As my Teacher finishes explaining the Body Temple to me, he transports us to the top of a magnificent snow-capped mountain, encircled by white, cottony clouds. Giant evergreens poke out from the snow. I reach down to touch it and am surprised to discover that it doesn’t feel like snow at all but, rather, like the smoothest silk. I lie on my back in the snow and fan my arms and legs wildly, to create my very own snow angel. I feel so full of joy, happiness, and excitement. My Teacher smiles, clearly enjoying my childlike moment.
Men and women who grow up only to lose their childlike purity and joyfulness suffer needlessly in life. The key to happiness is simplicity. Enjoying the gift of life and every moment in it is like creating a new jewel for God’s necklace. You do not have to be young to have joy. Every moment in life can be a jewel.
Everyone has a pure nature, like a child’s. This is important, because children are more optimistic than adults. They can quickly release anger and then get right back to happily playing. Most children expect good things to happen to them. They believe it and are willing to do things to manifest it.
There is a lesson here regarding the power of your thoughts. They are the most powerful, creative tools in the universe. They create emotions. Emotions create chemicals that destroy or heal. Stay aware of your thoughts and feelings. A positive mind cultivates positive results.
His teaching is the Revelation of Positivity.
My Teacher continues:
There are positive thoughts and negative thoughts. Just like everything in the physical world, both have vibrations. Good thoughts and words, like love, gratitude, and appreciation, create higher vibrations. If you are feeling happy and thinking positive thoughts, you are giving out high vibrations and creating health and healing. Bad thoughts, like putdowns, unfair criticism, despair, pessimism, and anxiety, create low vibrations.
As for health, if you constantly have thoughts of sickness or disease, your body will convert those thoughts into physical form. And remember what I said: All negative thoughts and emotions create toxins on an emotional and physical level that lower your vibration. Positive thinking produces a positive effect on the body, mind, and spirit.
I can feel him looking deep inside me to see if I understand. I’m a bit overwhelmed by all this information. In the past, I never thought of myself as much of a positive thinker. I had good days and I had bad days, ups and downs, and just went with the flow. I never really paid a lot of attention to my thoughts.
As you stay here and learn by my side, you will come to understand the power of positivity. If people understood the impact of their thoughts on their lives, they would surely spend far more time cultivating positive thoughts. So make sure your thoughts are pure and peaceful and filled with unconditional love. This is how you create a positive reality.
Your thoughts are actions, too. They begin a chain of events, positive or negative, just as if they were physical actions. That is why it is so important to become aware of your thoughts and become a positive thinker.
Know, too, that every thought you and everyone else has is recorded here in Heaven, and you are responsible for them. I could show you where all your thoughts and the actions that resulted from them are stored, but that is unnecessary. Instead, understand this: Your thoughts are imprinted onto your spirit. They become part of you and help define you and the character you build and maintain. You are a collection of your thoughts and actions.
The power attached to our thoughts sounds so amazing: Our thoughts create our character, and our character influences the circumstances of our lives—health, happiness, our whole way of being in the world.
Still, I think how easy it is to lapse into negative thoughts. I remember after I got out of high school, I didn’t have a chance to go to college. For a long time, I considered this a strike against me. I felt bad about myself, inferior to others with a college education. My biggest challenge back then was to develop a healthy dose of self-esteem. I finally took a serious look at myself and said, “Yes, you can be successful.” After going to trade school to become a plumber, I ultimately built a thriving business and made a good living. So I’ve seen both sides of the mental coin: how negativity can hold you back and positivity can push you forward.
As I remember these things, my Teacher tells me about affirmations to kick out negativity.
An affirmation is a statement that helps you crystallize and align your specific intention with what God wants for you. Affirmations are very powerful tools that change thinking and, therefore, change reality. You will remember these words. They are being stored in your mind and in your heart: “There will be no negativity in my life from this day forth. A positive attitude creates positive results.”
I understand from this that although we can’t control certain events in our lives, we can control our thoughts. I can react positively or negatively to the circumstances I find myself in. If I wake up in a bad mood, feeling stressed, worried, and anticipating a tough day, then generally I’ll have that sort of day. If I’m positive, looking for something special in the day, I’ll breed positive experiences. I bring into my life what I expect to find.
All of this knowledge is empowering. It makes me feel better about my life and the possibilities for my health. And it’s knowledge accessible to anyone, college educated or not!
The power of positivity across every facet of life, including health, has never been in question. As a doctor and healer, I’ve always tried to impress on people that if they think well, their bodies work well. If someone is ill, no matter how seriously, I tell them that they must cultivate a belief that they will recover. You have the power to choose thoughts that enhance your health and uplift your spirit.
