Deborah Horton

Enhance Your Calm

Enhance your calm and be well. So many of my clients struggle with anxiety related issues and find it hard to be calm. Whether it is non-stop thoughts, worrying about what other people say or think about them, inability to sleep or sleep well, social situations, past events or traumas they find it hard to notice the present moment, breathe, and relax. With just a few changes or additions to your daily routine, you can learn to enhance your calm and be well.

Everyone is so busy or think they are so busy that they often feel they cannot incorporate any calming strategies into their lives. However, many of those calming activities can take just a few short minutes each day. If you cut a few minutes off your time spent on your phone or other devices you could find the time very quickly to enhance your calm.

Meditation practice offers many ways to incorporate calm into your life. Headspace is a guided meditation app I have used for years. It offers a free option with 10 basic meditation units that you can use over and over again to become more calm. It also offers a paid version that has meditation units as short as 1 minute in length and other units that are targeted to specific situations. Meditation is not about learning how to STOP thinking it is about learning to notice your thoughts and let them GO. Seeing your thoughts as clouds and that just pass through, not as plants that put down roots and stay.

Another way to enhance your calm quickly is practicing deep breathing techniques. There are several techniques to practice and you may find you benefit from one more than another. It just takes practice. You can practice before sleep, while driving, on the bus, in class or at work, while you are scanning your electronic devices. Everyone has a few minutes to spare to enhance their calm.

Progressive muscle relaxation is another way to enhance your calm that once you have practiced it only takes a few minutes as well. Once you have learned the “script” by practicing multiple times, you will be able to achieve deep relaxation throughout your muscles with head to toe calm.

Essential oils can be an additional item to use to manage anxiety and stress. Using aromatherapy through diffusers, applying oils to cotton balls, or just breathing them as you are doing deep breathing practice can enhance your calm dramatically. Some of the best oils to use for anxiety and stress are Valerian, Jatamansi, Lavendar, Bergamot, Chamomile, Ylang-Ylang, Vetiver, Frankincense, Clary Sage, Holy Basil are all very good at enhancing your calm. Blends of these oils are even more effective. Always use pure, organic oils for aromatherapy to get the best results.

Some other ways to enhance your calm that you can add on to these more practiced ways include exercise even if it’s just a little bit to release endorphins, very dark chocolate at least 80% cocoa, laughing A LOT, and a nice cup of Sleepytime tea from time to time.

If you find yourself getting on to your phone or other device and thinking you will spend just a few minutes only to realize you’ve been at it for hours, binge watch full seasons of shows on Netflix in a weekend, or spending a lot of time wondering how to feel less anxious – you have time to use some of these ways to enhance your calm and be well.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you think counseling can help you enhance your calm more and learn how to let go of some of the things that keep you anxious and worried, I am accepting new clients (adolescent girls and adult women) for counseling. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com to set up a FREE initial consultation.

Deborah Horton

The Boss Of You

When we are growing up, we have people who can appear to be the boss of us. Parents, teachers, employers, friends, romantic relationships, or just about anyone who we feel has the ability or authority to tell us what to do and how to do it. Also as we grow, we start to develop the ability and the desire to make our own choices, to be the boss of ourselves. The struggle comes when we have the ability to make our own choices but we continue to let others or our own negative thoughts make them for us.

Over time, our own negative thoughts can become louder than the words of any real person or even our own words. Much like the voice of a military drill sergeant, it is constantly talking to us, repeating the same negative thoughts over and over. Many times it can sound like the voice of someone in our life who was critical of us, who abused us, who hurt us in some way, someone whose voice makes us feel even worse about ourselves. This voice becomes the boss of you.

Listening to this voice every day reinforces the negative things and your brain believes that these things are true. This voice becomes the boss of you and it is no longer you making decisions about your emotions, your choices, your life but it is the voice.

What if when the negative voice speaks to you, instead of going along with it and believing it, you talk back to it with something positive. It takes practice and it takes time and it takes doing it over and over. You did not come to the place of having your negative thoughts be the boss of you overnight and you won’t replace them overnight. As long as you let the negative thoughts continue to boss you, your brain continues to believe them and then looks for ways to make them true.

If you have the same negative thoughts repeatedly, write them down. For each negative thought you write down, write a positive thought next to it. Example, “what happened to you was your fault” positive “I did the best I could at the time” or “what happened to me was not my fault”. Rate your percentage of belief of your positive thought on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being you barely believe it to 10 being you totally believe it. If you find positive thoughts with a higher percentage of you believing them to be true, use those. However, your brain will start to believe the positive things you tell it if you say them over and over just as it has done with the negative things.

