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ОглавлениеPositive Thinking: The Conscious Mind at Work
It was Henry Ford who said, “Whether you think you can or you think you cannot, you are right!”
What is the most important thing when it comes to any treatment you may be considering, whether it be a medical or a nonmedical treatment? Clearly, it is your mind, as your mind will decide whether you agree to that treatment or not. Your mind will decide whether you continue with the treatment or cease it. Further, your mind has the very real potential to significantly influence the outcome by reinforcing or sabotaging the treatment.
What is the most important thing when it comes to the food you eat? Clearly it is the mind, as it is your mind that will decide what you eat and how much you eat, as well as what you drink, and whether you exercise along with that.
Clearly, the mind is responsible for the choices we make, the knowledge and experiences we remember, the habits and the beliefs that shape our lives. However, everyone who has studied the mind, from the ancient mystics to the modern neuroscientists, says we use barely a fraction of our mind’s potential. In these next three chapters we will learn how to train the mind and how to activate its potential for restoring health and for maintaining well-being.
To provide some structure and so that we can understand the various aspects of the mind and their potential for healing, here is an outline of what we will cover:
The Four Ways in Which the Mind Influences Healing
1. Consciously—Via Positive Thinking
We will learn that positive thinking is about making good decisions and following them through. Positive thinking recognizes that it is the mind that shapes our world through the choices it makes. Our health and our healing, in fact all that we do, will be dramatically affected by whether we make constructive or destructive decisions, and whether we follow through on those decisions or not.
2. Unconsciously—Via Our Habits and Belief Systems
i) The beliefs we hold have the potential to significantly influence the outcome of everything we do. We will examine the powerfully positive placebo response and the incredibly destructive impact of the “pointing of the bone.” Together, these two phenomena graphically reveal the mind’s capacity to influence healing directly. Then we will learn what we need to do to gain the full benefit from the power of belief.
ii) The habits we live with will directly affect our potential to heal. Are you lazy in some ways? Do you have trouble exercising regularly? Are you habitually bound to eating certain things? Do you have difficulty sticking to what you know you need to do? Habits can be changed. We will learn how to identify what, if anything, does need changing, and then how to make necessary changes in a way that is empowering, sustainable and actually fun! This is a crucial element of recovery.
3. The Mind-Body Connection
Here we will examine how the mind can be mobilized to directly activate healing. We will learn more about how to apply the techniques of imagery and affirmation.
4. Meditation
Meditation establishes an ideal state of balance. From this balance healing flows free of effort, almost automatically. We have covered meditation thoroughly in the previous chapters.
Let us begin.
The Conscious Mind, Positive Thinking and Healing
Imagine a loving mother who is giving her all to being the best mother that she can be. Do you imagine she ever feels that she is managing 100 percent? But do you imagine she ever gives up trying? Of course she does not. That is what positive thinking is all about—always aiming to do the best we possibly can, acknowledging our strengths and weaknesses, being comfortable with what we do achieve and knowing we will become better and better at whatever we turn our attention to.
Positive thinking is all about using our mind intelligently. Specifically, positive thinking involves understanding how our mind works, and then getting the best out of its vast potential.
The crucial point in this field of mind training is to realize there is a big difference between positive thinking and wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking is where you hope for the best and do nothing about it.
Positive thinking is where you hope for the best and do a lot about it.
This is a fundamental distinction and opens up our understanding to the truth of what “positive thinking” really is. Positive thinking is way more than just that optimistic hope—“If he can do it, so can I.” That hope is real enough. It is true; it has to be done only once to show that it is possible. But what did she do to achieve what she did? And what are you prepared to commit to, to achieve the results you are after?
Positive thinking begins when we use our mind to choose a specific goal. But then we must act on that goal. We need to use our mind to commit to that goal and embrace all we need to do to give ourselves the best chance of realizing that goal. This is a very active process. Wishful thinking is a passive process that involves little active effort and clearly is not likely to make a big difference to anything we do. By contrast, positive thinking regularly results in the extraordinary.
Your Mind at Work
How then does positive thinking work? Let us begin with the role of the conscious mind. In practical terms, the mind is well described as a goal-orientated, decision making tool.* Here is how it works.
Imagine you ask me to come and share a meal with you and I agree. You say you live in Australia or Canada or France. Big places. A lot of homes to look for you in. So maybe you are a little more specific and you give me the district you live in—the Yarra Valley, the Rockies, the Bordeaux region. I am getting closer, but it is still going to be a while before I find you. So you give me a full address: street name and number, town, city, country. Now I will find you. I can use a map, a GPS, ask the locals. If I persevere, there is only one address that matches your home and I will find you.
