.

Are you mentally fit enough to deal with life’s ups and downs?"

At the North Star Mental Fitness Blog we believe everyone can improve their mental fitness.  We can all improve our mental fitness by concentrating and repeating mental exercises. 

If Your Life Is Important to You,

The Time Has Come for You to Add Mental Fitness to Your Life!

Just ask us how!

By practicing mental fitness, you will make a commitment to take care of yourself and you will have the strength to achieve your dreams and goals!

 

Remember, You Live within the Mind, Body and Environment Created by Your Choices!

 

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

 

Does Your Child Have an Empty Heart?

Read about Empty Heart, if you are a parent who acts as if your children don't feel.  Please read about Empty Heart, if you have purposely, inappropriately or unwittingly rejected or unnecessarily been angry towards your children.

The Tiger Mindset

Tiger Woods has failed to maintain his elite status in the golfing world, since his return to the golfing circuit.  Mick Elliott at FANHOUSE called Tiger's current season his "winless season" in Mick's article "Tiger's Par-5 Game Still Isn't up to Par".

Tiger's golf game has been a disaster since his moral indiscretions and marital conflicts became big news. 

Mick showed how bad it has been for Tiger. "Ten times since 1997 Woods has finished in the top 10 on the PGA Tour on birdie-or-better conversions on par 5s. This year there are 53 players in front of his 43 percent conversion rate".

Tiger described his fall

Mindsets For Success

What motivates you?  What is your mindset?  Your mindset is important in every aspect of your life.

We have a very depressing economy.  The value of our property is depreciating due to the mortgage fiasco.  Many people are worried about maintaining their employment or have lost their employment.  Financial pressures magnify problems within marriages and families.

Your mindset determines your financial, interpersonal and psychological status in your life!  Today I would like to talk about three different mindsets.

When things go bad in life, many people often exercise the mindset of "not losing".  They seem to have a mindset that says "I don't want to lose".  Although this mindset may be appropriate at some times in our lives, it usually results in people becoming defensive and protective of themselves and their resources.  They try to hold on to what they have rather than increasing what they have.  They try to hold onto who they have been rather than growing and changing.  They are motivated to not lose rather than to win!

The second mindset is a mindset to win.  With this mindset a person is motivated and dedicated to win.  No matter how bad the circumstances are, this person is motivated to win at all costs.  You probably have heard the saying "when the going gets tough, the tough get going"!  With this mindset, people, often times, are obsessed with winning.  They view life as competition and they always have to win.  They seem to not enjoy what they accomplish and who they are.  They are devastated when they cannot win.

The third mindset is a mindset leading to self-actualization and growth.  Problems in living are perceived to be opportunities; opportunities for learning, changing and growing.  Dr. Alan Goldberg put it this way "You must let go of that obsessive need to win or beat others (which is actually limiting you) and instead focus on being the very best that YOU can be. Simply put you must make your goal improvement, NOT winning.

Steve Siebold writes about the differences in mindsets between the middle class and millionaires in his new book, How Rich People Think.   Steve wrote  "It's no mystery why 1% of Americans own 42% of the country's wealth. The good news is the rich are no smarter than the rest of us, they just think differently about money. The secret is to learn their thought processes, habits and philosophies and copy them. It's that simple, and this is what this book is all about."

In your relationships, are you:

1. Trying to not lose?
2. Trying to win?
3. Trying to grow and be yourself?

In your financial life, are you:

1. Trying to not lose?
2. Trying to win?
3. Trying to grow and be yourself?Remember,

Remember, We Live within the Relationship and Finances Created by Our Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

When Won'tpower Is Stronger Than Willpower

Cranky Fitness wrote about Willpower and Won'tpower.  Crabby McSlacker focused most on the failure to reach goals on the basis of willpower.  He insinuated that there is won'tpower. 

I sure like the idea that people have both willpower and won'tpower.  I know there is won'tpower.  Haven't you had run-ins with won'tpower!

Time and time again, we try to accomplish goals on the basis of willpower only to be thwarted by an insidious, constantly changing, unrecognized force called won'tpower by Crabby.

Crabby shared his own experience: "I actually do wonder if we have natural limits on our willpower, and can only tackle so many challenges at once. At least I observe this phenomenon in myself all the time. 
Anyone else find that if they're putting a lot of mental effort into one goal, the other stuff starts to slip?"

Can we all identify with Crabby's hypothesis "It's like there's a concrete amount of willpower in my psychological bank account. And if I try to write too many self-improvement checks? The damn things start bouncing."

Because of the difficulty with trying to solve life's problems on the basis of willpower, I created The North Star Mental Fitness Program.  I knew willpower was insufficient for completing self improvement projects.  I thought the willpower has to be made stronger.  I thought the solution must be multifaceted, more complicated, but still possible to obtain.

I liked the concept of mental fitness as it parallels physical fitness.  We all know that physical exercises can make people stronger.  So can mental exercises make people mentally strong enough to solve their problems or reach their goals. In the North Star Mental Fitness Program, there are 15 strategies or exercises for increasing the power in willpower or for giving us the tools for solving our problems and reaching our goals.

There are strategies for building one's focus, putting focus into action and keeping momentum soaring.  There are strategies for coping with frustration and turning won'tpower into willpower.