Start today to be the boss of you. One thought at a time.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you are a teen girl or adult woman or know one who could benefit from learning how to be the boss of their own thoughts and lives, I offer FREE Initial consultation appointments to see if counseling with me is a good fit. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com to set up an appointment.

Deborah Horton

Meditate This Way

Meditation is a tool that I try to use with most all of my clients. Many clients believe that meditation is for controlling your thoughts. A way to be able to think about nothing. To clear your mind. Most of these beliefs, however, are false. Meditation is about learning to be mindful, to be calm, in the midst of your thoughts and emotions and to not get stuck in them.

Headspace is an app I have used for several years now for guided meditation with clients and for myself. The main goal of this particular meditation app is to help you train your mind to see thoughts, become aware of them, notice how they make you feel, and then to let them pass through your mind instead of taking up residence in it. Not thinking is never the goal. Not feeling is never the goal. It is to think and feel without allowing those thoughts and emotions to control you. You control them and by doing so, you can let them go.

Many people view their thoughts as something their brain is telling them. The brain only tells you what you have put in. Human brains are like very powerful computers and like all computers brains digest and spit out what you put into them. Your brain did not on it’s own start thinking negative things about you. It did not start believing these things by itself. You told it to do so and so it did. You repeatedly told it what you believe about yourself, your life, your relationships and it believes you and then works to make these things all true because they must be true – you said they were.

These millions of thoughts that are input and then become stuck are what we allow to control how we think and feel every moment of every day. Meditation is about taking control over those thoughts and not allowing them to be stuck. Imagine that whatever thought you are thinking at the moment is in a cloud. See it, become aware of it. However, just like clouds that you have watched millions of times, they never remain in the same place, ever. They come and they go. Imagine your thought cloud coming and then going and when it is gone it is gone. Say to yourself, I am having the thought that (insert thought here) and I am letting this thought go. And when it leaves return your focus to your breathing and only your breathing. Next thought comes and we do the same thing again. We are in control of our thoughts. It just takes practice.

The second piece of resistance clients can have is stating they have no time for meditation. Do you spend 10 minutes a day just scrolling through your phone or online just scrolling, not really doing anything of consequence? Do you have 10 minutes before you fall asleep that you are just lying in bed with your thoughts? If you do, you have time to meditate. It doesn’t take hours, just a few minutes to begin to take control over your thoughts and to stop letting them control you.

Remember, the goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts and emotions but to become more aware of them, to learn how to move through them without getting stuck.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you think counseling could help you learn how to control your thoughts and emotions, set up a FREE initial consultation with me by calling 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or visit Mindful Montana Wellness on Facebook and click the Book Now button.

Deborah Horton

Comfort of the Familiar

Mindful Montana Wellness, LLC Professional Counseling Services Blog

Humans are content to remain in the comfort of the familiar. They dislike change. They dislike the unknown. They fear letting go of what they know. They fear letting go of what they are used to. Where they live their lives.

If you let go of the things that have taken up residence in your minds, in your hearts, in your emotions, what then takes the place of that? If you let go of negative things that you have built your life around, what comes next? Something worse or something better? The truth is, until you let go of the things you are familiar with, you will never know what waits for you. You will make assumptions about what it is, and they will take the form you choose, negative or positive, but the truth is not discovered until you let go of what has become comfortable. What is familiar. What you have decided to live with, blame yourself for, hurt over, be sad over, be stuck in.

How do we gain the strength to venture into the discomfort of the unfamiliar? By peeling off the layers of the familiar in which we live. Years spent in adding more and more to what we are comfortable with, what we allow ourselves to wallow in, what we choose to feel every day, what we never stop thinking about. How do we undo this damage? One layer at a time.

In my practice, I always have a worst first approach. If you cannot work through the worst thing first, you cannot get beyond anything that comes after. Everything else is informed by what happened first – what affects you most – what worst is for you. Everything else follows along after that, is added to that, is layered on to that. It is the hardest place to start and it is the most important for letting go, for learning lessons, and for moving on.

The comfort of the familiar is very difficult to change because it is frightening. The layers we have added provide a way to not look at the things that started us on the path we walk over and over day after day going nowhere. If we remove the layers, then we have to look at the truth and the truth is scary, difficult, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar.

