Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person

by Sherrie Campbell Ph D

Overview

The purpose of this book is to set you free to be who you really are. As you love who you are you will find that you move through life holding your head slightly high and your chest will be expanded and open for love and receiving. Your neck will be long and lean, your throat open showing you are always ready to share and relate. You will know who you are and therefore will feel comfortable to be fully expressed. You will no longer worry about what others think of you. Why? Because you love yourself flaws and all. When you love your Self, and have your boundaries in place, there is not much that can take you off center for too long. This book encourages you to shine in your own full expression in this beautiful life where you know you are loved just for being exactly who you are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477289327
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	11/30/2012
Pages:	396
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

Read an Excerpt

Loving yourself

The Mastery of Being Your Own Person

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By SHERRIE CAMPBELL

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Sherrie Campbell, Ph. D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-8932-7

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Chapter One

Ingredients for your journey:

Before you begin any sort of travel, you must pack all the necessities to take care of your needs while you were are gone. The following is a list of the necessary items of understanding you will need to travel on this journey:

Eye-sight is how you were taught to see yourself, love yourself, and feel about yourself from your adult conditioners and other relationships. When you are looking at life only through your eyes, you are limited in your perception. Your eye-sight is a reflection of the distortion you were raised in. Your adult conditioners have the most powerful impact upon you, because it is through them that you see your first reflection. You see yourself in the other before you are able to see yourself from the "I" point of view. As an infant you are totally dependent upon the outside world to meet your emotional and physical needs. Throughout this book, eyesight is reflective of your faulty conditioning. You were taught to see yourself other than you really are.

In-sight is reflective of your healing. This is seeing life through your heart, your intuition, and your own discovered truths. This is your sixth sense. When you have in-sights you are having a knowing from within that you are different and more magnificent then what was mirrored to you as a child. Insights are what you gain in self-examination. They are ah-ha moments.

Life class lessons are your home-work. A separate Self is your true home. So you will do home-work: work on the Self. Each section of the book has explanations and learning opportunities. It is my belief that one of the best ways to learn is through asking questions. In each section, I show a sample answer to the question being asked to help generate your own thought process. It is not my intent for you to answer them. It is my intent to get you thinking and wondering and integrating how you came to be the you you have become.

You have permission to examine these lessons in any way that is best for your learning. You can glance over them, you can come up with your own questions, you can think deeply about them, you can write about them, but whatever you do, I want you to, at least, think about them and observe the emotions which surface. Even if the emotion of resistance surfaces ... observe it. This is important information. Whatever you resist, will persist.

The questions are useful to you, as they serve to guide you deep into your own story through relating to mine. This allows you to develop a more clear understanding of who you are, to note the things you would like to improve, and to notice what you love and do not love about yourself. When you ask the evolving questions, you will receive the answers which help you to make sense of your feelings and circumstances. The questions are designed to undo the faulty conditioning you endured. The purpose of the life class lessons is to get your attention away from your suffering and onto what you have the opportunity to learn.

Anyone who is focused on gaining understanding in their life is bound to succeed in personal growth.

Extra Credit Advantages:

Healing reading for home-work

Reading opportunities will be offered all along the journey. I will offer personal flexibility in how books can be read as well. The books I have chosen have all served a different purpose in my life. For example, some books I have read over and over. Others, I learned from but didn't feel compelled to finish.

Not finishing a book should not be confused with quitting. Rather, I simply got what I needed, so there was no reason to read the rest. Sometimes, I open a book to a random page to pull some sort of message for me to contemplate for that day or week. Sometimes I read part of a book's knowledge, but did not feel ready for the rest. Time travels on, and I might be inspired to finish what I started at a new place in my life.

I look for what resonates with me, my process, my direction and my emotions. I would like you to do the same and to approach these reading opportunities with the same amount of flexibility.

I have read many books but more importantly, I have studied them. There is a difference between passively reading and studying in order to make the material applicable to everyday change opportunities. The way to have an extra credit advantage in your growth is to read with the intention of changing. This means you practice what you read and find opportunities to apply your new behaviors to your daily life. As you do so, you are connecting new neurons to new neurons creating new behaviors, thus creating a new life. If you do not apply what you read, the information is dead. The point of the journey is to become more and more alive! I am offering extra credit to put you at an advantage as a seeker.

Differentiating Opportunities: Just suppose your life could be whatever you dream ... When you differentiate, you are separating from the old eye-sights and running toward the new. It doesn't matter what happens along the way in your journey because you can overcome any and all obstacles, especially your old conditioning. What is important is that with each differentiating opportunity, you are getting closer and closer to your real Self. As long as you keep getting closer, your belief in your ability to heal will grow, and you will feel it is more realistic and attainable. Your energy and determination will increase with each step along the journey. You will see how to be open to all positive possibilities for yourself and your life. If you have picked up this book, guess what? You are ready to grow and master being yourself. You are ready to do things your own way! It is living the art of possibility.

