The Mind-Body Cure. Bal Pawa
to less-than-optimal health. Ideally, it would be wonderful if we could simply have a mindset that was automatically set to default to healthy behaviors.
Although many of us have good intentions when it comes to our health, we easily fall back on automatic habits and become derailed when we don’t involve our conscious mind. And if our subconscious lens magnifies negative experiences, we may even look for negative experiences to reinforce what is pre-set, thereby sabotaging our best efforts to make change. It requires awareness, effort, intention, and repetition to transform poor habits into good habits. I know from my own practice that some people run an automatic program of health and wellness and overcome obstacles more easily than those who have a mindset of blame, shame, guilt, or being a victim. Others continually run into challenges, oblivious to the automatic expectations they have set up for themselves. The bottom line is that our mind can make us sick or our mind can manufacture health. Thus, we must choose carefully and consciously what program we want running our body automatically (subconsciously)!
How Mindset Affects Our Health
I often use the analogy of modern-day computers to describe the mind-brain-body connection. I compare the mind to a programmer who builds a software program, the brain to the computer that runs the software program, and the body to the display screen or monitor on which the program is shown. As physicians, we often look just at the display screen when we measure symptoms (blood pressure, heart rate, gut function, or even blood tests). We often prescribe drugs or order tests based on what we find there (the physical symptoms) without really going deeper into which “program” that particular body is playing. If mindset is the software program being played by the computer, it often needs “upgrades and updates” and sometimes needs to be replaced completely. A new program results in a whole new set of information being displayed on the monitor. When it comes to the software program—our mindset—we have control over the version we choose.
➤ Growth Mindset versus Fixed Mindset
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, researcher Carol Dweck showed that mindset—whether growth or fixed—was a profound determinant of a person’s performance.7 She defined people who believe their success is based on innate ability as having a fixed mindset; that is, they think they are born with a certain amount of intelligence and talent and that’s that. Either they know something or they don’t. Those who believe their success is based on hard work, learning, training, and doggedness, she defined as having a growth mindset. If they don’t succeed at something the first time, they think that hard work and learning will allow them to master it. Many different cultures value diligent work, and we know that working hard (and working smart) is a great way to achieve our goals. Yet we also believe people have innate natural talents that give them an advantage.
For example, we look at people like Albert Einstein or Michael Jordan and see that their natural talents gave them both success and notability. However, their inherent talent was not the only quality they had. Dweck points out that talent alone would not have been enough. Imagine if Einstein had written the theory of relativity and then just kicked back and drunk lemonade! The fact he persisted and continued to create world-changing theories shows he was hungry for knowledge and disciplined enough to continue his research. This made him one of the most revered physicists in history. In the same way, what if Michael Jordan had hooped a few basketballs with precision and then quit just to lie around reveling in his glory? Would we remember him today? Absolutely not. Both men had more than incredible natural talent. They had other qualities in common, such as persistence, curiosity, and grit. They continued to practice and hone their skill and talent. Incredible natural talent combined with a mindset for improvement and effort produced epic results.
We can apply this mindset theory to our health. Believing in our ability to change our life is a key feature of a growth mindset, compared with assuming we possess immutable characteristics with a fixed mindset. In clinical practice, I have witnessed various patterns of mindset when treating patients over the years. I refer to those patients as having a health mindset versus an illness mindset. When we believe inherently that our mindset (software program) is not etched in stone, we can “upgrade” and “update” the version of software that our brain is playing so we get better results. Those results are displayed by the body. The programmer (our conscious mind) is key when it comes to starting this process.
➤ Health Mindset
People with a health mindset trust that they have some control over their health outcomes. They are willing to learn about health, adopt new behaviors, and commit to making a change with the confidence that it will produce change. In fact, some of these people have such faith in self-healing they have spontaneously healed themselves or responded to placebos alone.
People with a growth mindset know that putting in more time and effort can make them smarter, more intelligent, and talented. Those with a health mindset are healthier individuals! Why? Because they formed subconscious beliefs in their childhood that they could control their health—or they learned later in life that they could control their choices in health—and through practice and effort, they achieve better outcomes. Remember the saying, “Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard.” If we want to be healthy, we must put in the effort to form healthy habits of thinking, living, and doing.
A health mindset doesn’t always come naturally, but once we understand that our beliefs influence our body at a cellular level, we can learn and develop the ability to improve our health outcomes. In fact, we have an incredible influence over our health skills and abilities, far more influence than we know. Except for extremely rare cases of strong genetics, our genes define only a limited amount for us.
➤ Illness Mindset
People with a fixed mindset assume that ability and understanding are concrete and fixed, so they don’t try to change. They often assume that their DNA is their destiny—they were either born with health or they weren’t—and therefore believe they don’t have control over their health outcomes. This “what’s the point?” attitude to changing behaviors for health is a form of illness mindset. A defeatist attitude, we now know, can lead to disease and even failed treatments. In other words, fixed-mindset individuals sabotage themselves before they even start. They don’t commit to changing their lifestyle because they have a core belief that nothing will help.
Why does nothing work on those patients? It’s called the “nocebo” effect. Individuals contribute to their illness by subconsciously creating chemicals of self-destruction. They convince themselves that nothing will work, so it often doesn’t. How many times have people with cancer learned they have six months to live, and they do, while others refuse to be boxed in and outlive their disease or even beat cancer?
The main differences between the two mindsets of health and illness are our belief in the permanence of intelligence about our health state, our ability to adapt to any change in environment, and the knowledge that our circumstances do not define us. People with a health mindset are open to growth and change with opportunities for improvement. They can adapt to new information and adopt new behaviors; they are more resilient. In these individuals, we can update the software program that runs the body.
Case Study: Jane and Carol
In my family practice many years ago, two unrelated patients, Jane and Carol, were diagnosed with breast cancer within a few weeks of each other. They were only a few years apart in age. Their biopsy results were coincidentally identical on the pathology report, so I referred them both to a well-known cancer specialist in the area. He ended up seeing them a few weeks apart.
Carol was a happy-go-lucky, charming, and no-nonsense woman who was very proactive about her health. I explained the report of cancer; she appeared surprised at the diagnosis. Yet Carol calmly asked a few questions and then responded, “Doctor, just do whatever you need to do to get this thing out of me. I have travel plans and grandchildren to care for.” On the way out, she asked if I could recommend some good reading resources.
When