Awaken the Sleeper
"Awaken the Sleeper Within to Create a Happier Life"
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
(Pages vi and vii,
“My Gift”)
Most of us spend the first thirty-five years or so of our lives trying to establish ourselves in some sort of career and some sort of family situation. Lacking our own reservoir of personal experience, we have either bought into our parents’ values and beliefs without really being able to test them, or we have charted our course to oppose them for whatever reason. In either case, we tend to live our early lives, positively or negatively, under the unconscious control of our parents and early care-givers.
Fortunately, most of us experience an “identity crisis” somewhere around our thirty-fifth year on the planet. We seem to be driven to go back to complete a task that we began in adolescence. We want to become more aware of our individuality, to define our own values and beliefs, and to chart our course, consciously, for the rest of our lives.
Resolving our “identity crisis” requires that we withdraw ourselves, at least mentally, from the hustle and bustle of our daily lives. Our efforts are best spent searching our being for the things that give meaning to our lives, that give us a sense of direction and the will to go on. It is also useful, during this time of reflection, to take notice of the results of other people’s experiences, their recipes for success.
In this book I have set down the results of my own personal search for identity and meaning. My journey led me into the formal study of counseling and psychology and then into a career as a Marriage & Family Therapist. It helped me to recognize and to accept my individuality with all of its strengths and its short-comings. I learned how to use my strengths in appropriate situations, how not to over-use them, and how to develop new skills to overcome my shortcomings.
I offer you the results of my experience as a starting point for you to work out your own answers to guide you in your own search for meaning and happiness.
Respectfully,
Frank Losik
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About the Book
A step-by-step guide designed to help the serious traveler on the journey of life to identify his or her life goals, to create a plan for achieving them, and to begin putting those plans into effect. It is written in plain, every-day language, and is broken down into bite-sized, easy to digest chapters that provide essential background information, as well as easy-to-understand strategies to help the reader get through his or her current crisis, successfully. The book is divided into a number of segments. It begins with The Basics, which suggests a primary life goal of personal happiness and reviews the underlying principles of human development. Who Am I?, which follows, uses a brief quiz game to identify the reader’s personality type. This is followed by another short, game-like segment, What Do I Want?, that helps to clarify values. How Can I Get It? is a detailed blueprint for personal development. Mutual Support outlines the skills needed to nurture long-term, mutually supportive relationships. We Need to Talk! teaches specific, essential communication techniques. The final segment, Tips on Types, explains and expands on the psychological type theory of Carl Jung which has been popularized by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
About the Author
Frank Losik has been a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist for over sixteen years. He is an experienced problem-solver who specializes in working with clients who are temporarily overwhelmed by some sort of life crisis. He has worked with a wide variety of clients in many different settings from private practice to state prisons to at-risk high school students. He began his study of counseling and psychology while working through his own personal crises of divorce, career change, custodial and non-custodial parenting, step-parenting, and remarriage. He strives to achieve two goals with his clients: the first is to relieve their current pain and suffering; the second is to empower them to develop the skills to resolve future problems on their own.