5

Comments

My handle here at Carrie and Danielle is “The Seeker.” I’ve always been one to search for the good things in life, hunting inspiration and peace like a pig digs for truffles. I sniff and root and try to push aside the dirt of life to find the gleaming little thing that will suddenly put everything in its place and pave the gleaming road to the life I’ve imagined.

Praise be to the truffle gods, I found it. But it doesn’t look the way I expected. It looks like work…and it looks like me.

The September-October 2008 issue of Utne Reader contains an article that cracked open my entire world. The article, Your Brain is a Pharmacy by Julie Hanus, outlines recent discoveries about the placebo effect, namely that it’s not quite what we all thought. Until recently, the placebo effect was understood to be a psychological phenomenon that yielded the perception of an effect. However, researchers are beginning to understand that belief that a certain cause will bring about a certain effect actually triggers a chemical reaction in the brain…the same chemical reaction that would occur if the cause of the effect were real. I’m certainly not a neuroscientist, so I don’t fully understand the science of it, but I do understand Hanus’s summation of the findings: “It seems that sincere belief triggers bona fide reactions in the brain…”

Talk about triggering a reaction in the brain…recognizing that there could be truth in this made my brain feel different. It changed the color of the world, and everything seemed altered. But I couldn’t quite let it lie. The Utne article explained the science of belief, but it did nothing to explain how one can accomplish that “sincere belief”.

They Themselves are the Makers of Themselves!

Ever the seeker, I went in search again. I sought a source that could tell me where to find that belief…who could lead me to it? I went to the only place that my currently hectic life would allow: the Self Help section at the Barnes & Noble a block away from my office (aren’t I lucky?). The bookstore has rarely failed me in a time of need, and it came through again in this occasion.

Hiding there on the shelf I’ve browsed a million-billion times was a tiny little tome I’d never before seen, As Man Thinketh by James Allen (read it here). Intrigued, I read the Foreword. Within thirty seconds, Hanus and Allen had married in my head and had turned to face me to say, “DUH!” Allen wrote about his book, “…its object being to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that ‘They themselves are makers of themselves’ by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage”.

And I understood. I may sometimes need the aid of maps and legends to them, but the truffles I seek—peace, inspiration, the life I’ve imagined—can always be found within myself. I am the architect of my own life. If I choose to sincerely believe in myself, I can create the life I’ve always wanted.

Believe In Yourself—Really

It seems so silly to come to this conclusion now. Believe in yourself. I’ve been hearing this since I was a child. My whole life I’ve been surrounded by supportive people who I know for a fact believe in me. Even Barbie told me I could do anything. And yet, here I am, writing this in the first hours of my twenty-eighth year. I thought I’d have so much accomplished and even more figured out by the time I turned twenty-eight. Instead, I’m filled with wonder and gratitude as I finally begin to understand that I’m really just beginning, and that possibly my biggest accomplishment so far is finally hearing what I’ve been told my whole life: that believing in myself is the most important thing.

. . . . . . .

Photo courtesy of Tedi [teodora doychinova]