This quote is not by a famous “psychologist” but the Oscar winning actor, Laurence Olivier.

Perfectionism is an illusion. Both achieving it and maintaining it even if you think you have it, just leads to anxiety, stress, depression and low self-worth. Perfectionists feel they are never good enough. It is like pouring water into a funnel. No matter how much you put in, it never stays full.

When you strive to do your best, you are focusing in on what you can control, appreciate your efforts and have goals you can work towards achieving. Your opportunities for improving and getting better increase and you feel good about your efforts and your progress towards your goals.

These are some of the ideas I explore with my clients in my Boca Raton office and through the many counseling clients I work with by phone and SKYPE.

As a cognitive therapist, I help people recognize and improve the way they think in order to feel and behave better. While understanding the past is useful in knowing how you learned to develop your thoughts and beliefs, changing them is often the key to both feeling and getting better and achieving success and excellence.

For articles, books and other “self-help” information visit, www.cognitivetherapy.cc

Psychological Training

Given the stressors on a child prodigy and professional athletes, I believe psychological “training” should be required and is every bit as important as the technical training and physical conditioning athletes undergo.

The biggest reason for the success is the natural ability of the individual. Within 1 or 2 sessions, I can see how deeply a person gets in the trance (relaxation) phase. If they are highly responsive, I then develop a series of specific suggestions based on their needs and goals, then verbally “feed” them back to the client while they are in the trance. I often record the session and have them practice between sessions.

Accelerate Progress Through Hypnosis

While no one knows how hypnosis works for sure, it’s a great tool that can accelerate progress in many individuals.  My mental condition CD-ROM, TENNISMIND is based on hypnosis and numerous tennis coaches use it regularly with the students. It’s available on the products portion of my website, www.robertheller.net.

While I am disappointed and shocked by the revelations, I still admire and respect him as a great player, sportsman, ambassador for the game and philanthropist.The lesson for me is no one is perfect and that it’s never to late to share the truth.

Sports psychologists will have a field day on assessing his motivations and timing of it.

What do you think?

For many men, (myself included), I know sports and exercise are a great stress reliever and tends to improve my mood.

Other studies have reported the beneficial effects of exercise in reducing depression.

Mind-body Medicine

Mind-body medicine supports the idea that a healthy lifestyle can prevent and eliminate some of our major diseases.

To this end, I have produced a number of self help guidebooks that are easy to read and provide useful mind-body solutions to many of life’s common challenges. They are available on my products page.

How will this turn of events impact her personal life, relationships, trust and career? In the short run, it certainly can’t be good. Hopefully, she will be guided to seek competent professional counseling to help her sort out and manage her emotions and the complex issues that they evoke.

Being Present

By being in the present and not worrying about the future you reduce self-inflicted pressure. I remember year ago, when I was into golf, one of the best rounds I ever played was the one I didn’t keep score on! Developing the skill to be “aware” without “judging or evaluating” can help you perform at your best.

As a psychologist who works with adolescent boys I can tell you that the discipline, teamwork, leadership skills along with physical and mental benefits are among the BEST things many kids receive in high school.

The Obesity Epidemic

Research indicates that standard PE classes don’t make a dent in the obesity epidemic. Interesting you don’t see many obese male HS athletes! Also kids who learn to care about their body and need to be in top shape are far less likely to pursue drinking and illegal drugs for entertainment purposes.

Far better to channel their energy into sports than to join street gangs and to hang out on corners or malls.

Eliminating these programs is ” penny wise and dollar foolish”. Governments will end up spending much bigger bucks down the road to deal with the problems they will cause.

As individuals we should contact school committees and legislatures to ensure funds are available to keep these programs going.

To the extent that it’s true, I hypothesize that most of these middle aged and senior women are often not really athletes and have not participated in competitive sports before. They are social/recreational players who happen to compete on a team in a league. I believe that this lack of experience leads to unrealistic expectations about normal behaviors that occur during competition. These participants become overly sensitive, easily have their feelings hurt, personalize events and feel they should have more control and say over events than they do.

Adding to this is the fact that many times, the “coaches” are often the employees of the team members and their income and jobs are often tied to “not making waves”. As a result, “bad” or “inappropriate” player behaviors are often overlooked or result in only minor consequences.

I welcome thoughts and comments on this subject.

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