Parkinson’s is a symptom that life has gotten out of balance, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Many people are consumed with “why did I get this?” and “how bad will my future be?” When you are consumed with looking backwards with self-judgment and self-criticism, and you are consumed with looking forward in fear, you completely lose sight of the only thing that is real…this moment.
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At the beginning of 2019, I declared it 2019…the year of calming your mind! Today is the first day of the second half of the year, so I decided to repost the first post of the year and ask at the mid year: How are you doing with calming your mind?
Here is my January 1, 2019 post:
“Happy New Year, 2019!!! As we wound down 2018 chanting our affirmations together, the sun began to rise and awaken us to 2019 and the wonderment of all of the possibilities that lie ahead. For each and every one of you, this is a new year, a new breath of fresh air, and a new outlook: 2019…the year of calming your mind!
As you know, the Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery® is a soul, mind, and body recovery protocol. If you do not calm your mind and get control over your mind, your adrenaline-driven-self-criticizing-anxious-fearful-mind (yes, THAT mind), then your mind will substantially interfere with the soul and body recovery.
Your mind says, “Why have faith in the recovery and learn to love yourself? (soul healing). Weren’t you paying attention at the neurologist’s office? You cannot be cured. You cannot even slow or halt the disease. And by the way, your best is not good enough, so no matter how hard you try to get better, you will not ever do enough to be worthy and deserving of the recovery.” Can you see how your mind undermines your soul recovery?
Your mind says, “Why do you think your body is getting better? (body healing). Who cares that you got your sense of smell back, that your fingernails are growing long, strong, and fast, that your energy has improved, that you are sleeping better, that your urgent urination has subsided, that your constipation has subsided, that your indigestion has gone away, and that people are telling you how much better you look? You are shaking a little more or are a little stiffer or slower? You are getting worse.” Can you see how your mind undermines your body recovery?
How do you calm THAT mind? Well, my friends, to begin 2019, help is right here in a larger way than you can imagine. As I am certain you have seen in the blog post comments, a regular contributor is “Jan — UK.”
Jan’s husband Alex is a musician. He narrated a guided meditation with affirmations for Jan and they shared it with me. When we were on our next coaching call, Alex joined Jan and me and explained that if I felt it would be beneficial, he would remove the affirmations/meditations personal to Jan and re-record a similar guided affirmation/meditation audio for all of you as a gift.
I was overwhelmed and told them that it would be a wonderful way to start the new year, calming the mind. So, my friends, here is the gift from Jan and Alex in the UK:
Thank you Jan and Alex for your hard work on Jan’s recovery and for your willingness to assist our world-wide recovery community. I am grateful for you.
2019…the year of calming your mind!
I am grateful for all of you!
Happy New Year 2019!”
Okay. It has been half of a year. How are you doing with calming your mind? Have you noticed that six months have passed? Are you calmer? Is your mind quieter?
Okay. It has been half a year. If you have made progress in calming your mind, good for you. If you have not made progress in calming your mind, listen to the audio above and start today. You can do it!
Happy mid-year of 2019…the year of calming your mind!
YOU ARE WORTH IT!!!
All my best,
Howard
In my last post, I wrote about the importance of gratitude. Gratitude helps heal your life and propel your recovery. Why? Because it helps you release your dopamine. Today, we take a deeper look at abundant gratitude.
In my book, “Fighting Parkinson’s…and Winning,” at the end of Part Two, you will see that the final section leading up to my full recovery is entitled, “And then I found gratitude, which helped me finish my full recovery.”
Here is an excerpt from the beginning of that section of my book to show you how important gratitude was in my recovery and how important gratitude is in your recovery:
“Parkinson’s is a symptom of life out of balance, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I decided that it would be progressively degenerative disease for which there was no cure for me ONLY if I accepted it that way and did nothing about it.
If you have read this far and still are here with me, then you can see that I decided to do plenty about it! I knew I needed to bring my life back into balance and rid myself of the symptom called Parkinson’s. Gratitude helped me open the final door to my liberation.
GRATITUDE!
My story of a life out of balance. As explained earlier, in the years leading up to the fall of 2009 when the tremors appeared with all the other things that had been going wrong with me and the neurologist pronounced “you have Parkinson’s,” I had been running from the lion for a decade. My Adrenaline-mode-fear-based-mind was always running. This brought me completely out of balance in my life.
While working on my recovery, I realized just how out of balance I truly was. When things occurred that I did not like, my habitual stress, anger, and frustration surfaced. I did not express it on the outside. I held it in. I did not know that I was harming my liver by doing this, but I was harming my liver just the same.
I realized in my recovery that I had been refusing to accept reality, and with the surfacing of stress, fear, anger, and frustration when something occurred that I did not like, I was constantly “trying to undo what had just occurred.”
