Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein is the originator of The Enchanted Self. She has been a positive psychologist in private practice and licensed in the states of New Jersey and Massachusetts since 1981.
Seven Gateways to Happiness for Us Women!
1. Discover and honor your talents, strengths, coping skills and potential
2. Love the story of your live and find ways to fall in love with who you are
3. Learn how to get your needs met
4. Take time to replenish, to enjoy life, and to find meaning and purpose everyday
5. Belong and don't isolate
6. Be a mentor and find mentors
7. Live generously. Do positive actions and good deeds
For those of you not that familiar with The Enchanted Self, and those of you that are, sit back and enjoy me sharing what The Enchanted Self is with Thor the Barbarian. This is a great show!
Dr. Barbara's Happiness for Women Only Radio Series
Listen to the Radio Show Archives
The Happiness for Women Only! series focuses on different age groups as seen below. We take a look at happiness as viewed through the lenses of The Seven Gateways to Happiness.
Dr. Barbara hosts this series, accompanied by her two outstanding guests: Dr. Sandra Prince-Embury, nationally know resiliency expert and author of The Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents and Martha Trowbridge, author of books on Inspiration For Women in Crisis.
"Getting to The Truth and More!" (20-35)
"Women and Wisdom Gathering" (Ages 36-49)
"Welcome the Enchanted AARP Woman!" (Ages 50 plus)
A wonderful discussion for all age groups!
My Books
THE TRUTH: I'm a Girl, I'm Smart and I Know Everything!
In the mothers' and daughters' version, this girl encapsulates the spark and energy that your daughter has inside of her, and that you had inside of yourself as a girl. It is this special capacity for fun and wisdom that we need to protect in our girls and get back to ourselves!
Let's rejoice in the girl inside of ourselves. Let's give courage and affirmation to our daughters and granddaughters so they know from the inside out, it is ok, in fact, essential to keep her alive, as they grow up.
The Truth, I'm 10, I'm Smart & I Know Everything.
The adult women's version is a delightful, humorous secret diary, written by a girl who is 10-11 years of age. She is wise and yet so innocent. She makes us cry and laugh and remember ourselves. Behind this very easy read is the psychological message to the women reading THE TRUTH that they can and must recapture the fire and passion of their girlhoods not only for themselves to flourish and be happy, but for the next generation to also have the gifts of good emotional and spiritual health.
This book is filled with emotional and delightful reminiscences that will charm you even as you are inspired to begin thinking of your own ways to bring delight into your hearts.
A collection of stories that is guaranteed to make you Feel Good. Click on the title to find out about the free gifts you will receive or here to learn more about the stories.
Recipes for Enchantment, The Secret Ingredient is YOU! is a culmination of over ten years of work and research in the field of personal enchantment by Dr. Barbara. She teaches us how to recall positive memories, regardless of our history, recognize our potential, and bring into our lives more of what gives us pleasure and joy. This is all combined with daily positive actions.
The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy
Through my work as a therapist, I have become concerned that we do not keep clearly enough how to reclaim what is positive about ourselves. This led me to write my book, The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy, published in 1997 by Harwood Academic Press. This book was probably the first and only book for mental health care providers and the interested public, to lay out the tools necessary to create a positive mind set and live an affirmative and affirming way of life!
The Enchanted Self Podcast
Hi, everyone! I’m excited to start a new series on this blog. Once a week I’ll be posting a podcast that I have prepared that ties into The Enchanted Self. Many of these podcasts will be about Happiness as it relates to women and girls. This week, come and listen to my podcast about The Enchanted Girl. I’m talking about girls 10 and up, with my nationally known resiliency expert, Dr. Sandra Prince Embury. We will be relating the emoional development of girls to the Seven Gateways to Happiness. (Don’t forget you can get a free paper on the Seven Gateways to Happiness by downloading it off of the front page of my website, www.enchantedself.com )
Right click here and choose “Save Target As..” to Download the Mp3
Can You Handle the 'Truth'? | The Jewish Exponent
Experts confirm what the majority of people know: Truth comes in a number of forms and reveals itself in myriad ways, and that it’s often relative, depending on the needs and expectations of the seeker.
Now, Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, based in Long Branch, N.J., and a nationally known positive psychologist — an officially recognized branch of psychology that centers on what’s right with people — examines what truth is as young girls see it, in her new book, titled The Truth: I’m a Girl, I’m Smart and I Know Everything, the first in what is expected to be a series.
The book, which contains a “bit of mystery” because girls love that, noted Holstein, is the fictitious account of a young girl who keeps a secret diary in which she writes about the thoughts, ideas, people and events that shape and forge the truth for her.
In the process, it establishes a forum for discussion with parents and peers.
Through the eyes and feelings of the girl, Holstein comments professionally about truth’s particular impact on females aged 8, 9 and 10 years old — and beyond. It also focuses on its meaning in connection with interaction with the adults in their lives — mothers, grandmothers, fathers, teachers and others.
In the introduction to the book, Holstein, reflecting on her own days as a young girl, wrote: “One day I decided to find a way to combine what I already knew as a girl with the knowledge I have as a classroom teacher, case-study researcher, school psychologist, and a psychologist in private practice, in Long Branch, for nearly 30 years. I had to find a fun way to do this that would really help girls and mothers recognize that what we know growing up is just as important as what we learn later.
