Bontrager Livestrong Training Ride Austin Camp 2012
The laws of nature are unfaltering. I learned this the greatest while I was out on the open ocean sailing a tall ship during a squall where the waves were powerful enough to crash on us. From sailing I learned that the ocean has all of the power. You can learn how to sail on the ocean, sail with it, batten down hatches, set sails, etc., but you cannot fight the powers of it. The ocean has all of the power.
Single Minded Focus on Success
In understanding the laws of success or the laws of healing we also have to understand that we are working with a power that operates much like this. Just like gravity is unwavering in its force delivery, our bodies, beings and lives are shaped and molded by our participation with the laws of life and energy. Stress creates harm in the body. Eating horribly creates harm in the body. Learn the laws, learn how to work with them, and you give yourself the optimized opportunity to succeed- in health, in harmony, in life.
The determining factor for success is in knowing what you want to aim towards. What is your goal? Is the goal fame, wealth, or a great business venture? Is it to bring something powerful to the world for life or humanity? Is it a happy home life or a healthy body? It is inner peace? One needs to know one’s ultimate goal to head in the direction of success of those goals.
Learning from Champions
I was in Austin, Texas over the weekend for the first part of 2012 training camp for the cycling team Bontrager Livestrong. Within this powerful cycling environment are many who are demonstrating the results of sheer determination and single pointed focus towards success of a mission.
Following in a support vehicle watching these guys ride for a 5 hour training ride is enough to demonstrate the type of focus it takes to for a pro cyclist to do on any given day to train for success. I think there was one 5-10 minute stop the entire time for an “eating break.”
Flying home from this experience I started reading Napoleon Hill’s classic “Think and Grow Rich” and realized that those who are to succeed in highest degree, or already had, seemed in large measure to embody what Napoleon Hill teaches, in particular this quote: “Success comes to those who become SUCCESS CONSCIOUS. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become FAILURE CONSCIOUS.”
“Success” is variable to all who seek it and all who possess it. The greatest truth I see however, is that it follows those who seek it with 100% dedication and unwillingness to falter. Whether it is in healing, in winning, in being the best, in relationships, in spirituality, etc. Our achievements follow our dedication.
Single Minded Focus on Healing
In Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill shares a story about how he applied the principles of single minded focus and belief on outcome to how he assisted his son to restore hearing to himself despite the fact that he was born with no ears.
This story reminds me of what I have seen in working with some of the Combat Vets that I serve in rehabilitation at The Pathway Home. There are definitive personality characteristics that I see with the ones who seem to continue healing the most on their unique paths, and those are: determination to heal and faith in the capacity of the body to do so.
One young man has been impressing me of late in our conversations about a single minded focus on healing. Following surgery from a gun wound that missed scathing his spinal chord within a centimeter the blood flow to his lower limbs was cut off such that it damaged the nerve supply to his legs and he was rendered unable to walk. The doctors told him that he would never walk again, and, if for some reason he possibly could, he still would not want to because the pain would be too severe.
When I began working with him a few weeks ago he shared this story after walking in to see me. He is already gaining strength in his legs and doing exercises he was unable to do prior. I know that one of the key factors in his recovery, along with the healing of the nervous system and restoration of proper communication through the nervous system that is happening via chiropractic, is the restoration, encouragement, and development of his psyche in the supported direction of full healing.
He shares with me that some of his fuel was actually the inner flipping of the bird to the doctor who told him he probably wouldn’t want to walk anyway.
We all have to find the resiliency to flip the bird to the voices- on the outside or the inside- that tell us our dreams are impossible. Whether it is in the direction of health and healing, or the expression of a vision or dream into life.
Cultivating these attitudes are the imperative. It takes incredible courage, especially when all “facts” say that we are wrong, our task is impossible, it has never happened, etc. We have to cultivate the total commitment to what we are believing in.
