North Star Mental Fitness

New Year; New Choices and a New Life

Once a year, we celebrate New Year's Day. In reality, the first of the year is no different than any other day of the year. The same laws of the universe apply every day of the year.

What makes New Year's Day special is the deeper meaning. The message of hope generated by making new choices. Choices based upon reflection, honesty, self-awareness and commitment to change. For each one of us, we can have a New Day this year.

We must go beyond resolutions. We can change. We do have hope. We can achieve our dreams. New choices or re-commitment to old choces nurtured with courage, passion and persistency create a New Day and eventually a New Life.

For the wise, New Year's Day symbolizes the reality of finding a New Life this year. Some day during this year. A day when we turn the ordinary and routine in our lives into the pursuit of the spectacular. When we find genuine meaning in life. When we become self-directed and self-sufficient; while remaining connected and empathetic in our relationships.

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day;" which was written by Edith Lovejoy Pierce'

Mary Pickford said "Today is a new day. You will get out of it just what you put into it".

Remember, We Will Live the New Year, as Created by Our Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

Jobs on Choices

What made Stephen Jobs so successful?  One of Mr. Job's friends, Dr. Dean Ornish, shared the answer.  There is no doubt that Mr. Jobs knew the secret of mental fitness and success.  The secret of Mr. Job's success is

Gratitude Replaces Anger

I talked to a man who is a recovering alcoholic. He has been a very angry man. Anger from childhood spilled over into his adult relationships. He was angry over being raised by an alcoholic father. He has spent his whole life being angry over what is not there.

He has been angry over what is not there with his father, wife, family and friends. It became very clear to him as well as to me that he needed recovery from his anger as well as from his alcoholism. He has become painfully aware that his anger has alienated him from everyone. He and his wife are separated, but reconciling.

I asked him to write a letter to his deceased father. He was surprised by what he wrote in the letter. He admitted that he has walked a similar path; the path of alcoholism. He admitted that both of them hurt the ones they love, because of their alcoholism.

In his letter to his father, he did not focus on his anger over what was not there. Instead he surprised himself by writing how much he loved his father and how much he wished that his father would've had a happier life without alcohol.

Then he wrote how grateful he was for his father's sacrifices in supporting the family. He had not been aware of the positives provided by his father. He was able to verbalize how grateful he was for his father in spite of his father's alcoholism. He was able to verbalize that he was "proud" of his father.

I have shared this life experiences with you for the following reason. I wanted to ask the question.

Are you angry over what is not there rather than being grateful for what is there in your relationships and life!

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Life and Mental Fitness Coach

The Freedom Choice

THE FREEDOM CHOICE

I WANT FREEDOM FROM “THE WAY THINGS ARE”,

SO I WILL MAKE A NEW OR DIFFERENT CHOICE!

 

In situations that enslave and limit you, you can say to yourself,

“I WANT FREEDOM FROM MY PAST”.

“I WANT FREEDOM FROM THIS”.

“I WANT FREEDOM TO BE”.

“I WANT FREEDOM TO HAVE”.

“I WANT FREEDOM FROM THE WAY THINGS ARE”.

After making one of those powerful declarations make a new choice. Your new
or different choice may be a thought, feeling, behavior or activity.

As often as possible during a day refresh and energize your mind by finishing the
thought: “I WANT FREEDOM FROM” or “I WANT FREEDOM TO.”

As THE FREEDOM CHOICE becomes more meaningful to you, you will become aware that you create your environment with your choices. Once THE FREEDOM CHOICE becomes a regular part of your experience, there will be new meaning to the statement:

I LIVE WITHIN THE ENVIRONMENT CREATED BY MY CHOICES.

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

The Freedom Choice is one of the tools for recreating your life from my companion books, The North Star Mental Fitness Program and I Live within the Environment Created by My Choices.

9/11 Hero

William Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican and an American citizen for 19 years. He was employed at the World Trade Center. In his position, he was the only person on site with the master key to unlock the floors in the North Tower.

William Rodriguez was in the North Tower on 911. He escaped with his life. Istead of being satisfied with escaping the attack, he re-entered the North Tower three times. He saved 15 people. H still was not through with his mission.

He led firefighters of the stairway of the North Tower. As they ascended, he continued to unlock the doors. Hundreds of trapped, frightened and hopeless individuals were released and rescued because of his efforts .

I believe that William Rodriguez is a living example of a man with great mental fitness and courage. To read more about William Rodriguez, I refer you to heavenlystrength to read more about William.

William risked his life to save many. Because of the attack, he lost his job and was homeless. In spite of all this adversity, he has remained focused on helping survivors of 9/11.

Let us think of William Rodriguezand and many like him at this time of the year. Let us realize that we too will have opportunities to express our mental fitness and courage. Our opportunities may not be as heroic and dramatic, but they will still be very important and life forming.

Remember We Live within the Environment Created by Our Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

The Tea Party

The original Boston Tea Party was on December 16, 1773. A group of Massachusetts Patriots, protested the monopoly on American tea importation granted by Parliament to the East India Company. The members of the Boston tea party seized 342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on three tea ships and threw them into the harbor.

Once again, the Tea Party has become an important force in American politics. Today, I do not want to look at the Tea Party from a political perspective. Instead, let us look at the Tea Party from the perspective of mental fitness.

From this perspective, the tea party is an exciting group of individuals, who are working together to achieve their mutual goals. The essence of mental fitness is focusing and actively taking care of oneself in all areas of our lives.

The Tea Party is not depending on politicians or the President to make their lives better.

The Tea Part members are focused on taking care of themselves through becoming genuinely and actively committed to change the politics in our country.

Tea Party members are living in the present and not immobilized by the past .

Tea Party members remained focused in spite of the negativity of the press and the ridicule of the current American ruling class.

The Tea Party members are willing to accept the frustrations necessary to achieve their goals.

The Tea Party members know that happiness, freedom, piece of mind and control of their lives is dependent on their efforts and will be destroyed by being apathetic or dependent upon our current government and politicians.

The Tea Party members get It from a mental fitness perspective .

They sense the urgency and necessity of actively committing to changing our government so that people can self-actualize and pursue their dreams.

Remember, We Live within the Government Created by Our Choices or Our Failure to Make Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

What Are the Basics of Mental Fitness?

Politicians! As I read and listen to news commentaries, I wondered to myself if our politicians are mentally fit? Are they taking care of business? Are they more interested in pleasing their special interest groups to the detriment of the country? Since I was contemplating these issues, I decided to post what I think are some of the basics of mental fitness.

The basics of mental fitness from my book, I Live within the Environment Created by My Choices.

THE BASICS OF MENTAL FITNESS

1. I Live within the environment created by my choices.

2. I focus on taking care of me, now.

3. Where I want freedom from the past, I will make new choices.

4. I accept my choices as powerful and realize the content of my choices makes me powerful or powerless .

5. I accept my freedom to make or not make choices.

6. When I make a new choice, it may feel wrong and uncomfortable.

7. I accept the momentary frustrations necessary to care for me.

8. I accept my humanness and "messing up".

9. I accept and experience my higher power.

10. I belong and I actively commit myself to my family, friends, work, community and country.

11. I have quality and balance in my logical, emotional and self-parenting decision-making.

12. Success is making choice to actualize my dreams, achieve my goals and take care of myself so I have freedom, happiness, peace of mind and power over my life.

13. I do what is necessary to be successful and take care of me.

14. I claim my successes and experience the benefits of success which are freedom, happiness, peace of mind and power over my life.

15. I accept others' opinions as separate from me and I will not allow the opinions of others to deprive me from feeling good about my successes.

16. I live in the present: the place of freedom, happiness, peace of mind and power over my life.

It is important for all of us to decide if we and our our politicians are mentally fit! Are our polit Oans making decisions that are best for taking care of our country? Are our politicians applying the principles of mental fitness in running our country?

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

 

Wambach Never Doubted That They Would Win

"There aren't many moments in women's sports that are purely unbelievable sports moments, but Abby Wambach's perfect header off of Megan Rapinoe's perfect feed in the 122nd minute against Brazil yesterday was one of those moments. It is a play that makes your jaw drop and that you must watch repeatedly and studiously to grasp how it might have happened, and even then you can't quite believe that it still happened that way, because it was perfect." This was the picturesque description of the United States women's soccer team snatching victory from Brazil in the 2011 Woman's World Cup written by Emma Carmichael.

I was mesmerized by the unbelievable play. It was very clear to me that the win was not an accident. It was obvious that the team had confidence and unbelievable mental fitness.

Emma Carmichael presented numerous quotations from the players that demonstrated the effect of mental fitness, confidence and never giving.

"Rapinoe is praised for her aggression (for the ability to friggin' smack it, for example) but not necessarily for exemplary control. But it took an aggressive soul to retrieve a ball from the middle of the field and to have seen — just barely in her line of vision — Wambach's right arm pointing towards the right goalpost.

Any person who has played a sport and played it well knows that feeling when a play feels instantly right. In the replay angle that shows Rapinoe's delivery best, she gazes up after making contact with the ball and then, against her momentum, takes a few steps back, staring after it like she knows that it will go exactly where she intended it to go.

The "beast" in question was Wambach, who had been — for her standards — off the mark in group play, especially in her aerial game. She stands about six feet tall in spikes, and her height brings a threatening element to her game. But even with some faltering, and even in a contest that had pitched every possible setback against her squad, Wambach said later that she never doubted that they would win.

A lot of people today are attributing this to the American team's mentality, and to a certain kind of American spirit in sports. Sundhage, who is Swedish, said that she found the American attitude of "pulling everything together and bringing the best [out] of each other" to be "contagious," Solo called it "a feeling" that can't really be coached, and Wambach said that the team always felt that "all it takes is one chance."

Even Marta had previously acknowledged it. The Brazil star has been around for five consecutive losses to the Americans, and when a reporter asked her what made the difference, she pointed to her head and explained, 'It's the mentality."'

Wambach never doubted that they would win. This is the expression of confidence based upon mental and physical fitness. From a mental fitness perspective, there is a mentality that will not allow a person to give up. No matter how bad or pressing circumstances are, there is always a solution or a victory.

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

28 July 4th Quotes

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or
ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of
liberty.
John F. Kennedy

This nation will remain the
land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.
Elmer Davis

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.
Moshe Dayan

If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.
Hamilton Fish

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Abraham Lincoln
The Gettysburg Address, 1863.

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.
Dick Cheney

Liberty is the breath of life to nations.
George Bernard Shaw

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
Thomas Jefferson

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
Bill Clinton

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
Lee Greenwood

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
Louis D. Brandeis

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
William Faulkner

Where liberty is, there is my country.
Benjamin Franklin

Freedom is never free.
Author Unknown

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.
Woodrow Wilson

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
Simone de Beauvoir

All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
Rudyard Kipling


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.
Robert J. McCracken

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
Woody Guthrie

Let freedom never perish in your hands.
Joseph Addison

Quoations from: All Great Quotes.

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach.

Whatever the Mind Can Conceive and Believe

 "Whattever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve, regardless how many times you have failed in the past or how lofty your aims and hope may be".

In this quotation, Napoleon Hill described the essence of mental fitness.  This quotation not only describes the essence of success, it brings hope and excitement for those who want to depend upon their minds.

The power of the mind is revealed in the Brooklyn Bridge Story.  Ilka Flood wrote about the incredible Brooklyn Bridge Story in "An Inspiring Story of Determination and Realizing Your Dream".

I hope you will read the story.

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

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach