Kristina Hallett - Own Best Friend: Eight Steps to a Life of Purpose, Passion, and Ease

Advance Praise

Dr. Halletts book is a gift for busy women everywhere. I read this book in one sitting and literally could not put it down. It is chock full of practical tips that will help you find and live your very best self.

Melissa Morriss-Olson , PhD, Provost, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Bay Path University

As an executive coach and consultant working with career-changers, Fortune 500 executives, entrepreneurs, startups at the Cambridge Innovation Center, and in my work as a journalist, I receive countless books on how to improve ones life. The world is flooded with such treatises. And rightly so. It has never been so important for people to take charge of their own lives and live strong and beautiful! So what makes Dr. Halletts Own Best Friend rise to the top? It is one of the few to so seamlessly weave together proven techniques and ideas from a variety of sourcespsychology, Eastern traditions, coachinginto a comprehensive, easy-to-follow, powerful life-transformation tool. And she writes in such a personally enjoyable way, recounting countless examples in fun, accessible stories. Dr. Hallett turns personal improvement into pure joy. Other writers tell you, You are a rock star. When Dr. Hallett says it, you believe it.

James Lopata , MTS, PCC, Executive & Entrepreneur Coach & Consultant, Co-founder, innerOvation LLC, Author of The Secret To Career Happiness

In her book Own Best Friend , Dr. Kristina Hallett delivers a message that is dear to my heart. I am a fibromyalgia patient, and self-care has been the key that has unlocked a life I love to live and my future. Unfortunately, many of the clients and students I work with dont know how to translate the concept of self-care into reality. They often think it means getting a massage or taking a bubble bath or meditating. It can include those things, to be sure. Ultimately, however, self-care is about treating yourself the way youd treat someone you love. Its about being your own best friend. Dr. Halletts EMPOWERS process provides a practical, step-by-step framework for cultivating a relationship with yourself that goes beyond massages and bubble baths to provide something deeper and more lasting: a loving and nurturing relationship with yourself.

Tami Stackelhouse , Founder, International Fibromyalgia Coaching Institute, IFCInstitute.com

I have always believed that we are the CEOs of our own destinies. In her book Own Best Friend Kristina Hallett takes this notion to a much deeper spiritual level. She provides a guide to help us live more fully by believing in ourselves and the powers within us.

Carol A. Leary , PhD, President, Bay Path University, Author of Achieving the Dream

KRISTINA HALLETT PhD, ABPP

NEW YORK

NASHVILLEMELBOURNEVANCOUVER

Own Best Friend

Eight Steps to a Life of Purpose, Passion, and Ease

2018 KRISTINA HALLETT PhD, ABPP

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing in partnership with Difference Press. Morgan James is a trademark of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

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ISBN 978-1-68350-629-4 paperback

ISBN 978-1-68350-630-0 eBook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909502

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Interior Design by:

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For Sandra.

From the first, you have been my light, my love, my inspiration, my precious daughter. This ones for you.

In Own Best Friend Dr. Kristina Hallett takes on simple themes that have gotten lost in the swamp of modern lifeliving with meaning, passion, and purpose, and basically being our own personal spirit guides. We can access GPS satellites to guide us in nearly every corner of the planet, but we have lost our own personal guidance systemsand too many people report feeling lost and alone, even when interconnectivity and the illusion of connection is ubiquitous. Ads for antidepressants pepper the landscape of self-help daytime television. Something is not quite right.

Shortly before I spoke with Kristina about her book, I had the privilege of completing an immersive pilgrimage to temples in South India. The process evoked spirituality, mindfulness, and patience. Lots of patience. The temples are treasure troves of sculpture, ancient architecture, jewels, flowers, and a sensory tsunamismell, sight, sounds, touch, and taste.

As I stood in a queue that proceeded to the inner sanctum of the temple to witness the featured deity, I saw many other small statuary in nooks set along the way. The statues reflected myths that carried themes of duty, obedience, discipline, sacrifice, fate, and hopeheavy mantles to shoulder.

The myth of Ganesh is a favorite standard in the repository of Hindu mythology, and one that has been embraced by the West. To make a long myth short, Ganesh was the son of Shiva and Parvati, and his head was replaced by the head of an elephant, due to a bit of a misunderstanding. He is a benevolent spirit revered as a remover of obstacles, patron of the arts, and the overseer of new beginnings. It is his standing as a remover of obstacles that has held the most resonance for the West, and a statue of Ganesh often serves as a talisman for difficult situations.

At one of the temples I visited, I looked at a particular Ganesh statue and had a moment of clarity in which I recognized that perhaps nearly all obstacles are perceptual and illusory. The temptation is to turn to Ganesh to grease the way to personal goals (relationships, education, career, money)but what about the obstacles we set within ourselves that block us (I cant do this No one starts a new career this late Im not enough What if they say no?)? Even the practical obstaclesmoney, time, other peopleare, in fact, internal constructions.

So, does that mean that simply thinking differently about a situation would remove the obstacle? This is the central premise of cognitive behavioral therapy. People pray to Ganesh to remove what are believed to be literal barriers, but perhaps we all have an inner divinity that could allow us to think differently about these obstacles and re-render them.

The neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky makes the argument that zebras dont get ulcers, because they do not worry about small thingsthey only expend their sympathetic nervous systems on the real dangers, like a charging lion. The amount of time and mental bandwidth we humans expend on the what ifs , shoulds , and supposed tos results in significant wear and tear on our minds, bodies, and souls.

What are these barriers, obstacles, fears, and anxieties? While many are realmoney, illness, deadlinesmost are created. Even with the real barriers, what tends to be distorted is the narrative we create around them (If I dont make this deadline, my life will be ruined If I dont make enough money, Im not a success). Many of these barriers are created from the expectations others have for us to get the right career, the right partner, the right life. The risk then becomes that life is about living the narratives of others, rather than our own narratives. We become players in someone elses script, rather than crafting our own. Perhaps ancient mythologies offered through Hindu deities and modern neuroscience all converge on a similar riffthat we waste time on fears that are illusory.