I was not dealing with life as it was rolling out in front of my eyes because everything was not occurring the way I thought it should be occurring. So, I was trying to undo what had occurred instead of dealing with life, accepting the situation, and creating a solution.
Ultimately, this would cause me to turn the anger directly at me: “you should known this was occurring, you could have put things in place to have prevented this from occurring, I can’t believe how stupid you were for not being prepared….” Simply put, I lacked acceptance of the things I did not like in life and ultimately blamed myself for them. Mentally and emotionally, this brought me out of balance.
On the issue of gratitude, I had no gratitude. This is not because I was not happy about good things when they occurred. It was because I did not expect them to last. I realized in my recovery that I felt so unworthy and so undeserving of the good things lasting that I could not bring myself to a point of gratitude; it would only hurt that much more when the good things went away.
Why give gratitude for something when it won’t last and thus cause myself more pain later when it is gone? In short, I lacked gratitude for the things I liked in life. Spiritually, this brought me out of balance.
To bring balance back to my life, which would lead me to my Parkinson’s recovery, I had to adjust these imbalances. To physically bring my life back into balance, I needed to heal my internal organs. To mentally and emotionally bring my life back into balance, I needed to learn acceptance.
To spiritually bring my life back into balance, I needed to practice gratitude. This seemed like an easy task. I would think about things for which I was grateful and give thanks.
However, my problem was bigger than that. How was I to give gratitude when I did not feel that I was worthy and deserving of the good things that had occurred in my life? I had the most wonderful wife and we had been blessed with three magnificent children.
But, I had Parkinson’s. How could I have done this to them? This was so unfair to them. Having done this to them, how could I be worthy and deserving of anything?
How much more out of balance could I have been than that? I was doing the Recipe every day for my family because my Parkinson’s was so unfair to them. Sadly, I was not even on the list of people for whom I was trying to get better. I did not like myself enough, certainly did not love myself, and absolutely felt it would be selfish to be trying to get better for me. I was so out of balance and I was completely incorrect on this point.
This was such a critically important point in my recovery that I need to discuss it again.
I needed to see myself as worthy and deserving of good things in life, including my recovery. I needed to like myself. I needed to love myself. I needed to want to get better for me. I needed to want to get better for me FIRST! Yes, for Sally and the children, too, but for me first.
AND, I NEEDED TO KNOW THAT PUTTING MYSELF FIRST IN MY PARKINSON’S RECOVERY WAS
NOT SELFISH. IT WAS NECESSARY! AND, NOT ONLY WAS IT NECESSARY, IT WAS GIVING!!!
It was giving because I would be serving others and myself graciously from the
joy in my heart rather than from some obligation in my mind.
Once I realized this, I started giving gratitude for my life. I realized what a gift it was to be alive. “Thank you God for another day of being alive, even in a Parkinson’s body. There is so much I can do with my soul inside a human body. I am grateful.”
And with that beginning to each day, I began working on spiritually bringing my life back into balance.
Each time I gave gratitude, it was an internal announcement that I was worthy and deserving of good things in life and that the good things in life could and would last. Why? Because I was worthy and deserving and abundantly grateful for them. I know this sounds like circular reasoning. It is circular reasoning. But, it worked!!!
The more grateful I became for my life and everything in it, the more accepting I became of everything in my life. “Okay” was my new way of living. For the first time in my life, I was completely accepting of my life as it was rolling out in front of me.
In my recovery, to help me keep a positive attitude, and because I knew it was true, I looked at everything that was happening with me physically as “necessary for my recovery.” I started taking that attitude into my daily life.“
In discussing last week’s post, a person told me of a quote she had heard, “Your attitude of gratitude will determine the level of your altitude.”
It is time to be abundantly grateful and soar to the highest altitude beyond everybody else’s limited imagination of where you can go…ALL THE WAY TO YOUR FULL RECOVERY!
You can do it! I have faith in you!!
YOU ARE WORTH IT!!!
All my best,
Howard
Note: Don’t forget, I am providing a special offer of a discounted cost for Parkinson’s Coaching if you sign up by the end of June. Click here to learn more about Parkinson’s Coaching, including how to sign up for the Parkinson’s Coaching Package with the special offer.
In my last post regarding being cured of Parkinson’s for nine years, I mentioned gratitude. Gratitude was a critical component in reaching my full recovery. For the last nine years, I have lived in abundant gratitude, and today I will do my best to help you get there as well.
Continue readingFor me, today is a blessed day filled with gratitude, acceptance, and surrender. It is the day I woke up nine years ago, Parkinson’s gone, life back in balance…cured.
Continue readingWith Parkinson’s, many of you have gotten used to not relying on yourself. I was trying to think of a way to express my feelings on this issue, and I decided it was time to go back to Oz as the place to re-energize the “self-reliance for recovery” conversation.
