Strategic Discipline Blog

My journey through Acute Myeloid Leukemia continues with Chapter IV of CANCER CURED – Patience & Focus

(Previous segments of CANCER CURED are available here:  CANCER CURED BOOK -to read these from the beginning you’ll need to scroll through to the bottom to find CANCER CURED – What do You Feed?, which is the first in the series.)

This is the second segment from Chapter IV - Why I Believed Meditation Would Work (Be aware, a lot of this segment is based on my belief in God. If you don’t have a belief in a Creator, who loves us more than we love ourselves, I would suggest you avoid reading this segment.)

When something works, we continue to use it to get the results we’ve achieved before.

Waiting for an elevator, if you keep pressing the button, eventually the elevator appears.

Is this cause and effect?

There’s much that goes into our faith and belief system.

If you believe in God, you should understand He can help us achieve anything.

Reality indicates something vastly different.

God is only as powerful as we believe.

Emmett Fox shares this concept in his book on the Ten Commandments.

Egypt in the Bible means limitation, our belief in matter, time, space, our fear—all the things that clamp us down, the things that make us unhappy, old, and bitter. In the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, one of the things we are told about the Christ child is, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” Egypt is always basically the same thing—a lack of faith in God.

Whenever we are sick, fearful, or depressed, what is it but a lack of faith in God? And then we are apt to say, “If God will come down and fix it up for me, I will believe in Him.” What is that but a lack of faith in God right where you are? If we think, “If God will come down,” we are saying really that God is not here—He is there.

Dr Joe Dispensa shares in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: Moses, Abraham, and Joseph, the great figures in the Bible, and any great figure in the World, including JFK, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and Gandhi, first had to conquer themselves.

I had to conquer myself first.

As Fox explains, “Until men and women understand that nothing can ever happen to them—that nothing can ever come to them or be kept away from them—except in accordance with the state of their consciousness, they do not have the key to life, and they cannot be saved. How can you be saved if you do not know the law? Until you realize this truth, which is on every page of the Bible, that it is your state of mind that matters, that it is your state of mind that puts you into that house, or into that job—or walking the street without a job, or that gives you a sick body or a well body; that it is your mind and your consciousness that rule your life; then there is no hope for you. You do not have the key to life.”

Every problem has a solution. There is no difficulty that can come to you or me for which there is not a solution and for which we shall not find a solution in time if we persevere. Some problems last a long time, some a short time, but always there is a solution, and always the solution is to turn from the outer to the inner.

I believe this. This confirms my belief in my responsibility, being accountable for the condition or results in my life, my being.

This same philosophy is in Dr. Joe Dispensa’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. It’s one reason why the book and the ideology appealed deeply to my sense of faith and belief.

This truth, however, fails to recognize the difficulty of change. We may believe in God’s ability to heal us yet lack the emotion to achieve it. We may have the emotional response to allow it, yet not know how to achieve it. And we can have neither emotion nor knowledge.

Answered Prayer – Knowledge and Emotion

Fox explains our issue with God answering our prayers. God is not limited by conditions. It does not matter how sick you are today, what mistakes you have made, how foolish you have been, or how strong the forces against you seem to be—God is stronger than conditions—that is the knowledge side.

However, we know that it is never too late because God is outside of time. So we have the knowledge side.

What most of us lack is the feeling half.

Our feelings are given over to the side of fear. The more feeling you have, the stronger your emotional nature, the better if you throw it on the positive side, but the worse, if you throw it on the negative side. It is like a high-powered car that can easily do a hundred miles an hour. That is fine, if you are on the right kind of special roadway, like the Pennsylvania Turnpike. However, if you are a bad driver and get into the car lightheartedly and step on the gas, that car is going to wreck you. Emotional feeling is like that. Throw it on the good side, on the side of Divine Love, believe in God, believe in yourself, believe in the future, believe in harmony, and it will drive you right out of any trouble.

However, too often human nature throws it on the other side, the side of ifs and doubts and buts and fears, and, of course, it suffers.