The mind is goal oriented. The more specific the goal, the more potently it functions and the more reliably it works. If I have only your local region, it will be easy for me to be confused, to become disheartened, to give up. But with a specific goal, the prospect of success becomes very realistic.
However, clearly the specific goal is just the beginning. Once I decide to pursue that goal, to come to your address, I need to decide how best to make the journey and I need to actually complete the journey. So if I decide to come by car and the battery in the car is flat, I can either give up at that point or persevere. Having managed to start the car, I am then faced with many choices. As I begin to drive forward, I need to decide which direction to take, and I base that decision on what is most likely to lead me to your address. So I choose left, right or straight ahead, over and over, at one intersection after another, until I find you.
That is how it works. It is simple. The thinking mind is a goal-oriented, decision-making tool.
We are all positive thinkers. We all use our minds in this way many times over, day after day. However, some people become overwhelmed. “You want me to come to dinner? I don’t know about traveling on the roads just for a meal. What if I get lost? What about all the dangerous drivers on the road? Maybe it will be dark on the way home and I get scared in the dark.” Some people manage to talk themselves out of even simple things.
Of course, the truth is some people do set out in their cars each day fully expecting to reach their journey’s end and do not make it. Fatal car accidents are real. People do get lost, have flat tires, run out of gas and have minor accidents. Does this mean we stay at home and do nothing? Well, some do, but not so many when it comes to simple journeys. We accept the risks and persevere.
Consider this. Healing from a major illness like cancer can well be described as a journey. Often it is a lengthy journey, with many choices to deal with, many decisions to make, and often enough there are unexpected turns for better and worse. In my experience, some people do sense the scope of this particular journey and decide “to stay home.” Some may be paralyzed by fear. Others are deeply concerned by the fear of failure. What if I make all this effort and it does not work? Will I feel like a failure? Will I have let myself down or let down those around me?
Face the Fear and Do It Anyway!
The fear of failure is related to the notion of false hope. In many of the early media interviews that focused upon my work, presenters would ask if I was concerned about giving people false hope. Some doctors have also expressed a related concern—what happens to people who try hard to recover and still end up dying?
The answer to this is simple. Any major endeavor carries some risk. Recovering from a difficult diagnosis is not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and it would be commonplace. We know it is possible, but we do need to be realistic; it requires a good deal of effort. And the truth is I have seen people who have tried hard and still died of their disease. Long-term recovery is not easy, but it is possible.
When I had widespread secondary bone cancer in 1976 and was expected to live for a few months, I could have just accepted the disease as my fate and sat by hoping for the best, waiting to see what happened. My guess is that if I had done so, I could have died quite easily. But I dared to believe recovery was possible and, being realistic, knew that if I was to recover, I would need to do something dramatic. I knew I needed to do the best I possibly could with everything I took on.
When I became sicker before I began to recover, I simply became even more determined, more thorough. I knew I did not want to die with regret. I did not want to be near my last breath wondering if things would have been better if I had an extra carrot juice, or meditated a bit longer. Now, obviously there is a limit to how much carrot juice one should or could drink, and a balance in how much meditation to do. What all of us need to do is to decide for themselves how much carrot juice we drink, how much meditation we do, and then do it. That is the essence of positive thinking.
Commitment and Outcome
What can be said after many years helping people to face difficult situations is that these people fall into three broad categories. A number find that all this positive thinking and the lifestyle-based approach is simply not for them and they drop out. By contrast, most people recognize the truth in what is on offer, and the possibilities. However, even among these people, there are two types. We call them the 100 percenters and the 70 percenters.
The 100 percenters set clear goals and do them, 100 percent! Maybe they miss a little here or there, but essentially they do what they turn their mind to. By contrast, the 70 percenters consistently fall short of their goals. Maybe they set unrealistic goals, maybe for a multitude of reasons they just cannot persevere. But the gap between what they plan to do, what they set as their own personal goals, and what they actually do creates an inner tension. This tension commonly leads to unhelpful emotions like anger, blame, shame or guilt.
Now this latter situation is where help is urgently needed. I often suggest to people that if there is a big gap between what they believe is best for them to be doing and what they are actually doing, they need to treat that situation as if it is a medical emergency. It requires urgent attention. Either the expectations need to be brought into line or the questions of commitment and discipline addressed. To remain with a significant gap or disparity between your beliefs and your actions, between what you believe you need to be doing and what you actually are doing, for any length of time is an invitation to misery and poor outcomes. One way or the other, it needs to be resolved. More on how to do this is coming soon.