Tommy learned in Heaven that thoughts emit powerful vibrations (energy), which is exactly what Albert Einstein taught. He said that energy follows thought. So whatever you are thinking can become true, because thoughts are real, with their own energy field, and create your reality. Thoughts thus have a way of leading to what you expect, and those outcomes can be for you or against you, as we saw in the Revelation of Faithfulness.
When you strongly desire something positive and keep your focus on it, you will most likely get it. In 2005, I gave a talk on “healing the heart” to about 200 health-conscious senior citizens. As I looked out at them from the podium, they radiated health, vigor, and an absolutely contagious optimism, even though many had significant medical problems.
One gentleman stepped up to the microphone. He said he was 86; had aortic dysfunction, shortness of breath, and arrhythmia; and was somewhat hard of hearing. He’d had a quadruple bypass and a knee replacement.
“I want to make plans for the next 30 years,” he said. “My cup is half full, and I want to make it fuller.”
What an amazing spirit! That is the perfect healing attitude. Somebody else in his shoes might think their cup was half empty and draining, but not him nor the others in that room of positive thinkers.
When misfortune or disease strikes, we can make a conscious reaction—negative or positive. Some people develop a “poor me” attitude and turn into victims. They react to a situation by saying that “such and such has been done to me.” In reality, nobody can make another person feel inadequate, unhappy, unloved, or guilty. These feelings and insecurities come from within and are drawn in from outside sources only when they confirm an inner belief. A positive response will only come when you begin to alter your own thoughts and attitudes about yourself and your situation.
Suppose you tell yourself, “My boss always makes me feel inadequate.” Whenever you see your boss, your confidence shrinks and your self-doubt, anxiety, and discomfort skyrocket. In truth, it’s not your boss who is robbing you of your confidence or competence. The boss is merely enhancing your already established feelings of inadequacy. Changing jobs won’t alleviate the problem; it will only surface again at the next job until you find a way to internally control your self-evaluation. The best way to change the situation is to change your reaction to it: Develop a more positive attitude toward yourself and your capabilities. Start by simply thinking positive thoughts.
Behavioral research studies reveal that how we react to situations in our lives is extremely important as a variable in the nature of disease. Our character, adaptability, and responses to events may determine whether we get sick or not.
Many people see illness in terms of spiritual or emotional growth. Referring to their illnesses, patients have told me, “God placed it in my path so I will be more humble” or “to get out of a bad relationship” or “to change my bad habits.” Those are the people who tend to recover most quickly.
Even if a devastating illness slaps us in the face, we have to find the blessing in the situation. I had a patient, Ross, who needed to undergo emergency bypass surgery. Afterward, he participated in our hospital cardiac rehabilitation program and weekly couples groups. He described how his attachment to his job had run—and ruined—his life. As a workaholic, he’d had no room for anything else. His heart had not been open to his family, friends, or even his own feelings. We explored further the reasons Ross had heart disease, because he did not fit the typical profile. Ross was tall and slim, did not smoke or drink, and ate a healthy diet. We determined that his problem was a thought pattern—largely thinking that he was desperately trapped in his job and there was no way out—that led to deadly stress.
Ultimately, Ross changed his thinking. He made the conscious decision that he was not going to die for his job. He looked deeper into his emotional and spiritual self. An early retirement package was offered, and Ross took it. He sold his house and moved to a small New England college town to be closer to his sons.
I tell this story to illustrate how if we find a positive message amid the negativity and make choices based on that discovery, our lives will unfold in a positive way.
I’m a perennial optimist, but this doesn’t mean I’m a Pollyanna wearing a smiley face all the time. Nor do I deny the negative feelings that my patients with chronic diseases may experience. But I encourage them to do what they can to enhance their own positivity, because that, in turn, will help them be more successful in addressing the challenges they face with their health and with life in general. Even if you become seriously ill, try to stay positive. Positive intention is vital for healing. Negative thoughts are toxic to the body.
I can assure you, from observing thousands of patients, that positivity counts. You can choose to be depressed and live with the biochemistry that depression creates in your body or to be optimistic, find purpose in life, and live with the molecules that optimism creates. It’s those molecules that help you recover and stay healthy.
In 2001, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology gave strong confirmation to the power of a positive attitude. The study analyzed the medical histories and length of life of nearly 200 Catholic nuns who had completed handwritten autobiographies during the 1930s, when they were in their early twenties. “Positive emotional content in early-life autobiographies was strongly associated with longevity six decades later,” after the nuns had retired from years of teaching school, the authors reported.
