pain medication (true condition), and sometimes they were given a placebo pill and were told it was a placebo pill, meaning it was inert (i.e., a sugar pill) and would not have an effect on their pain (also true condition). In the false condition, they were either given the real medication and told it was a placebo (to lower expectations) or given the placebo and told it was the medication (to raise expectations). Finally, in the uncertain condition, they were given a pill and told it could be either a placebo or the medication.
Here’s what happened. People who received the pain medication experienced a greater reduction in pain than those who received the placebo pill. And, those who received the placebo pill did better than no treatment. These two findings were expected (no pun intended!). Now here’s where it gets interesting, where we start to see the power of information and expectancies. People who were given the migraine medication but were told it was a placebo pill experienced less pain relief than when they were told they were getting the medication (false condition to lower expectation). In other words, the pain medicine was less effective when people didn’t believe it was medicine.
Furthermore, people who received the placebo pill and were told it was medicine (false condition to raise expectation) experienced more relief from their pain than if they were told they got the placebo pill. In fact, they experienced the same amount of relief as those who received the medicine, but were told it was a sugar pill! In other words, the placebo was more effective when participants believed they were actually getting the medicine.
These results, and those from hundreds of other similar studies, demonstrate that what we expect impacts us, and it does so at the very neuro-cellular level. The effects of pain medication can be blocked by what we believe. Not only that, but we can also create pain relief in our body just by believing we are doing something that is going to reduce pain. I believe this pain relief isn’t just applicable to physical pain; our beliefs impact our experience of emotional pain, too. The bottom line of the research on the placebo effect and self-fulfilling prophecies is that we get what we expect. And given that, it is so important that we be intentional about what we expect and use this power for our good.
Your Expectation Is Your Choice: Choose Wisely
But when we’ve been pummeled by life, it can be very hard to expect things to get better, especially when the pummeling just seems to keep on coming. It can also feel scary to expect things to get better, because what if they don’t? Then what? It can feel unbearable to think of having to go through more pain and disappointment. However, what I’ve noticed in my own life and in the lives of my clients is that it’s far better to hope for change and not see it than it is to sink in the pit of hopelessness and despair and resignation.
You see, here’s the real kicker: You are never expectation free. You’re always expecting something. You’re either expecting nothing to change, for things to get worse, or for things to get better. Given what we know about the self-fulfilling prophecy and placebos, it’s clear that we can change our reality with our beliefs. Remember in the Introduction we learned about how our perception is our reality? This is where the rubber hits the road. Where you get to make a choice. Where you get to set an intention. Up-level your expectations. Set yourself up to bloom in the dark.
You didn’t have a choice about going through the suffering you’re experiencing right now. But you do have a choice about how you want to respond to it and who you want to become as a result of it. That’s what I mean by setting an intention to bloom. Blooming or transformation isn’t an automatic process; it’s one that requires clarity, intention, determination, and persistence.
Indeed, very few of the things we want to accomplish in life happen automatically. For most everything, we have to set a clear intention (i.e., set our belief and expectation for something), and for most everything, we have to exert some effort and persist in that expectation and effort until we realize our goal. It all begins with the intention we set. The research is clear: What we set our mind on—our intention—affects how things turn out.
Setting an intention: That’s the first step of blooming in the dark.
Your Turn
Below are some writing prompts designed to help you set your intention for blooming. You’ll engage in “possibility thinking,” where you take the limits off of your current level of thinking and dream about how you’d like your situation and life to turn out. This type of thinking helps you to move beyond your current emotional state and challenging life situation. Then you’ll get specific about what type of person you want to become, what character traits you want to develop, and what new focus you want for your life.
As you begin to set specific intentions for this time in your life, you’ll start to notice a greater sense of control and agency despite being in the middle of difficult and uncertain circumstances. Although what we’re doing is essentially setting goals for ourselves, it’s different than making New Year’s resolutions, which is important because hardly any of us keep those! This intention-setting work is deeper; it’s soul work. We’re creating a lifeline to your future self, shifting your perspective about what this time of suffering is all about, and creating new meaning and purpose for it. You’re setting yourself up to be more than you could have been had this pain not happened. As you write, dream big and dig deep!
WRITING PROMPTS
Expectations and Harvests
•What are you expecting during this dark season? For yourself, for others, for how it all turns out?
•What harvest do you really want?
•What expectation or intention would lead to the harvest you desire?
Everything Is Possible
Let’s play for a few minutes. Imagine that you were visited by an all-powerful and loving being who silently presented you with a beautiful gift wrapped in gold foil, just big enough to fit in the palm of your hand. The being disappears as soon as it hands you the gift. Warm light seems to emanate from the small package. You open the gift carefully and inside, wrapped in layers of golden tissue paper, is a little slip of paper. On the slip of paper written in gold ink is the following message: “From now on, there are no more limitations in your life. Everything is possible for you.”
What would this message mean for you? What would you allow yourself to believe, to expect, to hope for that you haven’t been allowing yourself? What limitations would end? What is the first thing you would do? What’s the second thing?
Setting Your Intention to Bloom
While you are still in the germinating seed state, this is the perfect time to set your focus and intention to be in full bloom. In order to set the intention to bloom, you need to first define what blooming in the dark specifically means to you. Take a good twenty minutes to respond to the following prompts:
•In a few sentences, describe your darkness (i.e., your pain, suffering, loss).
•What does blooming in the dark mean to you?
•Who do you want to be at the end of all this?
•If you were to become that fully bloomed person, what would that look like? In other words, how would you or I know that you had bloomed in the dark?
•If we thought of the petals of your bloom as character traits, what would your petals be?
•When
