North Star Mental Fitness Blog

Acceptance: Can You Really Accept?

Can you accept what you don't like in your husband or wife?  Are you willing to accept what you don't like instead of expecting your spouse to change?

Oftentimes, what we don't like in our relationships or our partners are signals of emptiness! 

Most of time we wish that we would not have to deal with the disgusting, frightening and obnoxious signals of emptiness in our spouses or ourselves.  We expect

Identify Signals; Not Problems; Not Symptoms!

Identify signals is the fifth blog in the series, If You Can Drive a Car, You Can Have Satisfying and Sensitive Relationships.  So far we have established

Expectations: What to Expect In Your Relationships?

Remember when you heard the wedding bells?  What expectations do you have for your marriage?  You were in love and undoubtedly had expectations for an exciting, passionate and long lasting relationship.  Didn't you expect your chosen one to be happy most of the time?  Didn't  you expect him or her to wake up with a lot of energy and passion, only to be disappointed or frustrated?

Remember, when you had your first job or the job of your dreams?  What expectations did you have for your work associates?  Didn't  you expect them to appreciate your work and validate you as a worker?  Weren't you poorly prepared to experience indifference, rejection and criticism from your boss or coworkers?

Remember when you began having children?  Remember how excited you were to have your children.  Although you may have never consciously thought about it, what expectations did you have for your children?  Did youexpect our children to be free from problems, develop normally and do well in all they do?  Most of us did not expect our children to have developmental difficulties, learning problems, social problems or behavioral problems.

Most of us have expectations full of the excitement, anticipated happiness and idealism when we begin a new relationship.  Oftentimes, our expectations are not realistic and practical.  Even after being in relationships for a considerable period of time, our expectations remain unrealistic and as a result we experience unnecessary emotional pain, anger and disappointment.

Our expectations regarding the important people in our lives would become more realistic, practical and functional, if we were to apply our knowledge about the fuel system in a car to our relationships.  With a car we know that the car will have times when the gas tank approaches empty and we expect our cars to become empty and give us empty signals on a regular basis.  Especially after we had been driving our cars, we expect our cars to become empty.

Do we have the expectation that the important people in our lives will be empty on a regular basis and this is normal?  How much better would our relationships become if we expected our significant others to have times of fullness and emptiness on a regular basis? 

 Our relationships would be much better if we expected our significant others to have signals of emptiness, when they are empty.  Most people respond to the signals of emptiness from our significant others as problems, symptoms, personality weaknesses or dysfunctional, learned behavior from one's family of origin. 

Signals of emptiness are not problems, symptoms, personality weaknesses or dysfunctional behavior from past relationships!  If we mis-read and fail to understand that signals of emptiness are only signals, then these missed signals can result in problems, symptoms, personality weaknesses or dysfunctional behavior.

Wouldn't your relationship with your wife become much better, if you interpreted "nagging", headaches, and irritability as signals of emptiness rather than as criticism, problems and deficiencies in your wife?

Wouldn't your relationship with your husband become much better, if you interpreted his anger, poor listening ability and emotional coldness as signals of emptiness rather than as problems, rejection, insensitivity, and a lack of love?

Wouldn't your relationships with your boss or fellow employees become better, if you interpreted their hostile, insensitive and different responses to you as indicating their signals of emptiness rather than as demeaning or criticizing you?

Wouldn't your relationships with your children improve immensely if you interpreted their problems, defiance, disobedience and emotional instability as signals of emptiness rather than concluding that they are bad, spoiled, ungrateful and self-centered?

Let us focus on accepting the reality of emptiness in our significant others.  Let us expect all of our significant others to sometimes be empty and have signals of emptiness.  Having appropriate and realistic expectations for our significant others will significantly reduce our conflicts with our significant others.  Our significant others will not feel pressured, judged, criticized and demeaned if we change our expectations.

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

Expectations: What Do You Expect?

If you know how to drive a car, you have all of the psychological tools to have a refreshed self-concept and empowered, satisfying and sensitive relationships.  This statement may sound like an over-statement, but it is true.

Knowledge! Do You Really Know?

If you can drive a car, you have the ability to have a good self-concept and form satisfying and sensitive relationships!

We automatically goes through many psychological processes effortlessly when it comes to understanding the importance of fuel and reading signals when it comes to driving a car.  It may surprise you how many psychological processes we successfully apply in interpreting what our car's need.

How to Be a Star in Your Relationships

Magic Johnson was a basketball star by any one's standards.  He was a star on his high school and college teams, which were championship teams.  He was selected first in the 1979 NBA by the Los Angeles Lakers.  This was a very wise choice as Magic helped his team win a championship in his first year of professional basketball.  He won the MVP award for the finals that year.  Over his career he was the star on five NBA championship teams.  To read about more of his accomplishments, read the article on Magic from Wikipedia.

Magic valued his team members and team.  He realized that to win, he needed to bring out the best in his teammates.  Being the star, one would expect that he wanted his teammates to do what was ever necessary to make him a bigger star.

Wrong!  Magic did not expect or want his teammates to focus on bringing out Magic's talents and skills.  Instead Magic realized and believed that his goal was to help his teammates reach their potential and refine their skills.

Magic applied Pres. John F. Kennedy's famous lines from President Kennedy's January 20, 1961 Inaugural Address.

