Wellness starts with the recognition that your body is wise, your mind is wise, and your soul is wise. You may not always honor that wisdom in yourself, but it is there nonetheless. You are at the leading edge of over five billion years of evolution. You are a being of amazing resources. It’s time to discover that.

Humans have an insatiable hunger for answers and cures, and show great persistence in their searches, which may take them around the world and back. Yet in looking “out there,” they overlook, dismiss, and even demean the obvious—the knowledge that lies within.

Experts and guides are valuable in all aspects of life. But the trouble comes when too much responsibility is shifted onto these experts, these doctors and teachers, and intuition and self understanding are ignored. Giving away personal power to an ever growing army of “professionals” puts us on the well worn path to a power robbed existence. Such reliance easily becomes a source of confusion when the advice of one specialist seems to contradict that of another.

The next major advances in health of the American people will come from the assumption of individual responsibility for one's own health and a necessary change in lifestyle for the majority of Americans. —John H. Knowles, former president, Rockefeller Foundation

One simple way to practice self responsibility is to acknowledge what you already know about your own life and health. You have a basic sense of what’s good for you and what isn’t. By looking within and asking yourself some simple questions, you can access information for your own wellbeing. If you are currently seeing doctors or other helping professionals, share this additional, valuable information with them. It will help to move you out of the role of passive patient and into a partnership with a healing team.

In a classic study conducted by psychologists Ellen Langer of Harvard and Judith Rodin of Yale, elderly residents in a nursing home were given plants to care for and were encouraged to do more for themselves instead of letting the staff take over all their responsibilities. Another group of patients, of similar age and disability, received no such encouragement for self responsibility. Within three weeks, there was significant improvement in the health and vitality levels of the first group. Eighteen months later, even more dramatic findings were revealed. The death rate in the “increased responsibility” group was half that of the other group.

This is only one example from a growing body of scientific research that supports the theory that individuals who have choices in managing and directing their own lives stay healthier, live longer, and heal faster than those who do not.

An Experience in Discovering
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