A careful examination of the writings for such key words such as happy, joy, love, hopeful, and content found that the nuns expressing more positive emotions lived as much as 10 years longer than those expressing fewer positive emotions. The findings concurred with other studies showing that people who rated more positive on personality tests seemed to live longer than those who were more pessimistic. People who are happier and more optimistic and laugh more have less disease. The researchers also discovered that early mental function could predict which individuals would show brain damage typical of Alzheimer’s disease some 60 years later.
My most successful patients have always been people like those nuns, with resounding positive attitudes. Freedom from disease and better health clearly require “radical surgery” to remove old thought patterns. Positivity leads to productive changes in actions that, if repeated over time, solidify into good habits. And good habits create good health.
So how can we change destructive thought patterns? There are several ways.
Remember that everything is energy, including your thoughts. Whatever you dwell on most expands. Dwell on what makes you angry and your anger will expand. Dwell on the good in your life, as well as what you want from that life, and the goodness will expand and your desires will manifest themselves. Should negative thoughts sneak up on you—and they will—learn to view them as feedback about what you don’t want. Once you have that insight, shift your attention to what you do want.
Retrain your brain toward positivity. Begin by challenging any negative thoughts. Is the thought true or rational? Is it helping or hurting you? When I’d ask patients if they could take responsibility for their health, I’d often hear “I can’t”: “I can’t stop smoking,” “I can’t lose weight,” “I can’t eat healthy,” “I can’t exercise,” “I can’t change jobs,” et cetera, et cetera.
Those are some of the most dangerous negative thoughts that can enter your mind, because they’re not working for you, they’re working against you. You must shut them down immediately and cancel out that sort of thinking, because you can do all those things and more. I suggest that you talk back to those thoughts in your mind, saying to yourself that they are untrue or silly and countering them with positive thoughts that begin with “I can.”
Try this exercise: Take two minutes to write down 10 things you feel positive about—your children, your values, your faith, your character. Researchers at the University of Chicago found that when people recorded their positive feelings, they had significantly less worry and lower levels of harmful cortisol. And, incredibly, this exercise raised their performance on tests of memory and critical skills by 10 to 15 percent. Refer to your list often so that your positive traits become woven into the mental fabric of your being.
Start being more optimistic. Research shows that optimists are not only happier, they’re also healthier, live longer, and recover from illnesses better than those with less cheery outlooks. Optimists interpret events in a way that gives them hope to keep on trying. You might say they know how to apply both the Revelation of Faithfulness and the Revelation of Positivity in their lives. Pessimists, on the other hand, look at an event with a negative slant.
One study from Harvard reported that optimism and joy can protect your heart by actually lowering the risk of strokes and heart attacks. The researchers had reviewed the outcomes of more than two hundred previous studies and found that people with the most optimistic attitudes had a 50 percent reduced risk of having a cardiac event compared with those less optimistic.
One way to start each day on the right foot is to think about what you are grateful for. But that doesn’t mean just rattling off a list. Really take the time to contemplate your feelings about each thing and internalize how each positive feature makes your life better.
Also, as you encounter frustrations during the course of your day, try to put a positive spin on them, a technique known as reframing, to encourage an optimistic perspective. For example, if you don’t feel like going to work, be thankful that at least you have a job during this time when many Americans don’t have that “luxury.”
If you failed at a task the day before, be grateful that you learned a lesson and may have the chance to try again. If a relative has irritated you, remember good times you have had together. Reminding yourself of what you are grateful for will promote optimism and hope even if your life has been difficult lately. You’ll feel serene as opposed to agitated and depressed.
Laugh often. Much research shows that laughter, just as exercise does, produces a high tide of endorphins, feel-good brain chemicals that reduce pain and generate a sense of well-being. Laughter impacts your physiology in specific ways to bolster health and healing by lowering stress hormones, raising beneficial hormones, and boosting natural killer cells and immunity.
Think of your body as one big pharmacy that is manufacturing a countless array of chemical substances based on your emotions. For your own well-being, you need more chemicals based on humor than on stress. I’ve often told patients to watch comedies as a kind of laughter prescription to reduce stress. My favorites over the years have been the 1987 film Planes, Trains and Automobiles, with Steve Martin and John Candy, and the earlier Pink Panther films with Peter Sellers; you probably have your own favorites, and I encourage you to keep those DVDs handy!
My wife, Jan, a cardiac rehabilitation nurse for many years, used to encourage her patients to bring cartoons about cardiology topics to rehab sessions. The levity always helped elevate the mood of people who were burdened with anxiety over their health. When chronically stressed, we invite into our lives many different health problems: high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, digestive disorders, ulcers, addictions, headaches, insomnia, even cancers. On the other hand, people who handle stress constructively are healthier.
