November 2020

Deborah Horton

Creating A Universe Of Gratitude

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Zig Ziglar is credited with saying:

“Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions.”

And he is so right. Of all the emotions we can experience pure gratitude is one that boosts our “feel good” chemicals, increases joy, makes us more mindful, and attracts or brings more good things to our lives. Gratitude costs nothing outside of our effort to be thankful.

Practicing gratitude is like all other things we practice and make habits in our lives. If done daily, even as little as once a day, it can become a habit in as little as 30 days. To do it more than once a day allows us to fully be aware of all the things that we have, things we are thankful for, things bringing good to our lives.

The brain is trained to focus on what we present to it as being the most important. Most of the time what we present is what we are worried about, angry about, sad about and that takes up all the brain’s focus. If we deliberately, purposefully, redirect our brain to the things we are grateful for, it will focus there. Being focused on these things instead of the things we don’t have, or the things we wish weren’t in our lives, or the things that don’t bring good things to our lives frees us to embrace happiness and joy.

There are many ways to practice gratitude. Mental gratitude — being thankful just in your mind, thinking about the things we are grateful for. Spoken gratitude — speaking out the things we are grateful for. Written gratitude — writing down the things we are thankful for. A combination of these gratitude exercises can increase the habit of being grateful daily.

I have been talking about writing as emotional transference quite a bit in sessions recently. Writing can also be very helpful in being grateful to reinforce your gratitude and the habit of being thankful. There are many, many options for gratitude journals online. You can also just as easily use any kind of paper for a journal. You can use a guided or prompting journal that gives you specific things to be grateful for on that date or you can just write about anything you want.

Many apps allow you to practice gratitude daily. I use the Gratitude Journal — Private diary & affirmations on my phone to keep a daily record of my gratitude. But I also incorporate mental and spoken forms of gratitude during the day and while practicing meditation.

It doesn’t matter what you are grateful for. It can be something big like your family, a home, a job, or health. It can also be something seemingly insignificant like coffee, a pen, pajamas, or dark chocolate. It is not what you are grateful for that matters it is that you practice BEING grateful every day to increase your happiness and joy. If you have more on the grateful side of things, you will find that more joy, more happiness, and more things to be grateful for come your way.

To create your universe of gratitude, you must put your thankfulness out into the universe. With each thankful moment you release, you are building a universe of gratitude that accepts your thanks and returns to you more things to be thankful for. If your brain is occupied with thankful thoughts more often than it is the thoughts that keep us trapped, we feel happier, freer, more at peace with ourselves and our universe.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Show Love Now

Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash


Throughout the Covid19 pandemic, one theme has run through many of my conversations with clients – death. And more specifically, the fear of death and of losing people they love.

Most of my clients are not fearful of death for themselves, but for their loved ones. Specifically for older loved ones or loved ones who have pre-existing conditions that could make a Covid19 infection possibly worse for them. They worry about death and worry about loss.

When in counseling, I use a lot of what is going on right now to help people focus on the here and now and not the speculation of future catastrophes. I do a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy work, which involves replacing negative thinking with positive.

But you cannot say to someone, how about we change that to my loved one is not going to die.

There is not, that I am aware of, any way to prevent death in human beings. All of us will die at some point. Therefore, it is very difficult and most times impossible for my clients to say they can believe the statement that their loved one is not going to die, because people do die.

Like the Covid19 virus, there is no making it just go away or that it is just not here anymore. Just like there is no making the truth that people die go away. We have no control over these things. We can mitigate by making healthy choices and working on ways to possibly extend our life span, but we cannot escape death at some point.

Staying in the here and now still works even with Covid19. Is your loved one sick? Are they taking precautions and being careful? Have they been exposed to a close contact? How are they doing right now – this moment? These are still here and now grounding questions we can ask and answer.

But what else can we do? We can always be intentional in showing our love now, today, at every opportunity to people we love. We can be proactive in our relationships to cultivate them and grow them with the people we love. We can make choices to show our love so that whenever the day does come that they are no longer here, we can say we know that they knew without a doubt that we loved them.

Being intentional with love relationships is something to be practiced whether there is Covid19 or not. It is the way we stay connected in the here and now. It is the way we share every moment of the time that we do have with people in meaningful ways.

We will still have to navigate loss and grief, but we will do so knowing that our loved ones knew we loved them and that we have many memories to keep their spirit alive with us.

