How to Be Well

Introduction

One of the most common problems in the world today is stress. When we are stressed, our body creates the stress hormone cortisol, which helps us stay alert to handle the stress better. Being on red alert for long periods of time, however, makes us ill, and the way we live today we are always on alert, so we are always making too much cortisol.

It would sound simple, logical and straightforward for us to reduce the amount of stress in our lives, which would reduce the amount of cortisol, which would result in our feeling better. Most of the time, though, we aren’t even aware of what the cause of our stress is. And because we are constantly in a state of stress, we’re often not aware of how stressed we actually are.

Rather than create a book about stress, though, I prefer to talk about wellness, where wellness is ‘a state of feeling well’. Feeling well means having good mental, physical and spiritual health (yes, spiritual too). When we feel well, we are happier, at peace with the world and have more energy, creativity and motivation. We begin to thrive, and then we strive for things that are good for us, and good for those around us too. Being well means having vibrant health and feeling we deserve good things in life, so we get them. And when something stressful comes along, it no longer happens to us because we feel like a victim, it just happens, and we bounce back from it more quickly than before because we are able to do so.

Being well can dramatically improve the quality of our life and the lives of our family and the other people around us. It takes work to get well, however; it doesn’t just happen because we want it to.

I have created a map to help you move from where you are now to your future healed self. It is all in this book, right here for the taking. The rest is up to you.

So let’s look at this book more closely.

About This Book

There are plenty of self-help books out there telling you what you ‘should’ be doing. I find the theory and the logic behind most of them are good, but they never actually tell you how to change your life. I spent years looking through self-help books for the answers and quickly discovered that if I found one answer in each book I was doing well. I wanted to write the book that I was looking for back then. So this book is different. It is not a self-help book. I like to think of it as a self-care book. And I include the how.

I promise you that in some way, shape or form this book will change your life – if you give permission for your life to change. The only thing that’s standing between you and being well is you.

So I’m taking the time now to connect with you right from the beginning. The reason why some healing work is life-changing and some is not is to do with trust. I want to get to know you, to talk directly to you, so you can feel that you can trust me and that you have a guide in me. A guide is someone who makes suggestions as to how you can do things in a different or a healthy way for yourself. I know I can guide you to make the changes you need to make to have a life full of joy, health and happiness.

You are the one who has to make these changes, however – let’s be clear on that from the start. And if you resist, you might feel that I’m being hard on you from time to time. Now I’m not an advocate of a harsh directive coaching style and I know we may not all be ready to do 100 press-ups or run a marathon. A morning stroll to a café may be all that you can handle right now, and believe me, that’s perfectly fine. So right from the outset I want you to take this book at your own pace. Please. If you find you’re resisting some of the work, then there’s something there for you to learn, and that can’t be rushed or ignored. So don’t push yourself if you’re not ready yet. I’m a great believer in the idea that when you’re ready, it’s easy. If you’re not ready, you can bash your head on the wall to try to get through it, but it just won’t happen and you’ll end up with a bashed head.

So please put this book down when you feel you need to so you can take the time to digest what you’ve read. You can’t learn these concepts through your mind alone. For them to be truly useful in your life, you need to embody them, and that means experience them and feel them deeply in your body as well as make sense of them in your mind.

A big part of being well is relaxing and accepting who you are. When you do this, you begin to grow or expand. Over time, you come into balance with the new you, and then you’re ready to expand again. This is the way growth works, and you can’t rush the process. Imagine that the ideas in this book are seeds that can be planted in a garden – your garden. You need to decide if they are the seeds you want and then give them time to grow.

Go gently. Be patient. And take care of yourself. That’s how you get well, and stay well for life.

Your Journey of Healing – a Map Part I: Gaining Awareness Chapter 1: Who Are You?

We will start by looking at all the different aspects of you, including your physical body, memories, thoughts and emotions. We will discover how you identify yourself (career, family roles, wounding). We will learn about the ego, the soul, life-force energy and energy flow. I will introduce you to the wellness scale and using a journal as a way of tracking your progress.

Chapter 2: How You Connect Energetically Through Relationships

There is a layer of energy we do not see that affects all of our relationships. You will learn about this layer in this chapter and discover how unhealthy relationships impact on your energy. I will give you suggestions on shifting heavy energy to remove the unhealthy effects on you. I will also look at ways of helping you empower yourself by changing your expectations of what a relationship actually is.

Part II: Getting Well Chapter 3: Healing Your Relationship with Yourself

We start the healing work with ourselves. Here you will learn how to make friends with your physical body and ask it what it needs and wants from you. You will learn how to listen to your body instead of just living from your mind. I will teach you how to be grounded at the energetic level, so you can be empowered and feel stronger. By treating yourself better and hearing your inner voice, you will learn how to be nicer to yourself. This will lead to a greater understanding of what self-care really is and how to do it. And in turn this will lead to an increase in self-worth, self-confidence and self-esteem.

Chapter 4: Healing Your Relationships with Other People

Here I will teach you how to respond in your relationships so that you can set good boundaries. We will look at how you give your power away and I will teach you how to get it back through meditation and exercises at the energetic level. We will then look at basic family systems and how families are affected when someone who is usually sick gets better. I will teach you what power is and how it’s different from force, ways of feeling safe standing in your personal power and how to create good boundaries in all your relationships.

Chapter 5: Healing Your Inner Wounds

I liken our energy field to a river: if it runs clear and fast, we’re healthy, but most of us are blocked with ‘debris’ from past wounding. To do deeper work, we must start with a damage assessment. That’s where we start in this chapter, then we clear out your river, releasing old wounding and healing aspects of yourself that are hurting. We also look at how you can forgive everyone, even yourself. You will learn why releasing all your secrets is important and how you can bring magic back into your life. This is big work and must be validated, so I also give you some healing ceremonies to honour what you have accomplished here.

Part III: Staying Well Chapter 6: Maintaining a Good Baseline Wellness Score

All the deep work we have done needs maintenance, so in this chapter we work with the physical body, the emotional body and the mental body to create healthy patterns for vibrant health. We will look at food and emotional eating, exercise and physical pain, rest vs exhaustion, watching what you say and think, and looking at what energies you put into your body. Becoming aware is key, but creating a daily practice of wellness is vital, so we will look at how you can do that too, as well as create a list for emergency self-care when you need it.

Chapter 7: Reaching Your Full Potential

Being well is great, but how can you then step into a happy life? Are you allowed be happy? Here’s how to follow your joy. We will look at the three most important things: who you are with, what you do and where you live. I will teach you how to let go of labels and roles and live as your best, healed, self. I will teach the difference between your healed self and your ideal self, and what being human really means. Healing yourself affects those around you too, so we look at healing the space in an argument. And I finish up the book with instructions for creating a life you love using the Law of Attraction. And why not? You’ve done all the hard work – you deserve it!

Appendix: Choosing the Right Therapist and Therapy

Empowerment is so important and is the emphasis of my work with you. But if done thoroughly, the work in this book will bring up issues that you may not be able to manage on your own. So I’ve written an appendix section for you outlining the different types of therapy available and how to choose a good practitioner, along with a synopsis of the other things I have to offer and a list of further reading.