Love, Medicine and Miracles

The Placebo Effect.

25-33% percent of patients will show improvement simply by BELIEVING that their treatment will be effective—even if the medicine (or procedure) they’re given has no active ingredient.

That’s AMAZING.

Want to heal? (or be happy/abundant/healthy/whatever)

Belief is essential. We talked about the placebo effect in Herbert Benson’s The Relaxation Revolution as well (see Notes).

Here’s how he puts it: “Many hundreds of scientific studies have shown that an inner conviction, which the medical community has linked to the phenomenon called “the placebo effect,” can help produce healing for scores of diseases and medical complaints. The placebo effect is a mind body mechanism that may bring about healing through a person’s expectation and belief that a certain treatment will work.”

Benson continues: “Scientific research now shows that the “miracles” of the self-healing powers of the mind and body are no less significant than the “miracles” wrought by many drug and surgery treatments. These well-designed scientific studies make it clear that it is at least as reasonable to believe in the healing power of the mind as it is to believe in the healing power of a given drug or surgical procedure.”

Benson brings the point home by sharing an extraordinary study in which patients with knee issues were given either a real surgery or a fake surgery and, shockingly, the ones who received the fake surgery (where they just pretended to actually do the procedure) showed THE SAME benefits as those who got the real surgery. Wacky.

Benson tells us: “This study is by no means an isolated example of the power of belief and expectation. Hundreds of other investigations, involving a wide variety of diseases and health problems, have demonstrated the power of the human mind over disease. The treatment principle might be summed up this way: Just as an antibiotic drug may stop an infection or surgery may eliminate a malignancy, so the mind—your mind—has the capacity to treat or even cure many of your serious physical and emotional complaints.”

Belief.

It’s *extraordinarily* important.

How’s yours?

I’m not okay and you’re not okay. But that’s okay. :)

As Siegel tells us, the first step in changing ourselves is, paradoxically, to ACCEPT ourselves.

And, it sure helps when we can let go of the silly notion that we need to be perfect.

Fact is, we’re all a little wacky. :)

We hit on this all the time, but let’s remember that there simply are NO (!!!) perfect human beings. We *all* have issues.

And, that’s okay.

Back to you: What part of yourself are you having a tough time accepting?

You think you can give yourself a little love and make it be okay that you’re messed up that way?

Good answer.

Remember: Acceptance is the first step in change.

Lots of good stuff in there.

First: As William James so beautifully says: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

We CAN change our lives via the power of our minds.

And, that power can be used in the wrong direction! When that happens, we’re contributing to the illnesses we experience. :/

The good news, as Siegel tells us, is that if we’re contributing to its appearance, we can also contribute to its DISappearance.

That’s part one.

Part two: We don’t want to set the goal of “getting well.”

Rather, we want to set a goal that is 100% within our control and that we can, with diligent effort, be sure to achieve: Peace of mind.

Now, when we set peace of mind as our goal, we’ve created the very conditions that will enable our bodies to heal—letting that be a by-product of the goal that’s within our control.

P.S. In Flourish (see Notes), Martin Seligman tells us that our minds are so powerful that “We estimate that being in the upper quartile of optimism seems to have a beneficial effect on cardiovascular risk roughly equivalent to not smoking two packs of cigarettes daily.”

P.P.S. Wow.

P.P.P.S. Let’s get our minds right!

Courage.

From the Latin word for “heart,” courage is the virtue that pumps blood to all the other virtues.

No prescription for change will do any good without the courage to accept the challenge!

As Rollo May tells us in The Courage to Create (see Notes): “The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”

We need to remember that it’s NOT about getting rid of all of our fear. It’s about moving ahead in *spite* of the fear we may feel.

As May tells us: “What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.”

Here’s to embracing our ideals and having the courage to go for it!!!

Exercise. (Again. :)

How amazing are those studies?! Inject mice with an exercised muscle and you can slow the growth of tumors? Wah wah? Wow.

Check out the Note on Spark by John Ratey for more on the science of exercise.

And remember how Dr. Walter M. Bortz puts it in Dare to Be 100! (see Notes): “The tremendous value that physical exercise provides to your body is established beyond any reasonable doubt. Dr. Bob Butler said, “If there was a drug that provided all the benefits that exercise does, the whole world would be taking it.” Of course, there is no such drug; the value of exercise must come from an activity program of your own devising and accomplishment. You cannot delegate exercise, and you can’t get something for nothing.”

I just love this: “If there was a drug that provided all the benefits that exercise does, the whole world would be taking it.”

How’s your exercise?

How can you step it up a notch or three?

Relaxation and anxiety simple CANNOT exist together.

So, if you’re feeling stressed, relax your body. See how the anxiety melts.

(Try it the next time you’re stressed! The hard part will be getting yourself to actually breathe and relax but if you can get yourself to do that you’ll be amazed. :)

Lots of goodness in there.

First: Play!

Second: Give love.

Survivors.

They tend to be complex, paradoxical characters.

Reminds me of how Maslow describes his “self-actualizing” individuals (see Notes on Motivation and Personality). He tells us: “The dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness disappears altogether in healthy people because in principle every act is both selfish and unselfish.”

Here’s some more on what survivors look like: “They are generally successful at careers they like, and they remain employed during illness or return to work soon. They are receptive and creative, but sometimes hostile, having strong egos and a sense of their own adequacy. They have a high degree of self-esteem and self-love. They are rarely docile. They retain control of their lives. They are intelligent, with a strong sense of reality. They are self-reliant: they don’t need to be included among others although they value interactions with others. Although concerned with their own welfare, they are also tolerant and concerned with others. They tend to be nonconformists with a permissive morality—they are unprejudiced, and they appreciate diversity among other people.”

Love it.

How can YOU embrace your apparent dichotomies and allow for the fullest expression of yourself?

That’s beautiful.

If we want to experience Love and Miracles, we need to know that it all starts with daring to be exceptional. Daring to be our own person.