Prefer to talk to a pro?
Call today, and let us connect you with the perfect merchant!
Call today, and let us connect you with the perfect merchant!
Top Organization Services in Stillwater, MN
Prefer to talk to a pro?
Call today, and let us connect you with the perfect merchant!
Call today, and let us connect you with the perfect merchant!
Where do you need Organization Services ?
Related articles
Federal Grants for Women in Business
How to Start an International Business Company
What Are the Differences Between Home & Business Networks?
Updates & tips
Straight Talk About Counseling
Everybody has ideas about counseling they get from Dr. Fraser Crane or a therapy hour with Tony Soprano or Dr. Phil. Maybe you find the movie "What About Bob?" as hilarious as I do. But what is counseling really? And why does it matter? Eight reasons to consider ... It was in graduate schoolwhen I first came across this quote by Albert Einstein that I understood the value of being a counselor. He said: "It is almost impossible to solve a problem from within the same consciousness that created it." That got me started on a career where I have come to believe the following ... 1.You don't know what you don't know until somebody points it out to you. I jokingly say to my clients that I am paid to ask naive questions - to have a beginner's mind. But I am only half-joking. The real truth is that we can't think outside of the boxes our thoughts have created for us. Counselors help clients surface assumptions, make associations, access strengths, embrace their often slumbering intuition. 2.Counselors have tools many of you don't have. We have the luxury of learning principles and approaches that the average person wasn't taught in school. I spend a lot of time in therapy teaching people these in ways that make sense and are practical. Like a compass, many of them point True North. 3.Counselors understand New Year's Resolutions don't work. Make a change and the status quo will actively go after you. Lose 10 and we often gain back 12. I tell clients that "we are our own worst enemies" can be true. On the hard drive of our thinking there are often worm viruses we don't even know about. Counseling can expose these so we can decide whether these beliefs are worth keeping - or not. 4.Counseling holds people accountable. Effective therapy creates homework assignments to take what you know out into the street. Insight can only take us so far. People shouldn't ask you to swim where it's too deep. On the other hand, people shouldn't expect to know if they like swimming if they never enter the pool. 5.Counseling is optimistic and can (for a time) hold onto hopefor the person or relationship that feels things are hopeless. One early father of psychology said that all meaningful counseling is build on the wordencouragement. I work with people who might have given up. They feel trapped or overwhelmed - too tired to care. Counseling walks with that person calling them into the light. 6. Counseling can be more efficient. Who was it that said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results"? People beat up on themselves or insist they don't have time to be depressed. What good is that - when depression settles on a person like a mountain of darkness? What good is it to pursue someone who doesn't want to be pursued - in the name of love? Counseling helps sort all that out - sooner. 7.In counseling you talk with a person. Books are fine but they can't respond to you in the here-and-now of your own thinking. Counseling is an encounter with a person. You are affirmed by a person. Challenged by a person. Your experience validated by a person. 8.You don't have to want to go to counseling but it may be important you go just the same. I don't want to go to my dentist. I expect pain. I hate the discovery of new problems. But pain can get me there. Worry can get me there if I fear a 6 year check-up a lot more than a 6 month one. I go because I am reluctant to practice drilling on myself. For more information on marriage counseling and individual therapy consult my website at jbragstad.com or call me at (651) 308-1200. There is no obligation and I welcome your call. The content above represents the views of this author. It is for information purposes only. If you are seeking help, consult with a professional who can tailor treatment to your specific need. For more information or articles go to my website at jbragstad.com. Thanks for reading.
Marriage Counseling Can Be Individual Counseling
Consider this. I work with married couples about 80% of the time.I also work with individuals who may be just like you contemplating whether to get out of your marriage or not. I believe that marriage counseling can be individual counseling for these reasons: 1. My experience is that many people think about divorceat a very difficult time when discouragement is high and resources sometimes are few. This is preceded often by a long period of trying to make changes – by both individuals. My knowledge of systems dynamics says that couples can slip into a period of chronic anxiety where it is difficult to make changes because any initiative tends to fail. 2. Also, systems are self-organizing and SELF-PROTECTIVE and do not like change.Even possible efforts to make positive changes can be exhausted because the patterns that have been created will actively create scenarios that return couples to the level of discouragement they experienced before trying to do something different. 3. Each person has created their own way of re-establishing equilibrium.In this way couples can go a long time without actually having to separate or divorce. Whether it be focusing on children or job or ventures into alcohol (or even affairs – emotional or otherwise) all of these are an attempt to find some significance or value within the on-going lack of close relationship with your partner. 4. That is why in my opinion it is sad that couples make these life-altering changesthat effect many without consulting with a counselor. Counselors provide perspective, understanding, practical ways of re-engaging while helping couples anticipate and become more aware of the challenges they are up against – both internally and externally. 5. It is also true that we sometimes do not have the psychological distance to step outside our mental limitationsto re-position ourselves to the problems we face. I am convinced Einstein was right: "It is almost impossible to solve problems from the same consciousness that created them". Again, marriage counselors by virtue of the fact they are outside (and objective) can offer real insight that may not have even been on the radar screen for individuals or couples before they entered therapy. That is why I think it is advisable toseekcounselingfor your marriage – with a partner present or not.It might allow you to change your behaviors with your partner which will give you a solid feeling you did all you could to effect change before you left the marriage. It can also prompt the other person to change as they experience a different you. If you leave you leave with a greater sense of integrity that you have done as much as you could. If you have children I sometimes tell my clientsthat one day they will ask youif you did everything possible to rebuild your relationship with their other parent. Isn't it worth thinking about that when this occurs you will be able to honestly tell them you did what you could in seeking professional help? Less than 1% of people who divorceconsult with a counselor before making this change. The average is 6 years from the time of marital distress to the time some individuals seek out a marriage counselor. This is a sad statistic. I encourage you to take this step before you leave your marriage or relationship.Quite frankly, because of the systems tendencies to render you exhausted and deeply discouraged that is a poor time to make such an important decision. Consider this one last step.For more information on marriage counseling or individual therapy consult my website at jbragstad.com or call me at (651) 308-1200. There is no obligation and I welcome your call. The content above represents the views of this author. It is for information purposes only. If you are seeking help, consult with a professional who can tailor treatment to your specific need. Any resemblance to a specific person in my writing is purely coincidental. Thanks for reading and I welcome your thoughts and comments.
