Harnessing the Power of the Principles of Well-Being: Live Free of Addictions and Self-Destructive Behaviors
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About this ebook
You’ll be provided with practical exercises and application for how to incorporate these principles into your daily life. You’ll learn how to build new life-affirming habits and behaviors that can turn you way from your addiction and self-destructive behaviors and on to a road of freedom from them! The principles of well-being are:
Principle 1 – We’re all a WIP (Work in Progress)
Principle 2 – Self Love is the Foundation
Principle 3 – The Past is Gone Forever
Principle 4 – Purge the Critic – Be Your Own Champion
Principle 5 – You’ve Got Feelings – Express Them
Principle 6 – Keep Your Power by Owning It
Principle 7 – Abundance is Attitude
Principle 8 – You are Spirit – Nurture Your Soul
Principle 9 – Resistance is Futile – Surrendering Will set you Free
Principle 10 – Forgiveness – It Starts with You
Principle 11 – Who you are now is What Matters Most
Principle 12 – Your Story is Yours to Write
The book also provides an overview on addiction and aspects of how it functions and keeps us prisoners in our own lives. But, by learning and living the principles of well-being anyone can break free of addiction and self-destructive behaviors, just like the author. Learn how to live these principles and you too will live a happier, healthy, and positive life.
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Harnessing the Power of the Principles of Well-Being - Kerry S. Campbell
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INTRODUCTION
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Did you know you have the power to make your life into anything you want it to be, or change it to something more positive and healthy? Well, you do. But you may not know it or you may not know how. Perhaps you are living a life that is like living in a dark cave. You see shadows all around you – somewhere there must be light to cast those shadows. Some of those shadows are dark things in your life, things you have not fully explored, dug up, and exposed to the light of day, so they can be set free. And, you don’t even realize that many of those shadows are actually really great things in your life, but you can’t recognize them in the dark cave. These great shadows are all the blessings and good things in your life you can’t seem to see because they are unable to shine brightly while you’re trapped in a dark cave of addictions and self-destructive behaviors. This book is about finding your way through the darkness and out of that cave into the fullness of light and life. That’s the power of the principles of well-being! Through this book, I’ll teach you how to harness the power of these principles to live a life free of addictions and self-destructive behaviors. By learning and living the principles of well-being I found my way out of that dark cave and I broke free of my addictions and self-destructive behaviors. And, you can too. Keep an open mind, deeply consider and live these principles, complete the exercises in this book, and you will truly go far with creating a more fulfilling and happy life.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where your life is a mess and you wonder how you got there? Maybe you’re angry all the time. Or you drink too much. Or you eat junk food every time you are upset or stressed out and now you’re terribly over weight. Any of these may provide temporary relief from the underlying anxiety that triggered it in the first place, but does it really solve anything? No, instead it usually makes you feel worse about yourself in the long run. But, you find yourself in this endless cycle of repeating these poor behaviors over and over as a means for coping with life and you don’t know how to get out. Well, let me tell you something. First of all, whatever your addictions or self-destructive behaviors are, they are a result of deeper core issues that have never been fully resolved. If you know someone who struggles with alcohol addiction, what you are seeing is a person who usually has an underlying mental or emotional unbalance that has not been properly diagnosed or treated in any effective way. That person is in deep pain and wound up self-medicating. We are a self-medicating society. Just look around – booze is the biggest business in America! So is junk food. So, also is a growing epidemic of addiction to pain killers (opiates) and other prescription medications. Addiction to nicotine kills over 400,000 Americans each year alone!
What is going on here? What is at the root of all of this? The reason why many of us gravitate toward these things is because they have become our primary coping mechanisms for dealing with stress, anxiety, undiagnosed mental or emotional issues, or anything else. It is also a result of our genetic and biological physiology that we are completely unaware of, or have no understanding about. Simply put – we’ve failed as a country and a society in teaching ourselves effective life skills, coping mechanisms, and principles of well-being. Think about it. What did you learn in school? Did you learn math, reading? Yes? Did you also take classes in expressing your emotions, practicing self-care, or embracing self-empowerment? Did you take any courses in understanding how the human brain works, what triggers our emotional responses, how the body, mind, and soul can become addicted to all sorts of bad substances? I don’t think so. Maybe you took a course in biology or psychology, but did you learn anything practical in them? When I say practical, I mean relevant information that is directly beneficial and useful to your life.
Since we never learned these things in school, do you think we learned them at home? Did our parents have all this wisdom to impart? Did our religious upbringing really get into principles of well-being and how to take care of your mental, emotional, and spiritual health? Not really, or at least maybe only partially. For many of us, our parents had their limitations that they passed down to us. For many others, we left the religious milieu we were raised in and walked into a modern secular world devoid of spirit. For others of us, we were simply cursed with a genetic code that pre-dispositioned us to depression, anxiety, or addictions to certain substances. Others of us grew up in violent households or were victims of sexual crimes and never developed a good sense of self value or worth.
It’s important to realize that with any personal growth, pain is part of the process. Remember when you were a child growing up and you’d have those pains in your legs? You’d complain to your mom My legs hurt.
She’d say Those are just growing pains.
