#17 Creating Wellness

Project yourself into wellness.  You are well. You are healthy.  What does that look like? Sound like? Feel like? Does it have a taste? A smell?

Surprisingly, this is a hard exercise for people.  I often see confusion and struggle in the eyes of people I suggest this too.  I see their wheels turning as they ask themselves doubtfully, “How am I supposed to make that happen?”

So just for a moment, think beyond what common sense will allow.

Do you like to color? Do you like to paint? Draw? Write? Cut and paste? Collage? Finger Paint?  Dance? Sing? Run? Jump? Play? What made you creatively crazy when you were a kid? Let that inner kid in you ring out! Scream out with creativity! Go back to the earliest times you can remember; when everything was possible. Nothing was jaded. Your imagination made everything realistic: Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, even the Boogie Man.

Don’t discount that belief you felt deep down in your belly. You owned it. You believed hard with all of your heart and soul the reality of what existed in your mind and nothing could convince you differently. (Not even that nasty little kid on the bus who tried to convince you otherwise!)

You believed and you believed hard because there were great rewards to be reaped in the end.  Christmas morning you’d wake to magical splendor under the tree. Who cared what was there, just waking up to see was enough.

Deep in your gut, you believed somehow a petite, little fairy with pink glittering wings placed a quarter or two under your pillow while you slept (Ok, so I'm showing my age here with a quarter of two). In the spring, a basket of chocolatey sweetness was waiting for you somewhere in the house because that tricky bunny always hid your basket. And you no doubt made it to the top of the stairs safely, skipping two stairs at a time, after grabbing some random item your mom needed from the basement because despite how loudly your brothers and sisters were egging him on, you were too fast for the Boogie Man.

I don’t really know what you believed or experienced when you were younger, I can only go by my own experiences to help you get to where you need to be in order to create your vision for wellness.  It’s my hope that my analogy helped you relive some childhood memories, in order to remind you of the conviction you once had when anything was possible. Magicians could really pull quarters out from behind your ear, and you didn't care how it was done.

Here's your challenge: Take that strong conviction you had as a child. Take those beliefs that you so strongly held on to and bring them into your life right now.  Believe with all your heart and soul that you are well.  That you can be well.  That you have the free will to choose wellness.  What does that look like? If you had to describe to a friend or a loved one what your life looks like when you are well, what do you see?  What are you doing?  Who are you with?  What are you feeling? Are you working? Dancing? Creating? Just simply being? Are you surrounded by supportive friends and family?

What would be a goal well beyond the boundary of the probable…far beyond the obvious next logical step?

In his Quantum Leap Strategy, Price Pritchett tells us that quantum leaps require us to start thinking about what we want, instead of what common sense says is the reasonable thing for us to do next. He says, “When you boil it down, common sense is just what it sounds like it’s what people today commonly believe.  And common sense is full of dumb, limiting ideas. Common sense used to say the world is flat, people can’t fly, bleed people if you want to heal them.  The idea of the man on the moon was once pure science fiction, and so was TV and the idea of a heart transplant”.

So I invite you again to go back to your childhood where everything was possible and everything was accessible.  Sense never came into the equation.  No barriers existed.  This is an important step because Pritchett reminds us that “Common sense still lies within you.  It focuses on the obstacles, reviews what you’ve done in the past, studies the normal achievement patterns of people in general, and then tells you what you can commonly expect to achieve.  It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

RELY TOO MUCH ON COMMON SENSE, AND YOU CAN EXPECT TO SEE COMMON RESULTS.

The irony here is that I was introduced to Pritchett five years after treatments to heal cancer that was in my body, and yet I intuitively did all that he suggests in his strategy years before I was introduced to him. Pritchett simply has the research to back up what I was already practicing. I understand the leap I'm suggesting here will be longer and wider for some, however, the end result for all will be the same…peace in your world.

What do you really want?

What excites you enough to move into action? Your heart has to get involved in this, because love is what fuels the quantum leap. Your head figures out how to get there, but it’s your heart that keeps you going.  In the overall scheme of things, heart is probably far more important than brains.

Set your sights far above what is reasonable…or practical…or probable.  Aim for the extraordinary, for that which is precious to you. Pursuing something you love, something you want passionately, produces inspiration.  You become more creative, more intense. Commitment to our dreams comes naturally, carrying you to the point of wishful thinking and disallowing half-hearted effort. Focus on the ends rather than the means.

If you’re not in love with your dream, it’s doubtful that you can successfully live out the quantum leap strategy. Passion starts the process, and caring enough keeps you going, so let emotion rather than intellect set your direction. – Price Pritchett, Ph.D.

Enjoy it, it's gonna be fun!