Freedom is the only condition for happiness – letting go gives us happiness. If we truly desire to be free of events, thoughts, emotions that keep us stuck – we must let go – to move towards happiness.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you feel stuck in the comfort of the familiar of your past, perhaps counseling can help you find freedom. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the BOOK button on Facebook to schedule a FREE initial counseling consultation.

Deborah Horton

Control Yourself

In all of the universe there is only one thing any of us can control – ourselves. Our circle of control resides inside our skin bag and there alone. Any other belief that we can control anything else is a lie we tell ourselves to attempt to either make things easier or justify our actions.

Most of our lives are spent in the false belief that we can control other people, events, or emotions. We spend so much of our time and energy focused on how we can alter how other people behave or feel, change things that have happened or alter things that will happen. We rarely take the time to realize that our circle of control is again only that which is within ourselves. The belief that we can shape other people into what we want them to be is one of the main causes of our internal struggle that leads to anger, depression, anxiety, and frustration.

When the urge to control things outside of ourselves takes over, we must confront it with the acceptance that we cannot control anything but ourselves and our own reactions. We cannot change anyone else. We cannot change how they feel or how they behave. We can only control our reactions to what they do. Also remembering that nothing anyone does or says is about us – not taking anything personally.

It can be very difficult to master this letting go of control. Humans as a species are genetically wired to take control of any environment, dominate it, shape it to their needs, however we cannot control as much as we would like to believe. It can be very hard to let go of this idea of control and focus on only what we can do. We let our emotions drive us. We love someone, even when it is not good for us at times, and we want to change them so we can keep loving them, but they won’t change. We end up in a constant battle of knowing we cannot succeed and banging our head on the wall continually trying to make it into what we want. This only causes us more suffering, more frustration.

Control yourself. Two words. It sounds easy enough but it is in fact one of the hardest things to do. It takes work, it takes sacrifice, it takes practice to let go of the belief that we can control everything and everyone around us. If we can, we can minimize or even eliminate much of the pain and suffering we cause ourselves.

Control yourself – your emotions, your reactions.
Never take anything personally – nothing other people do or say is about you.
Let go of control – everything and everyone else outside of yourself.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you are feeling that you need help learning how to control yourself and let go of control of others, you can make an appointment for a FREE initial consultation by calling 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com

Deborah Horton

Always Do Your Best

When someone says do your best, what kind of images does that conjure up for you? For those in school, does it make you feel as if you have to make all A’s? At work, does it mean continual advancement in your job? In relationships, does it mean giving more than your partner? For parents, does it mean giving your kids everything they want? What does always do your best mean to you?

Miguel Ruiz in his book The Four Agreements states that the fourth agreement is “Always Do Your Best.” In his book, he talks about what that should mean to us and how to apply it to our lives. Always do your best is different for every person and it’s different every moment of every day.

Sometimes, your best may be to just wake up in the morning. Sometimes, your best may be to get out of bed. Sometimes, your best may be getting dressed. Sometimes, your best may be not wanting to harm yourself. Sometimes, your best may be thinking one positive thing about yourself or your life. Your best is whatever you can manage to do, think, or feel that day that may make your life even one atom better.

We constantly beat ourselves up for “not doing our best.” This best that others put on us or we have put on ourselves by making agreements that this is what the best is and only this. Anything else and we feel less than, we start to place blame on ourselves, we start to talk negative to ourselves, and we do not see anything else as our best. Because we believe the agreements we have made about what is actually our best.

If you have been staying in bed all day due to depression or illness and you get up out of the bed today – that is doing our best – in that moment and you should be proud of that, be positive with that, allow that to be okay. If you have been staying in your house every day due to anxiety and you decide to walk out onto your front porch or steps – that is doing your best – in that moment. Take possession of that, make agreement with that, be positive with that and allow that to be okay.

Always doing your best will change from moment to moment and situation to situation. If we can stop putting the past agreements we have made with others and ourselves onto every choice, we can start to feel better about our best that moment, start to be more positive about our best that moment, and those moments will happen more and more often until everything we do is always our best and we agree with that changing our lives for the better.

What is doing your best in this moment? Make that agreement, feel that positivity, change your beliefs, and step into always doing your best and being okay with that, whatever it may be.

