Early into 2011, I’m still focused on the power of introspection to uncover, discover and experience happiness. Yes, I know it’s February, and many people have already forgotten their heartfelt resolve from the New Year, but I’m still exploring the Why and How of value-driven change. Come to think of it: I’m always exploring change.
Keeping and reviewing a personal journal is just one strategy to discover unrealized dreams, and it’s one of the best. Another approach is one developed by Martha Beck, celebrated life coach and published writer who is a regular contributor at www.oprah.com. Now, for my purposes in exploring unrealized dreams, my aim is to tackle Dr. Beck’s “Lifeline” from a positive frame of reference.
Dr. Beck describes her “Lifeline” strategy in a recent article that she wrote for Oprah Magazine under the title “Eight Steps to Conquer the Beast Within,” and it is part of a feature on “Martha Beck’s Plan to Conquer Depression” http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Plan-to-Conquer-Depression-Pain-and-Addiction .While I admire Dr. Beck’s philosophy, practice and even her unique and terribly funny writing style, I’d like to encourage you to read the article and approach the “Eight Steps” by focusing on the positive, most spirit-lifting, most personally informative outcomes.
It’s easy.
Complete steps 1 through 5 as you are directed, but stop and siphon through Step 6 with a more targeted emphasis on exploring the questions and answers from Part B, which provides these instructions: “Now, answer the five questions above in regard to the times when your ‘bad habit, illness or disorder’ was least bothersome.” In this way, you are spending your energy in this exercise and gaining insights from it from a positive standpoint. In answering the first five questions only as a Part B exercise, you re-create the physical and emotional circumstances from your past during which you were the happiest: “Where were you living when you were at your happiest?, Where were you working?, What did you do on a typical day?, With whom did you spend time?, and What did you believe?”
Do you understand now why, when you sculpt the exercise from a positive viewpoint, the answers become as powerful as a chronicle of journal entries from your past? In your answers to Part B, you’re revealing to yourself a great deal of the What, Where, and With Whom that provided the greatest amount of happiness for you in your past, and I think it’s a potentially powerful way to uncover some dreams that you had that flourished during a time when you were at your very best.
When you were happiest, what were your most heartfelt dreams? Are those dreams real to you now?
Yours truly,
Doctor Mell
