How Did THE ENCHANTED SELF Turn into THE TRUTH?

I believe that retrieving positive memories is important to our health and well being. This is one of the dominant themes of my professional teaching. I have come to believe that without a sense that life is pleasant and at times pleasurable, joyful, even rapturous and ecstatic, we are vulnerable to depression, chronic anxiety and seeing ourselves in a poor light.
I have seen my clients and myself find positive information in our own life story and perk up no matter what the circumstances. For me perhaps this was never more strongly pointed out than writing RECIPES FOR ENCHANTMENT, The Secret Ingredient is YOU! So many times when I was writing the book I remembered and felt the positive lessons that my dad had taught me. I felt his love for me coming through. For example when I remember his story about how he had not picked up a returnable glass bottle when he was a boy, as his friend told him “it ain’t worth nothin’,” I am flooded with good feelings about my dad.
My dad really made an effort to help people to make good judgment decisions. For example, in his story, “That ain’t Worth nothin’,” he looses a bottle in the gutter because a friend convinces him it is not worth anything. However, the friend then picks it up and turns it in for a “shiny” penny! He loved to tell his lost bottle story because it pointed out occasions that we all face.

So often people try to convince us that something is not good for us. Why? Perhaps because they want it instead or they really believe it isn’t good for us, or they simply, for some reason, are blocking us. That’s where our personal judgment skill comes in to play.Many times during my life, people have tried to convince me to drop something. For certain there have been people trying to convince me to drop THE ENCHANTED SELF project, as it has been an expensive passion.

Can you imagine?  If I had dropped the project I wouldn’t have continued to think about how to help women stay in touch with the best of themselves.  And if I had stopped thinking so much about how to help women recapture their zest for living I wouldn’t have started to think more about girls and how important it is for girls to hold on to the best of themselves.  And if I hadn’t focused a lot of how I could get out the message to girls about growing up emotionally strong, I never would have written and published The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything). And if I never wrote that book I wouldn’t have gotten the idea for the second book in The Truth Series: SECRETS, (You tell me yours, maybe I’ll tell you mine), which will be available in February.  And if none of the above had happened….well it wouldn’t be the same for me or lots of people that my books and theories have touched.  And that’s THE TRUTH!

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January 26, 2010 | Filed Under Books | Leave a Comment 

Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein quoted in the Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2010 ON STYLE

A New Look for a New Life, by Christina Binkley

Bye-Bye, Bottega: A Former Executive Purges Her Closet in Search of Deeper

“People often feel the need to reinvent themselves when they reach midlife or the years before retirement, says Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, a psychologist in West Allenhurst, N.J. It’s common for people like Ms. Kan to feel that they’ve compromised too much of themselves for their job or their marriage, and to want to rectify that by starting afresh….”

Please read the full article  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704586504574654971072980350.html

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January 20, 2010 | Filed Under Published Articles, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein looks at the Enchanted Self’s Third Gateway to Happiness in Reference to girls growing up.

The Enchanted Self’s Third Gateway to Happiness is all about learning to meet our needs, and how to negotiate for ourselves. Often kids certainly know what their needs are better than adults, because everything is less disguised, fresher and closer to the surface. But they very often don’t know how to negotiate for themselves or how to find ways to get their needs met, particularly if they live in difficult families So we have to help them again.

Advice for young women in this category, how they might be able to sort of go around difficult circumstances and manage:

Get mentors outside of the household. A neighbor who will — who’s really a good person, who maybe you can go over and the two of you can cook together in her kitchen now and then. It can be a teacher that takes an interest in you. Perhaps she introduces you to fine literature or she finds a young piano teacher so you can take lessons at a price your parents can afford. I don’t mean a formal mentor like we think of in coaching, where you pay someone by the hour. I simply mean someone who sees you in a positive light and enriches your life in positive ways.

I’m talking about people who can take you beyond your family circumstances.

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January 5, 2010 | Filed Under Recipe for Enchantment, Women's Happiness | Leave a Comment 

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