Counseling for Individuals & Couples

If I were stuck on a desert island and could only bring one book with me, this would be the book!  You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L Hay.  It’s a must-have in my toolbox.

Louise wrote this book back in the 1970′s- it’s a precursor to the recently popular book The Secret.  You Can Heal Your Life describes the “Law of Attraction” in a spiritual non-materialistic way. Louise L Hay explains that things like health, relationships, confidence, forgiveness and wealth come into our lives based on our thoughts. You may remember this post on gratitude thinking and why our thoughts are so important.

I keep this book in my toolbox because I love pulling it out when I am feeling down.  I like to use it as a starting point when I feel overwhelmed in a situation and as a way to gain some clarity on that situation.  Reviewing this book always reminds me that “this too shall pass.”

It helps me gain some perspective on how I got where I am, where I want to be instead, and gives tangible affirmations to start my journey towards that better place.  It also has an amazing chart towards the end that Louise uses to help us connect physical ailments like headaches, digestive issues, depression, anxiety, hay fever, and even acne with the negative thought pattern that causes them.

Check it out sometime, you may find it to be a nice fit in your own toolbox as well!

Have you guys checked out the website  i can read before? I found the above photo on this site and I just love it.

Too often we assume that the important (and not so important) people in our lives just know how we feel about them… but you know what they say about ass-u-me-ing things, right?  Especially in our long term relationships, we get comfortable and spend a lot of time pointing out our partner’s short-comings, but how much time do we spend pointing out or acknowledging their strengths and appreciation that they are in our lives?

So here’s my challenge to you- start telling the people in your life how you feel about them! We are coming up on a new month, so it’s a perfect time to create a month long project out of this.  And here’s how….

Spend the next week creating your “plan of attack” for this challenge.

• Figure out who you are going to include in your project and how much focus you want to put on each person.  For example, if you are in a relationship, maybe it’s just your partner you want to focus on, or maybe you want to pick a different person for each day of the month.  Totally up to you, but it’s easier to have a plan up front.

• Next start creating a list (mental or hard copy) of the things you appreciate, love, respect, cherish, make you giggle, rely on, take for granted about the person or people you’ve selected.  Remember April has 30 days so if you are focusing on your partner, you want to have 30 things in your list.

• Then figure out how you’d like to communicate these things with the people you’ve selected.  It could be with daily emails, text messages, hand written notes, little presents or treats that represent your specific feelings.

Like maybe you want to give your partner or friend a role of Life Savers candy because they saved your life, or project in some way.  Maybe there are some cute songs (like “My Life Would Suck Without You” by the cast of  Glee) that you can burn or gift through iTunes.  Or maybe you either print out or create the month of April from a calendar and then each day, write a new thing.

It’s up to you how you present the info, but it will be easier to complete this challenge if you have a plan ahead of time.  You can even use some of the planning time to purchase some materials, or save a few draft emails, what ever you need to make the next 30 days easier.

But have fun with this part.  Get creative.  Trust the process and know that it will get easier and more fun the more you do it.

Then, on April 1st begin your project!

• Spend a just a few minutes each day telling the people in your life how important they are to you, how much you appreciate them, how much they make you laugh or keep you on track.

• Do this for all 30 days in April!  It’s only 30 days, you can do it.

• Along the way, notice the differences this “challenge” is bringing into your relationships and self.  We get what we put out, so even though this challenge is based around giving to other people it will be impossible for you not to start feeling more loved, appreciated, happy, and hopeful along the way!

Finally, take this challenge and make it your own!

• Maybe it’s something you do once a quarter with your family, maybe it replaces Christmas or Birthday presents this year, maybe showing appreciating and love becomes a weekly task for you…. doesn’t matter how you do it, it just matters that you do it, and that it fits for you.

reflection on gratitude

Originally uploaded by cmvoelkel

My blog post from yesterday got me thinking, and I realized that while gratitude is something that you probably often hear about in relation to creating happiness, you might not know why it’s important. So that’s what we are going to talk about today- why gratitude, or positive thinking, or acknowledging what you are grateful for is actually important.

(Gotta add a little green for St. Patty’s day!)

Gratitude thinking is not the “band-aid on a gun shot wound” sort of treatment that you may think it is. It’s not suggested by therapists, life coaches, and ancient wisdoms to distract you, or make you “touchy-feely,” or to down play the difficult things that may be going on in your life. Honestly, it’s not.

Gratitude thinking has the ability to physically reorganize our brains so we can treat the cause of the problem not just the symptoms. So instead of taking Pepcid AC when your tummy gets upset, you avoid getting the upset tummy all together. Does that make sense?

To start, we have to understand the human brain just a little bit more (promise I won’t go off the deep end with this, hang in there with me for a few sentences).

Our brain is an organ like every other body part we have. This particular organ is like an elaborate map of dirt roads in our heads. There are endless twists and turns and ways of getting to our destination, and like driving on a dirt road, the paths we use most often become the easiest to travel on because they have nice deep tracks already created. If we take these routes we are able to follow along in the tracks, and have a nice smooth ride. Our thoughts work the exact same way.

The thought patterns we use most often have the deepest tracks, and therefore are the easiest to use. So if we are constantly thinking “something is going to go wrong,” or “I hate this,” or “nothing good ever happens to me” that is the pathway with the deepest tracks and the route our brain sends all it’s thoughts through.

Gratitude thinking changes this. By including gratitude thinking in our day, and forcing ourselves to see things from a new angle, we physically create a new pathway (or dirt road) in our brains.

As the tracks in this more positive pathway become deeper and deeper it becomes easier and easier for our brains to send information through these tracks. The more information that goes through these positive tracks, the easier it is for us to see things more positively, and to feel more positive and hopeful.

Gratitude thinking has the same snowball reaction that negative thinking does, and as your positive tracks deepen it becomes easy to see the good side of not-so-good things.  Like in this blog.

Another way to look at it is that gratitude thinking is actually exercise for our brains. It helps new muscles develop and strengthen, and literally changes the physical look and function of our brains just like bench pressing changes our physical bodies.

So next time someone tells you to “think positively” don’t write him or her off so quickly. Maybe they are on to something……