Medical Files
Creative mental imaging
By Rafael Castillo, MD
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 18:50:00 01/02/2009
Filed Under: Health, Lifestyle & Leisure
I MET Mang Sandro recently while vacationing in Boracay. He said he was nearly 90 years of age but he looked easily 10 years younger; and he still had the spring in his steps.
He obviously didn’t have much of material possessions but he was effusing with joy and his zest for life was quite obvious as he regaled the small crowd of people who gathered around him with tales of his small victories in life. You end up buying something he sells.
“I’m healthy physically, mentally and spiritually,” he proclaimed and no one can possibly dispute that.
His positive mindset could be the envy of many lettered and accomplished professionals. And to think that he hardly knows how it feels to be in a high school class. A month before elementary graduation, he had to quit school because his parents could not afford the tuition fees he was asked to settle before he could take his final tests.
But that was history. For Mang Sandro, despite his limited resources, he considers himself more than blessed than many people of much greater affluence than he could ever imagine himself to ever have in several lifetimes. He has never begged and will never beg for alms. He plies his trade wherever his feet take him, and his earnings are enough to provide for his food and shelter. He cannot ask for more.
He’s happy with what he has and his happiness and contentment bring him priceless dividends. He has never been sick or ever had a need to see a doctor. He never had a sleepless night, and never had to worry about enemies after his neck, or robbers after his possessions.
Positive mindset
Many of us can learn a lesson or two from Mang Sandro. As we start the new year, the most important resolution that we can make for ourselves, for our families and for our nation is to have a positive mindset, and maintain a positive expectation of things to come.
Sometime ago, we wrote about the tremendous impact of our mental disposition on our health, career, relationships and practically any aspect of our lives. We compared this to the internal or built-in GPS or global positioning system which directs our entire life to whatever we predominantly think of.
If we expect a bad year right at the start like this week, chances are, we’re going to have a bad year. Instead of focusing on the problems, we can focus on the solutions and expect that things should turn out just as we would ideally want them, and the outcome should follow accordingly.
Talk of self-fulfilling prophecy and this is what it’s all about. Our dominant thoughts can make things a reality. And this is so no matter how outrageously impossible things we fill our minds could be at the outset. Ask President-elect Barack Obama and he would tell you how true this is. As a young boy he dreamed to become the president of the most powerful nation in the world, people who heard him dream of this considered it an outrageous black boy’s fantasy.
In his mind though, it was so crystal clear and he believed he would achieve it without a speck of a doubt. His mind focused on how he could achieve it rather than on the great obstacles that blocked his path.
Talk to Manny Pacquiao and he would tell you the same thing about how important a powerfully positive mindset can determine who would win an important boxing match. Talk to many Olympian medalists and you’ll be mesmerized at how they have reprogrammed their minds to only think of positive creative images of how they would like the outcome of their games or matches should be.
In a way whatever that is happening to the world today is perhaps part of our own doing. There is probably a predominance of negative universal thoughts accompanied by negative emotions such as bitterness, distrust, envy and hatred. The results can only be in a similar plane and that is war, disasters and economic collapse.
Positive thoughts
On a personal level, if we fill our minds with negative thoughts day in and day out, the outcomes are likewise negative. We get sickness, failure, broken relationships and financial ruin. It’s easier said than done but the solution looks pretty simple as turning on the switch the other way.
For a truly happy, prosperous, bountiful and healthful new year, let’s make our minds think only of positive thoughts that create positive emotions and we would certainly be convinced that all the doomsday sayers about where our country and the world are headed to were just stretching things a bit too far.
Ask Mang Sandro.
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