We do not have to spend hours and days worrying and wondering what might happen in the future, we can live in each day, each moment showing love intentionally instead. Choosing not to lose the time we do have by letting it slip away in worry and fear.

Show love now.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Do One Thing

Photo by Joe Caione on Unsplash

I have a sign in my office that states, do one thing every day that makes you happy.

In a world of grief, division, blame, election chaos, and Covid finding happiness can seem a herculean task. But finding one thing, no matter how small, might seem a little more doable.

Think right now the first thing that comes to your mind that makes you happy. What is it? It does not matter what it is. It does not have to be something big or enormously meaningful. It can be tiny and to others may seem insignificant or even trivial, but to you it makes you happy. It makes you smile.

The first thing that came to my mind is coffee. A really good cup of coffee. Every time I have my coffee in the morning, it makes me smile. it makes me happy. It makes me warm and fuzzy. And this is something made of just beans.

Do one thing every day that makes you happy.

And in the great tradition of building habits, if you can do one thing for a period of time, you can also add to that one thing with another thing. And possibly another thing.

What if you added enough of one happy things that it filled most of your day? Would you think you would feel happier overall? You would need to notice and acknowledge each one. Speak gratitude for each. Enjoy the smile, the happiness, the warmth for each one.

How many one things could you have in a day? Five, ten, twenty, a hundred? Just think of the dopamine and serotonin you would get from all those one things that make you happy every day.

This week I put up the Christmas decorations in my office because Christmas lights make me happy every single time I turn them on. Every time. One thing.

What will your one thing be today?

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Constancy of Change

Photo by Alex Bertha on Unsplash

In all of life, there is one thing on which we can constantly expect and that is change. In the universe, change never ceases and in our lives it is our constant companion.

Because we are human, we resist change. At times, we resist it mightily doing all that we can to avoid it, to try and stop it. We are often times intensely afraid of it.

We become comfortable in our lives. Even if our lives contain trauma and pain, those things become normalized and we are afraid to move past them. We have relationship issues and attachment problems, but we fear letting go. We fear being alone.

So we push back at change to try and avoid it or prevent it. Much of the time we are running away from it or pretending it does not exist.

However, nothing that we do can stop change from happening. It is the very catalyst of the universe and of all life in it. An ever changing constancy that promotes growth. And it can be very painful.

Every moment of every day we are presented with the choices of change. And every time, we make a decision on whether we resist or accept. The changes will occur either way, the amount we suffer with them is up to each of us.

We resist out of fear. We resist because we are afraid. We resist because of our past trauma responses. We resist because we are not in control.

The suffering comes to us with the resistance. Much like sandpaper across wood used to change it from rough to smooth. It scratches us and can wound us, but the end result can be beautiful.

Change can be difficult and painful and yes scary, but it can also be beautiful and transforming and freeing.

Change is constant, it is always occurring, and for life it is necessary for everything, including ourselves.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Try Love

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

I read an article earlier this week that was shocking, sad, and truly hard to believe. One of those stories, that you almost never hear about but that happens millions, even billions of times a day around the world. Yet we remain unaware in a world of constant information.

With the 24/7 Internet providing us with what we THINK is all the information all the time – there is SO much that I, You, We do not know that goes in in this world, this country, your neighborhood, in your next door neighbor’s house and lives.

Mental health issues are what I would estimate as immeasurable during this current time. And services for those issues continue to be underfunded, underutilized, and understaffed. Just yesterday I learned that the shortage of therapists in the state where I live is astronomical. And my state has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation.

This story was one of multiple millions, even billions that are similar and much, much worse going on right now every second and I, you, we know nothing about it.

So what can be done? Such a complicated question with millions of possible answers.

I think though starting at love thy neighbor as thyself might be good and to truly love means to know them, their lives, their needs, their issues, and find some way, any way, a single action to help. But start with love no matter who they are, what color they are, what political party they support, what hot button issues they agree with, or any other thing that we might feel separates us from them.

Love has no separation. True love, true acceptance, true support does not see barriers, differences, politics, religion, etc.. True love sees that we all the same, HUMANS.

Will we choose today to not hate, not blame, not divide, not separate and try love instead? It is a choice regardless of what we do…we choose to do it. And one choice could save a life, a human, a soul.

Choose love for we know not what others are suffering only that they like us are humans and we all need love.

Until next time, be well,

Deborah