Once again, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself shares this same ideology. To change we must become greater than our environment, our body, and time. We must break from our known past, and our predictable future, by crossing the river of change. In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr Joe explains the difference between Elevated Emotions and Survival Emotions. An intentional thought needs an energizer, a catalyst—and that energy is an elevated emotion.

The quantum field responds not to what we want; it responds to who we are being.

The only place the unknown exists, where we can change and become our new self, is in the present moment.

I had an advantage in believing meditation would work for me: The Knowledge Side.

As you will see, I was coming up short on the emotional side.

My faith in mediation emanates from an earlier experience in which I was able to produce a miraculous result.

In 1993, Michelle, my wife (1993 – 2015), rejected me. In desperation, I began to meditate.

Michelle had accepted my marriage proposal when I presented her with an engagement ring on Christmas Eve in 1992. Two weeks later she told me she couldn’t accept my proposal because she had promised herself never to marry a man with a child from a previous marriage.

I felt rejected and betrayed.

For months I couldn’t concentrate at work.

Everywhere I went I felt a negative energy following me.

After nearly 2 months of wallowing in misery, I discovered meditation. A Wayne Dwyer audio shared a meditative approach. Dwyer’s meditation required imagining a 24-second clock winding down. Each time your mind wanders to something, you should restart the clock, eventually getting to the point where you think of nothing but the descending numerals on the clock.

Meditation provided me with peace of mind. For the brief periods I would meditate I would lose track (Mind, Body, Environment) of my problems. The fear, worry, and deep depression about losing Michelle would dissipate.

I began to re-read Catherine Ponder's book The Prosperity Secret of the Ages. At the same time, I had repetitively listened to a series of audios by Jim Rosemurgy entitled Great Stories of the Bible. One of the series shared the story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.

Rosemurgy shared a formula God gave Moses when the Egyptians trapped the Hebrews against the sea.

In meditation, and throughout my day, I began to follow this formula to free myself from the mental depression I had fallen into.

Rosemurgy’s formula followed these five steps, taken from Exodus:

How to Cross Your Red Sea

1. “Fear Not!” Exodus 14:13 Peace, be Still!
2. “Stand Firm” Exodus 14:13 Don’t do anything. Can’t face a problem on the level of the problem. See the salvation of the Lord – what God will do. Raise your level of Consciousness.

The Lord will fight for you have only to……. Exodus 14:14

3. “Be still and know that I AM God” Exodus 14:14

Define your purpose – it is to know God – not get what you want.

4. “Go Forward” Exodus 14:15

Under the direction of the Spirit. Allow for guidance from within.

Let God be God, Trust!

5. “Don’t Predict Your Solution”

(Italics are intended to add context and texture to the message.)

The formula provided me with a sense of direction. A pathway to follow. It enabled me to see purpose and meaning in something emotionally debilitating.

I’m an optimist. A naïve optimist if you can’t tell already? I tend to take people at their word. I’m honest and I expect others to be honest with me. If someone tells me they love me, or if they say they’re no longer dating or engaged to someone, I take them at their word. Right or wrong, that’s who I am.

Something unusual happened to me during this period while I was meditating. Several times my phone rang at my house. When I’d pick it up no one was there!

I’m not sure why, but my intuition made me feel it might be Michelle trying to reconnect with me.

Sometime in early June, the phone rang again. It was Michelle, asking me how I was doing.

We went out on a date, and I asked her to marry me again, and the result was two children, Noah and Joshua, and nearly 22 years of marriage.

That phone call, the resulting outcome, provided the faith meditation would produce the result I needed now.

Call to Action

Challenge your team, your business, yourself. Contact Positioning Systems to schedule a free exploratory meeting to challenge, inspire, and ignite purpose and passion in your business!  

Create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

Belief is a massively important element in achieving success. People often account for this as being the most critical element. Conquering fear, overcoming challenges, and being greater than the environment, your body, and time are crucial as well.  We’ll explore this next blog as we continue Chapter IV of Cancer Cured - Conquer Fear, Preparation, The Environment, Body, and Time.  

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:

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NEXT BLOG – CANCER CURED CHAPTER IV – Conquer Fear, Preparation, The Environment, Body and Time