A few important thoughts I’d like to share with you—let’s say “wisdom thoughts” that I have accumulated as a positive psychologist:"1. As women, when we fly, we don't fly in a straight line. We fly in circles. Yet we can home in like the greatest guided missiles!
2. Each of us has an ENCHANTED SELF—a place inside of us where we can feel peace of mind, a sense of well-being, purpose, and happiness—where we can mobilize for action using our best talents, strengths, and even lost potential.
3. Yet, we diminish and disregard our Enchanted Selves and often are influenced by other factors and persuasive circumstances that keep us from feeling good, fulfilling our dreams, and even remembering what those dreams are!
4. We forget how to read ourselves so we can help ourselves recognize what is most unique about ourselves, what is most central to our beings, and what is right for our health in mind, body, and spirit.
5. We don’t always have a good enough framework around which to sort through the complexities and distractions that come into our lives and push us from our Enchanted Selves.
6. We can come home to our Enchanted Selves.
7. What most of us knew as girls is the missing key to all of the above. As a culture and as women we have forgotten where to look for wisdom and life-sustaining energies. Having been convinced to look externally and often in all the wrong places, we have made a terrible mistake not looking into ourselves, to the positive parts of ourselves, often very alive when we were kids, rather than the negative parts, for valuable information, advice, encouragement, and inspiration."
The above list is part of a rough draft for the book before THE TRUTH. That book, You Don't Have to Be A Princess to Live An Enchanted Life, Seven Gateways To Happiness, still lives peacefully in my computer. I would say sleeps in my computer, except I have some good news about a rough draft that never made it into book form-at least yet. The good news is that the creation of that rough draft was the initial birthing process for THE TRUTH. As I came more and more in touch with the wisdom and insights of the ten year old girl inside of me and the girl inside of each woman, I realized that the energy stored up from childhood must be better understood and utilized by women.
We are so depleted, so overloaded with chores and obligations. It is a tragedy not to grab whatever free resources we have available to replenish, to have fun, to feel good. As a positive psychologist I was so aware of our needs as women to feel competent, capable, special. Yet again and again I saw my clients and my friends and even myself reaching only for wisdom and guidance and energy from the outside, rather than restimulating the essence of ourselves.
By the time I started a new draft of a book, the 'girl' was just waiting to come out to play! And she was truly a character with her own personality and adventures. As I began to write I realized that I was sharing positive psychology truths, but I was also writing my first novel. This was fiction. How exciting. The Girl came to life and so did her story. She grew from 10 to almost 12 and before I knew it, a short novel in diary form had emerged. She had a story to tell about growing up. She had messages to get across about the importance of holding on to what is special and appreciating the good things in life. She had painful experiences but she also had successes and lots of courage. And best of all, what she had to say turned out to be exactly what I wished to teach. We were a perfect team. Within her story are embedded many positive psychology principles. And within these principles are embedded the genius of a life well lived. A perfect match.
And that's how the inspiration for this book took place.
Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein
Author of THE TRUTH: I'M TEN, I'M SMART AND I KNOW EVERYTHING
http://www.enchantedself.com/
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