“Once you take internal responsibility for knowing who you authentically are, and creating a mental landscape that makes life navigable, and even joyful, then you come to realize that you also have the power– and the responsibility–to lead every relationship in your life to the best dynamic of which it is capable.” ~ Emma J. Bell

It’s an honor and privilege for an author to be asked to write a foreword for another author — IF you love that book and that author. And I do BOTH. Here it is, hot off the presses, my thoughts (a carefully chosen word) on Emma J. Bell’s THE TRUE YOU: Discover Your Own Way to Success and Happiness by Uncovering Your Authentic Self and Building Remarkable Relationships With Others,  the powerful new book (all the way from Glasgow, Scotland), that will change your thinking – literally!

Here’s my foreword…

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Like a way-too-early-bird, the phlebotomist burst into the room with a chipper, “Do you mind if I turn on the overhead light?”

From the hospital bed, my husband, Dale, groaned in his sleep, and from the recliner next to him, I pulled a thick eye-cover over my face. It kept the light out, but not the commotion that followed. One by one, and in quick succession, different medically- necessary-persons made their entrance like vaudeville acts vying for top billing.

First, there was the lady who came for blood. Next came the flamboyant electrocardiogram technician. After him trailed the night nurse, the charge nurse, and the staff of the nutrition-support department.

It was now shift-change time. A new nurse came in, followed by the physicians- assistant, who, by the way, was worth taking my blindfold off for. He asked the unassuming woman from housekeeping to come back later. She turned around and bumped into the internal-transportation-specialist just arriving to take Dale to the radiologist.

And finally, like the ringmaster himself, the doctor appeared. “Can we go home?” Dale asked.

Like a crowded hospital room over which we seemingly have little control, our thoughts take on a life and momentum of their own, piling in one on top of the other; bossing, intimidating and frankly, confusing us. After a lifetime of submission to these pseudo authorities, how refreshing, how empowering, how liberating to learn that we don’t have to acquiesce to their conflicting agendas. We have the power!

For me personally, Emma Bell’s charge to take charge could not have come at a better time.

Earlier this year, my team and I attended a conference/seminar about sharing our passion and expertise with the world. In that high-energy, information-packed environment, we became newly endowed prophets: visionary and fearless; ready to lead multitudes over mountains; to plant flags atop summits; to blaze trails through lands of promise.

And then we got home.

Little by little, Doubt and Fear elbowed their way into the room, cramming out Visionary and Fearless until our mission was so hijacked, so dubious, so ridiculous by their reckoning, that despite protests from Reassurance, Reason, and Logic, I was ready to abort.

That’s when Emma asked me to read her book. Thank goodness.

Emma Bell and I had met and hit it off at the same seminar I just referred to, the one that ignited my flame for doing “good” by doing my best for the world. When she and I parted at its conclusion, she was full of the same vim, vigor, and vision that I was, but managed somehow to sidestep a crisis of faith. Her roar never faltered. How? Why?

The answers are in this book.

Emma thinks, to this day, that I agreed to read the manuscript as a favor to her. The truth is I agreed to read it as a favor to myself. I was all-to-ready to learn her secrets, to become her fellow and her follower, eager to put myself in her place, even as she put herself into mine–which, by the way, is the hallmark of an exceptional author. I was not disappointed. Her beautiful, candid confessions invited me to examine Emma-the-person, while her rock-solid research, specific instruction, promising perspectives, and real examples persuaded me to study Emma-the-professional. As a result, she guided me through the sometimes-frightening-and-always-thrilling quest for self-discovery and mastery, and in the end, as I hoped, I am once again atop the prophet’s mountain, quite determined this time not to slip from the summit. I know now that if I do, it will be by my own hand, not anyone else’s. The room in my head where such things are decided, the room so long contested and so long congested, has been cleared of all influences that are not my own.

Thank you Emma Bell. My initial admiration of the externally confidant and charismatic woman has only exploded into veneration for the internally calm and compassionate one. The world will be so much the better, the brighter, the clearer for the way Emma has led us all into becoming leaders: chiefly in our relationship with ourselves, and consequentially, in the relationships we have with others. In addition to recommending the reading of this book to everyone, including all my family and friends, I know thousands of women will feel Emma’s message coming through me. Their marriages will be blessed because their hearts will be enlarged because their heads will be their own. I wish you all, every reader and every follower, a grand journey, with Emma at your side, all the way, and all the time, to The True You. ~ Ramona Zabriskie 

  • Emma’s book is a perfect companion to Wife for Life and is available from her website HERE or on Amazon. If you are looking to transform your life, your thinking, and your relationships, put The True You on your must-read list this summer. Some of my favorite parts of the book include:
    The True You by Emma J BellThe Four-Stage Habit Forming Process, 
    Your Intrinsic Motivators,
    How to Maintain Your Motivation,

    Raising Tricky Issues and Handling Difficult Conversations, 
    The Six Resilient Factors and tons more

Emma also writes an excellent blog here: http://emmajbell.com/