Counseling or Mental Fitness Training

I recently wrote the following post at Healthcare.com and wanted to share it with you.

I am often asked what is the difference between counseling and mental fitness training.  This is a very important question.  The differences are significant.  For some people counseling is a better match.  For other people mental fitness training is preferable.

It is very difficult to reduce all forms of therapy into a brief synopsis.  Therapies usually emphasize the individual’s discovery and understanding of the nature of their problems in order to overcome the problems.  Different therapies may analyze family history, interpersonal dynamics, irrational thought patterns, unconscious dynamics, and feelings as the road to recovery.  Therapies are based on self-analysis, usually of one’s past.

Mental fitness training is not based on self-analysis.  Mental fitness training is learning new strategies for making decisions and becoming psychologically stronger.  Remember, the strategies in the North Star Mental Fitness Program are the empowering strategies for change learned from successful clients in therapy.

If you do not want to enter therapy and discover your own successful and empowering strategies, then you can learn from others.  You can learn 15 different ways to solve problems and to make yourself stronger.  You can become stronger than your problems.  You can be strong enough to solve your problems by applying one or as many of the mental fitness strategies as you choose.

Mental fitness training takes many forms:

1. You learn 15 or less strategies for solving problems or reaching your goals. 
2. You think about your life, problems and goals from the perspective of these 15 strategies.
3. You can apply these solutions for any problem in your life or when you want to make new changes in your life. 
4. You can keep your focus with these 15 solutions, when you are working on changing lifelong patterns or reaching long-range goals
5. You can use the mental fitness strategies for improving your self-concept, going beyond your comfort zone and for determining your emotions.
6. You can repeat the mental fitness exercises much as you do physical exercises in order to make yourself mentally and psychologically stronger.

Both counseling and mental fitness training can empower you to make changes in your life.  It is your choice to use either service, when you are dissatisfied with your life and what more for yourself.  

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach