Mental Fitness^®Training
(@ 1998-2001, Dr. Yanina Shapiro)

If you never heard of Mental Fitness^®, you probably wonder whether Mental Fitness^® Training is a kind of Mental Health Therapy. A short answer is "no", Mental Fitness^® Training is as different from therapy as Physical Therapy is different from a workout with personal trainer.

Mental Fitness^® Training is neither a therapy nor a treatment, but prevention of mental health problems. It is athletics for the mind. Therapy and other treatments involve manipulation. A health professional decides what your best condition is to be and how it is to be achieved. A mental health professional may decide that therapy alone would do or prescribe a combination of therapy and Prozac. In training or coaching, you decide where you want to go and what results you are going to achieve, and a coach or trainer helps you get there, faster than you would on your own . Mental Fitness^® Training involves no manipulation. It is you who is training your brain and making it work better and better.

Mental Health Therapy is about digging the unconscious and re-living one's childhood. Mental Health Therapy is based on the assumption that if you dig long and deep enough, you will understand your true self and, thus, will be set free of all the problems you are facing today. But how? If you are permanently stuck in analyzing your childhood and tracing its problems to your parents, to your environment, to your church, to your football coach, to the neighborhood bully, etc, when will you reflect upon your present life and your present self?

The fact that your present self has a beginning does not meant that your present problems must begin in the problems of a child, whose pictures you identify as continuous with your present self. Why should that child, whose survival was completely and totally dependent on his/her caretakers, be the cause of your today's anger with your boss or your office mate? In the years that have elapsed since then, have you not began taking charge of your own life? Have not people other than your parents touched your life and influenced you? Have you not touched and influenced other people?

Do you really feel that the child in an old photograph, of you, at a tender age of 5, is somehow hidden inside your present self, just as pop-psychology books say it is? As if each of us were a set of Russian dolls, a smaller doll sitting inside the bigger one - a doll per a year of life, forming the line of 54 dolls that stretches out in front of the biggest one, yourself at the age of 55. Well, if you prefer to feel this way, then you may want to stick with your psychotherapy and/or Prozac. Otherwise, give a try to a different philosophy. Yes, I did say philosophy, because the choice between whether you are responsible for your future or your future is at the mercy of your past is a philosophy.

Among many a myth scientific psychology has produced none has been as pervasive as Sigmund Freud's idea that the past determines the present by leaving undeletable traces on "the unconscious". By training, Sigmund Freud was a medical doctor. Incidentally, psychoanalysis was not his chosen profession. He intended to do research in neuroscience, but, being Jewish, he could not obtain a research position in Vienna, Austria. So, he became a psychoanalyst and eventually became very famous. At the turn of the last century though, he was much more famous in the United States than in Europe. And until this day, in the USA, many people rate his discovery of the "unconscious" as one of the greatest achievements of the 20-th century science. A discovery it was not. Rather, it was a postulate, which cannot be either proven or disproven.

Freud never explained how the conscious phenomena turn into "the unconscious", but he endeavored to explain how "the unconscious" comes undone. That is supposed to happen through psychoanalysis. Freud believed that only his brand of psychoanalysis was a legitimate cure. Later on, other schools of psychoanalysis emerged and gave birth to new therapies. But whatever other differences between psychotherapies, they pretty much agree on being able to trace the patient's present problems to their roots, in childhood.

At the turn of the last century, another MD, William James, who had studied philosophy and psychology, and then taught psychology and then philosophy at Harvard University, was not in the least impressed with the lectures on psychoanalysis that Freud delivered at Clark University. William James, who by then was a famous philosopher, much admired both in this country and in Europe, thought that the whole idea of "the unconsciousness" was a humbug. Given his philosophy, he could hardly have thought otherwise. William James was not a determinist; he believed in the "Will", which, simply put, means that we can improve upon our brainwork.

At that time, in the absence of experimental proof, William James thought the "Will" could be no more than a philosophy, but he hoped that eventually it will be proven by experimental evidence. By now, the supporting experimental evidence has began emerging. And while the word "will" had gotten a bad reputation, because of its incorrect interpretation as "free will", i.e. something independent of the brain, it is now recognized that our thought patterns affect our brains' activity (which was precisely the argument advanced by William James).

It is from James's idea of "will" or mental effort, that the idea of Mental Fitness^® stems.

Mental Fitness^® is about training your brain to fare well today, tomorrow, and in the years to come, despite all the difficulties and unhappiness of the past. It is about exhaling today's anger, stretching the muscle of memory, mastering the aerobics of problem solving and the gymnastics of reflection, and about learning to balance personal and professional growth on the beam of satisfactory and pleasant daily living. Mental Fitness^® is about Your Own Effort, about the Work You Do to Prevent your Mind from ever Needing the help of Mental Health Professionals (psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, therapists, psychoanalysts, etc.) - the folks who are in the business of diagnosing and treating minds by various medical means.

Well, like most of our clients, you have probably never heard either of Mental Fitness^® Training or of Mental Fitness^®Coach or of Mental Fitness Gym^® . Those ideas have been developed by Corporate Psychology & Mental Fitness and its affiliate Brain-Flex^® Inc and are their registered trademarks. While we cannot disclose our proprietary information, what we can say, and what we want you to remember, is that Mental Fitness^® is just as trainable as physical fitness is.

Mental Fitness^® Training is about creating a set of individually tailored strategies for increasing mental agility and cognitive productivity of people's minds, which are as different and unique as are their bodies.

Mental Fitness^® is about exercise and training for one's brain, and body. Cannot exercise alone? Brain-Flex^® for success at our on line Mental Fitness Gym^®

Even the best fit minds are sometimes overwhelmed with the problems of today. At such times a personal Mental Fitness^® Trainer/Coach could help. And so s/he could in tuning up your memory, risk taking, and decision making skills.

Need a coach? www.coaching365.com