Foojan Zeine - Life Reset: The Awareness Integration Path to Create the Life You Want

Life Reset

The Awareness Integration Path to Create the Life You Want

Foojan Zeine

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2017 by Foojan Zeine

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

978-1-4422-7609-3 (cloth)

978-1-4422-7610-9 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

The journey to the creation of the Awareness Integration (AI) Model has been a long, yet amazing, experience. Id like to thank the pioneers in the field of psychology and ontology for bringing a wealth of information into this field, allowing me to use their brilliant work as components of the model. Many thanks to Nasrin Barkhordari, Ladan Safvati, Sholeh Warner, Fazi Azimi, Melina Satari, Julian Farzan, Lilian Farzan, Jake Gavenas, Sanam Rahimzadeh, Sara Panhasi, Shadi Kohandarvish, Shayan Rad, and Amy Firestein for their support in conducting and organizing research and publishing of the AI Model. Dr. Fereshteh Mirhashemi, Lili Starr and Helen Gilhooly, I thank you for creating the space of empowerment and love so that I felt the strength to pursue my dream of creating a model based on what I had learned and integrated in my life and my career. Im so grateful to have Eileen Manoukian in my life with her resourcefulness and caring. Thank you Kevin Quirk for the art of listening and making what I meant into the great art of writing. Thank you Lenore Skomal for taking this book under your wings and carrying it through; I call you the guardian angel. And finally, and most importantly, Im blessed to have Sam as my mate and for allowing me to experience love as I have never felt before.

Authors Note

The information contained in this book is intended to provide helpful and informative material. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions are not intended to serve as a replacement for professional advice, psychotherapy, or the provision of psychological services. Any use of this information is at the readers discretion. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.

Introduction

You picked up this book for a reason. Youre ready to hit the Life Reset button.

Clearly, youre feeling unfulfilled in your life. Despite your best efforts and intentions, maybe youre not getting what you really want and need in your work, your intimate relationships, or in your dealings with family, friends, and even strangers.

At times you may feel weighed down by voices that proclaim, Im not good enough or, I just dont seem to fit. Or you may wake up feeling powerless, angry, or frustrated about people or situations you have to face every day. Maybe youve been let down by others so many times that you wonder who you can really trust. Maybe you yearn for greater connection with the world around you but feel afraid of becoming bigger than youve allowed yourself to be. Perhaps youve achieved a degree of success but somehow youre still not completely happy. Or youre aware that childhood wounds still burden or limit you, and although youve done your best to move past them, you still get angry, frustrated, or just plain stuck.

You deserve to be happy, to have what you want, and to obtain the freedom to be who you really are as you find your place in the world. Youll feel stronger and more capable of asserting yourself, and your thoughts, feelings, and behavior will be in greater alignment. Realistically, you still wont be able to change what has happened to you in the past. But youll learn that with greater freedom in your mind and more love in you heart you can choose to deal with those same situations in healthier, more productive ways, exercising greater responsibility and accountability in how you relate to yourself and others.

Im confident that no matter why you have turned to this book, if you commit yourself fully and wholeheartedly to the process that unfolds, youll take a very big step toward greater fulfillment.

As you read this book youll soon be addressing your life through a much wider lens, and trust me, it wont be scary. Instead of worrying, get psyched because itll be fun. This journey is designed to help you free yourself from all those negative thoughts and experiences that have heretofore defined you, and it is going to be one of the most fascinating of your life. And Ill be with you every step of the way. Im going to escort you on a unique life journeya fascinating and revealing path. On this path youll be examining seven major areas of your life with many subareas. Youll meet a great number of people, both familiar and unfamiliar. Its a bit like putting together your autobiography.

Im going to ask you a series of simple questions, and through your answers youll be exploring your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. What you discover may at various times surprise, challenge, and excite you as you expand and deepen your awareness of who you are and why you do what you do. Sometimes Ill invite you to name an emotion you are experiencing and then guide you through a simple process to be present with and release that emotion. That release will help clear space to bring in more of what you want in life.

Once you have visited each of these areas of life, Ill walk you back along the same path. As you revisit each of the seven areas of life, youll be thrilled with the change. Youll hold new beliefs, new values, and even new intentions about how to relate to the people and situations in your real life. With this fresh perspective, a changed identity can be directed toward more satisfying results; and youll have new goals supported by concrete action plans to achieve them. You will have successfully hit the Life Reset button.

This new therapeutic Life Reset process has a name: the Awareness Integration Model. Ive been utilizing concepts from this process for many years, but I formally launched the technique in 2012. Since then Ive introduced it to hundreds of health-care professionals and clients from all walks of life.

Ive witnessed the results in the many clients Ive guided along this same path. Ive been a psychotherapist since 1990, and I can honestly say that I had never witnessed clients consistently walk out the door of my office looking like completely different human beings, after only a matter of weeks of therapeutic work, until I began utilizing this therapeutic model. When I conducted a pilot study of clients who had completed this process, the results showed a marked decrease in depression and anxiety and a significant increase in self-esteem. I dont know that Ive suddenly become a better therapist; Ive simply found a more effective way to facilitate profound growth, change, and healing.

Awareness Integration is designed to enhance self-awareness, increase self-esteem, release past traumas or psychological blocks, reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression, and promote a clear, realistic, and positive attitude to learn and implement new skills for an effective, productive, and successful life. The model integrates cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and body-mind techniques to create more awareness into a persons life patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving toward self and others.