It does not work to try to beat won'tpower into submission by using willpower.  The harder you try to destroy won'tpower, the stronger it becomes.  Sometimes our unconscious mind specializes in won'tpower and fights against our conscious efforts to achieve self-fulfillment.  When won'tpower appears, it is much like an acting out, screaming child. It must be dealt with immediately. You cannot ignore a screaming child nor won'tpower. 

If you are not reaching their goals and solving your problems, get help for your won'tpower.

Remember, We Live within the Environment Created by Our Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

 

Tarkenton Still Scrambling in His Senior Years

Fran Tarkenton is still known as the elite scrambling quarterback.  If he didn't beat his opponent with his passing, he did it with his running.  Now in his senior years,

Do Professional Athletes Know How to Stop Choking?

In professional sports, there is tremendous pressure to achieve.  Athletes want to be "Mr. Clutch"!  Athletes went to lead their team to victory.  Athletes want to continually elevate their performances to higher levels.  Athletes want to win, when victory or defeat is determined by what they do!

What is choking?  Choking is the failure to cope successfully with the pressures associated with professional sports, because of anxiety and panic.  Failure to "always" cope effectively with pressure in sports should be expected.  All professional athletes sometimes in their career will fail to achieve at the critical moment.  The critical moment is when what they do will determine the joy of victory or the agony of defeat.  Failure to successfully achieve is not choking.

Professional athletes need to set realistic expectations for themselves.  If a person wants to be a professional athlete, then they need to expect and accept that they sometimes will fail.  After all isn't winning and losing the nature of the game.  Isn't playing well and playing poorly to be expected?

Choking is when professional performance deteriorates, because of anxiety, fear and panic.  Choking is associated with prolonged failure to achieve at a level commensurate with one's ability, because of anxiety, fear and panic.  When focused attempts to achieve result in continuing poor performance or deteriorating performance, choking is present.  Anxiety, fear and panic can completely destroy confidence and prevent successful achievement.  When this occurs, professional athletes are in a state of choking.

There is a lot that can be done to control and manage choking.  Some athletes seek psychiatric treatment and counseling for their anxiety. I recommend mental fitness training for successfully coping with choking.  Mental fitness training is just as important as physical training for successful performance and managing of the pressures associated with professional sports.

Often times, professional athletes are given wonderful advice such as in Patrick Cohn's article,How to Avoid Choking in Baseball.  Although professional advice may be correct and valid, it is only effective when an athlete's default mindset for coping with choking is changed.  The mind's default position for coping with choking can only be changed through hard work or mental fitness or mental toughness training.

Athletes need to know: 

• Advice from their friends, fellow players and coaches usually is ineffective in reducing anxiety induced choking and sometimes can increase choking!
• Attempts to consciously stop choking can actually increase choking!
• It is important to change one's mindset in order to effectively manage choking!
• Mental fitness and mental toughness are the result of one's thinking and not automatically associated with professional skills.
• Mental fitness and mental toughness training can make an athlete stronger than the anxiety associated with choking!

If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety associated with their performance, suggest to them that they get mental fitness training or contact me for further information.

Remember, We Live with the Performances Created by Our Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

Brain Injuries

We love playing football and watching football being played.  In fact, we love many sports, where the athletes have a high risk for brain injuries.  Can you believe this?

High school football players suffer 43,000 to 67,000 concussions a year. 

Enough Is Enough

When is enough enough?  We have experienced unimaginable bidding wars in the National Basketball Association for Lebron James and his cohorts.  The amount of money they have been offered is hard to fathom.  Even though Lebron James took less money to sign with the Miami Heat, he still settled for a king's ransom.

In contrast, I read an article by Sesn Conboy in the Pittsburgh Magazine.com about Lamarr Woodley.

Lamarr Woodley is a former football player at the University of Michigan and currently is a star linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers.  In 2009, he was a first-time Pro Bowler.  He made 25 sacks from his linebacker position in the last two years.

In this article,

Freedom Is Not An Entitlement

Are you erroneously thinking that "freedom is an entitlement" or that the " world owes you something"?  Are you erroneously looking for the government to take care of you and give you freedom?

Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness!

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Man are created equal,  that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that amongst these are the Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".  This is a quote from the Declaration of Independence.

The framers of our government realized the importance of freedom for each and every individual.  They perceived freedom and the pursuit of happiness to be basic truths and our basic rights given to us by our Creator and codified by the Second Constitutional Congress.

In the North Star Mental Fitness Program, the focus is on training individuals to exercise their self-evident and inalienable rights for living their life under their own direction.  The purpose of the program is to provide tools to help people self-actualize and achieve their own dreams. 

In the North Star Mental Fitness Program, people are motivated to make changes in their lives out of freedom.  No matter how big or small one's achievement becomes, the real goal is to experience increased happiness, peace of mind, freedom and control over one's life. 

We very strongly believe that people are motivated to have their benefits, which are happiness, peace of mind, freedom and control over their lives.  While it is important for individuals to be free in their pursuit of happiness, it is also important that our government must not become destroy these self-evident truths and our inalienable rights.

It is important for our federal, state and local governments to uphold the rights given to us by the Declaration of Independence.

As July 4th approaches, let us celebrate our independence with a determination to ensure that our government does not neutralize our inalienable rights for freedom and the pursuit of happiness.   Let us courageously pursue our dreams in order to experience our freedom and happiness.

Remember, We Live within the Environment Created by Our Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach