WE STOOD ON TABLES or chairs, threw our hands in the air, and as animated and loud as our tired, sleep-deprived bodies would allow, yelled through hoarse throats, “I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!”
I was 18 and had quit three-quarters of the way through my first term of college because I had been accepted into Mr. W. Clement Stone’s Combined Insurance Sales & License Preparation two-week training in downtown Chicago. If I passed, I was guaranteed a job.
My fellow students showed up that first morning very tired. Our trainer, whose job it was to mold us into purpose-driven “positive-attitude, never-give-up sales machines,” noticed our heavy heads and said to us, “Stand up! Now repeat after me, ‘I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!’” He explained that on the road to success we were not always going to feel like making that next sales call, reading that next book on success, or being on fire with positive enthusiasm, so we could simply repeat to ourselves out loud or in silence, “I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!” We repeat these words, he said, because we have powerful brains, in charge of how we feel, since our emotions and actions follow our thoughts.
I listened! When I look at how sophisticated our world has become, that simple mantra, along with books like Laws of Success and Think and Grow Rich that were part of Mr. Stone’s curriculum, seem trivial and very old school. The idea that someone could get purpose out of selling insurance might seem a bit simple. Or maybe not.
This story is from the January/February 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the January/February 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
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the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.