Find your own personal antidotes to stress. There are a lot of stress-busting methods from which to choose: Exercising. Finding a hobby. Dancing. Playing music. Engaging in or watching sports. Spending time with your kids or grandkids. Doing crossword puzzles. Knitting. Painting. They are all out there. My antidotes are walking, grounding, and doing yoga when I can join a class. Whenever possible, I get away from my many professional and business activities to pursue my favorite pastime: catch-and-release bonefishing. I basically disappear for a few weeks with my wife in a warm, sunny vacation spot and spend time wading and fishing on the flats. It’s a moving meditation for me.
Another part of healthy stress management also involves physiological interventions through mind/body techniques like yoga, meditation, tai chi, and qigong. These practices, when followed routinely over the long term, lower the heightened sympathetic nervous system activity associated with emotional stress. Regularly practicing any of these methods helps to train the body and mind to adapt healthfully to stress through relaxation and breathing. Grounding, which I discussed previously, also shifts the nervous system in a healthier, more-balanced direction.
As Tommy’s Teacher suggested, affirmations are excellent tools for reinforcing positivity and creating healing. Affirmations are words or whole sentences, spoken out loud or meditated upon in the mind. They create energy and have their own vibration. In 2004, the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine published an article by Masaru Emoto, a Japanese researcher who set out to prove that the energy we give off through our thoughts, words, ideas, and music affects the molecular structure of water. He wrapped vials of water with pieces of paper on which were written either love and thanks, devil, or you fool. The water was then frozen. The water exposed to love and thanks formed beautiful ice crystals; the words devil and you fool produced no crystals at all.
In a similar way, repeating a positive word or phrase can alter a person’s state of mind for the better, all due to the higher vibrations given off by positivity. Here are some affirmations to repeat.
“I have everything it takes to heal completely.”
“The more I embrace positivity, the healthier I am.”
“I’m healing every day.”
“I’m healthy and strong, and my energy and vitality are increasing daily.”
“I’m grateful for my life. I’m grateful that I’m healthy today at this moment.”
Another strategy I recommend is to chant, using sounds such as om, hrum, hum, or shum. These are prolonged vowel sounds that create vibration within the body, so they help tune up our out-of-tune energies. Used in healing rituals for thousands of years, chants have been proven scientifically to increase mental alertness, relax the body and mind, improve breathing, reduce heart rate, improve blood pressure and circulation, and awaken parts of the brain and endocrine system that are tied to everything from immunity to emotional behavior.
You can also interrupt or work through negative thoughts by listening to soothing music or music with life-affirming lyrics (but no heavy metal—research shows it abnormally accelerates heart rate!). You’ll discover that the right music can lift you up and bolster a more positive mind-set. In turn, a more positive mood can help you cope better with negative emotions and circumstances, allow you to problem solve, and enable you to take action for positive results. So let music into your life.
Remember: Always choose your thoughts carefully. You have the power to control them. You can bring whatever you want into your life. It all comes down to positivity.
POSITIVITY
We’ve presented many ways to build a foundation of positivity in your life. It’s something that takes daily practice. Here are some commitment steps to help you get started.
◼I will start each day in a few moments of stillness. My attitude determines what each day becomes, so during this quiet time, I will center my thoughts on positivity—what I want to accomplish, what I feel grateful for, and the goodness I intend to experience today. If negative thoughts arise, I will listen to them, but I will question them: Is this really the truth? Do I know this to be what is really true? I will relax amid bad thoughts and simply release them, like balloons into the sky. I know that negative thoughts will dissolve on their own, and positive ones will come in their place.
◼I will select at least three health-and-healing affirmations to repeat this week and three more next week. I will attach them to my mirror, refrigerator, or office wall—anywhere I can see them—as reminders of the transformative power of positivity. I will explore and practice other tools such as chanting, singing hymns, or listening to music to get rid of negative mind clutter. Any one of these will produce a calm and relaxing effect that will eliminate any negative energy within me.
◼I will make a written list of the good things that I have in life and the positive elements of my health. I will also list the things I want in my life, not focus on what I don’t want or have. If I want better health, then I’ll focus on living a healthy life and take action to do so. If I want to feel more connected, then I will focus on forming loving relationships rather than on my feelings of loneliness and isolation. I will add or subtract from these lists as needed. I know that my life will head in the direction I’m facing. The more I face and focus on the positive, the sooner I’ll see positive results.