Approach
I was on the road last week traveling with Hali who came to work for our company in July. Hali is skilled in many areas and one is body awareness and massage therapy. In phone conversations, I had been telling her about a nagging shoulder pain that I have been experiencing for a little over a year. I had gone to a medical doctor and didn’t get relief. She recommended a chiropractor in one of our conversations and I went. This physician offered a different remedy for my difficulty, which also didn’t solve my situation. I was commenting to her last week that neither of these approaches had worked. She quickly reminded me that my lack of a resolution was not evidence of the effectiveness of either approach for an ailing shoulder; it was more about seeking the modality that would work for me.
It’s interesting to note that some people can go to the same physician with the same ailment, get the same plan of action and one will get better quickly and the other will not get any relief. This is the point where some people may seek out other solutions – ones they may have never considered or dismissed in the past.
It got me curious about things that I have dismissed out of hand in the past. There are so many approaches that bring people relief from emotional or physical pain that the bulk of society has neither heard of or choose to dismiss because their belief system won’t entertain something new. They choose to remain in pain and keep seeking a solution by staying married to the same methodology that has not worked for them before.
The Grasshopper chimed in on this topic back in 2004. He said, “Regarding a therapeutic approach: It’s far more valuable if it’s useful versus whether it’s true.”
The word “true” brings out the logic machine. The truth that most people argue about is the relative truth. Usefulness is put on the back burner while philosophical concepts are bandied about so that we can pummel each other into submission as to our version of the truth.
It’s my experience that most medical doctors still roll their eyes when they hear chiropractic and most chiropractors still roll their eyes when presented with the medical model. They both roll their eyes at other approaches that won’t fit into either one of their belief systems. Then the true argument begins.
You cannot argue with reality. If someone has a documented difficulty with something and uses an approach that is considered “whacky” by the mainstream and gets relief, there is no argument as to the usefulness of that approach in that situation. To dismiss the person’s relief is to dismiss reality. They are feeling better and were not able to get that way with the “true” methods.
My personal opinion is we are an overmedicated and over marketed to society that seeks solutions in the form of a pill. Don’t get me wrong, I would take whatever they were giving out if I were in acute pain. It’s like Jerry Stocking says,
“Thank goodness medicine is there when you need it and thank goodness it’s not there when you don’t need it.”
This isn’t a rant on medicine. It’s more about removing the relative truth blinders and entertaining the notion that a different approach to whatever is challenging you may provide the solution.
The prescription is: Get Curious!
All the best,
John
http://CDBaby.com/CD/johnmorgan
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