When first you are confronted with Parkinson’s, you are scared and you feel lost, much like how Dorothy felt when she landed in Oz. Parkinson’s is a strange territory outside your comfort zone and you lose confidence in who you are and what you should do. So, what do you do?
Initially, you are not certain what to do, so, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, you follow a path with the hope of finding the answers from somebody at the end of the path. Along the way, Dorothy asks a scarecrow with no brain what he thinks she should do, and Dorothy asks a tin man with no heart how she should feel, and Dorothy asks a lion with no courage how she should be brave on her journey.
Clearly, she has lost confidence in herself…truly she is lost. She is so lost that she is willing to take a ride from a complete stranger who is supposed to fly her back to twister-ridden Kansas using a hot air balloon.
Finally, Glinda tells Dorothy that she had the power to go home the entire time. Dorothy had the power to heal herself. My best guess is that if you go to the store and buy some ruby slippers, click your heels three times and say, “I don’t want Parkinson’s, I don’t want Parkinson’s, I don’t want Parkinson’s,” you still will have Parkinson’s.
However, what if you say to yourself, “I have the power to heal myself.” “I have the power to heal myself.” “I have the power to heal myself.” And then you do something about it…you genuinely rely on yourself with the Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery®. You pick your Recipe soul, mind, and body recovery path, you get on your path, and you do not leave your path until you have recovered from Parkinson’s Disease.
Along the way many people will have an opinion about what you should do, and they all mean well. However, as a person once said to me, “My naturopath recommended what I should do, my yoga instructor recommended what I should do, my Qigong instructor recommended what I should do, and none of the recommendations were the same. It occurred to me that at the end of the day, I was the only one of the four of us who was going home with Parkinson’s Disease, so I might as well rely on myself for what I should do.”
And while you are relying on yourself to make this decision to do the Recipe and head down your recovery path, know that you are supported. Yes, supported. You are part of a world-wide community of courageous warriors doing the Recipe.
Feel assured that when you are doing the physical part of the Recipe, somebody else is doing it with you. When you are meditating, somebody else is doing it with you. When you are doing spiritual work, you are being connected to your Higher Self, and through the Universal Energy, we are being connected to each other. Yes, being connected to each other in the soul, mind, and body recovery Recipe…being, just being…all together as one strong force of recovery.
Years ago I saw an ad for a motivational seminar, and the catch-phrase is applicable here. It said:
“There are three kinds of people in life:
Those who make things happen.
Those who watch things happen.
And those who say, ‘What just happened?’
Which one are you???”
All of you know which one you need to be if you want to recover from Parkinson’s…let’s MAKE THINGS HAPPEN!
WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW? How about grabbing hold of the Recipe, taking a dose of confidence and self-reliance, and heading down your path to your full recovery. You deserve it! Don’t you agree?
You are worth it!!!
All my best,
Howard
Note: Don’t forget, I am providing a special offer of a discounted cost for Parkinson’s Coaching if you sign up by the end of June. Click here to learn more about Parkinson’s Coaching, including how to sign up for the Parkinson’s Coaching Package with the special offer.
On June 12, 2019, I will be nine years with no Parkinson’s symptoms. Nine years with no Parkinson’s Disease. I am cured. I am joyful. I am grateful.
The last couple of blog posts have sparked a conversation in my coaching calls and in emails people have sent to me: “I am special simply because I exist? I am radiant? How is this possible?” Today, you get a reminder of how this is possible.
Here is where people have gotten stuck over the last two weeks in their recovery. I have written, “You have to decide, as presented in my last blog post, that you are special simply because you exist. And, if anybody does not accept you based upon who you are instead of how you look, then the problem is their problem, not your problem.”
This is the issue of self-acceptance, self-love. If you do not love yourself, then you do not think that your best is good enough. If you do not think that your best is good enough, then you do not feel worthy and deserving of your full recovery because whatever you did was not “good enough” to justify your full recovery. Love yourself and just let go.
I feel that each of us is part of the greater whole. Our mind creates an illusion that we are separate, and that we are not good enough or perfect enough, and we feel unworthy and undeserving. It fills us with fear and makes unreasonable demands of how we are supposed to act in life. That is the mind that needs to be surrendered in the end.
If you drop one drop of poison into the Atlantic Ocean, I do not believe the Atlantic Ocean even notices. It is so vast that the one drop of poison instantly becomes part of the whole.
The Universe is exponentially more vast than the Atlantic Ocean. And, your internal Parkinson’s “poison” is so small compared to the vastness of God and the Universe. In the final surrender, it is letting go of the poison within you and sharing in God’s Universal Energy, His healing energy…opening up and literally becoming one with everything.
It is a sense of belonging, a sense that nothing is wrong with you, a sense that all will be well. And when you let go, the Parkinson’s ceases to exist. You go from illness to health, just like that.
