I’m a big believer in the power of positive thinking. My hero, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, taught me that when I read his book in my twenties. He proved to me that we get what we expect in life. When we expect positive things, we act accordingly and then get positive things in return. When we expect failure, we usually fail. When we expect success, we tend to succeed. When we expect health, we make healthy choices. When we expect illness, we are often sick. Our lives move in the direction of our most dominant thoughts.
It is said that the average person has 40,000 thoughts per day, of which 80% are negative. Every time you have a negative thought, your brain releases negative chemicals that make your body feel bad. Think about the last time you were upset.
How did your body feel? Did your heart rate increase, your jaw clench, your breathing quicken? Now imagine one of your happiest times. When you do so, your brain releases chemicals that make your body feel good. You’ll notice a slower heart beat, deeper easier breathing, and relaxed muscles.
Medical research demonstrates that panic, depression, hate, fear and frustration can have negative effects on human health. There is mounting scientific evidence that hope, faith, love, the will to live, purpose, laughter and festivity can actually help control disease. These are not just mental states, but have electromechanical connections that play a large part in the working of our immune systems.
Dr. Peale, a pioneer in positive thinking, stated hope, faith, and truth were keys not only to happiness, but to physical healing. He claimed that when you practice these virtues, you can imagine your own recovery.
In my book, Balancing Life in Your “War Zones; A Guide to Physical, Mental and Spiritual Health, I quote the Boston School of Medicine’s study showing that hopelessness—that is the image of no recovery—actually kills. If a doctor diagnoses a fatal disease and tells the patient, and if the patient loses hope and gives up, death comes quickly. (Have you seen that in your own patients?) An autopsy may show the malignancy, all right, but no reason the patient should have died so soon.
Conversely, there was once a woman whose elderly father was hit by a taxi as he crossed the street in Manhattan and died at the age of eighty-seven. When an autopsy was performed, the doctor was amazed. “Your father had all sorts of lesions and ailments that should have caused his death twenty years ago!” he said to the woman. “Yet you say he was lively and energetic right up to the end. How do you account for that?” “I don’t know,” the woman answered. “Unless it was his habit of saying to me every single morning, ‘Today is going to be a terrific day!”
His daily imaging habit, it seemed, paid off. You can make it a habit too. You can think positive to make every day a terrific day for you.
About the Author: LeAnn Thieman LPN, CSP, CPAE is in the Speaker Hall of Fame and coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul and Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul, Second Dose. She is an expert in nurse recruitment and retention. To learn more about her books or presentations, visit www.NurseRecruitmentandRetention.com.
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