Supplies:

Permission to Feel:

When feelings come up, we tend to feel uncomfortable. When we feel uncomfortable, the natural response is to resist. When we resist our natural emotions, we place ourselves in an unnatural emotional state which works against our natural flow. As you read this, give yourself permission to feel. Feel whatever it is that comes up and observe it as an area of interest. You do not have to hold it in. This is a safe place to let it all out, the good, the bad, and the ugly. No one is watching after all ... so why not just give yourself the freedom to feel. In this journey, you do not have to be controlling of your emotions.

The feeling/emotional part of this story is told through poetry. The poetry is not obscure or confusing with hidden meanings or secrets to decode. Rather, it is direct and raw. It is the expression of experienced feelings. Not written for audience or approval, it was simply released in its pure and uninterrupted raw expression. I could have edited it to make the reader more comfortable. But then it would not have been my authentic story. It would have been a story glossed over so as to not make waves.

The poetry element should be read in the same space in which one would watch a movie. It is story-telling, and has the potential to draw you into the story of your own life and the emotions your life contains. You will be in the boat floating down the river of the story being told. The river reflects the way emotions create the currents and flow of any life journey. Emotions are liquid. They are unstable, always in motion, and they take us from one place in life to the next. So, just observe, escape into the story.

After each poem, you will stop and rest along the river banks and get clear with explanations, lessons, and new directions for you to apply to your own life story. The explanations will offer you clear direction on your path just like a compass will give you your direction. In this way, you will never feel lost.

Open Mind:

A mind, which is closed, is a mind not open to new information. A mind not open to new information is a mind which cannot change or evolve. To this journey bring an open mind. Be open to new questions, to new ideas, expanded thinking and new ways to live your life. Let your memories and emotions unfold. Be open to them. If you are open to them, then you can make sense of them.

Willingness to Grow:

The signature purpose of life is to grow and expand into the newer and newer levels of who you already are. You must be willing to grow because it takes effort and commitment. When you are truly willing, the miracles begin to come, so let yourself become a willing miracle creator in action!

Forward Moving Questions:

Once you are open and willing, you can begin the life classes with commitment and interest. The life class lessons will help you find the roots of your issues and help you move from the place of what happened to you to what can you do about what happened to you. You are moving in one direction in life as dictated by the element of time and that is forward. Forward moving questions keep you in the natural flow of your life and out of resisting and creating friction.

Journal and Pen (optional but highly suggested):

These are here for you to document your travels through your inner world. Some of the most successful people throughout history have kept journals. The act of writing is organizing and solidifying. Writing accesses your left brain, which is analytical and rational. When your left brain is entertained and/or distracted, your creative right brain is free to feel, intuit, and create. The right brain opens up the unexpected solutions. What a gift to become your own best problem solver. This is just one treasure obtained through writing.

Journal writing is transformational. Writing engages in you the process of working through something. The simple act of writing thoughts and feelings down immediately calms an unsettled mind and heart.

Taking the time to write your feelings down helps you know yourself more deeply. Because writing provides the space and time to be raw and uninhibited in your experiences, it aids in clarifying the truth of what you feel. When you know your truth you know exactly who you are.

Because writing helps access clarity in what you think and feel, it helps you to resolve your challenges in your relationships. When you write about your conflicts or misunderstandings with others, you get out of your own head and put yourself onto the paper in the form of a conversation. You are able to clarify your feelings and point of view and to examine how you think the other may be feeling. This is the best way to enter into an actual conversation. When you enter a conversation with clarity, you are more able to keep your life in a place of stability. Once you expel your emotions through writing them out, you may find a real conversation isn't necessary. You worked it through on your own.

You can document growth over time by noting your patterns of behavior and your solutions to past problems. This way, when you are facing an issue that seems insurmountable, you can go through past journals and see how you have dealt with previous problems and this will guide you into solving the new.

In engaging in this type of writing, you will have a deeper experience of this book and it will allow you to get the most out of it. It is as powerful as any talk therapy and it all comes from within, which means you can heal and stand on your own. Journaling and having a therapist is doubly powerful because in this instance there is a team of transformational experiences helping you to make sense of your life. I ask all my patients to keep journals, and we often go over their writing in session. This way I teach them to be their own best allies.

Self-Acceptance:

Surrendering to a process and not needing it or yourself to be different is what acceptance brings to your healing. This is about acknowledging the facts of a situation or yourself and then deciding what you would like to do about it. Understanding where you are in any given situation in your life will help you to see what your limits are, how far you have come and where you would like to go. If you can accept your circumstances, you have clear vision to create change.

Patience:

Patience is a state of endurance under difficult conditions. It is the ability to stay steadfast without acting out in a negative way. Patience promotes maturity because you have to delay your gratification which includes quitting. It keeps you focused on the long term, bigger picture. Having patience is the key to solving all problems.

Time:

There is no need to rush through this journey or to rush through your own healing. When it comes to healing, examining, and growing, time is the conduit that brings us to all the solutions up ahead. There are no "have to's" on any journey to healing. There is enough time.