Another quote from Napoleon Hill’s book is “no one is defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.” This reminds me of another combat veteran I am working with. He has a traumatic brain injury causing most of the connections between the hemispheres of his brain to be lost, and because of that lost most motor control to one side of his body. He is another example of total dedication to healing.
When I started working with him he had already regained great use of the disengaged side of his body and it just kept continuing to improve. He had greater coordination and visibly walked and carried his arm such that it was less obvious that something was wrong with his body. These improvements continued until he went for a physical and they took a c-scan of his brain.
Once he saw the picture and was convinced by the doctors of the severity of his problem his motor coordination started to decline again. This happened within one week of seeing the picture of the scan. Somewhere his body and being had accepted the picture as reality. I started working with him on not accepting that reality.
As a doctor this is a liability risk. We are educated not to give people “false hope” and to follow scientifically proven work. I know however the power of the “placebo” and the “nocebo.” I work to assist my clients to get into the placebo- or positive direction of the healing power to adapt and heal. The power of the body to adapt is far greater than our capacity to conceive of how it is going to do so. I know as a chiropractor however that the power that made the body from single cells does not leave the body until death, and that this is the power that does the healing. If that power is there that MADE A BODY then it is unlimited in its capacity to keep making, healing, and allowing a body to adapt. Indeed this soldier’s body and brain already had been doing so even though the picture made it look inconceivable. (Napolean Hill shares a similar story in his book about his son regaining the full capacity to hear even though on x-ray there was no visible possible way that sound was entering the brain as it should be for processing).
There is a great book by Bernie Seigel, a surgeon, called “Love, Healing and Miracles” that illustrates story after story about the power of belief structures on healing outcomes.
No matter what outcome we desire, it is cultivating this single pointed drive towards success that will lead us towards the outcome that we want. We have to be willing to try, and try again. We have to have courage. We have to listen to the dictates of our own belief and value systems. We have to understand that any time we are seeking a solution we need to ask the right questions- the ones that lead to the answers that we want, to move us supported in the direction that we want to move.
All around are people willing to hand out theories, rules, moralities, values, etc. It is up to us to decide what we accept, what we live by, and who and how we become. If you have a goal in mind it is wise to assemble a team around you willing to assist you to single pointedly work towards your goal. For every person willing to say your goal or dream is impossible, more than likely you can find another one to support you. Most likely you can even assemble the “facts” and “science” to back you up: no matter what course you choose.
In my life experience it is the people who refuse to listen to the nay sayers and doubters that consistently succeed. The world is full of people who will consistently tell you that your goals are impossible and cannot be done. We entirely owe our progression and discoveries on those who are willing to consistently flip the bird to these inner and outer nay-sayers and move forward despite them. I encourage it. Ingenuity is not based on “this is how we have always done it.” It is based on a willingness to ask the right questions and then single mindedly discover the answers one seeks. The doubters and nay-sayers will be ready to receive your answers once you discover them.
The point here is: if you want something- go for it. Have the courage to actually want something. To say what it is. And then to work towards it, with faith. Assemble people around you who believe in you and your goal. Surround yourself with them. Seek out those who have succeeded and study their stories. Become your vision.
Bonus Quote from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill:
“Awake, arise, and assert yourself, you dreamers of the world. Your star is now in the ascendency. The world depression brought the opportunity you have been waiting for. It taught people humility, tolerance, and open-mindedness.
The world is filled with an abundance of OPPORTUNITY which the dreamers of the past never knew.
A BURNING DESIRE TO BE, AND TO DO is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition.,…
You have been disappointed, you have undergone defeat during the depression, you have felt the great heart within you crushed until it bled. Take courage, for these experiences have tempered the spiritual metal of which you are made- they are assets of incomparable value.
Remember, too, that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they “arrive.” The turning point in the lives of those who succeed, usually comes at the moment of some crisis, through which they are introduced to their ‘other selves.”,…
Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.”
Here is a picture depicting the vision that I am working towards!