Until next time I wish you peace,
Deborah

If you feel you need help accepting your best, managing your emotions, or coping with your life issues, make an appointment for a FREE initial consultation for counseling by calling 406-413-9904 or emailing mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com

Deborah Horton

Don’t Make Assumptions

Mindful Montana Wellness

In Michael Ruiz book The Four Agreements, the third agreement is Don’t Make Assumptions. Making assumptions complicates so much of our lives and relationships to the point of ruining them in some cases.

When we are very young, we continuously ask the question why. We are always seeking answers and explanations. It is only as we grow older that we stop doing that and start assuming the answers instead of asking the question. Instead of why, we assume it is because someone doesn’t like us or that the answer will always be no. Instead of talking to people to see what it is they really think and feel, we assume they don’t love us, we assume they don’t want to be our friend, we assume they think we are fat, dumb, ugly, lazy, weird, or any other number of adjectives. These assumptions make our lives and relationships chaos and cause us to believe all the stories we are telling ourselves instead of finding out the truth.

We also make assumptions about ourselves and those agreements prevent us from living our best lives. We assume that were are not smart enough to make our dreams a reality, that we are not pretty enough or lovable enough to have a meaningful relationship with someone, that we are not cool enough for our peers to want to hang out with us, that we are not strong enough to be more than what our past experiences have taught us. We spend our every thought on assumptions about ourselves or about others and hardly a single moment on the truth or finding out what the truth actually is.

Instead of letting the assumption become our reality, we need to stop the assumption as soon as it comes into our mind. To do this, we have to ask that thought if it is true, what is the proof that it is true and this has to be something that is real not just something we think. If this assumption is what we think someone else thinks we have to ask have we actually talked to them about this honestly. Every assumption needs to be confronted with the question, what is the proof that this is the absolute truth. Almost always, the answer will be that it is not or that we have no idea whether it is or not because we have not talked honestly with the person we are making the assumptions about.

Find the strength to ask the questions of yourself and others. Practice asking honestly for the things you want. People cannot read your mind. Communicate openly and clearly with yourself and others to avoid the chaos of assumptions and the sadness and drama that it causes to your life. Practicing undoing this one agreement can completely transform your life one assumption at a time.

Until next time,
Deborah

Now accepting new clients, specializing in adolescent girls and adult females, in person and online counseling available in Montana. Call 406-413-9904 to set up your FREE Initial Consultation.

Deborah Horton

Don’t Take Anything Personally

In Michael Ruiz book The Four Agreements, the second agreement is Don’t Take Anything Personally. This may be the agreement that we as humans make with others and with ourselves and one of the most destructive to our lives.

We make agreements with others and with ourselves from the day we are born taking things personally. As a baby, someone in our lives may continually tell us that we are “such a pretty baby”, “such a smart baby”, “such a happy baby” or in some cases “such a slow learner”, “such a slow walker” “cry all the time”. We as humans make agreements with what is being said and if we believe those agreements we embody those things and they become who we are. If we believe we are pretty, smart, and happy because we agreed and took personally what someone else said – this becomes our reality. If we believe we are stupid, slow, and unhappy because we agreed and took personally what someone else said – this becomes our reality.

In the Four Agreements, Ruiz states something over and over – Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. Read that statement again. Now say it out loud. Now make an agreement with yourself that this is the truth. Nothing anyone else says or does is because of you. It is because of their own agreements, emotions, truths. Not yours. It only becomes yours after you agree with them and begin to believe it as truth.

We make agreements with ourselves in the same way. The things that we tell ourselves everyday, over and over, we choose to agree or disagree with, we choose to believe or to not believe. Almost all of these things have their root in something someone else has said or done to us and we have already agreed, so the belief is already started in our minds. We water it with repeating it, with believing it, with becoming it until it grows into a tree in our minds with deep roots that are hard to move.

How can we make changes to agreements we have made for years with others and ourselves? First, we must become aware of the things we have agreed to and confront those that need to change. Second, we must want to change more than we want to stay as we are. Third, we must have patience. Undoing trees with deep roots takes time and work, hard work. And fourth, we must repeat, repeat, repeat to ourselves as many times as it takes the replacement agreement we want to make. Such as, the old agreement – I am stupid and the new agreement – I can learn to do anything or it was my fault with I did the best I could at the time.

Remember,nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. Don’t take anything personally. The second step of freedom on the path of the Four Agreements.

Until next time,

Deborah

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Deborah Horton

Be Impeccable

In Michael Ruiz’s book The Four Agreements the first agreement is Be Impeccable With Your Word.  It is first because it is the most important and the one that is necessary to be able to accomplish the other three.

