*This post is sponsored by Vocalpoint and Life Reimagined. All opinions are my own.
Who doesn’t want to live their most authentic life? That’s what I thought when I was approached about trying a new program with Dr. Phil called”Become the Best Version of Yourself: A Personal Guided Journey by Dr. Phil” through the Life Reimagined® platform. Dr. Phil guides every step with specific, detailed videos! You also get your own profile and ability to access other programs if you like what you see.
It’s all about being your best you right here and right now. I got the opportunity to try the program in exchange for writing this post — and it’s probably the best decision I’ve made in awhile! This program is a monthly subscription service with free activities to help get you started discovering your authentic self.
I’ve gone through a LOT of changes in the past six months — moving states, having a baby, buying my first home, living back near family for the first in a decade. With a full time job, a baby and lots of extra stressors, I knew I need to STOP — and focus on how to live my best life despite the business.
I’ve always love Dr. Phil’s non-nonsense approach to life issues. He’s not a cuddle bucket — he’s a reality guru and that’s the kind of life I prefer to live as well. I wanted to give you a bit of a preview of this program so you can see if you are interested in trying it yourself. Don’t you want to be the best version of yourself?!
Self-Concept
This whole program is all about self-concept — figuring out you really are and how you came to be the person you are today. Most people never stop to look at that. I was intrigued by a video Dr. Phil displayed, showing how learned behavior in bugs can be just like our own learned behavior. If we’ve been shaped by our environment a certain way, we may never realize how much more potential we have to be better or different.
The series of videos with Dr. Phil throughout the program — he guides you through each step — makes it really effective. One of the big things we did was figure out our 10 defining moments of our lives — the first one being birth.
10 Defining Moments
You then go through each moment in detail, answering questions and really fleshing out the details behind it. To be honest, it wasn’t easy. Many of my defining moments are negative — things like the day my eating disorder began, when I was rejected by all of my friends in 6th grade, and negative experiences with relationships that I don’t enjoy reliving.
However, I do believe they kind of just sit there festering if you don’t get the root of them. Maybe I could figure out some of the issues I have today by digging through the muck of the past.
I also have several positive defining moments — things like meeting my lifelong friends my junior year of high school and the moment I discovered that I wanted to travel the world.
The course really gets you to dig through each moment thoroughly and find the root of why these things happened to you — and how they did and do affect your well-being. Do these moments take away from or add to your authentic self? And what do they teach about who you really are?
It can be tough to dig through memories but answering the very pointed questions about each moment actually creates a pathway for you to see connections to other issues or events in your life. You are FORCED to evaluate everything, almost as if a therapist is sitting there with you getting to the roots of what has brought you to this point today.
After each session, Dr. Phil appears on video to talk you through things, which helps connect the dots of all the thinking you’ve just done.
Seven Critical Choices
When I got to this section, I had trouble because I feel like I put some of these choices in the defining moments section. So just remember before you start that these will be different things, though some may go together.
Like the other section, you are guided through each part with critical questions and guidance from Dr. Phil via video. He makes the good point that so often we make these “critical choices” without any awareness of why we are doing it. By analyzing it here, we are able to start thinking more clearly about choices we’ll make in the future — and what the consequences of those choices will be.
It can be painful to look at our decisions and see just what those consequences were but it’s important to take an honest look at them or we’ll never come to terms or find peace about it.
Five Pivotal People
Here, obviously, you identify five people who have made the biggest difference in your life. It was actually hard for me to figure out who I wanted to name as the last person. I have SO many wonderful people in my life but I found one to fill the gap that has consistently influenced me positively over the years.
I don’t want to get into who I picked here for my five, but it was refreshing to think about the good things these five people have brought to my life — and how I need to be taking more from that than from the negative influences I too often focus on.
Internal Factors
After you go through all the previous steps, you evaluate the internal factors of your mind. What made those moments so pivotal, those choices so critical, those people so important? It’s amazing how much power we house in our own minds.
Dr. Phil takes us through a process that shows us how we begin to accept distortions in our lives, which shapes our self-concept in a way that takes us away from who we were really meant to be.
I thought it was interesting to evaluate my internal dialogue. I realized that I’m not the kind of friend to myself that I would want to be to someone else. I have false confidence but not real confidence and that needs to change.
Additionally, I learned that what we impress in our minds regarding expectations and possibilities is far more powerful that our actual skills or abilities. Dr. Phil presents some really great examples here that made a light switch turn in my head.
After you complete everything, there is direction for a 5-step-action plan to make real changes in different aspects of your life.
Conclusion
If you never take the time to truly evaluate your life, you’ll miss out on incredibly valuable insight that could help make it much better. I believe in-person therapy is great but this program is awesome because you can do it on your own time and really take the time you need to think about these big moments in your life.
I came away feeling much more clued in to what has happened to me and why. It’s not fun digging into things like eating disorders and failed relationships but it’s freeing to see them from a larger perspective — and recognize where you went wrong — and where you went right.
Most of all, I realized the POWER our thoughts have to define & direct so much in our lives. It’s something I’m now taking into consideration with every thing I do.
The Life Reimagined® project with Dr. Phil is well put together and the guided videos from Dr. Phil after every section are really helpful. If you’re feeling like you need something more than just another self-help book (I love those too!), this might be a good option for you.
Do Want To Try It?
Life Reimagined® is offering a 14-day free trial of Become the Best Version of Yourself to Sweet Life readers when you click here. I highly recommend checking it out!