Once beliefs and actions are in sync, people invariably do well. Giving 100 percent to what they do has resulted in many people making a full recovery. But perhaps not too surprisingly, even those who give 100 percent and still go on to die of their disease, they do well too. They invariably have a good death. Maybe there is a natural disappointment and a sense of regret about dying itself. But there is no regret about having not done all that was reasonable. There is no guilt or shame. No anger or resentment. They do not die wondering. We will discuss this more in the chapter on death and dying (chapter 18), and no, it is not being “negative” to discuss dying. We will all die one day, so let us plan for a good death. That certainly is possible and perhaps a good death is a testament to a good life, a life lived well.
However, we are focused here on getting well, then living well and dying a long time later! So for those who are keen, we need to observe that positive thinking can be an innate trait or a learned skill. This is more good news. I have seen really pessimistic, “negative” people learn the three simple principles of positive thinking and transform their health. However, before we learn these three principles and clarify how to apply them, there are some really useful preliminaries.
Positive Thinking 101—Choose to Be Positive
We begin our move toward becoming more positive by giving attention to our basic state of mind. The first question is, just how positive are you? Are you content with your current attitudes, or do you need to work at being more positive?
If you already have a positive state of mind, count your blessings. You have the starting point in place to develop the power of your mind more fully.
If you doubt your own level of positivity, or know it to be lacking, the first step is actually one of clear-cut choice. You are either positive or you are not. This may seem somewhat simplistic, but it is a fact: you can choose to be positive, hold that intention, and then follow through with the steps that develop it. This act of choice is a crucial one.
We literally can choose to be positive. It is that simple. This is one of those basic choices in life that can be made consciously. We can decide, we can have the intention to be positive, commit to what is effectively a state of mind we choose, and then carry it through. To do this, the intention needs to be one that is firm and one that we strengthen at every opportunity.
One of the best ways to reinforce this intention to be positive is with the aid of contemplation. Contemplation is a reliable way to think something through in a way that brings clarity of mind, understanding and confidence. To do this, we begin by taking up our usual meditation position and consciously relax the body as normal. Then, instead of aiming for a still mind, we actively think about what positivity means to us. We consider it from every viewpoint. We think of how we would define what it is to be positive, we compare it with negativity, think of positive people we know, think of positive aspects of our own character. Think of why we want to be more positive, why we need to be positive.
A hint here to assist your contemplation. Positive thinking may be as simple as being clear about what you are aiming for and being confident you can achieve it.
As we reflect and contemplate more, we will generate a very comprehensive understanding regarding positivity and what it means. This may take one or more sessions and so we repeat the contemplation until we have thought it through and gained real insight into what being positive means to us, why it is helpful and why we choose to adopt the positive approach.
What If I Do Not Feel So Positive? Use an Affirmation
Be reassured. Many people start this program knowing they are not very positive. Others have been rocked by their diagnosis, had their confidence undermined by all that can be a part of cancer. More than thirty years of experience tells us many people have turned all this around. That is why we learn how to train our mind. That is the joy of using positive-thinking techniques.
So to consolidate and to reinforce our intention to be positive, we use an affirmation. An affirmation is a short statement that accurately reflects our goal, our intention. We will discuss them more in the next chapter, but it will be very useful to begin to build your positivity straight away. The affirmation in this case is: “I am a positive person now.” What we do is to repeat this short statement, this affirmation, over and over until it has been imprinted onto our mind and carries conviction.
Affirmations are wonderful things. They work! By using such simple, positive statements and repeating them regularly, we can condition our thoughts so that they lead on to the actions we intend.
So, when you first get up in the morning, repeat to yourself, “I am a positive person now,” for a couple of minutes. Make time to do it again at least twice more during the day. Especially when driving in the car, say it out loud—even sing it if you like! Adding a sense of fun can be helpful, so put it to different tunes; be theatrical and keep doing it.
What will start to happen quite quickly is that when a new decision needs to be made, you will now have a little voice in the back of your mind saying, “I am a positive person now.” And bingo! To satisfy that inner voice you will make a positive decision! As you become more positive, you see the system work and it becomes that much easier to be positive the next time. As the intended actions are put into practice, the cycle of positivity is completed and all of this will steadily help to build healing and a better life.
