Right here, right now, I’m going to give you the best mental (and maybe physical) health advice you’ll ever receive. It is this:
Get this book, read it cover to cover. * Read it again. Think about it, and what Dr Gladys says in it, whenever you have a bit of a mental health situation, or you feel like life isn’t going exactly the way you want it to go.* Repeat the parts between the asterisks every six months, or as needed.
Years ago, as a result of attending or facilitating about 17 Covey Mission Statement Workshops, I wrote a mission statement for my life. In my records it’s dated May 14, 1997, and it says:
To keep my heart, mind and body in prime condition so that I am able to enrich the lives of people I love, and people with whom I have personal and professional relationships.
To strive constantly to be a change agent in the lives I encounter while walking along the path of life.
To practice honesty with kindness and compassion, to laugh a lot, and to help people know the value that joy and passion add to life.
I pull that mission statement out occasionally and ask myself if it’s time to make any adjustments, to add or subtract anything, or change the focus somehow. If I do say so myself, I did a great job crafting it because, even today, 28 years later, there’s nothing I want to change either in that statement or in my life’s mission here on this earthly plane.
I give you the advice in the first paragraph because Dr Gladys McGarey has written a book that encapsulates the attitude and mental outlook I’ve done my best to embrace in my own life. Some of the things she says are what I impart whenever anyone asks my opinion or seeks my counsel (as when I was mentoring in a women’s ministry years ago at the Lake of the Ozarks). Dr Gladys does it 10 times better than I ever have, however, and brings some perspective, especially how your thoughts and things you learned unconsciously during your life affect so much of your physical health and affect your entire life as a result, that I never thought of or understood before.
This book is a treasure trove of realization and understanding, a boatload of hope if you need to create a more joyful existence for yourself, and a celebration of how, while you can’t control everything that happens to you in life, you certainly can control how you react to what happens to you so that you, too, experience a well-lived life. It’s a how-to manual, really, if you take the time to honestly evaluate your life, and make the effort needed to reframe your thoughts as she suggests. She says, as I’ve always said, that only you can change your life. Dr Gladys gives you the tools to make that as easy as I’ve ever seen it explained.
And she ought to know. Dr Gladys is 102 years old. She grew up as a child of missionary parents, both medical doctors, serving in India. She claims to always have been a bit of a rebel and was one of only a few women admitted to medical school just as World War II began. She says she went to medical school because she wanted to love and heal people. But medicine at that time was all about killing…killing disease that kills people. Gladys was sent to a psychiatrist by the medical school’s dean who thought it wasn’t “right” to talk about how love can heal. She says in the book that she realized the medical establishment was never going to accept her as she was. Looking back, she claims, this was the moment she realized she’d have to make her mark on medicine by doing things her own way.
Dr Gladys is internationally recognized as the Mother of Holistic Medicine. She and her husband went on to found the American Holistic Medical Association (now called the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine). She still has a life-coaching practice, and this book was published just a few months ago. She still had a 10-year plan! I subscribed to her newsletter today.
Following my cancer diagnosis earlier this year, I’ve come to believe that medicine driven by pharmaceuticals is definitely not the answer to everything that ails us in this “modern” world. Dr Gladys knew how to heal before the pharmaceutical industry exploded and bamboozled us all into thinking they had (expensive) magic pill solutions that were so much better than how God created us and we’ve lived for all time before. (Yes, I admit to the bias. Take it or leave it.)
I don’t know if I have the words to describe how impactful I think this book will be to the rest of my own life. I got a copy from the library after seeing an interview on YouTube with Dr Gladys, thinking I’d like to read it, but was only a few chapters in when I felt well and truly gobsmacked. I immediately ordered my own copy, and one each for two friends with whom I’d recently been discussing issues covered in the book. I’m even thinking about forming a group to discuss the book and the practices Dr Gladys mentions, and support those who may need it to improve the quality of their lives.
I could go on and on. I won’t though. Here’s a link to buy the book on Amazon. Trust me, it’ll be one of the best investments in yourself you’ll ever make. And here’s a link to Dr Gladys’ website where, under BLOG at the top, you can link to interviews and articles with and about her.
P.S. I mentioned Dr Gladys is a rebel; her beliefs are not mainstream. Don’t let that scare you. If she mentions something in the book that pushes your buttons (and she likely will), don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. What she can teach you is more important than whatever other religious dogma you may or may not agree with her on.
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