Are you ready for change?
Never confuse the failure of past approaches to the potential of future recovery.
Over the last 12 years I have worked with many people with a range of different conditions across all levels of severity and duration. From decades of illness, or being bed bound through to just getting a recent diagnosis or mild enough to still able to push through with full time work. Some have even been able to hide their health experience from everyone but their closest friends.
So yeah. I’ve seen lots of people. Maybe even some one like you.
But what they all had in common is that none came to me as their first port of call. They came having tried many different things, having a long history of failures and yet went on to see massive change in their lives.
Weekly in consultation, I hear the comment “Ian, I’ve tried everything”. But it’s useful to remember – you haven’t.
Never confuse the failure of a past approaches to potential of future recovery. They are unrelated.
Ongoing failures might merely be a sign that a different approach could be useful. Many past failures might not even mean recovery is even hard or will take a long time. It might just be a sign that it’s time to take a radically different approach.
That’s what the Lightning Process is. It takes a radically different approach to change. A new approach means all your past failures can be irrelevant.
Are you ready for a different approach?
To be ready for the Lightning Process, people do need to be ready to dig deep and give 100%, to be ready to think differently about themselves, their condition and the role they can play in recovery. For some the biggest step is just shifting from ‘I can’t’ to ‘just maybe I can’.
So are you ready to begin the process of thinking differently?
Are you ready to see that ‘chronic’ does not necessarily mean broken or permanent?
Are you ready to challenge your understanding of what the problem even is? Are you ready to begin look at the powerful role the brain can play, and how historic and current stress can keep someone’s health stuck below optimal function.
This ability to be flexible with our thinking has changed the life of so many people – people that were often told there was nothing they could do but learn to manage better rather than actually get better.
Chronic Pain research is leading the way in helping us change our thinking. Over the last decade we have gone through a pain revolution where we have fundamentally changed the way we understand pain. The model of understanding has changed. Now, people who were told their problem was structural and they could at best merely learn to manage their pain, can take on board a more up-to-date understanding of pain and move from managing their pain to treating it. This applies to real chronic pain sufferers – fibromyalgia, CRPS, migraines, period pain, back pain, osteo-arthritis pain, pelvic pain, bulging or herniated discs who can learn to live full and active pain-free lives.
HOW? They became flexible in their thinking and changed their understanding of pain.
If you are suffering from chronic pain then I would recommend watching the short video below. It’s not about the Lightning Process. It’s about pain. This video is an award winning video put together by some of the top pain specialists in the world. People who almost certainly know more about pain than you. The information is up-to-date and accurate. As you listen to it, notice how you respond to it – excited, confused, angry, frustrated. If you are excited then you are demonstrating the flexibility of thinking that has changed the lives of millions of people. If you are frustrated, angry, confused, dismissive (listen out for the ‘yeah buts’ or the internal argument how your pain is different) then at least keep questioning whether your model of pain has worked for you (or the millions of people who are stuck in pain).
Question why some people do get well even though they got a rock solid diagnosis. Question why x-rays and MRI’s can not predict either the presence or the levels of pain. Question why doctors are now being told NOT to send back pain clients to get X-rays or MRI’s. Question why research shows medication is not the best practice for successful treatment of chronic pain. If osteo-arthritis pain is caused by ‘bone on bone’ structural issues why is exercise the best way to treat it?
Keep questioning until you feel better. By feel better I don’t mean find the answers that supports your current understanding of pain and you feel better about your belief that there is nothing you can do about you pain. I mean keep questioning until you FEEL BETTER and are physically living a rich and active life.
Keep questioning.
While this post has focused on pain, the same applies to outdated models of fatigue, anxiety depression or trauma.
If you’ve tried everything and nothing works, or works for long, then maybe you are not broken, but the model you are working with is broken.
Maybe chronic fatigue is not ‘running out of energy’, maybe anxiety and depression are not a lack of a neurotransmitters. And maybe the doctor who said there is nothing you can do meant – “there is nothing I can do”. Maybe there IS something YOU can do.
The benefit of looking at a model of understanding that takes into account both the body and brain function, as well as the role of stress both past and present, emotions, beliefs and thought processes, is that it gives people more options to make changes.
Keep questioning.
If one of those questions is ‘What is the Lightning Process’ then I would recommend downloading the Lightning Process audiobook (HERE). It guides people through the concepts behind the training, and helps people question their current situation and question if they are ready to make massive changes in their lives.
If you have questions for me then simply make contact. You can email me HERE.
Play the video & notice how you respond. Stay curious and if you suffer from pain I hope you get excited.
VIDEO – WHAT TO DO ABOUT PAIN IN 5 MINUTES