Health and Healing

The mind is only capable of processing positives.

If you see a child climbing a tree, and they are precariously balanced, be careful what you tell them to do. If you shout, “Don’t fall!”, their mind has to interpret it as “FALL!!! don’t.” They are more likely to fall, than not. What you probably want to get across to them is “Be careful.”

Cigarette companies do not need to spend a lot of money on advertising because many people are doing it for them. You know all those “No Smoking” signs? They are a clear reminder to people who are trying to quit to “SMOKE! not”. Of course their craving is even worse. One of the greatest advances in this area is the sign that shows a little cloud on a sky-blue background indicating “Clean air”.

So what does this have to do with posi-genesis, health and healing?

Many rehab programs are performing marvellous services to their clients in helping them move away from an addictive life-style, but their success rate only tends to be 30%, give or take. While this is a good enough stat to get you into the Baseball Hall of Fame, I would venture to say that it is not all that great when dealing with human lives, especially when we know so much about behaviour modification.

Using the concept of posi-genesis, and the idea of turning on the light in a dark room in order to read a book, we can view health and healing in the same manner. A lack of health, however, can cause extremely damaging effects, just like a lack of heat or a lack of wealth. Posi-genesis does not pretend to say that the problem does not exist, nor that looking at negative effects is a poor way of analyzing a situation. Posi-genesis rather offers the idea that negative solutions are not effective in overcoming these negative effects.

It seems to me that the various rehab centres that focus on stopping an action have the effect, for most people, of reinforcing the habit. By continually saying “Don’t drink” or “Don’t drug”, the effect is that of “DRINK! don’t”, or “DRUG! don’t”. It serves as a continual reminder of the action the person is trying to stop. A more effective means of accomplishing the noble end would be to reinforce the healthy habits they are trying to actually cultivate.

When I first became a Bahá'í, the most difficult thing for me was to be able to go into a bar with my friends and not have a beer. Why? I wasn’t an alcoholic and didn’t suffer from any ill side effects of not drinking. The problem was when I went into a bar I ordered a beer. It was that simple. How could I go in and order a “not beer”? What would they give me? A whiskey?

The solution was easy, once I thought about it. I went in and ordered a juice. If someone offered to buy me a drink, I thanked them and got a juice.

There are many bad habits we would like to eliminate, but the problem is often finding the substitute. You cannot easily stop doing something, without doing something else. If you don’t have another action to replace the bad habit, you often fall back into the old routine, the habit.
There are a few rehab centres that have picked up on this concept and their “success” rate seems to be much higher, with stricter criteria for how they define success. If anyone has any information on these types of centres, I would be very grateful if they could send it to me.