Adding more of what works
If you needed someone to battle the forces of darkness, would you choose Mother Teresa or Arnold Schwartzeneger? Jimmy Carter or Superman? The Dalai Lama or the Marines?
Let’s face it: we believe that evil is powerful and goodness is weak. We’re convinced that goodness cannot possibly triumph unless we do battle with evil. The fact that fighting evil just seems more exciting than cultivating goodness—well, we don’t like to talk about that. The official line is, "War is hell, man."
But television, movies, and the news media know the truth. Fighting evil is downright thrilling. It’s bravery, brainpower, and brawn, pumped up with testosterone, adrenaline, and blood. It’s risk, daring, explosions, car chases, and blazing guns. Promoting good conjures yawn-producing images of saintly church ladies visiting the sick or scrawny Gandhi-like saints, passively resisting.
In our attitudes about health and illness, we see our beliefs about the power of evil, the weakness of good, and the zest of battle. Health researchers almost never study health; they look for ways to fight disease. Medical institutions and health maintenance organizations have nothing to do with health and everything to do with constant, hand-to-hand combat against the power of illness. Health is seen as fragile and vulnerable, ever under threat from inevitable, sneaky, powerful attacks of disease.
Obituaries rarely report people succumbing peacefully to diseases we expect them to combat. Instead, they are reported as dying after "fighting courageously" or "losing a long battle" to cancer. Individuals receiving a dire diagnosis announce they’re going to fight their disease with everything they’ve got. Doctors "pull out their whole arsenal" of interventions when confronted with tough cases.
In battles to vanquish disease, collateral damage is accepted just as it is in war. Take prescription medications and put up with side effects, some of which might kill you. Go into the hospital for surgery and you can die under anesthesia, from infectious, or from medical errors. Fight cancer by drenching the whole body in toxic chemicals and some innocent cells—or maybe whole patients—are bound to die along with the bad guys. Does this worry you? Well, stop your sniveling! Don’t you know there’s a war on?
The mind-body approach to health takes the revolutionary position that good is stronger than evil. Rather than fighting what isn’t working, mind-body interventions transmute problems by adding more of what works. These solutions tend to produce collateral benefits rather than damage. And unlike battles against evil, which never really end, promoting good tends to alter undesirable circumstances in ways that make change last.
Education, for example, is a mind-body intervention that results in changes in awareness, attitude, and expectations. It is consistently found to provide lasting health benefits for both individuals and communities.
Education can expose people to empowering new ideas about themselves and the world. In programs that educate women in third world countries, increases in literacy rates result in decreased infant mortality, reduction in population, improvement in the social status of women, and measurable economic benefit as women join the work force. All these changes come about without battling the oppressive "evils" of the traditional patriarchy.
In a study of the effects of mastery upon health, patients with gastrointestinal problems were educated to improve their ability to be assertive with their doctors and feel more in control of their clinic visits. They reported better physical functioning, less interference from symptoms, fewer doctor visits, and decreased need for medication. No battling of disease was involved.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy educates people to become more optimistic, feel more in control, and make choices in keeping with their goals. In all studies, it is shown to produce long-lasting good results for people suffering from a wide range of illnesses and problematic symptoms. Without having to fight them, unwanted symptoms diminish or disappear as attention is shifted in more health-promoting directions.
When you want to evoke the powerful goodness of the mind-body connection, stop fighting what isn’t working in your life and look for ways to add more of what works. Increase the amount of awareness, inspiration, relaxation, invigorating activity, meaningful connection, creative self-expression, and plain old fun in your life.
Adding more of what works isn’t anywhere near as dramatic as sending in the troops to stamp out evil. It’s not the rockets’ red glare or bombs bursting in air. It’s a simple, daily matter of making choices that move you in the direction of growth, vitality, exuberance, and a heartfelt connection with life. You’ll be surprised how powerful that can be.
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