The Use of the Imagination in Therapy
In the month of Marchit's hard to be too optimisticabout the North. Winter lingers. Clouds bring more cold down from Canada. Inland lakes are frozen. People cope in two basic ways.Either they trudge on towards spring or they await it with anticipation. What makes the difference? Our imagination. Some frontload the month of March with scarcity images. They picture more snow to shovel, more getting into cold cars, more darkness, more boredom. Others fill their minds with positive images. Lakes opening up. Orion disappearing from the sky. Open water running down the long hills into Lake Superior. That is the power of our Imagination.One person has said "It can make for us a heaven or a hell". Edwin Friedman, in his bookThe Failure of Nerve, writes about the power of projected images and how critical they are to leadership – whether he talking to CEO's or to married couples. "Unequivocally whenever anyone isin extremis(whether a marriage crisis or an economic crisis, a political crisis or a health crisis, their chances for survival are far greater when their horizons are formed ofprojected images from their own imaginationrather than being limitedto what they can actually see". Here are six insights that can work for you or limit your abilities to succeed. 1. Your body cannot tell the difference betweenwhat is imagined and real.Anyone who has wakened from a nightmare knows this. Your body is sweating, your breathing is hard and fast. For a few moments you struggle to separate what is real from what is imagined. For a few seconds, it's hard to know the difference. 2. Reality can be whatever you want it to be.One person wrote "Two men looked out through the prison bars. One saw walls and the other saw stars". In the world of the very small – in quantum physics that measures the universe in subatomic bits of information - if you measure for particles in will present itself as particles. If you measure for waves reality will present itself as waves. It cooperates with whatever the viewer wants it to be. 3. We can create our own reality.Quantum physics pictures reality as great energy fields moving through space. When they touch and remain together literally they can create something out of nothing. When they separate, whatever was there is gone. In the same way our imagination can brush up against reality and create – literally out of nothing. Why does this matter?Friedman writes about his own experienceafter he was admitted for a serious medical problem..Doctorsand intake forms asked about the course of the disease, who to call in an emergency, what questions he had about surgery. These questions need to be asked. But nowhere did anyone ask "What will you do when you get better?" or "How long do you think your recovery will take". One set of questions is focused on treating the disease. The other centers around what we can actively do to participate in a favorable treatment outcome. 4. The Law of Attraction is real.It was Goethe who said "Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it". We draw to ourselves that which we conceive. What chances do you give a basketball player of making a shot when he doesn't think he will make it? If you play golf and see yourself trying to avoid a water hazard, what are the chances you ball will go in there? 5. Your imagination can't ignore Reality.Walk outside in wintertime without gloves and there's a very good change you'll get frostbite. We can't bend the laws of Nature that way. On the other hand, people who survive harsh, almost impossible conditions tell us that it is our ability to project positive outcomes that lifts us up from being a victim to becoming a survivor. 6. To imagine is to take a leap of faith.It is not only an intellectual exercise. Action gives it wings. Think about this. I don't think there was one invention that just sprouted. First, it was conceived in the mind of the inventor, believed and then acted upon. Experts in car collisions say the worst thing a person can do is to become transfixed by the point of impact. Instead they train people to do the unlikely thing of looking where they want to go. The body then follows. Yes, the winds of March can be cold and inhospitable.But there are the memories of summer warmth that can warm us still – even when days are dark and winter lingers. You can infuse your imagination with Marsh Marigolds waiting to catch your eye – one of the first harbingers of spring. Northern Lights are giving way to long summer days and campfires down by the beach. The loons will soon be returning and once again their call will be heard echoing down the long canyon lakes of theQuetico.For more information on marriage counseling and individual therapy consult my website at jbragstad.com or call me at (651) 308-1200. There is no obligation and I welcome your call. The content above represents the views of this author. It is for information purposes only. If you are seeking help, consult with a professional who can tailor treatment to your specific need. Any resemblance to a specific person in my writing is purely coincidental. Thanks for reading and I welcome your thoughts and comments.