Chapter 1 – Right thinking
There’s a famous story of a man called Henry Beecher. He was a doctor in WWII and when they ran out of morphine, all he had left to give was a saline solution. This has led of decades of scientific study to figure out “did the pill kill the headache”, or “did we convince ourself it’s going to work”. In other words did the chemical in the pill work, or did our brain do something to convince 40% of Beecher’s patient’s bodies that they really did have morphone. quantify its power, moving beyond the idea that the effect is purely psychological to discovering that placebos can trigger real physiological changes, like the release of endorphins.
Early on it was just labelled as “suggestion” that it is purely psychological, a matter of suggestion. However, modern research shows that placebos can cause real, measurable biological changes. And, what is remarkable is that placebos can the brain to release its own natural painkillers, such as opioids and endorphins, and can even influence pain processing at the spinal cord level.
No wonder Mum’s band-aid and a “kiss it better” works so well.
But seriously, scientifically, that means a lot for doctors, but what does it mean for you?
From the reading I’ve done for this section, I can’t see any real explanation for why placebo works, but it obviously does. And that’s severe physical pain. OK it’s short term, and it’s inconsistent, but imagine if our brain can be convinced to literally think we’ve had morphine, what our brain might be able to do in terms of motivation and success and careers.
But, you’re not going to get off the couch, or stop screaming at the kids, or stop crying in the bathroom at 2am if your brain isn’t working right, if you’re not thinking right. If all you can think of is the person you just lost, and the funeral, and the car accident that took them, and you’re balling at 2am in the bathroom, your brain isn’t suddenly going “now I wonder if I went through my annual bank statements, could I find a subscription that I’m paying for that I don’t need any. more”. Are you crazy. You can’t see your way out of the bathroom, much less some “come on cheer up” philosophy.
Right thinking: Step One.
is it “ALL IN YOUR HEAD?”
This book, bit by bit, will be released in Eight Chapters, and step by step, together I want to show you a way out.
So, here’s the first step. It’s about “Right Thinking”. But before right thinking comes right brain. Having a brain that literally functions. If you’re low in iron, your brain won’t function properly, if you’re high in iron – you could be half way to death’s door. How do you know? I knew a lady once, her name was the same as mine, funnily enough. I asked her how she’d been and she said she’d been in a coma.
She’d been to an (unlicensed) therapist of some kind who gave her a sheet of paper to check off, and decided she was low in iron. So, she started taking iron supplements, and still didn’t feel better, so they upped her dose, and it put her in a coma in hospital because she was HIGH in iron, not low.
So step one is go to a doctor. Now if you’re in America, I know, I realise, it’s a problem. But here’s the thing. I had anxiety. Except not in my head…in my body. I didn’t have a problem in the world at the time, there was literally no reason for it. I had to go to the doctor many times in America with the same issue…my legs won’t sit still, I’m wringing my hands, rocking back and forward. Coming from Australia, where they’d give you a full blood test at the first visit, I had to push and say “no I don’t want anti-depressents, I want to find out what’s causing it”. It seemed a novel approach to them at the time. He was also honestly shocked when it turned out my thyroid was so high I had to have emergency treatment, and still on lovely old Carbimazole to this day.
I’m not sure any of my friends would ever agree there’s “nothing wrong” with my head, but it was just as big of a surprise to me. Got the treatment – anxiety gone.
Or maybe the opposite is true. Hypothyroid (which is low thyroid) causes depression.
Irritability might be your blood sugar. Low in B12 and Folate, and you’re probably not thinking straight.
Even that confusion or fatigue you’re writing off to old age – or growing pains – might be kidney or liver issues.
The answer is – get checked now. Don’t let the politicians in your country take your health away – search in your area for free clinics. If you can’t find a clinic, there’s always church and community groups, but quite frankly I never go to either for help. I go straight to your local Councillor, or Representative or Senator. Call them up. Ask them what to do that you haven’t had a physical, can’t afford a doctor, and either give you free health care, like we have in the entire western world, every single country has it except you poor things. In fact the infant mortality rate in the USA for African American women is worse than that in Iran. So, don’t put up with it any longer…if they won’t provide free health care, they can at least direct you to the closest free clinic. That’s the VERY LEAST they can do.
I don’t want to sound like every book “don’t do anything until you’ve consulted a doctor”, but in this instance, I really want you to think about the consequences if you don’t. Those headaches every afternoon might be too much coffee in the morning, but they might be a brain tumour too…How would you know? And, would you rather get it fixed when it’s the size of a grain of rice and can be fixed with tablets, or the size of a grapefruit and half your head will be missing.
Literally nothing is more important than health. Lose your health and it changes everything, and it changes it forever. Your career changes, or ends completely, relationships change, and so many end completely. Your friends visit less and less often, you lose family members and can’t even go to their funeral. It’s the worst feeling in the world.
At the end of each step I’m going to give you an action item. All you have to do is make a phone call. Call your doctor for an appointment. Call your Congressman or Congresswoman if you have to. Go to the emergency room.
