Change your Mind, Change your Future

Day +54, I am getting closer to the first hundred days. It has been tough going for the last couple of weeks and it seems like I am battling with my mind. Just trying to deal with fatigue. I don’t feel like doing anything. I must find a way to handle this. The blog was a great way to keep me occupied when I was in hospital and it kept my mind alert. Somehow, I haven’t been feeling up to writing a blog. Anyway, here I am, let me look into the future as I continue to battle with my own demons! Even Pat has got into reading my blog and misses it. Every morning she says, ‘Why don’t you write something today?’. Amazing statement from Pat, who is not a great fan of computers.

It has been an eventful few days. I got a bad dose of diarrhoea last Friday. This is one of the symptoms of the Graft-versus-Host disease. I was in touch with the hospital to see if I should go in, they did not seem as concerned as I was. Probably they wanted to rule out a few things first, such as a flu bug. The last thing they want is to have me come in and infect other patients. The other possibility was food poisoning, which I thought was highly unlikely as Pat cooks my meals fresh every day. Anyway, the hospital said, let us wait and see for another few hours and if I got worse, then to come in. I felt better on Saturday and the crisis was under control. It is amazing how much power your mind has over your body. I was convinced that it was GvHd and the fear took control of my body and put me out of action for the rest of the day on Friday. I am convinced that we do need to find a way to control our minds.

By an amazing coincidence, I came across this article in the Reader’s Digest (February 2012). This goes back to one of my original postings when I spoke of the ‘law of attraction’. The challenge for me is to figure out if it was my Guardian Angel or the ‘law of attraction’ that brought me this article. In itself it does not matter too much as long as it helps me. The article is called, ‘Change your Mind, Change your Future’ written by David Shephard.

A recently published report says that 38 percent of Europeans are suffering from some sort of mental or emotional disorder. This is over 1 in 3 people suffer from this disorder. If I read this a few weeks back I would have laughed it off as I am not a great believer in mental disorders.

I also didn’t believe that the incidence of cancer was as high as it is reported. I used to laugh at my sister-in-law, who is a Consultant Pathologists, when she was very concerned about carcinogenic substances in our food (cancer causing substances). Well, here I am now a cancer patient. Can you believe that 5 out of the 6 of my family have had a brush with cancer? Being a cancer patient is not a great place to be in, as it is a ‘life sentence’. Going through cancer treatment is tough, but once the battle in won, unfortunately, it is not the end of the war. If you get cancer, then you have to deal with it.

The best is to avoid getting cancer. It is a known fact that smoking can cause cancer. The liver is one of your lines of defense and heavy drinking damages your liver. The detergents we use at home are probably carcinogenic. I was surprised to see the cleaners use Fairy Liquid (washing up liquid) to clean the surfaces at the hospital and not Domestos (Bleach). A good healthy diet is recommended with fruit, fibre and vegetables (avoid sugar). All this is to ‘close the barn door before the horse bolts’! This was a digression from my original thought process, but this has been in my mind for some time since I got sick. When you are sick, you long to be well again.

Back to the ‘Change of Mind’ article. The article talks of developing a few techniques for controlling your mind and therefore your life. Your brain runs two minds; the conscious and the unconscious mind. Your conscious mind is the one you feel with, and where you get intuitions and gut instincts. I for one, is overly reliant on my conscious mind. It is our unconscious mind that holds the power to create our dreams and this is news to me! The truth is that we require both minds. The article talks about the conscious mind being the captain of the ship and the unconscious mind being the crew. The unconscious mind’s job is to give you something to focus on. The unconscious mind can’t process ‘negatives’ e.g. If I ask you not to think of a blue tree, what do you think of? A blue tree! The problem is that culturally we’re conditioned to focus on what we don’t want.

Train your brain. You need, literally, to insert “memories” of what you want to happen into the future. Your unconscious mind needs to know exactly what you want and when. Your conscious mind’s job is to decide how to get there.

I think I will look up on David Shephard and will keep you posted on what I learn here. He says that the most important thing to realise is that nothing is just the way it is – you have the power to change the meaning of the past and create your future the way you want it.

That’s all for now folks!