Then suddenly, you’ve grown 2 inches taller over the summer. It’s true. You were growing and pain was part of the process. But without pain there is no progress. You’d stay stunted at the height of 4 feet your whole life if it weren’t for growing pains and bodily growth. The same is true for personal growth. In order to grow up, you must go through growing pains.
Regardless of how we got here, we all find ourselves at a point where we look at our life and we want something different. Something better – more abundant, more joyous, more connected, more… But, we don’t know how to get there. We don’t even realize what is blocking our way. Does any of this resonate with you? Are you suffering from an addiction, self-destructive behaviors, or negative thought patterns that keep you a prisoner in your own life?
I was. In fact, I was suffering from all of those things. I was in a deep dark depression, physically and emotionally addicted to alcohol, lacked any sense of self-worth or value, and was committing atrocious acts of self-destructive behaviors. I was one hot mess! I wrote this book to share my journey and path to a life free of all those things. Maybe you’ll learn some things to help you on your path to freedom. I’m not a doctor; this isn’t the only way. I’ve read many, many books on self-transformation, personal development, and have been through three alcohol treatment programs. This book distills down what I had to learn, what I had to embrace and practice, and how I did it, to get me free of a life of pain, depression, and despair.
Nothing is impossible. The word itself says I’m possible!
— Audrey Hepburn
The Principles of Well-Being
I will cover the below principles in this book. You can learn and apply these same principles of well-being to improve your life too! I’ll walk you through each one of these in detail and how it helped me to get free of my addictions and self-destructive behaviors. I’ll also share with you exercises I did to help me learn and practice these principles, so that they became part of how I lived my life and continue to live my life happy and sober today. You can change your life, how you relate to it, and how you live it. Trust me, I’ve done it. And, life is so much better for it! This book is about showing you how you can live a life free of addictions and self-destructive behaviors too. In the process, you’ll begin to live a life that is more fulfilling, healthy, and enjoyable.
Principle 1 – We’re all a Work in Progress
Principle 2 – Self Love is the Foundation
Principle 3 – The Past is Gone Forever
Principle 4 – Purge the Critic – Be Your Own Champion
Principle 5 – You’ve Got Feelings – Express Them
Principle 6 – Keep Your Power by Owning It
Principle 7 – Abundance is Attitude
Principle 8 – You are Spirit – Nurture Your Soul
Principle 9 – Resistance is Futile – Surrendering Will Set You Free
Principle 10 – Forgiveness – It Starts with You
Principle 11 – Who You are Now is What Matters Most
Principle 12 – Your Story is Yours to Write
What are principles of well-being? What is meant by well-being? Well-being is the focus on being well in mind, body, and soul. By this I mean living a life that is focused on the positive, maintaining a healthy life style, managing our emotions in effective ways, and ultimately being content with who we are and the life we are living. A principle is a core concept or practice – it’s a conscious decision to act and behave in a specific way. All the principles of well-being covered in this book can be learned by anyone and everyone. The key to success is to practice them daily until they became a natural way we approach the circumstances in our life, how we behave, and the philosophies we embrace. I hope learning these and applying them in your life on a regular basis will help you build the foundation for a more abundant, joyful, and purposeful life. I can tell you from personal experience that learning these principles and living them got me on the road to recovery from depression and alcohol addiction and it has kept me solidly on that road for over three years now. I live them every day and it keeps me on that road into the future.
I’ve broken this book up into two sections: the biology of addiction and the principles of well-being. Without first understanding some basics about the biology of addiction, you won’t fully appreciate the principles. Plus, addiction comes in many different forms and it’s important to recognize any addictions we may have and how it is holding us down. Then, we know how we can apply the principles of well-being to bring us up to live a more full and enjoyable life. So, get ready for a journey of transformation. I’m going to walk you through how to take yourself out of the darkness of addiction and self-destructive behaviors and into the light and life of well-being.
Stay connected and get additional support, get private or group lessons on specific topics, or learn more by going to my website at http://www.principleswellbeing.com. If you have specific questions you’d like me to answer based on my experience, let me know. I’ll write a blog post response to it and publish it on my site. I wish you the best, Kerry
Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
— Frederick Douglass
PART I – A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF ADDICTION
CHAPTER 1
THE BIOLOGY OF ADDICTION
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Let’s talk about addiction. Personally, I dislike this word as it usually conjures up images of homeless people, stinking, and emaciated in dark doorway corners of the street huddled in ragged blankets. This might be true. Homelessness is often a result of untreated mental illness for a person who has no resources or support mechanisms to help them get well. But, addiction comes in many shapes and sizes. In fact, I’m a firm believer that we all have addictions. It’s just a matter of what kind and how destructive it is. I can tell you I had an addiction to alcohol, but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell from the outside. I was an educated person working at one of the biggest global companies in the world, Microsoft. I made a six figure salary – I dressed well, I spoke well. I had a good family and a good upbringing. None of this matters. Addiction is an equal opportunity disease. And a dis-ease it truly is.
What is Addiction?
Simply put, addiction is:
A habit that has taken over our life
A biological survival mechanism that has over ridden itself/gone on hyper-drive
A result of maladaptive behaviors and poor coping skills
A thing that fills a void we don’t know how to otherwise fill
A genetic disposition we are born with and have no control over
The dictionary definition of addiction is the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.
Otherwise known as: dependency, habit, or problem. The key thing is it’s a