When I work with individuals with low self-esteem, a major focus of the work is on helping them to identify areas where they have experienced successes in the past. Too often such individuals are overly focused on non-successes or failures, but everybody has positive aspects of their histories that can be called upon to help…
If you seek advice from a financial professional in an effort to gain control of your finances, develop a budget, and create a savings plan that hopefully will lead to a comfortable retirement, virtually every expert in the financial field will tell you to Pay Yourself First. That means that you should determine an affordable…
Sometimes I like to use The Mental Health Gym website for a type of role modeling. Using the regular gym as an analogy, we know that some folks visit the gym at times of crisis; when they’ve become too overweight or out-of-shape or unhealthy in some other way. Others are regular gym visitors for just…
You know, I’m actually pretty good at telling the future. Over time, I’ve learned that if I don’t try something I won’t accomplish it. For example, I can’t remember ever being successful at helping a patient or giving a presentation or writing anything – a book or research paper or blog or thank you note…
All of us are made up of collections of traits and behaviors. If you try to objectively evaluate yourself on a half dozen attributes – for example, intelligence, compassion, technical skill, reading speed, social comfort, and persistence – you would likely rank yourself differently for each different attribute. And we are only talking about six…
One of the highest compliments that can be paid to a professional athlete is that, “he makes those around him better”. That means that the player is a role model of commitment, unselfishness, and teamwork. Teams that win usually have at least one player who makes the other players better. But we don’t have to…
A major goal of Positive Psychology and Goal-Achieving Psychotherapy is to feel good about our selves. This type of attitude enables us to use our personal strengths to overcome problems and move into more positive phases of our lives. It may thus seem paradoxical to learn that one of the things that can help us…
Setting goals is a very important part of The Mental Health Gym philosophy. Rational behavior change enables emotional growth and the maintenance of mental fitness. The opposite of change is staying stuck. The downloadable exercise cards on the products page of this website enables the management of change by providing a format for goal-setting and…
If you are the organizer of a party, one of your responsibilities is to set the ground rules with respect to things such as attire, gifts, food, etc. It permits your guests to plan more comfortably if they know the ground rules and the expectations when they get an invitation that specifies any of the…
When I see patients in therapy, one of the questions that I use the most is, “How will that get you there?” My orientation in therapy is future-focused. We set goals and use therapy as a means of building skills to achieve them. When patients are stuck or resistant or do things that are regressed…
As you know, I’ve often compared mental fitness to physical fitness – suggesting that the same principles apply. People who desire to stay in good physical shape don’t stop exercising or eating in a healthy manner just because they’ve achieved certain fitness or weight goals. Staying in shape becomes something that they do as regularly…