You will soon find that you have a new feeling, a feeling of being responsible for your own situation. You will be doing everything because you feel positive about it. You will want to do it; it is your choice. You will feel in control of your situation and you will find that your inner resources will be strengthening and developing rapidly.
You will come to recognize that if you were not positive before, you almost certainly suffered from “victim consciousness.” This is the “Why me?” syndrome, the attitude that leaves people feeling a powerless pawn of random fate that has slated them for doom! It is the most negative and destructive attitude in which you could have become stuck. If you recognize it from your new vantage point of positivity, be gentle with yourself. You are a positive person now. Quietly remind yourself that is not the way you are now. Seek out how you can change those negative aspects and not repeat them again.
You can reasonably expect to have ups and downs, so you need to be prepared to persevere. When you do act positively, congratulate yourself. Quietly, of course! But happily. Reaffirm your new attitude and seek the next opportunity to practice it.
Armed with our positive attitude we are now ready to sort out all the challenges cancer presents and set ourselves clear goals. The next step provides us with a major key with which we can unlock the power of the mind.
The Three Principles of Positive Thinking
Before the details, a short summary of the three principles:
Principle 1. Set a clear goal. Remember, the mind is a goal-oriented, decision-making tool, so the starting point is a clear goal. When it comes to healing, there are many choices. We will explore reliable methods for good decision making and for setting clear goals.
Principle 2. Do whatever it takes. Once we have a clear goal, we need to accomplish it. Sometimes the commitment required will flow easily, other times we will need to work at it. We will investigate how best to take a good idea and put it into action, how to do whatever it takes.
Principle 3. Choose to enjoy doing it. Those things we enjoy doing we tend to persevere with; we keep doing them. Things we do not enjoy doing we tend to avoid, forget, become disenchanted with, find excuses to let go of. The value in enjoying what we are doing is obvious enough and we will discover how simply and effectively we can achieve this final key to positive thinking.
But we begin with the first principle, goal setting.
The First Principle of Positive Thinking: Set a Clear Goal
Step 1. Who Decides?
When it comes to setting your goals, when it comes to deciding what to do, who tells you what to do? Is it some external authority figure like a doctor, a counselor, a natural therapist, a parent, a child or a partner? The lady over the back fence? Or is it you?
Who decides?
Authority figures can be really useful; genuine experts are invaluable. It is always sensible to consider seeking help from people who are knowledgeable, passionate and confident in what they recommend and what they do. But who takes the ultimate responsibility for what is done to you, or what you do for yourself?
Here we need to talk of fear again. Fear has this uncanny knack of disempowering people. Often when fear is strong, we feel so anxious, so uncertain of what to do, we want someone else to fix it, to tell us what to do. This is perfectly understandable and maybe in times of crisis it is wise to defer decisions to the people we trust the most.
However, if you value your own integrity and prefer to take more responsibility for your own choices, this tells you that making big decisions when fear is strong is fraught with danger. Fear commonly causes us to overreact and become frenetic, or to underreact and become too passive, too inactive. Again that reminder, it is wise to give yourself time for major decisions. Particularly allow time for any shock to settle so that you will be more relaxed and be in a better place with fear. Then with a calmer, clearer mind you will be able to gather all the information you need, make your choices and set your goals.
Step 2. Use Both Sides of Your Brain to Make Good Choices in the Decision-Making Process
The human mind has intelligence and wisdom. We think logically and also we can think more abstractly, more intuitively, more wisely. Clearly, both logic and wisdom are useful; in fact, logic without wisdom can be dangerous.
However, in the world we live in, where science has such a high value, it makes sense to begin by assessing things logically. Then we need to add the wisdom. Wisdom in its most ordinary form may be as simple as “common sense,” but we will investigate developing wisdom more fully soon.
Start with Good Information and Logic
Ideally, it is wise to obtain the best opinions, the best advice from the most experienced experts in whatever field you are considering. It is wise to ask them for an opinion. What would they do in your position? What would they recommend or where would they send you if you were their child, their parent or their partner? Then, informed by this expert opinion, do whatever additional research you consider warranted or within your capabilities.
But consider this, and a warning, if you do not want your head messed with a little, perhaps it will be wise to skip the next paragraph!