Magic's wisdom was expressed in these powerful words as written by Pat Riley's in his book, "The Winner Within".

"Ask not what your teammates can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your teammates."

Let's apply these words to our personal relationships.  After all, Pat Riley emphasized the importance of the family, when he wrote "the first and most important team in anyone's life is their family".

For husbands who want to be a star in their relationship, Ask not what your wife can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your wife.

For wives who want to be a star in their relationship, Ask not what your husband can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your husband.

It is very difficult, but important to step outside of our selfishness.  Too often we limit ourselves to expecting our spouse's job is to make our lives better and help us become more successful.  Too often we expect our spouses to live up to our expectations, satisfy our needs and achieve our goals. We expect our spouses to be our supporting cast.

One of the 50 greatest NBA players, Magic has a lot to teach us about teams and teamwork.  No matter how good or gifted we are in our relationship, our goal is not to be self-centered and demand attention.  Instead Magic gives us the secret of a satisfying, electrifying and victorious team. 

The secret is to encourage and help our partners achieve their goals and potential.  Our focus should be to bring out the best in our partners.  Our goal is to be empathetic and encouraging rather than critical.  Our goal is to be loving and empowering rather than judgmental.  Our goal is to be grateful rather than demanding.

Are you willing to commit to Magic's philosophy regarding successful teams?  Are you willing to enable your spouse to be the star for the well-being of your spouse and the team?

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

How Can You Have a Good Relationship With Your Spouse?

Steven Stosny wrote about this dilemma in his post "How Can I Be Me, When You're Being You"? 

Perhaps you have experienced how difficult it is sometimes to be yourself, when you have to deal with it the personality quirks of your partner and your disappointments. 

You Don't Get Any Better, When....

"When you start taking things personally that is when you don't get better"!

This was University of Michigan football player, Morgan Trent's profound, psychological insight regarding accepting intense, emotional instruction from his coaches.  Sam Webb from Go Blue Wolverine interviewed Morgan Trent regarding the yelling and highly confrontive coaching style of the new coaches.

Morgan Trent went on to say about taking things personally:

"You want to get upset and that never helps you out.  You have to understand and get to a point where you have to realize they are only trying to help you. 

Rich Rod always says that he always wants to take you to a place that you can't take yourself and he does.  It is a difficult painful project but that is his main goal."

Morgan also had a wonderful perception.  Oftentimes, when people take things personally, they feel disrespected.  Morgan Trent realizes that his coaches are not trying to be disrespectful.  He told Sam

"Our coaches are never disrespectful.  I don’t know what you have heard.  They weren’t coming in and acting crazy and cussing everybody out just for fun and trying to break you down.  It wasn’t that.  It is just a different style of coaching.  They still have respect for us and they would never do anything to disrespect us or anything like that.”

In our personal lives we we must learn to not take coaching personal. Sometimes we enroll in classes or activities, where we will be coached.  On other occasions, we and our significant others try to coach each other.

In our personal lives, it is also important to learn how to not feel disrespected, put down, and maintain the perception that our family members are trying to help us instead of attack or demean us.

Too often, our insecurities intrude into our perceptions and as a result we personalize highly emotional reactions from those who want to help us.

Although it is hard, it is emotionally more satisfying to remember that our significant others are respectful, helpful and loving even when their coaching techniques are difficult to accept.  

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

My next blog will focus on learning how to not personalize in situations where people are not trying to be helpful

Relationship First Aid

Here are four ways you can improve your relationships.  The first three ideas were written in a post "Managing Your Mind: Relationship Part Two.  I have also added the fourth idea. 

1.  "Work on changing yourself, not on changing others". 

2.  "Changes take time.  When you change the way in which you relate to others, they may resist that change and do things to make you change back."

3.  "Work with people as they are" and

4.  "Focus on creating the type of relationships you want rather than reacting and escalating conflicts.

Applying these four ideas in your relationships can significantly reduce conflicts and painful feelings. 

Remember, You Live within Environment Created by Your Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

The Real Battle Is Inside the Mind

I read a wonderful article on Mental Fitness by Mark Salinas.  I urge you to read this article as it is loaded with mental fitness tips.

Mark wrote "athletes know their real battle is not so much on the field or track, but inside their mind". 

This quotation reminds me of a talk I had with a very skilled archer.  For 10 years, he could not get past shooting 90%.  Shooting 9 out of 10 arrows successfully sounded great to me, but not for a professional archer.  Only after studying mental fitness and sports psychology was he able to improve his shooting.

As I read what Mark wrote, I quickly realized that people's problems with their spouses, children, parents, employers or employees are not due to the other individual.  We like to blame other people and wish that they would change.  Professional athletes and athletes in the stadiums of human experience, know that the battle is inside their mind.  We must learn how to change how we think about the important people in our lives in order to change our feelings and reduce our conflicts.

From a mental fitness perspective, you can change your feelings by changing your thinking; not by trying to change the other person.  The other person does not have to make significant changes in order for us to change our feelings.  Your mental fitness can never be dependent on someone else.  Your mental fitness depends on your thinking and mind conditioning. 

Mark put it this way "it is a must that you manage your mental state".

Your thinking for victorious living depends on training your mind to be fit and tough.  This is why I became a Life and Mental Fitness Coach.

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach