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LASTING Transformation: A Guide to Navigating Life's Journey

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LASTING Transformation takes you on a journey to experience the process of transformation, which can result in powerful, positive change. Life's journey provides us with many opportunities for self-knowledge, self-love, and deep personal transformation. The road map outlined in LASTING Transformation gives specific guidance for this journey. It offers important insights and effective strategies for developing a strong self, fulfilling relationships, and deep soul-wisdom. Dr. Abby Rosen shares the experience of her thirty-nine-year pilgrimage integrating psychotherapy and spirituality. Each chapter includes real client experiences that show the process of behavioral change and lasting transformation, humorous cartoons, and practical exercises that together provide a road map to help you navigate the sacred journey of your life.

264 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 2010

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Abby Rosen

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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Hazel.
83 reviews17 followers
February 22, 2024
Abby Rosen’s transpersonal guidebook, “Lasting Transformation: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Journey,” enlightens on understanding the inner self, promoting self-awareness, personal growth, spiritual awakening, and lasting transformation, while also giving the realization of how childhood experiences shape a person as an adult.

Divided into two stages, the book’s first half focuses on life-lesson therapy, where the author explains each of the five strong sub-personalities—the inner critic, the judge, the perfectionist, the pusher, and the pleaser—that affect relationships both internally and externally. The first stage centers on personality development by changing the behavior that no longer serves the person, while the second half emphasizes soul-wisdom therapy, which is for soul development, where meditation is one of the powerful tools promoted to achieve higher consciousness and to connect to the Divine.

Dr. Abby Rosen simplified her discussions by giving actual clients’ experiences and providing clarity on each of the proposed topics, especially the sub-personalities that impact any kind of relationship. According to the author, “to have a healthy relationship with our inner child, we need to know ourselves since it is an essential guide on the journey to health, happiness, and wholeness.”

The book includes several references to other authors’ work supporting Abby’s transformational book. One of the many citations that hit me hard was from Susan Polis Schutz, who describes: “Hatred can never put an end to hatred. Hate is conquered only by love.” With a dollop of simple cartoons relating to behavioral change, the higher self, and transformation, the book also encloses practical and actionable exercises at the end of each chapter, effectively evaluating one’s transpersonal realm, which “leads to the most sublime and constant experience of joy, wisdom, love, and peace.”

Insightful and informative, the book provides specific guidance for navigating the sacred journey of life. As the acronym LASTING Transformation entails: Life-lesson and Soul-Wisdom Therapy for Inner Growth Transformation, the book extols persuasiveness, especially since the author’s thirty-nine years of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritualist bolster its credibility too.

Filled with wisdom for positive change and transformation, the book imparts lessons from each client’s anecdotes that help readers understand the inner self, the source, and the significant others. 

Coherent, invaluable, and exceptionally edited, “Lasting Transformation” merits an optimum rating from me. Hence, readers interested in the importance of vulnerability, conscious communication, aware ego, meditation, serving self, and purpose will find this book beneficial. By taking the road less traveled—the inner road that takes people beyond the materialistic worldview—one can achieve a deeper connection and the inner joy of life.
Profile Image for Steven Seril.
Author 1 book13 followers
December 23, 2024
Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)

Lasting Transformation is an ambitious, introspective, and empowering self-help book by Abby Rosen, PhD!

This book provides a unique combination of practical and—what we would call—“metaphysical” advice to help you to achieve your best and happiest self.

Something we appreciated about this book is that this isn't a book about being an alpha-male or lady boss. It isn't a book about crushing your enemies, opponents, and problems. It's not a book about getting rich quick. It's not a book about hooking up with guys or girls. It's a book about being YOU-- a fulfilled YOU, a HAPPY YOU.

From beginning to end, Rosen emphasizes how important it is to prioritize your happiness and mental health/well-being. So many times, we sacrifice ourselves, our health, and/or our happiness to make others happy. So many times, we work ourselves into the ground to make someone else rich. We go out with someone to make them or our parents or friends happy. We stay in unhappy relationships because it's what others want. We keep working unhappy jobs because we don't see a way out or we don't want to displease our employers or coworkers. We don't follow our dreams for one reason or another.

Worst of all, we say that this is life and that's all there is to it.

The voice that tells us that “this is life and that's all there is to it” (or other such things) is one of many negative, pessimistic voices that keep us down and hold us back. They rob us of our smiles and our laughter.

On that note, one of the things that the author talks a lot about are the voices—the subpersonalities—that make us sad, depressed, anxious, or feel utterly defeated. These include the “Pusher.” That is the voice that keeps telling us to go, go, go and that we haven't achieved enough to deserve good things yet. There's the “Beach Bum,” the voice that tells us that it's not worth trying or doing. There's the “Inner Critic,” the one that keeps us from doing or saying stuff so we don't make a fool of ourselves in front of others (supposedly). There are the “Nurturing Parent” and “Critical Parent” voices that seem to hover over us like a helicopter, a puppeteer controlling our every movement. There are our various “Inner Child” voices that often feel scared, nervous, or vulnerable. There's the “Perfectionist,” the voice that is obsessed with everything being absolutely perfect, else the person risks feeling defeated or disappointed. This voice, similar to the Pusher, almost never seems to be happy, satisfied, or content. That's because perfection is a futile and impossible pursuit.

All of these voices have their place and exist for a reason, however, one of the keys to our happiness, fulfillment, and mental health is knowing when to listen to these voices and when to silence them.

On that note, one of the biggest takeaways we had from this book is that YOU are in control, not the voices. YOU make the final decision. YOU choose to be happy.

While that may not be the most unique affirmative concept ever, it's definitely powerful and meaningful. It restores power back to the person rather than their negative, pessimistic subpersonalities.

Speaking of being empowered and being in control, some of our favorite quotes from this book are:

“I have a mind, I am not my mind”

“I have emotions, I am not my emotions”

These are powerful! A lot of us feel like we are “emotional people” and can't see life without being completely guided by our emotions, for better or for worse. Likewise, a lot of us feel like our minds (or bodies) are all that we are, but that's far from the truth. We are a whole. We have dimensions and layers. This book even seems to take the perspective that we have a soul and/or a spiritual self that transcends those things while also intersecting them. Our brains are one of many organs that keep our selves chugging and churning.

This book also emphasizes the importance of relationships and how they both teach us and reveal new things to us—about the world, other people, and ourselves. One of our other favorite quotes from this book is: “Hearts that don't touch can't ignite.” This refers to the mental blocks or apprehension that keep us from fully experiencing or immersing ourselves in relationships. A lot of these blocks or apprehensions come from repressed or hidden (often poorly-hidden) issues, some of which spring from negative experiences in the past like abuse, infidelity, or some other betrayal of trust.

This book is actually an amazing read, particularly in its first half. However, we have some reservations about the second half of this book. The reason we say that is that this book seems to take a complete 180 in its second half, emphasizing more meta concepts like spirituality and meditation—to what seemed like a pseudo-religious degree. That's not something we were necessarily braced or prepared for. Many readers may be put off by this, especially if they were bought into the more practical concepts in this book.

Similar to REAL Psychology by Scott Flagg, PhD, this book starts getting into bizarro territory with weird concepts like “Soul Wisdom Consciousness.” There's even the questionable quote that “meditation is medication.” Having just read the article “Mindfulness Would Be Good For You If It Weren’t So Selfish” by Thomas Joiner, also an accomplished psychologist (who developed the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide), we view those kinds of statements with heavy skepticism. As Joiner alluded to in that article, mindfulness and meditation are not magical or a replacement for modern medicine. That's not to say they can't help, we'd just caution against overselling these things.

Otherwise, this is a great book!
60 reviews2 followers
February 8, 2024
Lasting Transformation: A Guide To Navigating Life's Journey by Abby Rosen is a boon to the society, where we all are suffering with the broken soul. It is very very helpful book. It not only allows your to heart and mind to stay strong but also heals your soul . In this book Abby Rosen has written all her life experiences as a psychologist in order to help people healing their mind, heart and soul.
It is written in a very clear and easily understandable manner and there are some pictures of cartoons inside the book which doesn't let reader get bored. Those cartoons make it more interesting. There are also In Practice exercises which are fun to do. You will find yourself enjoying those activities. The thing which I like the most is the cover of the book. It is beautifully printed with a butterfly, like it is conveying a message for all the people that we all are like them, beautiful, colourful. This book is one of the best book I have read till date.
I will honestly recommend everyone to read this book once. It will really help you in living your life in a better way.
I appreciate the author for her work and bringing such a beautiful and helpful guide to us. And I am grateful that I got a chance to read it.
Profile Image for Sudipta Nandi.
132 reviews7 followers
February 6, 2024
Do you like to please people over your discomfort?
Do you get anxiety attacks if everything is not perfect?
Do you get angry if something or someone is not aligning with you?
and, you are answering affirmative to all or some of the above questions. yes?
Then, the actors are not you. Rather some of your subpersonalities like "Pleaser","Perfectionist" or "Controller" are dominant here.
They are sometimes a great help. Really, great. But, they are like a two-way sword. They disassociate you from the real you and they limit you.
It is time, we should search within. That hurt the inner child who was forced to sleep a long time ago. Who has no say when those sub-personalities take charge.
But, transpersonal change can let us connect with our inner self, the core to bring coherence with all personalities and primary selves.
Of course, you need a roadmap.
That's why try this book.
P.S. Try ASAP.
Profile Image for Yvonne Oloo.
53 reviews5 followers
May 6, 2024
Lasting Transformation: A Guide to Navigating Life's Journey by Abby Rosen, Phd, is a gem of a book. The book guides the readers on how to achieve behavioral change and lasting transformation through transpersonal psychology. The author delves into how our past hurts and pain have shaped our personalities, and how our current dispositions may be causing us pain and hurt instead of leading us to a more fulfilling life. The author then takes the reader through the healing process using tools adopted from different fields of psychology, tools which not only help the reader achieve healing but also open you up for self-discovery and awakening. This process will overall help you change behaviors that cause pain, hurt, and holding back, and in turn help you build healthy relationships with yourself, loved ones, the community, and planet. I highly recommend that you take this journey and read this book, for it a gem and gift to the human race.
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