There was a major study carried out some years ago in the United Kingdom with the aim of developing best practice recommendations for women with breast cancer. Two hypothetical case histories were formulated: one for a typical woman with primary breast cancer, the other for a typical woman with a recurrence. These were circulated to all the major cancer hospitals and treatment centers around the UK seeking consensus as to the best treatment to recommend. The results were somewhat disconcerting. While the recommended treatments had some similarities from all the centers, there were enough variations for the study to report that a number of different recommendations were received. For the women with primary breast cancer, the number of treatments regarded to be different was put at thirty-five! For the typical case of secondary breast cancer, the woman with a recurrence, the number was forty-five! So if the woman with primary breast cancer had been a real woman rather than an hypothetical case and if she had gone to one major cancer hospital, then decided she wanted a second opinion, she could have gone to thirty-five other centers before finding a match. What do you do with that if you only use your logic?
In real life, a woman with a breast lump is likely to start with her family doctor. If breast cancer is suspected or confirmed, she is likely to be referred to a specialist. She may have known the local doctor for years or not, she will almost certainly have no prior experience with the specialist.
The logic of what the specialist has to say regarding her condition and treatment options will be really useful information. It is likely to form the basis of the decision-making process. But logic also says there may be other ways to consider treating her condition. Is it worth seeking thirty-five other opinions? Of course not. These days, many major cancer centers aim to resolve this potential problem by using a team approach. There is a trend toward gathering together surgeons, oncologists, radiologists and other health professionals to discuss the individual needs of individual people.
But what of the person him- or herself? I strongly suggest there is more to decision making than pure logic. If we talk of a broken leg with major damage, the logic is compelling to have surgery and a cast. In that situation one does not need to dwell on the choices too much. But in cancer medicine, the choices are not always so clear. The reality is that many cancer treatments are tough on the patient. Often the risk of side effects is considerable and the potential gains debatable. Unfortunately, in this and many other situations, logic does not always provide an obvious answer.
However, with almost all decisions, it will make obvious sense to gather the best information you can, based on the best evidence available. An example of how to achieve this was given in chapter 3, where we discussed how to decide what treatment to commit to.
Add Contemplation—Develop Clarity, Confidence and Wisdom
Contemplation is a methodical way to think something through and to gain a deeper understanding of it. Also, contemplation provides a way of directly tapping into our intuition. All this helps to dispel doubts and reliably builds clarity and confidence. As a consequence, commitment develops more strongly and it becomes easier to follow through with our decisions.
Contemplation is easy to do and comes highly recommended for all our major decisions, and for setting all our positive-thinking goals.
So we can investigate and learn how this technique works. We will use the example of reviewing our eating habits and deciding on what sort of diet to follow. Here are the steps.
Goal Setting Using Contemplation
1. Decide what the issue is (e.g., in our example, to set dietary goals) and determine to reach a conclusion.
2. Express the issue as a question (e.g., What will be best for me to eat?).
3. Do the research. Use your intellect and your logic. Read the books, get on the net, speak to the experts, discuss it with friends, listen to CDs. Ideally, make notes. This person said that, this book the other, etc. With food it is usually easiest to write lists of the different recommendations.
4. Set a time for the decision to be made. There are two ways to do this. If you were to buy a new washing machine, probably you would wait until you gathered all the relevant information. Presuming you have determined your price range, you could find out the makes and models available and collect all their details within a reasonable period of time. However, with food you could collect information indefinitely. So you probably need to say to yourself something like, “I will collect all the information I can in the next two weeks [this two weeks is just an arbitrary figure I have used—there is no need to take me literally on this one—choose your own time frame] and then I will make the best decision I can.”
5. On the day when the decision is to be made, give yourself some time—half an hour to an hour is ideal—and some space—either where you meditate regularly or in any quiet area. Make sure you can be free from the telephone and other possible distractions. Take with you any notes you have made and any other material you have gathered. Also, take a pen and some paper in case you want to write on it.
6. When you sit down, begin by reviewing your research material and in this way refresh all the knowledge you have of your subject. If you do not have written material go straight to the next step.
7. Consciously relax your body and calm your mind. This will be a familiar process if you have some experience of meditation. The aim is to relax your body and to calm your mind so you are in a better state of mind to progress into contemplation.
8. Once relaxed in this manner, focus your attention on consciously reviewing the facts as you remember them.
9. So, in our example, you might recall the style of food you have been eating, the broad issues relating to why you are considering changing your diet, what different people have recommended to you, what you have read in different books and so on.
10. If at any stage you become distracted or your mind wanders off onto other thoughts, as soon as you recognize this, be gentle with yourself and simply come back to concentrating on issues relating to food and diet.
11. This first part of the process then is clearly a rational, “left brain” exercise. You actively think about the topic and all issues relating to it. You are actively focusing on the topic and thinking it through.
