I decided to be healthy and was

I was staying at my father's farm when he and his lady got sick. They caught a virus that some years back was – let's just say – quite popular. It was never my highest excitement to get vaccinated (and you bet I discerned that over and over to make sure I was clear on my position). At that time I lived mostly by myself in a cabin. Now, however, I was under the same roof as two people with the virus.

I had touched all the same light switches, had used all the same surfaces, breathed the same air...

Getting sick would mess up my commitment to a course I was taking – I just couldn't get sick. But I knew that pumping a negative into my decision ("I am not sick"), is the same as focusing on being sick. I needed to figure out a positive decision.

I had made many positive decisions about myself before, though never with this kind of urgency. And I had never done it on such foundational terms as I was now pushed into doing. My self-definitions had mostly been about being such-and-such a creative person.

Beautiful synchronicity invested this chapter of my summer. It all happened as I was reading Your Power on a Plate. I was on the 'WHO ARE YOU?'-part.

What could I decide about myself, foundationally, that would be relevant for the rest of my life and that I couldn't see myself ever wanting to change?

I am a healthy man acting on his excitement and experiencing lovely reflections of his signature core vibration.

For the next step of maintaining the decision through behavior, physical action came naturally, as I have long followed excitement. I actually stayed in the house the first day, working on various things (running away in anxiety would not have been the action of a truly healthy man, in my estimation). The challenge lay in the mental realm.

I had to MIND what I did with certain neutral props called thoughts. I had outdated ideas about how illness works. You might call these ideas "the standard idea" about illness: there are symptoms, and once you notice some of their signs, you're at risk of contracting an illness.

But now I was affirming – through response – new ideas, one idea to rule them all:

Nothing has to be a sign for anything in particular – unless I say so.

An otherwise ordinary cough which the body makes to loosen up mucus, or a slightly off physical sensation like feeling a 5% headache because it's hot, would raise my suspicions. I thought, 'Oh, now that I'm experiencing this, that means I must have caught the bug after all'. Yet I always returned to my decision: I am a healthy man acting on his excitement and experiencing lovely reflections of his signature core vibration.

Why should it not be possible to override potential illness with this perspective? Elan says that we can adjust the meaning of circumstances through our responses. I fine-tuned my ability to redefine subtle things.

One after another, I allowed and countered the 'Oh, here's a symptom – I must be getting sick'-thoughts. Again and again I returned to my decision, saying it either out loud or mentally, and believing it, not hoping or supposing; just deciding. My body relaxed more and more through surges of relief.

The next day I packed my stuff and drove off with my camper van. I brought a virus test. As I rolled into the woods, I wondered...

How many times in my life had I gotten sick not necessarily because of a virus or because of bacteria, but because I decided that I was sick, based on a suspicion of illness? Probably many times. That's what I assumed, and that's what I assume that a lot of people did when the "high risk" of contracting this particular illness was on the menu.

There always was and is the option of trumping an illness with a simple decision.

Or am I wrong?

After this experience, I'm surer than ever that no, that's exactly how it is in every case – decision is the deciding factor (lol). Walking around in that house, being close to infected individuals (before they confirmed their infections), placing my hands on surfaces where their hands had been, I cannot attribute my triumph to mere luck or unusually strong immunity. Well, I can. But it doesn’t make the most sense. Because here's the kicker:

My father and his lady were vaccinated. I was not. They got sick and I stayed healthy.

During the fifteen minutes it took for the test to show its result, I meditated. A warm feeling welled up inside me. I wasn't surprised to see the negative indication that proved my health.

Long live healthy decisions?