The medical profession today is an amazing resource in healing. I define a victim as the person who only looks outside for the solutions to their problem. If a person gets excellent medical care and they only look outside, they can become a victim. The empowered patient actively participates with the medical professionals as a partner in the healing process. Both the victim and the empowered patient can have a chronic illness and need medical care.
The patient’s participation determines how they will deal with and receive their medical treatments. We participate in challenges based on our past conditioning, which is basically learned in childhood. If your past conditioning did not give you the tools to support the healing process, it is possible to consciously recondition your mind. Norman Cousins said, “We either reside in our body or preside over our body.” Victims reside in their body and treat their past conditioning as their reality. This is because they are conditioned to look outside for the solutions to their problems. Empowered people have the ability to preside over their body and recondition the conditioned mind that does not serve them.
In our society today, the question of health care is a strong debate. We can focus solely on who pays for it or how the treatments are presented and ignore this significant fact; empowered people play a significant role in the healing process. The issue of how the patient participates in healing may not be such a big issue today because we basically trust our doctors, but how the patient receives the medical treatments could improve the results. Even if this improvement is only 10% for some people, when you look at a trillion-dollar health budget, that could be a significant reduction.
When a health crisis forces you to develop new life skills, it benefits your entire life. E.g., when you reach beyond your conditioning to heal, you develop neural pathways that reach beyond your past conditioning to tap inner resources. Just think of what a benefit that would be when you faced challenges that you did not know how to control. Instead of relying on old habits and the ways you have been taught to think, you would be open to receive new ways of approaching that challenge. This is the essence of creativity, for when you are open to your inner resources, a deeper wisdom can respond to your challenge in new ways.
Imagine if people could approach difficult times accepting inner resources like this. The old ruts that limit us would not define our difficulties. This does not mean we would not be challenged. It just means we would be on an on-going search for deeper and new inner resources. That is what sustains a quality life.
Marc Lerner is the President of Life Skills Institute and has been working with people in a health crisis since 1982. Learning to discover oneself in difficult times is the theme of A Healthy Way to be Sick, the e-book Marc Lerner wrote. Go to http://ahealthyway.org to read a mini-version. Learn this same technique to deal with any difficult time with the e-book, A Light Shines Brighter in Darkness, at the same website. Marc Lerner is available for public speaking and tele-seminars. When you learn to master inner resources and avoid negative thinking, you automatically tap powerful inner resources to become an active partner with medical professionals. Patient participation can influence the results of the doctor’s treatment. The doctor’s relationship with the patient can also influence how the patient participates in healing. Marc’s work is dedicated to establishing this partnership.