Courage:

Courage dismantles fear. Courage represents your ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, and/or intimidation. Healing is usually a fear-based process, so pack your courage along with you and let it stand up whenever necessary. Courage is the path to confidence. As we are courageous, we become open to new possibilities. When we fill ourselves full of possibility, we gain courage.

Love:

Bring love on this journey. Love is the key to healing of any kind.

Now that you have been educated on the essentials and you have your list covered and packed, we are ready to journey. I am so excited, let the story begin....

The Voyage through Emotional Landscapes

Omen is perhaps one of my favorite words. Omens
are signs. An Omen is believed to foretell the future,
often signifying the initiation of change. What I had
to change was my faulty belief system. This would
be the biggest change in Self-love I could make.

Omen

I asked for an omen,
and here I sit,
a pen in hand,
in appearance
reminiscent of an ice pick.

I am going inside
to chip away,
on a journey to uncover
my icy, cold, inner decay.

The aspects I shaved off out of shame ...
I want to reclaim them
and give them a name.
I no longer want to hide the pain.

I have learned it is never really hidden.
When it gets triggered,
I am unexpectedly frostbitten.

So, here I am,
pen in hand,
traveling into this
cold, strange familiar land.

My bones,
they ache from the cold
as my pain begins to unfold.
I can feel it and sense it;
there is a unique smell to it.

The smell
is stinging
the inside of my nose.

It is so dark in here.
Nothing is clear.
I feel afraid.

It is no wonder I pushed
these memories away.
I could not live with
this ache in my bones
day to day.

It was survival for me.
Down here, so many
memories and faces of me.
At one time ashamed of them,
I cut them off from my inner vision.
Each pain is now yearning
for resurrection.

I am down here alone.
I do not know where to go.
It is so slippery and bitingly cold.
Afraid I will fall,
I feel so small.

Aware of the pain,
I am about to see.
A boat appears;
it is here to guide me.

I am so freezing,
so unbelievably cold.
I fear I will stop breathing.

Panic sets in,
my chest begins
uncontrollably heaving.
I feel the tears forming,
I am resisting.

I climb in the boat;
it starts down the river.
So overwhelmed,
I'm afraid I will splinter.

I feel the presence
of all aspects of her.
She is haunting me,
hunting me ...
she wants me to help her.

It is just so cold,
the pain so deep,
I feel out of control;
I begin to weep.

I need some light.
I cannot see.
It is so dark in here;
it is paralyzing.

I see a memory.
She is so small,
this infant; she is preverbal.

She senses the stress,
her parents a mess,
too young to create a healthy nest.

My parents were not happy.
No chance for the creation of a family,
between them so much immaturity.

Me, just arrived from heaven,
my body absorbing this novel haven.
My senses so fresh and alive,
from what I could feel,
I sensed this life was going to be a ride.

I chose difficult this time.

I became aware the boat had stopped
waiting for the reclaiming
of the me at this spot.

Back to reality,
the cold biting at my sanity.
The boat moved on.
The memory made me clear.

I started this life
alone and in fear.
I felt this so powerfully.
No wonder my soul
had such deep misery.
Too much for me then,
I was just a baby.

This was my beginning.

In the Omen resides the beginning of Self-awareness. As I sat with my pen and journal, my life's movie began to play. I was on the precipice between the old and the new. When you visit here, you will actively re-experience the pain of the vision of the beginning of your conditioning. You will be able to see where the old program began. As you journeyed this section of the river you have gazed at the scenery through the lens of the Omen, so now it is time to get out of the boat and discover.

The natives of this place pay close attention to times of change and they will teach you to read and trust the Omens in your life. The people here are healers and those who can intuit. As you exit the boat, you will learn of their culture. Here, in this land, all change begins. The place of the Omen is somewhat haunting as you are not in the new and no longer in the old. It is the place of signs and signals that change is coming. It is consumed with anticipation anxiety as you are unsure of what is to come. The Omen people say you will have to change your inner world in order to change or affect your outer world. You will begin to see, as you walk around, how your sense of worth initially got lost. Hold the Omens close and follow their direction. There will be wisdom here. This wisdom is sure to show you the faulty way in which you were taught to see the world and your distorted views of yourself. The people of this world let you know it is faulty eye-sight.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Loving yourself by SHERRIE CAMPBELL Copyright © 2012 by Sherrie Campbell, Ph. D.. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Welcome to the journey into Loving Your Self....................1
Three Part Journey....................5
Part I: Traveling the Story: The River of Old Programming The Old Program is made up of all the faulty things we learned to think about Ourselves....................7
Ingredients for your Journey....................9
The Voyage through Emotional Landscapes....................16
Part Two: Finding the Meaning in the Suffering....................287
Part Three: The Crystal Palace: Living what we have learned....................305
The Internal Operation: Welcome to your inner Self....................307
The Crystal Palace....................309