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A therapist is someone trained to help you understand yourself — your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors — in a way that is beneficial to you. A good one can help you find meaningful answers to life’s persistent questions. If you find yourself stuck in a cycle of behaviors, a good therapist can help you become unstuck. But how do you find a good therapist? Here’s a brief how to:

1. Therapists are mental health professionals who listen and talk. You can discover if a potential therapist is gifted in listening and talking from the comfort of your own home. Pick up the phone give their office a call.

2. Can you talk to a therapist over the phone? If the answer is no, try another number. Your personal connection to your therapist is important. This personal connection begins with that first phone call. Trust your instincts.

3. Don’t be afraid to call a bunch of different offices. This is an important decision.

4. Remember that positive therapeutic outcomes are based on genuine human interaction. Listening. Talking. Caring. Pick up the phone as see where your a conversation with a potential therapist takes you.

Here is a link to the Psychology Today listing of local therapists. It’s a good place to start: Rogers, Arkansas — Therapists.

People expend a great deal of effort contemplating their own happiness or lack thereof. They invest a great deal of time and mental processing power in seeking to understand how they could be happier. Those prone to depression or anxiety might spend their time contrasting their current circumstances with their expectations or an idealized version of what they want their life to be. Whether a client is dealing with panic attacks, anxiety, depression, or a general lack of direction and fulfillment, counselors generally find that their clients do not benefit from attempts to think their way out of their problems. Often, actions are more beneficial than thoughts.

If you want to change how you feel, change your habits. Replace unhealthy habits with healthy habits. Research shows that habits form naturally if behaviors are repeated consistently. Habits may form in as quickly as 18 days. Sometimes it takes longer, over 100 days. We recommend clearly defining the healthy habit you wish to form and using a calendar to track your daily progress. Place a large X on every day you successfully execute the behavior.

The more specific the behavior, the easier it will be to monitor progress with the calendar.

The types of behaviors you wish to change may include:

• eating habits
• exercise habits
• use of TV/Internet
• sleep patterns
• spending habits

The purpose of process is to take something that seems very complex — how am I going to feel happier, more fulfilled? — and make it much simpler — did I successfully limit myself to one hour of television today? If you are able to achieve your daily behavior objective, mark an X and relax. By the time your new behaviors are habits, you may feel differently about yourself and the direction your life is taking.

Is your plan is place? An earlier post gave a few what not to’s for your resolutions this year (NY Resolutions: A Counselor’s Perspective). Here are a couple of suggestions for resolutions that work for you. Don’t worry if you haven’t developed a well-defined resolution or set of resolutions. Now is the perfect time.

Be specific. Broad generalizations are not your friends. Set specific, measurable goals with a specific verifiable, objectives along the way. If today is day one of your new program, you should do something today toward your goal and feel good about it.

Give yourself two months. What you are trying to do is replace a disorganized, unfocused, or unhealthy habit with the habit of your choice. Research indicates that you need to practice a new behavior about 60 times before it becomes a habit. If you are talking about an everyday discipline, that means you’ll need about two months to turn a new behavior (cleaning the kitchen every night before bed, walking every morning, not smoking on the way to work, not placing clothing on the floor of your closet) into an established habit.

Reward yourself along the way. Feel good starting day one. Recognize that the change you are seeking is already underway. Imagine how good you’ll feel at day 60. Think about it. How you get there starts on day one and continues for every day thereafter. Think about spreading that good feeling of accomplishment out, from day one to day sixty and every day in between.

Any party involved in a conversation has the opportunity to not listen. Sometimes, it’s obvious when your partner is not listening. Individuals engaged in the following behaviors are not actively listening: reading the paper, browsing the Internet, texting, channel surfing, wearing headphones, playing video games. Sometimes people pretend to listen. Just because a loved one is pretending to listen does not mean that you also have to pretend that he or she is listening.

You may be the most effective communicator on the planet — a Gandhi-level communicator, a Martin Luther King Junior-level communicator — but if you are talking to a post, you are talking to a post. If the person you are talking to is not listening you are mostly talking to yourself.

Save your breath. Ask for you partner’s full attention. When you have it you’ll know. Then proceed.