This year the London Wellbeing Festival welcomes back Persia & Joey from Addictive Daughter. In this blog post they share with you the 3 steps they took to become the healthiest and happiest versions of themselves – inside and out.
As one of our father’s once told us: If you focus on the insides, the outsides will take care of themselves.
This advice was imparted when the both of us were feeling more lost and alone than we ever had before.
Several years after graduating from drama school, our acting work (and bank balances) were alarmingly sparse, and we found ourselves jumping from party to party, dysfunctional relationship to dysfunctional relationship, in a desperate bid to find some sense of validation and identity in a world that was growing scarier every day.
Since then, we’ve worked hard to overcome our own personal struggles in order to create a healthier, happier life for ourselves, and we’ve helped many others do the same through our positive lifestyle company Addictive Daughter.
Below, we share the 3 step process we set forth in our upcoming book ‘The Inner Fix’ that enabled us to become stronger, happier and braver. Our hope is that it might inspire you to focus on your own ‘insides’, so that the outsides can take care of themselves for you, too.
1) Identify the problem:
Before you can move towards a solution to your woes, you must first get really clear on what – and why – you have your particular problems in the first place. Much of the time, we focus and obsess about the external issues or behaviour that we’re struggling with – whether that’s anxiety, depression, heartbreak, debt, weight gain, drinking too much, or anything in between. Whilst these behaviours do need to be dealt with, they are often symptoms of deeper issues bubbling away below the surface that stem from unresolved pain or trauma from our childhood or adolescence (and make no mistake, we all carry some form of baggage from our past – even if it might not seem as heavy or extreme as other people’s.) If you want to understand why you’re having trouble now, ask yourself the following question (and ideally, write down your answer in a notebook or journal in as much detail as you can): What were the most painful/frightening/significant things that happened to me during my childhood or adolescence? We can almost guarantee that the answer to this question will have influenced most of your choices and behaviour throughout your life. So, although this may be a difficult task, it’s the first – and most essential step in your personal path to happiness.2) Be open to the solution:
Once you’re aware of the root of your problems from doing the exercise above, you’re then in the position to begin the process of healing those old wounds so that you can move forwards. We believe that the solution to our problems lies in developing a spiritual connection of our own understanding – one that will help us experience the sense of love, peace and joy that’s already inside of us (even if we don’t know how to access it just yet). To some people, this idea may seem clear and straightforward, to others, it may sound esoteric and not at all tangible. A spiritual connection is an intensely personal experience – one that we’d find very difficult to explain or do justice to in this short blog post. What we do know, however, is that if you’re open and willing to developing your own connection of this kind, you’ll be guided to exactly what will best speak to you. Therefore, we recommend saying this following affirmation out loud as a statement to yourself – and the universe – that you’re ready to release the past and embrace a happier future: ''I am ready, open and willing to develop a spiritual connection that makes sense to me''. Once you’ve made this statement, keep your eyes and ears alert, as we have no doubt you’ll start to receive guidance from all manner of sources. This often comes in the form of coincidences and synchronicities, for example, a friend sending you a book about spirituality that you’ve been thinking about buying for some time. Make no mistake though, the amount of time and work it takes to heal past pain can be very challenging. But, we promise that the results you’ll experience when you come out the other side will be well worth the effort.3) Get clear on what you want for the future:
Once you’re some way into developing a spiritual connection of your own understanding (along with any additional therapy or self-development work that you may have decided to undertake in the process), it’s then time to start getting clear and focused on what you want for the rest of your life. This may sound like quite a selfish step in some ways. However, it’s important to acknowledge that, when we’re happy, our loved ones and those around us also receive the positive benefits, too. We can’t give what we don’t have, so when we focus on making ourselves healthy and happy first, we’ll then have so much more energy with which to serve others still struggling.
One of the most simple and fun ways to work out what it is you want for your future is to carry out the following exercise:
Take a full page in a notebook or journal and divide it into 3 columns entitled ‘Be’, ‘Do’ and ‘Have’. Next, under the relevant column, write down everything you’d like to be, do and have in the next 10 years (think big – imagine there are no limits!)
After you’ve finished, star the 3 things in each column that are the most important to you, and write down one small action step next to each one that you could take this week to move you that tiny bit closer to your dream.
Example: BE – a loving mother – offer to babysit my niece this weekend and plan a really fun evening for the two of us.
Each week, you can continue to plan little action steps in the same manner for each goal. It might not seem like a lot, but by making progress slowly and gently like this, you’ll be heading in the direction you want to go – and in a way that feels fun, manageable and achievable. Before you know it, those small steps will soon start adding up to create real, tangible results.
When we carried out this exercise ourselves, we were shocked by how quickly our wildest dreams started to manifest: just two years after starting this process, we signed our very own book deal for ‘The Inner Fix’ with top publisher Hodder & Stoughton. This had seemed like an impossible feat to us not so long ago, and proved to us that what we focus on really does come to pass, so it’s worth focusing solely on what you do want – not what you don’t!
We really hope this blog post helps support you in becoming the healthiest and happiest version of you – inside and out!
Come along to Addictive Daughter’s workshop “It’s An Inside Job” on Monday 2nd May at the Mind Body Spirit London Wellbeing Festival. In this interactive workshop, Persia & Joey will provide practical tools and insights which will guide you to take the mountain of value you’re already standing on, and use it to heal and serve the world – in your own unique way. Buy tickets.
For the full workshop schedule visit our website. Book tickets for the festival and download the festival programme to find out who’s on, what’s on and when. 