When you love yourself, you accept that your best is good enough. When you accept that your best is good enough, then you accept that what you have done in your recovery is enough, thus making you worthy and deserving of your full recovery.
Love melts all remaining blockages. Let go and surrender your over-thinking mind and set yourself free.
You are worth it!!!
All my best,
Howard
In my last post, I explained that each and every one of you is special simply because you exist. There is a part of all of you that will resist this notion, but you have to realize that it is this resistance that exacerbates many of the imbalances in the symptom known as Parkinson’s.
I have discussed in the past that there is nothing wrong with you in your soul, your spirit, your essence. However, I have been asked how does one have Parkinson’s symptoms and not care about them. One of the main ways to do this is to know that you are not your symptoms.
We are raised and marketed that what is important is on the outside…how we appear to the others. We strive to have accomplishments so that the others can objectively judge us as successful, and we never wish to look anything but perfect on the outside.
This is one of the main things that causes us to lose our way. We stray from our spirit when our mind tells us that our physical appearance is what matters most. This is just another lie our mind tells us.
What matters most is who were are in our soul, our spirit, our essence. Our outside appearance will constantly be changing in our life. Parkinson’s brings this issue to a head…we are provided an outward appearance that makes us feel unacceptable.
The issue is, though, that something inside us felt unacceptable already. The PD just put a spotlight on it. So, even though the issue appears to be how to have PD symptoms and not care about them, the real issue is how to be less than perfect and still be able to present ourselves in public.
You have to decide, as presented in my last blog post, that you are special simply because you exist. And, if anybody does not accept you based upon who you are instead of how you look, then the problem is their problem, not your problem.
And, part of why you are struggling is because you still are having a hard time forgiving others who have wronged you and forgiving yourself for being less than perfect.
This is a very hard issue, forgiveness. If you were a helium balloon and wanted to experience your full potential, but you were tied by a cord to a pole, what would you do? Detach from the pole…cut the cord of attachment to the past and set yourself free to soar just as you are…a beautiful, healthy soul…the genuine, authentic, real-self you.
Okay everybody, let’s chant this together as there is more strength in numbers:
“I am doing the Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery® and I am curing myself from Parkinson’s.
I am forgiving unconditionally all those who warrant my forgiveness, including myself, and I am detaching from the burdens I have been carrying in my life.
I am looking inside myself and learning that I am special simply because I exist.
I am radiant in my soul, my essence, my real self.
Like a helium ballon tethered to the post, I am cutting the cord and soaring so that I may experience my true potential and healing.
I am my Parkinson’s cure. I am worth it!”
Yes, yes, yes, you are radiant!!!
And, you are worth it!
All my best,
Howard
Many people believe, as did I when I had Parkinson’s, that they are special based upon achievement and performance. When the Parkinson’s reduces the ability to achieve and perform, many people lose confidence in themselves, and their self-worth plummets. What you need to know is that you are special simply because you exist!
In November of 2017, I wrote a book entitled, “Fighting Parkinson’s…and Winning.” To understand just how special you are simply because you exist, it would be helpful to re-read pages 98-113 in the book. If you have the Kindle version, it is near the end of Part Two in a section entitled, “I viewed the healing of my soul primarily as a 4-step process.” Then read the next section about gratitude to the end of Part Two.
If you do not have the book, you can click here and purchase a paperback or download a Kindle ebook from Amazon.
To assist all of you, here is an excerpt from my book:
I understood in my heart and soul that I was uniquely me. It was not my accomplishments that made me special. It was not straight A’s that made me special. It was not hitting the home runs or scoring the most points or getting the lead in the play or the solo in band that made me special. It was not the great job that made me special, or the promotions or the raises, or the leadership positions I held that made me special. It was not the schools I attended or the degrees I obtained that made me special.
My thinking for almost all of my life had been that these were the things that made me special. However, that type of thinking was nothing more than the illusions I had created in my mind. I felt that I needed to be an over-achieving perfectionist in order to be special…in order to be accepted and liked and loved.
I had gotten the impression that acceptance, being liked, and being loved was based upon performance and achievement. This was because no matter how hard I tried and no matter what were my achievements, it never seemed to be good enough.
In my recovery, I understood that my achievements had been more than enough. However, I gleaned that the people from whom I was seeking approval, being liked, and being loved had been incapable of expressing these things to me as a result of their own life issues.
Ultimately, this brought me to a place of not approving of myself as well as not liking or loving myself. I felt that my best was not good enough. The people who had given me this impression had moved on in life. However, I was the one who had gotten stuck internalizing unhealthy feelings about myself.
Then, I broke free and became liberated. I understood that I was special simply because I existed.
Every one of you is special simply because you exist!
You are worth it!!!
All my best,
Howard