To understand this agreement, it is necessary that to understand the definition of “word” in this context.  The Word (capital W) is a force that we create with and includes all that we express.  Not just spoken words, but emotions, actions, thoughts, and attitudes. All of this is the Word.

To express ourselves impeccably means to express ourselves in the direction of truth and love including love, respect, and acceptance for ourselves.  The emotions of jealousy, envy, sadness, and frustration are not impeccable.  The emotions of anger and fear are also usually not impeccable except in the case of having to fight for your life.  If you lose your job something you have worked your whole life to have and are angry and fearful, these are emotionally painful, but your life is not in danger therefore these emotions are not impeccable.

The direction of truth does not include someone speaking “my truth” or “their truth”.  Those kinds of truth are only someone’s opinion of the truth, not necessarily the truth and are viewed by others under the lens of their own truth.  Because someone believes what they are saying is the truth doesn’t mean it is THE truth.  It is an opinion that can be filled with judgments and hard emotions.  When you are impeccable you do not need to defend what you say as the truth.

Another part of being impeccable is to be without fault or blame.  Truly one of the hardest things to accomplish.  It has taken years for us to form the agreements we have made with ourselves and others regarding our own fault, the fault of others, and the blame we have placed for every situation in our lives.  Being impeccable means to refrain from criticism, judgement, or finding fault with yourself and others not just in the words you speak but the thoughts that you think.  This single change allows us to take total responsibility for our own lives.

Being impeccable also leads into the second agreement Never Take Anything Personally.  For example, if you have 100% faith in your intelligence and someone calls you stupid and you feel hurt or offended, you have allowed yourself to take that personally and believe even a tiny bit of what they said is true.  You give them the power to change your faith in yourself.  Be impeccable with your Word to yourself.

Being impeccable means to be truthful, honest, and kind in what is spoken, what is done, what is thought, and what is felt.  It sounds easy, but it is difficult to undo the years of learning to use our Word to be dishonest and unkind to ourselves and others.  Learning to be impeccable is a one moment at a time journey that requires thinking before talking to ourselves or others, doing to ourselves or others, thinking to ourselves or about others, or emotions we place on ourselves or others.  Will you be able to be impeccable always? No – but you can keep trying in each moment of your life and by doing so the happiness and love for yourself and others will only increase.

The Four Agreements:

Be Impeccable With Your Word

Don’t Take Anything Personally

Don’t Make Assumptions

Always Do Your Best

 

Deborah Horton

The Four Agreements

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

The Four Agreements written by Miguel Ruiz is a wealth of life changing information. Miguel Ruiz was raised by his mother and grandfather in Mexico. His mother was a “healer” and his grandfather was a “shaman” in the Toltec Indian culture. Miguel had a life altering car crash that moved his path back towards his cultural heritage and out of that came this wonderful book.

Ruiz writes that from the time we are born we are making agreements. Agreements with our parents for what we learn, what we eat, how we live, and about who we are. We make agreements with everyone we come into contact with through our lives – people, social media, television, music, etc.. Some of these agreements can be positive and uplifting such as “you are smart, you are loved, you can succeed.” Some, however, can be negative such as “you are stupid, you can not succeed, you are worthless.” It is in these agreements that we form all the things we believe about ourselves. Over years and years of making these agreements, it becomes very difficult to break them.

It is because of these agreements that we judge ourselves, find ourselves guilty and punish ourselves. We abuse ourselves more than anyone else could ever abuse us. If we abuse ourselves very badly, we can tolerate someone who beats us up, humiliates us, and treats us like dirt. Why? Because in our agreements and beliefs we think “I deserve it. This person is doing me a favor by being with me. I’m not worthy of love and respect. I’m not good enough.” We have the need to be accepted and loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves.

There are thousands of agreements we have made with ourselves, with God, with society, with our parents, with our families, with our friends, but the most important agreements are those we make with ourselves because they define our beliefs about who we are, what we feel, what we believe, and how we behave. One agreement is easy to break, but thousands are very difficult.

In order to find joy and fulfillment in life, we must find the courage to break these agreements that are fear-based and claim our personal power. If you adopt these four agreements and have a very strong will, you can begin to live your life with these agreements creating personal power to break all other agreements and transform your life.

Click the link in the right hand column to read more about this book and start on the path to transforming your life. I incorporate this book into many of my therapy sessions. If you think you could benefit from counseling with this as part of the process, please contact me to set up an appointment.

Until next time, I wish you peace…

Deborah