12. What happens next, as you continue to concentrate on the topic, is that at some point your mind will automatically shift into more abstract, intuitive, “right brain” contemplation. It will be as if all the facts you have been reflecting upon and analyzing, all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle as it were, come together and now you can clearly see the bigger picture. This will give you a new sense of comprehension and understanding and usually leaves you with a clear sense of what to do. This can all come with a moment of clear insight, almost like an “Aha! I’ve got it,” moment of revelation.
13. The more you practice this technique, the more reliable it becomes. It is a wonderful and dependable way to solve problems, develop creativity and instigate lateral thinking. (As another aside, this is an excellent way to prepare for and complete creative writing.)
14. Once the sense of clarity dawns, usually it is best to write the ensuing insight down. Perhaps you can remember having the experience of a moment of insight like this before. Perhaps you were in the shower, or was it when you were half asleep, and suddenly like a bolt out of the blue, it seemed as if you had the perfect solution to a problem you had been wrestling with. Yet by the time you got dressed and ate breakfast, it had flown from your memory! Insight during contemplation sometimes comes like that too, so it is best to write it down. I always do this exercise with pen and paper close by and as soon as the answer begins to form write it down.
This contemplation technique can be used to solve any problem. It leads to a clarity that is backed by a deep sense of your own inner wisdom. As a result, the directions that come with it, the goals that emerge from this exercise, will feel very “right” for you.
So when it comes to contemplating food, we may think through specific issues like whether we will eat tomatoes or not, and whether we will cook them or not. Or we may arrive at a more comprehensive overview and, for example clearly understand why eating organic food makes sense and come away deeply committed to doing just that.
People often ask me, “How can I trust the result of an exercise like this?” Well, if you come out of this exercise with no clarity and are still clouded by doubt, all that has happened is you have spent time simply thinking about the issue. No harm done, but no profound insight, either! The insight we are talking of has as one of its features the confidence of certainty. It comes with a deep inner knowing and no doubt. You really know what to do with the tomatoes! No one else will need to confirm such an insight for you; it will be easy to feel confident about, easy to commit to, and it is highly likely to work well.
But what if you do all this and you still have doubts?
Step 3. When in Doubt, Do Something!
It would be nice to think we will arrive at a point of certainty before making all the decisions in front of us. Maybe we will. But doubt remains a real possibility—and does that mean you are unable to set a goal effectively?
One of the benefits of contemplation is that it does clarify the choices. When you reflect on this, with most things you either do them or you do not, or you put them off. Now, while there is the old Irish saying, “If you put something off long enough it will take care of itself,” maybe we need to be a bit more proactive when it comes to cancer.
Faced with lingering doubts, what many people find works well is to accept the doubts and make a decision anyway. With a decision made in this way, it is still useful to decide to commit to whatever it is you are planning, make the commitment, and to embrace it. But then it is always healthy to review your progress from time to time and adjust accordingly.
Here it is helpful to appreciate another facet of how the mind works. As we have established, the mind is a goal-oriented, decision-making tool. In this regard, however, it is more like a heat-seeking missile than an arrow. Pardon the warlike images but they serve as useful metaphors here. When an archer takes aim and lets fly an arrow, the arrow is at the whim of the archer’s aim and the elements. If a wind begins to blow the arrow off course, it has no self-righting mechanism. A heat-seeking missile is quite the opposite. A heat-seeking missile locks on to its target, and then receives feedback. If the target moves, the heat-seeking missile adjusts its course.
Step 4. Make Friends with “Mistakes”
Our mind functions like a heat-seeking missile. The mind is designed to manage the complexity and changing nature of our lives. It is designed to receive feedback, to compare our progress to what we are aiming for, to adjust, to change course regularly and to persist until the goal is reached.
Some people feel badly about mistakes. Some mistakes are regrettable, and we will consider later how to transform common feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment and blame that often accompany mistakes (see healthy emotions, chapters 16 and 17).
However, here is another possibility. Mistakes are feedback. Mistakes can be really useful feedback. It is reported that Thomas Edison made ten thousand experiments before discovering how to produce a lightbulb that worked. When asked what it felt like to make 9,999 mistakes, Edison replied that he had not made 9,999 mistakes. He had completed 9,999 attempts to achieve his goal and with each experiment he learned something. In the end, courtesy of all he learned from what appeared to be his “mistakes,” he revolutionized the world with his 10,000th attempt.
