In my decades of working as a health care provider, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with patients of all types.
Prior to becoming a chiropractor, I worked in spinal cord, cardiac, burn, and neurological ICU departments, in addition to emergency and trauma.
Each patient has taught me at least one thing about life and how to perceive it.
Recently, a patient asked what I think is the one single thing that separates the patient that will get better from the patient that will not.
I think she was expecting an answer like; “its nutrition, exercise, genetics, fate.” Though these are very important factors in the patients’ outcome, I did not volunteer them as viable answers.
I turned to write in her chart and mumbled “attitude.” When I turned back to her, her look was one of disbelief and slight annoyance at what she thought was a glib answer to a legitimate question.
It was a legitimate question. She just didn’t like the answer. I thought I should explain.
I told her, I rarely have ever had a patient be utterly surprised by the outcome of their care.
If they feel they will never get better, they usually don’t. If they feel, truly believe, that they will get better, they more often than not do.
That is not to say you should stop all care and treatments for a malady and live in a land of fairies and rainbows.
But, if you enter your treatment with a firm belief you will improve, noting the improvements and living in a state of gratitude and abundance for whatever comes your way, you stand an exponentially higher chance of success.
Henry Ford said it best; “If you believe you can or you can’t, you’re probably right.”
Let me use a personal example. When I was working at Vancouver General Hospital, often I would come across a patient in the ICU who was in multisystemic failure. Essentially, by definition, they were dying. At times, one characteristic would prevail; they were contagiously optimistic and empowered. They would typically pull through and recover.
The odds were clearly against them but they would defy all that I had learned in my 14 years of university. Again and again it would happen.
At first it was humbling, then it became empowering.
I can quote the hundreds of studies that cite just this example.
Believe me, I’ve seen it: you are entirely what you believe.
At the very least it could never hurt you to look at a disease or a condition in your life and create a new outcome based on your beliefs instead of external expectations, limited thinking and scarcity.
My mom once said to me “You can be optimistic and positive about anything and everything, or not. It is entirely your choice. No one will tell you what to believe. The two, have entirely different outcomes and they take the same amount of work in both cases.”
So, you choose.
