The Bergen Protocol

Real Life Resilience

Only by taking better care of yourself can you improve your overall wellbeing. It’s important that you take action for nothing will change until you do. Kevin Bergen walks us through the Bergen protocol to help us understand how to get unstuck in life through expansion writing.

The Bergen Protocol and the Upward Spiral

The aim of the Bergen protocol is to improve your well-being by encouraging you to get actively involved in your actions and thoughts. The principle of self-care is advocated and a few actions are recommended. These actions when taken daily will improve your sense of wellbeing. The action you choose can be journaling and creative writing and points are allocated to help you get motivated to achieve your life goals. The motivation received from the daily actions creates an upward spiral that helps improve the different aspects of your life. The actions points you choose can be a combination of easy and difficult actions in order to get you challenged and also motivated.

Writing has been used successfully to help people get through traumatic experiences. In expansion writing, you engage in therapeutic writing for four to ten minutes a day, for seven days. It’s recommended that the same sentence stem is used for the first few days as it prompts the mind on what you wish to write about. By using the same sentence stem, you unlock your subconscious and you are able to delve in the deeper issues that may be hurting you.

After writing, take time to evaluate what you have written down. You examine your thoughts and feelings on the subject matter. In addition, you will need to look back on the amount of time you spent in the previous day thinking of what you had written on that day. This will make you more aware of your thoughts and feelings on the subject. The last question for you is on how likely you are to write again. These questions increase your level of self-awareness.

Take Home Message:

• Practice self-care everyday by participating in actions that give you a sense of being better.
• Adopt expansion writing and allow yourself to grow more aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions.
• Check out Kevin’s book: The Bergen Protocol
• Be sure to get the special Writers Edition of Kevin’s 7-Day Therapeutic Writing Challenge created just for Write of Your Life listeners

Lifestory Toolkit: ZenWriter

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features ZenWriter, a text editor for Windows that cuts out all the distraction and lets you focus on letting your thoughts flow. It’s a full screen, zen-like program that offers few formatting options but a whole lot of tranquility. If you find yourself, skipping between tabs in your browser checking up on e-mail and Facebook when you’re meant to be writing, ZenWriter is the solution to your distracted mind. Trial and full version is available at beenokle.com.

Free Download:

Kevin Bergen’s 7-DAY THERAPEUTIC WRITING CHALLENGE—SPECIAL WRITER’S EDITION

About: Kevin Bergen

When a friend and success coach introduced Kevin Bergen to a disciplined regimen he required of his coaching clients, he immediately saw the positive impact it could have. He began to apply the approach to his own life and quickly developed it into a full program for his family members, friends, and clients. The benefits were immediate. People who took the actions Kevin outlined in The Bergen Protocol found greater peace, satisfaction, control, and productivity.

Working in the manufacturing industry, Kevin knew he had to switch to something more fulfilling. He acted on an early interest in psychology and a budding passion to show others how to experience the joy he had with his family. He worked through graduate school at night and became a licensed marriage and family therapist.

Now, as the director of The Center for Counseling, Recovery, & Growth in Torrance, California, he’s passionate about helping men find recovery from addiction, teaching couples to find bliss in their marriages, and helping people find all kinds of success by leveraging their own self-care.

Links:

Website: TheActionCorps.Com

Facebook Page: Kevin Bergen

Twitter: ClearHelp

Instagram: TheActionCorps

Podcast: Recovery Support with Kevin Bergen