Right thinking: Step TWO.
Ask for help
Whatever you are going through, others have gone through. Other people have been exactly exactly exactly where you are. And, we know how we got out of it. So go and get checked out.
If it’s 2am and you’re really sad, call LIfeline, call emergency services, go and get some help. And, if you’re saying to yourself statements like “there’s literally no-one who understands me”, or “I don’t have anyone”, or “I can’t call anyone”, I”m sorry you’re wrong. The world understands you more than you think. Half of those people you see that look cool and put together are on ADHD meds or they’ve got an eating disorder, or just gambled away a fortune, or having sleezey affairs with every tradesman that knocks on the door. There is a massive list of people who will help you. You just have to reach out to them.
Here’s where I have a problem. I’m hopeless at reaching out. I never tell my friends I’m in trouble. I’ve never gone to a charity or church in my life. I should have. I could have. They were right there. I just didn’t. I just couldn’t. But gee I wish you would.
I was crazy sleeping in a car when there were alternatives. I had friends I could have asked who would have been delighted to have me there. There’s a bunch of all sorts of emergency accommodation, and no not necessarily a creepy shelter, but with a bit of looking around, there’s no need to be literally on the street. There is help. You just haven’t found it yet…or it hasn’t found you. But, if it found me sick, alone, on the other side of the world with the choice – do I buy bandages for my infected mastectomy wounds, or dinner, or medicine that night. All three of them were the same price. I remember .99 cents at the dollar store, or $1 at Walmart next door. On the dinner nights I’d put the frozen meal on the dashboard first thing in the morning, and by dinner time it was loose enough to eat. It was still cold, but it was food.
I want better for you. Please reach out. Right now. Ask for help. Ask AI. Now that Google is going AI you won’t even have to pay for ChatGPT or Grok.
Right thinking: Step THREE. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Don’t worry… I never did step 2 either. I did step 1. I really did go to the doctor, and continue going back when they said “there nothing on the mammogram, you’re right”, but I insisted on an ultrasound as well, and sure enough it found the breast cancer, and that was the first round in 2013. Still here!
So, for those of you, like me, that are willing to get help from your doctor, but not from anyone else…this was my very next step.
Figure out what you want.
Oh boy is that hard. It’s hard for everyone. It might be as simple as do I want the No. 1 or the No. 2 at the takeaway restaurant. Or, it might be do I want to marry this person, or move to Dubai, or buy that house.
I loved that whole concept of Stephen Covey’s where he talks about the funeral, and it’s you that’s dead, and imagine what people are saying about you, or what you want them to say about you. That’s a great concept. “Begin with the end in mind.”
In my head I could always figure out the ending. The funeral, the speeches, the will, the endowments, everything has, and always will be, sorted for my very last moments on earth to go “well at least they won’t find a mess”.
However, it’s the stuff in between.
I couldn’t manage to figure out what I WANTED before I could figure out what I LIKED. But, then even if I knew what I LIKED, maybe that wasn’t possible in the group I was in. You see it all the time, the kid loves ballet and the parents want them to be a engineer. The kid loves downhill Olympic level ski training, and the parents want them home practicing piano concertos.
It’s not just kids. Your flatmate wants to watch the news. You want to watch “Say Yes to the Dress”…and you’re watching the news in silence. You’ll eat what the group wants to eat, go places where the group wants to go. After a while, you don’t even know what you like, much less how to fight to fit.
There’s an old saying “there’s no athiests in the fox hole”, meaning when those shells are flying over head, and you’re hiding in a dug out trench, with no way out, just like a fox hole, with only one entrance, then everyone, in the end, breaks down and starts praying.
I know I have. It was only one gun. It was only two men. But I know I prayed. The question is…what would make it bad enough for you to pray, or to think so consistently about something that it changes you. The military do it. Chanting as they march, chanting as they run. Impounding it into their brain in both left brained and right brained, visual, auditory and kinesthetic ways. Power learning. The exact same way I learned the alphabet backwards, in one afternoon, singing a song on a swing at the age of 3. By 4 I was already at school a year early. Not because I was smart, but because there was no child care, and the nuns were kind.
Imagine my surprise with the others, a year older than me, didn’t know their alphabet forwards much less backwards AND forwards. Like I said, not that smart, just someone had to teach me the right way. Singing, on a swing, in the backyard on a sunny afternoon in Chester Hill, my 6 year old sister teaching me had no idea she was an early accelrated learning/neurlinguistic programming teacher, lol. She didn’t have to know. It worked.
You’ve heard of “affirmations”. They’re the Youtube version of the army, chanting. They’re exactly the same only with weirder music. Prayer is exactly the same repeating and repeating and repeating the same request, the same words, the same movements if you’re holding beads, or standing and sitting at regular points.
The army wouldn’t use them if it didn’t work. Olympic athletes wouldn’t have hteir headphoes on until the very last minute if it didn’t work. People for centuries would not have used prayer, or the concepts of prayer if people didn’t feel something, or change something.