Be brave. Make a start. Stick to your goal. And be flexible with how you achieve that goal. Respond to feedback. Be prepared to hold to the big goal and be prepared to be flexible when it comes to how to get there.
Step 5. Rambo or the Martial Arts?
Pardon me again but we need to discuss the state of mind that goes with our positive thinking. While what we do is of great importance, the state of mind we do it in can be even more significant.
Most people are familiar with the Rambo image. Isolated, tough, uncompromising, resolute. Very driven, a fair bit on edge, high energy. Not much inner peace or calm. Contrast this with a martial artist. There is the same resolve, the same willingness to do whatever it takes, but there is a deep calm, a palpable inner peace. Meditation leads directly to this inner peace. Meditation can provide the background, the milieu, the atmosphere for our positive thinking, so that we will find it easier to make good decisions, easier to follow them through, easier to enjoy doing what we need to do to achieve them.
Step 6. Your Primary Goal—How Healthy Can You Imagine Yourself?
When it comes to cancer, what are you aiming for? What can you imagine as the best possible outcome? Whatever that is, that becomes your primary goal.
Can you imagine yourself fully recovered? Free of cancer, with a normal life expectancy again, fit and well? Is that easy to imagine, or a struggle? Is it easier for you to imagine yourself living well with cancer? Is it just a good quality of life you are after and you do not want to focus on the disease itself? Can you imagine your illness becoming stable? Or is there a deep sense of fear, or maybe an acceptance that dying of the disease is a likely outcome?
Challenging questions. Doubts are OK. Most people have doubts. Positive thinking is not about denying doubts. Or denying fears. Positive thinking is about recognizing the doubts and the fears, and using our minds intelligently to move through them, past them, and to accomplish our goals anyway.
The limit in positive thinking is what you personally believe is possible. Not what someone else believes. What you believe. Some people do accept they will probably die of their cancer; we spoke of this earlier. But maybe at the moment the limit of your belief is that you can genuinely only imagine the cancer becoming stable. If you consider that prospect for a moment, we know cancer tends to multiply, to increase in size exponentially. That is why once it is large enough to be detected, it commonly grows quite rapidly. (Please note, this is a broad generalization. Some cancers do grow very slowly indeed.) Therefore, when a cancer becomes stable, it is a sign of real progress. Maybe once stable, you can imagine the cancer receding a little.
Positive thinking works well with progressive goals. While some people go for an all-out, big goal like total recovery right from the start, others find it more manageable, more realistic and effective to advance in stages.
Step 7. Write Down Your Goals
With any significant goals you have, write them down in a journal, in a special notebook or simply on paper you can easily refer to. The writing will lead to even greater clarity, and you have a good chance of remembering what is written!
Step 8. Finally, Decide How Important Each Goal Is
Once you have clarified your goals, the next question is simple. How important is each goal to you? Is it a casual thing? If it works out, would it be nice but no big deal? Or is it a matter of life and death? Something you choose to give your all to?
When my secondary cancers appeared, I became totally uncompromising. For the next few years, until it was clear that I was well again, everything I considered, everything I did, needed to get past the first big filter.
Will this help me to recover?
If it did not pass that test in the affirmative, I was not interested. Of course, having fun passed that test. Some people seem to be of the impression getting well is tough work, which it can be, and unpleasant, which it has no need to be at all. In fact, I had a wonderful time during my recovery. There was this fabulous excuse to do all the things that were good for me, all the things that caused me joy and happiness. I had cancer. I could change whatever I liked, do whatever was needed. I had a great reason, a great excuse, and when I did it all in this uncompromising fashion, I was fortunate indeed: I fully recovered.
Positive thinking is a measure of what you are committed to and how committed to it you are. The first principle, having a clear goal, leads naturally to the second principle.
The Second Principle of Positive Thinking: Do Whatever It Takes
The three principles of positive thinking tend to flow on, one to the other, fairly naturally. When we have a clear goal, it often seems easy to commit to doing whatever it takes to achieve that goal. If so, it is as easy as that. If not, if it seems hard to do whatever it takes, then planning and concerted effort makes sense—all in the right state of mind!
Step 1. Embrace All That You Do
When it comes to positive thinking, the key recommendation is to embrace all that you do. To think through your options, decide upon your goals and embrace them. So to not just passively accept a treatment, or put up with dietary changes. Not just go along with things because someone else wants you to do it. Take ownership. Take control. Embrace everything you do. Welcome it. Commit. Believe in what you are doing. Then your mind will be activated and the placebo response will be working courtesy of your conscious mind, your conscious commitment.
