Mind at Work
How then does positive thinking work? Let us begin with the role of the conscious mind. In practical terms, the mind is well described as a goal-orientated, decision making tool.* Here is how it works.
Imagine you ask me to come and share a meal with you and I agree. You say you live in Australia or Canada or France. Big places. A lot of homes to look for you in. So maybe you are a little more specific and you give me the district you live in—the Yarra Valley, the Rockies, the Bordeaux region. I am getting closer, but it is still going to be a while before I find you. So you give me a full address: street name and number, town, city, country. Now I will find you. I can use a map, a GPS, ask the locals. If I persevere, there is only one address that matches your home and I will find you.
The mind is goal oriented. The more specific the goal, the more potently it functions and the more reliably it works. If I have only your local region, it will be easy for me to be confused, to become disheartened, to give up. But with a specific goal, the prospect of success becomes very realistic.
However, clearly the specific goal is just the beginning. Once I decide to pursue that goal, to come to your address, I need to decide how best to make the journey and I need to actually complete the journey. So if I decide to come by car and the battery in the car is flat, I can either give up at that point or persevere. Having managed to start the car, I am then faced with many choices. As I begin to drive forward, I need to decide which direction to take, and I base that decision on what is most likely to lead me to your address. So I choose left, right or straight ahead, over and over, at one intersection after another, until I find you.
That is how it works. It is simple. The thinking mind is a goal-oriented, decision-making tool.
We are all positive thinkers. We all use our minds in this way many times over, day after day. However, some people become overwhelmed. “You want me to come to dinner? I don’t know about traveling on the roads just for a meal. What if I get lost? What about all the dangerous drivers on the road? Maybe it will be dark on the way home and I get scared in the dark.” Some people manage to talk themselves out of even simple things.
Of course, the truth is some people do set out in their cars each day fully expecting to reach their journey’s end and do not make it. Fatal car accidents are real. People do get lost, have flat tires, run out of gas and have minor accidents. Does this mean we stay at home and do nothing? Well, some do, but not so many when it comes to simple journeys. We accept the risks and persevere.
Consider this. Healing from a major illness like cancer can well be described as a journey. Often it is a lengthy journey, with many choices to deal with, many decisions to make, and often enough there are unexpected turns for better and worse. In my experience, some people do sense the scope of this particular journey and decide “to stay home.” Some may be paralyzed by fear. Others are deeply concerned by the fear of failure. What if I make all this effort and it does not work? Will I feel like a failure? Will I have let myself down or let down those around me?
Face the Fear and Do It Anyway!
The fear of failure is related to the notion of false hope. In many of the early media interviews that focused upon my work, presenters would ask if I was concerned about giving people false hope. Some doctors have also expressed a related concern—what happens to people who try hard to recover and still end up dying?
The answer to this is simple. Any major endeavor carries some risk. Recovering from a difficult diagnosis is not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and it would be commonplace. We know it is possible, but we do need to be realistic; it requires a good deal of effort. And the truth is I have seen people who have tried hard and still died of their disease. Long-term recovery is not easy, but it is possible.
When I had widespread secondary bone cancer in 1976 and was expected to live for a few months, I could have just accepted the disease as my fate and sat by hoping for the best, waiting to see what happened. My guess is that if I had done so, I could have died quite easily. But I dared to believe recovery was possible and, being realistic, knew that if I was to recover, I would need to do something dramatic. I knew I needed to do the best I possibly could with everything I took on.
When I became sicker before I began to recover, I simply became even more determined, more thorough. I knew I did not want to die with regret. I did not want to be near my last breath wondering if things would have been better if I had an extra carrot juice, or meditated a bit longer. Now, obviously there is a limit to how much carrot juice one should or could drink, and a balance in how much meditation to do. What all of us need to do is to decide for themselves how much carrot juice we drink, how much meditation we do, and then do it. That is the essence of positive thinking.
Commitment and Outcome
What can be said after many years helping people to face difficult situations is that these people fall into three broad categories. A number find that all this positive thinking and the lifestyle-based approach is simply not for them and they drop out. By contrast, most people recognize the truth in what is on offer, and the possibilities. However, even among these people, there are two types. We call them the 100 percenters and the 70 percenters.
The 100 percenters set clear goals and do them, 100 percent! Maybe they miss a little here or there, but essentially they do what they turn their mind to. By contrast, the 70 percenters consistently fall short of their goals. Maybe they set unrealistic goals, maybe for a multitude of reasons they just cannot persevere. But the gap between what they plan to do, what they set as their own personal goals, and what they actually do creates an inner tension. This tension commonly leads to unhelpful emotions like anger, blame, shame or guilt.
Now this latter situation is where help is urgently needed. I often suggest to people that if there is a big gap between what they believe is best for them to be doing and what they are actually doing, they need to treat that situation as if it is a medical emergency. It requires urgent attention. Either the expectations need to be brought into line or the questions of commitment and discipline addressed. To remain with a significant gap or disparity between your beliefs and your actions, between what you believe you need to be doing and what you actually are doing, for any length of time is an invitation to misery and poor outcomes. One way or the other, it needs to be resolved. More on how to do this is coming soon.
Once beliefs and actions are in sync, people invariably do well. Giving 100 percent to what they do has resulted in many people making a full recovery. But perhaps not too surprisingly, even those who give 100 percent and still go on to die of their disease, they do well too. They invariably have a good death. Maybe there is a natural disappointment and a sense of regret about dying itself. But there is no regret about having not done all that was reasonable. There is no guilt or shame. No anger or resentment. They do not die wondering. We will discuss this more in the chapter on death and dying (chapter 18), and no, it is not being “negative” to discuss dying. We will all die one day, so let us plan for a good death. That certainly is possible and perhaps a good death is a testament to a good life, a life lived well.
However, we are focused here on getting well, then living well and dying a long time later! So for those who are keen, we need to observe that positive thinking can be an innate trait or a learned skill. This is more good news. I have seen really pessimistic, “negative” people learn the three simple principles of positive thinking and transform their health. However, before we learn these three principles and clarify how to apply them, there are some really useful preliminaries.
Positive Thinking 101—Choose to Be Positive
We begin our move toward becoming more positive by giving attention
