Power Of The Mind
By Ron Stubbs
June 3rd, 2003 I saw something that I never expected to see; a man hooked up to countless tubes, machines, gadgets, monitors, bags and who-knows-what-else as he struggled between life and death after a team of doctors removed a cancerous portion of his lung. His chest and upper body was covered in scars from various operations.
As I looked at the man in that bed; I saw a man who was once told he had 6 weeks to 6 months to live because of a defective and engorged heart that wouldn’t/couldn’t pump enough blood for his body to survive. Because his blood type was uncommon, he waited five years on a heart recipient list, waiting for a suitable heart healthy enough for a transplant, only to receive a heart tainted with cyanide from a man murdered by a psychotic woman.
That 6 weeks was eighteen years ago.
As I looked at the man in that bed; I saw a man that because of the side effects of the over 11 different medications he takes many times during the course of a day, has developed skin cancer and has had countless sessions of removal of those lesions, either by cauterization or by surgery.
As I looked at the man in that bed; I saw a man that survived a massive heart attack, severely ruptured appendix, the lost of his right eye as 10-year-old boy.
My mind flashed back to the day I told him I was pursuing a career in hypnotherapy. As I excitedly tried to explain the who’s, what’s and how comes of what I did and the power of our minds, I know he must have thought I had lost my mind. Your'e doing what?? That stuff is all B.S. Nobody believes in that stuff, Ron. But he never said any of those things. I remembered how he just looked at me blankly, tried to understand but being from the “old” school didn’t, and said “That’s good, just make sure you have something to fall back on if this doesn’t work”.
My mind flashed back to the day I told him that I was leaving the security of my 24 year job to work full time as a therapist, instructor and writer. Again, he didn’t quite believe in what I was doing nor understood it fully but dutifully smiled, never criticized and told me to just be careful.
As I began to further my career, I would tell him about some of the cases I was working on, the successes my clients had, or how my classes were going. Whether writing my monthly newsletter, publishing a new book or recording another program for my catalog of hypnosis CD’s, I would send them to him. I never much expected him to listen or read them, but knew he would display them as a parent would.
But as the years passed and he began to discover that my career wasn't just a passing fancy or fad, I guess curiosity must have got the better of him. In May, 2003, after sending him a promotional copy of my new cd “The Heart’s Journey", he called me to say that he had just finished listening to it, enjoyed it and could I send him more copies so he could give them to friends. He also began to listen to the other cds that I had sent him. That was also the same day he told me the doctors had found "something unusual" on his lung.
I found out that he had been reading the current and back issues of "Transformations", my monthly newsletter. He had started to read some of my books. He was beginning to accept that maybe there might be something to this “Power of the Mind” stuff after all.
As I looked at the man in that bed; his arms black and blue with bruises from the blood draws, tubes and monitors, his upper body crisscrossed with more stitches and scars than not, a clear bubble type mask covering his entire face, supplying oxygen so he could breathe, the life support tubes and monitor wires streaming from his body, I stood there thinking about all he had gone through in his life. The ups and downs, and wondered what made him go on.
As I looked at him sitting in a recliner at my grandmother’s home on Fathers’ Day, June 15th, 2003; just twelve short days after his lung cancer surgery, smiling and laughing, I just shook my head in amazement.
He was entertaining anyone who would listen about not using that “old man walker” they gave him, how he hadn’t taken any pain medication for over five days, how he had to get home so he could cut his grass;(it was getting pretty long you know and the roses were blooming, he didn't want to miss the show), about how he had thought up a great story about being attacked by a Great White Shark while surfing to explain all his scars, how good it was going to feel to sit on his deck in the sunshine and just breathe, I marveled at this man I’ve called my father for all my life. I also wanted to know his secret to keep him from giving up, so I asked him.
“Ron”, he said, “It’s all in the way that you look at it. You can either decide to fight like hell and live or just curl up and die. I decided to live is all. I still have things I want to see and do, places to go yet. I have my motor home, a new boat and lots of fish with my name on them still to catch. Besides, your mom and I still haven’t done even half the things we want too.
The human mind is an amazing piece of work, we all have the power in our minds to make ourselves well or make ourselves sick, and it’s ultimately our choice which one to decide. Some people, well, they give up and don’t make it. I just decided to see what else this life has to offer me so I think positive, that things will work out and I'll just keep going. Life's to short as it is to waste a day thinking about what "could" happen. It's better when you take control of your life, use the power of your mind to determine your own future and see yourself doing what you want to do. Somehow, when you do that, magically things happen the way you want them too.
Yes son, the power of our mind is pretty amazing in what it can do; it can work magic if you believe in it, you should remember that, maybe you could use it sometime”.
Blinking back the tears in my eyes as I looked at him, I smiled and said “Thanks for the advice Dad, and for sharing Father’s Day with me once again. I’ll try to remember that....."