Jill was a lady who came to our groups in a heightened state of anxiety. She was having chemotherapy for secondary cancer and was deeply concerned for her own future and the fate of her two young children. Amid the emotionally safe environment the group created, for the first time she shared her fears and cried openly. Quiet understanding supported Jill as she released her deeply held pain. She reported feeling as if a weight had lifted from her shoulders.
Up to this point Jill had been experiencing major anticipatory nausea even before she went into the hospital for her regular chemotherapy treatments. It transpired she was quite undecided in her own mind regarding this treatment. There was the hope of some benefit and another deep fear for the potential side effects. Once the emotion had cleared, Jill subsequently talked through her choices regarding the chemotherapy.
Now, with her mind somewhat clearer, she could think more logically and she decided she was doing the right thing for her. She embraced her treatment and went to the hospital looking forward to doing something she considered to be in her own best interests. She embraced the lifestyle program, ate well, meditated regularly, exercised and so on. When Jill arrived at the group, she had not been responding to her treatment. Two months later her tests had improved dramatically. Her main doctor remarked on this and encouraged her, saying whatever she was doing, she should stick to it!
Step 2. Check Your Clarity
This is a major point. In my experience, the most common factor behind a lack of commitment is a lack of clarity. The answer? Revisit the first principle! Set a clear goal.
Step 3. Use Ideals Wisely
A great deal of what is presented in this book is made up of ideal ways to use our lifestyle, our own inner potential along with our actions to generate healing. Remember, however, ideals are just that, ideals. As such they may be unattainable in their entirety. However, ideals do give us a goal, they do give us a sense of direction, and they do give us a strong sense of what to aim for. Obviously, we will be the better for any step we make toward an ideal.
So as we lay out these lists of things to do, these ideas, be comfortable with where you are, start where you can, do what you can. It is obvious. If you are really tense and anxious to begin with and you relax 10 percent of what is ideally possible, you are 10 percent better off. That is quite a good start! It will serve you well to be pleased that you are 10 percent more relaxed, rather than to worry about being 90 percent short of being fully relaxed. Positive thinking is acknowledging the 10 percent gain, focusing on that as progress, and being committed to making even more progress as time goes on.
Step 4. Seek Inspiration
Emphasis has been given to the pivotal role of hope. Many people find it useful to collect a “bank” of inspirational material to read, view or listen to when they need inspiration. Perhaps at the place where you meditate, you keep photos of inspiring people or landscapes, whatever inspires you the most. Even simply bringing inspiring people to mind can powerfully lift your spirits and these people may be family, friends, community leaders, spiritual or religious figures.
Step 5. Develop Constructive Discipline
The discipline we are talking of here is best described as a “personal kindness.” This type of discipline is not a discipline imposed by someone else, it is a self-discipline. This self-discipline is based upon having the clarity of mind to understand what is in our own best interests, what is needed for our own welfare and well-being. This self-discipline is about having the resolve to actually do whatever is good for us. It is the capacity to do what is appropriate. That is what it is to be kind to ourselves. Simple as that. It may not always be easy, but it is always kind.
So when we wander off track we need to notice, to be vigilant and to gently and firmly bring ourselves back to what we know is good for us.
There is a very useful and practical recommendation here. Do something each day purely as an exercise in discipline. Perhaps go without a piece of food you would have had for pleasure’s sake; do exercise as an act of discipline; even do as I do—finish your daily shower by turning the hot tap off and the cold full-on. This for me takes great discipline! Although it is extremely invigorating and I have been doing it for years, it still takes effort for me to do it. Practicing discipline by choice makes it a little easier to use self-discipline when it is more important—such as persevering through the ups and downs of the healing process.
Another way to develop personal discipline is to develop the capacity “to go without.” Perhaps simply to go without that piece of cake. Perhaps to fast through one meal or one day. Build your discipline muscles!
Step 6. Develop Your Communication Skills
As a group, people affected by cancer tend to keep their thoughts and especially their emotions to themselves. Reversing this can help to change the dynamics of the illness.
• Start with a diary. Research has actually shown this is good for your immune system. When you write, aim to be brief on fact, long on personal detail. It is helpful to record what happens day by day, but the real benefit from writing a diary comes when you elaborate and recount how you felt, how you were affected by what happened. This helps “get it out,” to express your feelings in a safe, private environment. And writing it down makes everything clearer and that little bit easier. I made diary entries virtually every day of my recovery and found doing so to be very helpful.
