Mind-body Medicine

Tonight, I will be attending the first meeting of a new group that is for "Men with MS". I have been thinking and wonder who the men are and what they would be like. I do hope they will have positive attitude about their life. I want to be involved with group of men who have something in common and hopefully we can have a social life together and develop meaningful friendship. Most of all, I hope they also have positive attitude about life and their MS. Heck, I sure hope some of them love to play golf. I missed playing golf.

I have seen that there are literally thousands of articles on how the mind and brain affect the body. When a person can focus on something other than their own illness, this allows the body to take advantage of our own healing capacity. Accepting may be the most important step toward finding success and happiness by focusing on the term “All disabilities or weaknesses are part of life’s challenges". We need to be self-aware by using our ability to accept the existence of our weaknesses and identify our strengths and weaknesses rather than dwell solely on the negative aspects of our weaknesses.

A positive attitude is often key to a successful life and sometimes we fall into the bad habit of negativity. I have a positive attitude, and I am optimistic about my future. Whenever I find myself not being positive, I try to put into perspective how fortunate I truly am, and usually what I'm upset about ends up looking pretty trivial. Whenever my positive attitude gets deflated, I get depressed. In order to have positive attitudes, I have to learn to “respect my bad habits." Habits don't develop in a vacuum. Without understanding the value of my habit, I will never consider methods for replacing them with something easier to adapt with. So therefore, rather than “beating” my habits, I need to understand that my habits are my “weaknesses”. I view weaknesses as disabilities. Those with disabilities have learned to accept and adapt life with their own weaknesses and therefore, we can learn from them.

The right perspective is to understand that in the trouble of life this is part of it trying to discern what God is doing in the trouble of it. James says count it all joy when you fall into various trials cause trials have a perfecting work. Peter says after you've suffered a while the Lord will make you perfect. God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual condition. If I keep forgetting the basic meanings of God's grace, I would become a bitter, angry, and cantankerous person just because things are not going "my way". Trials come to us to reveal what we really dwell on. I have to remember that no one else can take responsibility for my private life. Health is mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wholeness which health is a gift from God, but I am responsible alone to create a proper attitude. Grace teaches me that I am to continue to rejoice and praise God even in the midst of my trials and suffering in this earthly life! Trials come to test the strength of our faith because they assist us in the knowledge of our own faith to cope with our daily lives. (Genesis 22:1-18, Malachi 3:3-4, 1 Peter 1:6-9).