Think Yourself Healthy: Harness Your Inner Child

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Power" by Rhonda Byrne. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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Can your mind make your body well? How do you think yourself healthy?

Having a positive mindset about your well-being has a direct influence on how healthy you are. You can think yourself healthy by choosing to live like a child. Children are enthusiastic about life and they approach each day believing they are invincible.

Read on to master how to think yourself healthy.

Love and Health

Good health means more than just the absence of illness. You’re not truly healthy unless you feel energetic, happy, and free of stress. To think healthy, think about how you felt as a child or how children you see today feel. Without the concerns of adult life, children are enthusiastic about life. They wake each day with anticipation and spirit and believe they are invincible. If you want to be the vision of health, live like a child.

How to Think Yourself Healthy

You must live like a child to think yourself healthy because children have not been corrupted by negative thought patterns that lead to poor health. They have no reason to believe they are unhealthy or that their bodies are not perfect and strong, and so those results do not come to them.

Your beliefs likewise determine your physical state:

If you were sick often growing up, you likely believe you get sick easily.
If you’ve always struggled with your weight, you may think you have trouble losing weight.
If you injured your back and experienced pain afterward, you probably believe you suffer from chronic back pain.

What you don’t realize is that these things continue to be true because you don’t think yourself healthy.

Think about the prevalence of disease in society despite the advances in medical science. With the ability to cure diseases and heal from conditions at a higher level than ever, why are so many people living with diseases? The answer is that most people fear diseases. Commercials constantly show pharmaceuticals that can help with certain diseases. The news is full of stories of people dying from disease. You likely know people who suffer from one disease or another. This prevalence creates the thought, “I don’t want to get that disease.” And that thought leads to bad feelings about the disease, rather than positive feelings about good health.

What are your beliefs about your health?

Do you feel good about your current physical state, or do you worry about future health issues?
Do you believe that illness is an inevitability as you age?
Are you convinced that your body will diminish with age, or do you believe you are the age you feel?

Whatever your beliefs are, your feelings follow suit. Think yourself healthy, believe in long life and a strong and healthy body, and you will send those good feelings to the law of attraction.

The Placebo Effec

Medical researchers often test the efficiency of new medications or treatments using double-blind experiments. These studies provide one group of patients with the treatment and another group with a placebo, or fake treatment. Neither the patient nor the researcher are aware of which treatment the patient received.

The placebo effect provides the astonishing evidence of how beliefs can lead to physical changes. Often, the placebo patients show improvements in their conditions despite not receiving the actual treatment. This is likely due to the willful belief that they are in the treatment group, which allowed them to feel like their ailments were being treated.

Through the power of their beliefs and good feelings, they were able to create better health in their bodies. This is the Power at work and the amazing results of focusing on love.

How the Body Works

Your body is a well-oiled and self-sufficient system capable of amazing things. There is great power in your body, and you control that power when you think yourself healthy.

The body is made up of trillions of cells that work to keep the body running smoothly. These cells work 24-hour shifts 7 days a week together and alone to maintain your health.

Your organs are operated by a leader cell that ensures the other cells work in harmony to function properly.
Patrol cells traverse the body like security guards, searching for disturbances to your cellular equilibrium. When you get injured or become sick, the patrol cells alert other cells in the body so they can activate and fix whatever is wrong.
Memory cells assess unfamiliar organisms and check the rolodex of previous intrusions to determine the treatment needed.
The attack cells rally to destroy the organisms using the myriad of chemical compounds contained in the body like a personal pharmacy.

So what does this mean for you? Your feelings seep into your cells. Good feelings fill the cells with love, and on that love frequency, more love is delivered to them as good health. Bad feelings create tension in the body, and stress produces a chemical reaction that reduces the viability of your cells, thereby reducing the force of love. The result is a continued reduction of love until the cells become vulnerable to disease.

The good news is that you are the conductor of everything that happens in your body. You give instructions to your cells through your thoughts and feelings. Believe your cells are full of the force of love, and they will keep you healthy. If you believe you have trouble losing weight, the cells must respond by slowing their absorption rate, thereby slowing your metabolism. It’s the law of attraction inside your body.

To achieve the health or body you want, tell your cells what you want. They have no choice but to listen and respond in kind.

Tell your cells how strong and powerful you feel.
Tell your cells how good your hearing or eyesight is.
Tell your cells how happy you are that you can eat anything and not gain weight.
Tell your cells how relaxed and well-rested you are.

Whatever you tell your cells is what you will be.

Get the Body and Health You Want

If your body were the solar system, your heart would be the sun and all the organs would be the planets. The sun is the center of the universe that creates order and harmony, and your heart functions in the same way.

Scientists have proven that positive feelings strengthen your immune system, boost energy, reduce stress, stabilize blood pressure, and improve metabolism. These positive feelings are felt in your heart, which means that in addition to helping to harmonize the body, the heart grows stronger, as well.

Think Yourself Healthy: Harness Your Inner Child