Only problem is – what are you asking for? If you don’t know what you want, you can’t ask for it.
That book “The Secret” that has been just a phenomenon in it’s own right really has a common thread – you have to know what you want.
It’s the same in business, or government, or running a charity. You have to know what you want. If you’re trying to save the whales working for a kidney research foundation, while they’re both great ideals, you’re on the wrong path.
Finding out what you want is about blocking other people out. Blocking out the noise. Blocking out their wants and needs, so, for a moment, let yourself be selfish. People who join the military do it for a big big purpose. It’s to protect their family and their country. It’s to improve their career path, or their lot in life, or to just fly those awesome freaking planes! Either way, they are huge huge goals, and that’s what you need to start with.
The easiest thing to start with is something you can literally buy. If you’ve got money, you can buy it. Relationships, or careers, or training, that takes time. But if you’ve got the money, you can buy what it is you’re after tomorrow. So, let’s start at the top.
That’s normally a house. So, let’s start there, this is easy stuff. The first choice – a house or an apartment, sure most of us know the basics that houses make more money than apartments over time, but are you a gardener, or do you just want to crash and watch Netflix at the end of the day. You are never going to be happy in the wrong house.
So, start at the very top. Think for a moment what your perfect house would be. Is it two story (I’d hate climbing all those stairs). Is it a huge mansion (I’d hate that too, I’d never find my glasses ever again). Is it a simple happy home with a white picket fence and it’s all yours, no mortgage, totally yours.
Let’s get you the house you want first. Before anything. If you can get a house, surely everything else will be easy than that will it not?
But, again it comes back to RIGHT THINKING. The “i’ll never have the money”, or “my partner won’t let me” or “this city is too expensive” is absolutely correct. You really WILL never have the money, your partner won’t let you, and you’ll stay in the most expensive city in the world when that’s what you’re saying to yourself.
Back to placebo effect….
Lie to yourself. Yeah, why not. You’re not hurting anyone. Isn’t saying “I’ve won the gold medal” isn’t thinking “I’m putting it around my neck”. They’re all lies. You’re lying to yourself. In that book again, The Secret, you’re lying to yourself. You’re saying “I have $1 million”, or “I have the perfect partner”. You’re lying to yourself. Totally lying. AND IT TOTALLY FREAKING WORKS!
I’ve started with a house because you know what it looks like visually. You know what the door sounds like when you close the door. You know what your favourite smell in the kitchen is like (or maybe some not so favourite smells from the bathroom). You can remember your childhood home, what it looked like, what it felt like when your favourite Aunty or Uncle came over. I’ve started with a house because it’s the dream of everyone around the world. From the people in war torn middle East to the Pacific Islands to the mansions of Southern France, we all want housing. We want it to be ours. We don’t want anyone to take it from us. We’re willing to work half our lives to get it.
Most smaller goals aren’t worth the fight. They’re easy to get. They’re not like a house. To own a house, debt free, not owing anyone in the world…that’s very very VERY difficult for the majority of the people on the planet. Only 20-30% don’t owe on their mortgage. So that’s a huge huge huge goal. Why don’t we start with that?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting a lovely home. It gives safety and comfort to you, your family, your guests and provides employment for the community in terms of building, road and service maintenance. Everyone benefits. Everyone. No-one could be WORSE off by owning a home and not owning any money on it.
What’s your dream home made of, what’s the colour of the roof, the fence, what kind of furniture, do you have a garden? If you journal write it down. If you do affirmations, then include it. If you pray, ask for it. But you have to have that image so clear in your mind, it’s as clear as the army when they’re chanting, it’s as clear as the athlete when they’re preparing….all they can see is that medal. All you need to see, for now, is your house.
We have a long long way to go together….for now – take a breath, smile, and know if I made it from homeless in a car to owning my own place outright, not owning a cent to anyone, then I can explain how I did it, step by step. I’ve got you. I know that stuff.
Tonight when you go to bed, imagine yourself waking up in your perfect home. Will you be in an apartment overlooking a beach, or a farmhouse overlooking a river? Imagine yourself there, feet up on the railing, or on the coffee table, drinking your coffee. Even see your feet, what they look like crossed out in front of you as you sit there saying “I did it. I actually did it. I really did it. I’m in my house.”. And, remember, smile. You just do that…I’ve got the rest.
I used to ask my students “if today was your birthday, and you had to make a wish, what would you wish for?” So many times, and I do this too, they would struggle for a quick answer. That’s again, why I started with the house. Because now, if today really was your birthday, you could EASILY say “I want to live in a place that looks like this”.
This, at least for the time being is your north star. So, if you’re like most of us who have no idea what we want in life, nor how to get it….now. you have step one. You have your north star…You work towards that, and everything will start to fall into place so quickly, it’s truly freaky.
Trust the placebo effect. Cheaper than drugs, and no side effects.
Thinking about a house makes things so much easier, it teaches you to focus, and to clear prioties that aren’t important. It’s amazing, and fun. Don’t get sad you don’t have it. Get happy because it’s coming.
The Pet Professor 