“One day the ‘girl’ just appeared. She knew what to say and how to say it. She did a much better job of sharing the truth than I ever could have imagined. So I just let her go for it. I used a child’s voice because children understand things in a special way. In the end, the young girl will become a young woman and will keep the best of herself.”
There are 12 to 15 serious topics embedded in the book that offer young girls and their parents the opportunity to discuss the subjects. Girls throughout the world, explained Holstein, experience similar aspects of growing up, with crushes, family and sibling friction, and being bullied at school just a few of the categories that bewilder children and cause them to feel alone.
And Then There’s the Internet
When the influence of the Internet is thrown into the mix, unavoidable and continual situations for concern arise, leaving parents unsure of how to handle these challenging aspects of a young girl’s life, said Holstein.
Here’s an excerpt from The Truth: “What is wrong with human beings? I had to read The Diary of Anne Frank in Sunday school and again I felt so horrible. She died only a few years older than I am. And she loved life so much. How can it be? … ”
At the back of the book, readers will find 25 discussion questions for youngsters.
Why did Holstein write The Truth? “I wrote it because after having worked on women’s issues for years, I came to the conclusion that women at every stage of life need to find ways to build self-esteem and self-worth.
“Every girl wants a mother who listens and is aware of her behavior, especially during the tween years. Family is fun, and tweens want to feel special in their families. The Truth gives girls 8 to 14 years old the knowledge that they are not alone, while it reminds mothers what it was like to be this age,” explained Holstein.
Among her hopes for the book — which ranks second in parenting tweens book topics on Amazon.com — she said, is to see it in school libraries, adding that “my other dream would be to see it turned into a musical.”
USING OUR PAST AS A POSITIVE GATE
As you begin to recognize the positive states of well being from your childhool, i.e., THE ENCHANTED SELF, you can become a better expert at understanding what made them heightened joyful times. It may not be enough to remember a wonderful day that you spent. For instance, let’s imagine a wonderful day at the circus with your uncle. It is pleasant to recall but it may not teach you enough in order to help you find your own promise. You have to be more specific. Here are some of the types of questions to ask yourself:
Why did you like that day?
Was it the weather conditions?
Was it the way you felt that day?
Was it being with this particular uncle?
Was it something you saw at the circus that excited you?
Was it something you purchased?
Was it something you ate?
Was it the way the air smelled?
And so on. The more you can specifically isolate what made the memory enchanting, the more you can practice positive states of well being.
I hope you will take the time now to think of a pleasant day from your past and really get back ‘into’ the essence of it by asking yourself similar questions. I can guarantee that if you do you will have some pleasant feelings aroused and be doing a first step necessary to creating lots of good times in the present and future.
REMEMBERING OUR PAST AS A POSITIVE GATEWAY
TO OUR FUTURE Do you realize that your past experiences hold the key to a better future? Each of us can learn to unlock the door to a better future by understanding the promise that exists in our own unique memories. Many times in life we struggle between hope and hopelessness. One place to find hope is in the promise of your own past.
No matter how difficult your childhood may have been or how busy or anxious you felt, the jewel of your own potential still showed through at times.
Maybe it was what kept you going. Perhaps you loved dance class as a little girl or singing songs with grandma, or cooking, or growing vegetables, or taking care of a pet. Maybe you had a rock or coin collection that meant a lot to you. No matter how gummed up your earlier days were, you lived them and within them was the promise of your own potential. Sometimes your potential may have shown through just because of dysfunction or difficult times.
For example, if your family was fighting you had to find a way to escape. You may have connected with yourself by climbing up into a tree house that you had built and decorated with your own hands. Problems at home may have pushed you to study harder, or to learn to do something better, so that you could spend more time with your studies or your hobbies, and less time thinking about your problems.
If you can get back to your own sense of promise then hope can reemerge as you see ways of reinventing yourself. Of course, as we get older and evolve, some dreams are gone forever in terms of being practical. For example, we may not be able to be a commercial airline pilot if we never learned how to fly, or a conductor of an orchestra if we have not pursued music theory. Although we can’t make all our own choices in life, we can make a lot of them.
We often decide where we will live, whom we will marry, how we will live, how we will spend our leisure time, etc. Also, as we get older we have more options to work out, a compromise between our dreams and what might be a practical reality. We have more capacities to resolve a situation and creatively find a way to bring forth one’s promise from childhood into a new form.
Is making a positive future easy? I wouldn’t call it easy, but having a future in meaning, hope and joy is obtainable if you are willing to be practical and very specific. It is crucial to learn how to look back into your own past, to discover unique enhanced states of well being.
Recipe for Enchantment!*
If I want my dreams to come true, I mustn’t oversleep.
Of all the things I wear, my expression is the most important.
The best vitamin for making friends…. B1.
The happiness of my life depends on the quality of my thoughts.
The heaviest thing I can carry is a grudge.
One thing I can give and still keep…is my word.
I lie the loudest when I lie to myself.
If I lack the courage to start, I am already finished.
One thing I can’t recycle is wasted time.
Ideas won’t work unless ‘I ‘ do.
A Blessing -We all Need Them
May you always be able to skip through life as if you were jumping rope and never tripped. May you be so good at life’s journeying that you are even a champion at Double Dutch! Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein