The Essential Self: The Key to a Life of Passion, Lasting Joy and Fulfillment

By Dr. Elliott B. Rosenbaum

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that Most men die with their music still in them. In The Essential Self, psychologist and master life coach Dr. Elliott Rosenbaum explores the source of joy and fulfillment and teaches us how to access our inner music. This music comes from our Essence and consistently connects us to our life purpose and most compelling goals. With the tools of The Essential Self in hand, we are guided to truly transform our lives and live a life that is deeply enjoyable and satisfying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475982404

Dr. Elliott B. Rosenbaum

Dr. Elliott Rosenbaum is a board certified clinical psychologist and master life coach. He received his master’s level training at Johns Hopkins University and his doctorate from The George Washington University. Dr. Rosenbaum served as a psychologist in the U.S. Navy where he received recognition for his innovative service to active duty service members, helping them reconnect with their life purpose and goals using evidence-based techniques. Dr. Rosenbaum is currently a life coach and psychologist in private practice and he directs the American School of Professional Life Coaching (ASPLC), which trains professionals and lay people in the art and science of transformational life coaching.

Book preview

The Essential Self

The Key to a Life

of Passion, Lasting Joy

and Fulfillment

DR. ELLIOTT B. ROSENBAUM

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

The Essential Self

The Key to a Life of Passion, Lasting Joy and Fulfillment

Copyright © 2013 by Dr. Elliott B. Rosenbaum.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7807-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8240-4 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 04/22/2013

Contents

Introduction

PART I—Form & Essence

Chater 1 The Study of Essence

Chater 2 Beyond Self Evaluation

Chater 3 The Intrinsic Value of Man

Chater 4 Values, Religion and Essence

Chater 5 Essence, Self Worth and Relationships

Chater 6 Form & Essence

Chater 7 The Impact of Socialization

Chater 8 The Core Mistake

Chater 9 We Are Mostly Essence

Chater 10 The Source of Satisfaction

Chater 11 Essence is Within

Chater 12 When We Access Essence, Life Transforms

Chater 13 Decisions

Chater 14 Enlightenment

Chater 15 Waking Up

Chater 16 Education and Essence

Chater 17 Passion Comes From Essence

Chater 18 Essence-Centric vs. Form-Centric Living

Chater 19 Essence and Emotional Health

Chater 20 On Being Connected

Chater 21 Coming Down To Earth

PART II—The Music & The Noise

Chater 1 The Vision

Chater 2 From Noise-Maker to Music-Lover

Chater 3 The Three Levels of Noise

Chater 4 The Music

Chater 5 Expanding the Music of the Spirit

Chater 6 The 4 Levels of Pleasure

Chater 7 The Energy Meter

Chater 8 Energy Flow

Chater 9 Vital Life Energy

Chater 10 Energy Blocks

Chater 11 A New Definition of Success

Chater 12 Your Joy is Your Purpose

Chater 13 World Harmony

Chater 14 The 10 Questions: Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

PART III—Two Words & One Phrase

Chater 1 Introduction to The Two Words

Chater 2 The Two Words

Chater 3 The Two Words Challenge

Chater 4 Discovering Your Two Words

Chater 5 For the Next Month

Chater 6 The Two Words Worksheet

Chater 7 Feng Shui with The Two Words

APPENDICES

Appendix A Common Two Words:

Appendix B Common One Phrases

Appendix C Diagrams

Appendix D For Coaches

Introduction

You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. ~C.S. Lewis

In my search for personal transformation, lasting joy and fulfillment in my own life and in the lives of the people I work with, I have been fortunate to observe a feature of man that consistently provides all of these outcomes: the Human Spirit. It appears that when this part of us is tapped into, our burdens are lightened, our path becomes clearer and our sense of self becomes more solid.

To my delight, I have witnessed individuals reshape their lives using simple tools which consistently bring out the best in them by reconnecting them with the Human Spirit within. These tools feature new ways of thinking about ourselves that are truly transformational. They include the development of a life vision that flows from our deepest values and the delineation of goals that are concrete expressions of our Spirit.

Since writing my first book, The Valued Self, I have received feedback as to how helpful and transformational the simple act of identifying one’s core values has been for those who have done so. The added component of clarifying one’s life vision and goals has been instrumental in helping people find meaning and fulfillment in their lives again.

Young people who are looking for themselves have reported that they were able to identify a satisfying path for their future. This work has allowed them to release themselves from the expectations of others that were not in tune with their personal vision. Middle-aged and older adults have reported that values clarification has assisted them to return to their Core Selves. As one client put it: I got my happy back.

This work has been transformational for me as well. It has helped me connect deeply with my passion for helping others find the purpose and joy that lies dormant in their Spirits. What we value ends up being what we spend most of our time and energy on, and it can transform a person’s life to reconnect with the thoughts and actions that flow from their Essence.

We are happiest when we are expending our energy on experiences that are truly satisfying to us on a personal and professional level. When we are in tune with our core values, we can find opportunities to express these life-giving themes in practically any situation and environment.

The term value is a rich and multifaceted term. Oxford dictionary includes ten different, though related, definitions including the worth, desirability, or utility of a thing, one’s standards or judgment of what is valuable or important in life, the relative rank or importance of a game piece (e.g., playing-card, chess-piece) according to the rules of a game, and the ability of a thing to cause an effect. I believe that all of these definitions are relevant to our task of identifying the core themes in our lives that give our lives meaning and pleasure. We must know what is important in our lives so that we play the game well and live a life that gives us the highest payoff for our efforts.

On the deepest level, I have come to recognize that when I ask a client to identify their Core Values, I am literally asking them to find what their Core or Essence values most. I AM ASKING WHAT THEIR CORE WANTS. When they learn to listen to the inner voice of their Essence, they are able to identify what they most want from their Core. From this place, they are able to access their passion and purpose in a meaningful way.

Spending our lives satisfying values that are not relevant to our Core will give us little meaning and pleasure. When we learn to listen to our highest inner voice, the voice of our Essence, we soon figure out what we really want in our lives. When I ask someone I am working with to identify their core values, I am asking them to tell me what are the themes or values that consistently feed their Spirits.

Just as food feeds our physical selves, core values are what feed our emotional and spiritual selves.

The difficulty in this process is often in being able to separate what is truly meaningful to a person from what they have been told should be meaningful to them. To do this, we need to be able to separate our own inner voice from the voices, values and beliefs of others that we have absorbed throughout our lives but which are external to our Core Self. These external values lead us away from what we want and need to live happy and fulfilling lives.

Not all information from the outside has to be discarded, but it is essential that it all be processed through the prism of our Core Self. This process includes asking ourselves if the values we are currently using in our mental operating systems are aligned with WHO WE ARE on a Core level. The practice of separating one’s core values from their external values sets off a chain-reaction of decisions geared towards self-satisfaction.

The primary question that is asked at this point is: If nobody had ever told you who you were supposed to be, who would you be?

It has also come to my attention as a psychologist, how rare it is for therapists to help their clients connect with what they truly want in life. That is not to say that this does not come up in therapy, but to say that it is commonly a structured focus of psychotherapy would be misleading. Rather, most therapists spend their time with their clients engaged in one of the following activities:

1. Receiving updates about their client’s week.

2. Discussing the problems that brought the client to therapy.

3. Seeking insight into what caused the client’s problem in the first place.

4. Applying a therapeutic technique such as cognitive-behavioral therapy to remediate the problem.

While all of these options have positive applications, it has been my experience that individuals make very slow progress when a problem-oriented approach is applied. I believe the reason for this is that all of this work is essentially geared towards helping clients remove blocks.

The drawback with this approach is that for most people, until they have a clear vision of what they want, the blocks that stand in their way are not truly