Waking Up Happy by Jill Muehrcke
Published By: J P Publications
Release Date: December 7, 2011
Format: Paperback - 286 pages / Kindle - 752 KB / Nook - 1 MB
ISBN: 0960297871
ASIN: B0079MTI0U
Genre: Self-Help / Health, Mind & Body / Personal Growth & Inspiration
About The Author:
Juliana (Jill) Muehrcke is the award-winning author of many books and articles. Founder and editor of the international magazine Nonprofit World (snpo.org), she has studied at the University of Colorado and the University of Michigan and has a BA degree, specializing in English and psychology, from the University of Washington. Jill is listed in Who's Who (MarquisWhoswho.com). In her spare time, she enjoys teaching yoga and eating ethnic food. For many years, in several cities, including Seattle, Honolulu, and Madison, she has written restaurant reviews.
AUTHOR WEBSITE
GOODREADS
Jill Muehrcke's Waking Up Happy Virtual Book Tour Page On Pump Up Your Book!
BUY THE BOOK: Waking Up Happy
AMAZON
BARNES & NOBLE
SMASHWORDS
Disclaimer: I received a PDF copy of the book from the author in exchange for my honest review and participation in the virtual book tour event.
Virtual Book Tour Event: On Thursday, May 3, 2012, in association with Pump Up Your Book! Virtual Book Publicity Tours, author Jill Muehrcke participated in a virtual book tour event with an Author Guest Post on Jersey Girl Book Reviews. http://jerseygirlbookreviews.blogspot.com/2012/05/author-guest-post-jill-muehrcke-author.html
Listen to Jill on the Joy Cardin Show
Book Description:
There are many reasons why you may want to change your life. If you're in a relationship that's diminishing rather than enhancing your best self, or if you're eating the wrong foods, hurting your body, or doing other self-destructive things, you know, deep inside, that you can't continue on that path. And as you pass through different phases in your life - as you become a parent, for example, or an empty-nester or a retiree - radical adjustments are necessary.
Changing your life isn't easy. It means learning to know yourself. It means creating yourself anew. Because you're both the sculptor and the stone, it's a wrenching task.
And yet every sculptor knows that the piece of art that's meant to be already exists: It's a matter of carving its essence from material that's already there. When asked how the granite bear came to be, the sculptor says, "I just cut away everything that wasn't a bear."
Everyone's life cries out for transformation. If you don't change and grow, you die: Bit by bit, day by day, your innermost soul dwindles and perishes. The cost of not continuing to grow is ultimately feeling half-dead.
Your're the artist of your own life. All you need to do is pick up the tools for change and begin to use them. Each false start is a carving crucial to the final piece of art, paving the way for you to sculpt your greatest creation: the beautiful self that lies within the stone.
Book Excerpt:
Those of us who tell our stories here had different time schedules for changing our lives and have taken varied pathways, but all of us were — and are — on the same odyssey. Moving away from our addictions was just one step on that road to a new life.
Before we could create lasting change, we needed to find the root causes that made us turn to drugs – and other addictions – for relief – childhood abuse, neglect, mental illness in the family, secrets and fears that stifled honest communication as we were growing up and made us doubt ourselves and our worth. Confronting those ghosts, we learned to care for ourselves and find peace in our hearts.
It wasn’t about the drugs. There was always something missing at the core. What was missing was love. We had to learn to love ourselves, the people and environment around us, and finally the larger world.
The afflictions that went along with addictions – depression, eating disorders, sexual compulsions – complicated our voyage. We had to be vigilant that we didn’t slip back into those secondary disorders. Doing so required us to become detectives in unraveling the mystery of our own lives, and digging for those answers became one of the most exhilarating parts of the journey. The only thing more magical was sharing our discoveries with others and listening to their stories of self-discovery.
We have come full circle but have discovered that life isn’t really a circle but, rather, a spiral. Each time we come around to what seems like the same place, we’re on a different level, with greater ability to apply the lessons we’ve learned before.
We ask ourselves: How many times do I have to learn this lesson? The answer is: You will be learning your life lessons forever. But each time, you embed that lesson within your psyche a little more fully.
Step by step is the way. Slow and steady is the speed. That’s how change happens – by inches. By millimeters. By micrometers.
It is our brokenness, the jagged parts of ourselves that catch the light like crystal. It’s the glitter of those pointed pieces that beams a light for us and for others.
Taking these lessons to heart, we’re stronger than we ever thought possible. And yet we’re stronger still – immeasurably strong – when we join with others on the pilgrimage. We’re like beads of water falling on stone. Together, we transform the stone into something altogether new. We will never give up.
Before we could create lasting change, we needed to find the root causes that made us turn to drugs – and other addictions – for relief – childhood abuse, neglect, mental illness in the family, secrets and fears that stifled honest communication as we were growing up and made us doubt ourselves and our worth. Confronting those ghosts, we learned to care for ourselves and find peace in our hearts.
It wasn’t about the drugs. There was always something missing at the core. What was missing was love. We had to learn to love ourselves, the people and environment around us, and finally the larger world.
The afflictions that went along with addictions – depression, eating disorders, sexual compulsions – complicated our voyage. We had to be vigilant that we didn’t slip back into those secondary disorders. Doing so required us to become detectives in unraveling the mystery of our own lives, and digging for those answers became one of the most exhilarating parts of the journey. The only thing more magical was sharing our discoveries with others and listening to their stories of self-discovery.
We have come full circle but have discovered that life isn’t really a circle but, rather, a spiral. Each time we come around to what seems like the same place, we’re on a different level, with greater ability to apply the lessons we’ve learned before.
We ask ourselves: How many times do I have to learn this lesson? The answer is: You will be learning your life lessons forever. But each time, you embed that lesson within your psyche a little more fully.
Step by step is the way. Slow and steady is the speed. That’s how change happens – by inches. By millimeters. By micrometers.
It is our brokenness, the jagged parts of ourselves that catch the light like crystal. It’s the glitter of those pointed pieces that beams a light for us and for others.
Taking these lessons to heart, we’re stronger than we ever thought possible. And yet we’re stronger still – immeasurably strong – when we join with others on the pilgrimage. We’re like beads of water falling on stone. Together, we transform the stone into something altogether new. We will never give up.
My Book Review:
Waking Up Happy is an inspirational self-help guide that is designed to help you change the way you live and find balance in your life. This well-thought-out guide book contains true stories (testimonials) from the author and six other people, each sharing the core lessons that they learned, and how they rebuilt their lives from different addictions. The book also has Tools For The Journey, a set of exercises at the end of each chapter; Words of Wisdom and Light, wonderful insights and inspirational quotes that appear throughout each chapter; and 365 Steps On Your Journey, a daily strategy for each day of the year to keep you on your path.
You don't need to be an addict to use this self-help guide, everyone could use a little bit of transformation to regain balance, a new direction and find true happiness at some point in their lives. In Waking Up Happy, the reader will find a little bit of guidance, revelation and hope to help them kick-start their lives in a new direction, and have the best life they can have. This self-help guide has a hands-on style that focuses on tools for self-reflection, reinforced with examples of how others have prevailed to turn their lives around. Change doesn't happen in a moment, it takes initiative, dedication and drive ... like Jill says "you're the artist of your own life. All you need to do is pick up the tools for change and begin to use them."
Waking Up Happy will help you realize how fulfilling life can be, how much you have to live for, how to learn to accept yourself for who you are, have the courage to change, and most of all ... to enjoy each day. As you read the testimonials and review the inspirational quotes and exercises, it will give you a reason to ponder what areas in your life that you may want to change. This is a wonderful book of inspiration and guidance that everyone could utilize at some point in their lives. It is a guide book that you can go back and reference whenever you feel the need to change something in your life.
RATING: 5 STARS *****
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