 In the midst of one of my saddest, most downed days visiting my initial Chinese medicine doctor, he said to me, listen Alex, your illness is a gift and your symptoms are important messengers. Now at the time it really annoyed me because I was feeling like garbage and I didn't understand how being sick could be a gift. Now in this video, I thought I would elaborate on his advice on why every illness actually is a gift. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hain, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture in traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out and contact my private practice right below this video. And the second is for a free guide, which is four daily rituals that could potentially help you add to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So first and foremost, your beliefs dictate how you feel when you go through suffering. So for example, if you believe that depression is only a chemical imbalance that explains all depression and the only treatment for that is pharmaceuticals, well how does that make you feel? Do you feel empowered, disempowered, like you have to take this medication for the rest of your life, like there is hope for getting off of it, how does it make you feel? And let's say if you feel like symptoms are there just to make you feel pain, they serve no other purpose, they're there just to make you feel bad. How does that make you feel? Do you really feel annoyed and down and discouraged, like I'm always going to feel this way? Like there is no fix for this problem. If you feel like your illness is let's say karmic or of some spiritual nature as opposed to a practical or biological nature, how does that make you feel? Like if you feel you are destined for this illness, right, I did something in the past life and that's why I'm suffering as opposed to it as a biological origin. You probably feel powerless. So first and foremost, your beliefs about your illness and about symptoms will determine your experience of them. So if you feel like this thing is not easily treatable, that can lead to more suffering and more feelings of depression. Then, for example, if you feel like there is hope, it may just be a longer course of treatment. And if you feel like this illness has some organic causes, some biological causes, well, then maybe there's something we can do to treat it. As opposed to this is a mysterious spiritual illness that is from my past ancestral karma and therefore I'm here incarnated to suffer. But our beliefs will determine a lot of our suffering on top of our illness. I'm always inspired by people with cancer who end up viewing their cancer as the best thing that ever happened to them. The first little time I encountered this idea was in Bernie Siegel's book, Love, Medicine and Miracles. Now, he was a surgeon who talked about just these experiences with radical remissions and unusual recoveries and healings from cancer or at the very least really unusual patient outcomes. And one of the things he talked about quite a lot was that many cancer patients, the ones with the right mindset, viewed it as the wake-up call in their life. He said, there are just as many people who frankly probably did not want to live and he believes maybe that was a piece of why their cancer developed in the first place. Nonetheless, he said, the patients with the most adaptive or growth mindset viewed it as a wake-up call, viewed it as a time to change their job, to start living the life they had always wanted, not the life that other people expect, you know, the life that everyone else expected, their parents, society, stability, fear. But just the fact that these people viewed it as a wake-up call when you could have viewed it as a horrible disease that mames people with a horrible treatment that often mames people as much as the disease and many kinds of cancer. The fact that they viewed it as a powerful wake-up call and one of the best things that ever happened to them in retrospect is almost unbelievable. But very often it is that if you believe it to be that on top of the way you treat it. So very often you hear, for example, people with cancer that will say things like, it was the thing that inspired me to go travel the world or inspired me to leave my marriage that I didn't like or inspired me to write the book I always wanted to write or to start the business I always wanted to start or to move across the country or move across the world and live in Spain. It's often the thing, one of the diseases or illnesses that reconnects people to themselves, paradoxically. And that's what's so funny about it because if you view that illness is a curse, you change nothing. But if you view it as a wake-up call, you change everything. So every illness is a gift if you wanna view it like that. But the symptoms themselves are almost like the viziers or the trusted advisors to the king. You know, when I was young, I was always fascinated by this sort of Merlin archetype physician sage alchemist that was the advisor to royalty or to the emperor. You know, the wise man that's always on the shoulder or the wise woman that was always the advisor. And in my mind, all symptoms are these wise sages on the shoulder because evolutionarily, we don't have symptoms just because the body wants to feel pain, right? Disease is not there to hurt you even though that's the natural process and the progression sometimes. The symptoms are there as a warning, right? The symptoms of acid reflux, the symptoms of severe bloating abdominal pain, the symptoms of unusual menstrual cramps or the symptoms of insomnia. They're not there randomly. They're not there for no point. They're there because you overate or you had 10 pieces of fried chicken instead of three or because you've been living completely unaligned with the life you wanna live and there's always a low level of subconscious stress going on. They're trying to give you information. They are your trusted friends that are trying to show you that something has to change and that we're gonna keep punching you in the head or screaming at you or making you fall down or keep you up at night until you do something about it. And if you don't change, then we won't change. So I view the symptoms as the trusted advisors because then what are they trying to say? What do my persistent headaches say about my diet or stress levels or sleep patterns? What does my acid reflux or my bowel patterns say about what I'm eating or the pace of my life or the conflict in my personal relationships? Every illness is a gift and the symptoms, the trusted advisors. And if you view these things like that, they are there to prevent you from things progressing to a catastrophic point like putting your hand on a stove and your senses are able to detect heat and pressure and temperature so that your finger doesn't melt to the point where it is permanently destroyed and no longer usable. All of these things are carefully designed to help you, not to punish you or to make you feel ill. But if you view them as a curse, then they will only remain at a curse and they will not progress to being the gift and the trusted advisors that they are. So every illness is a gift. If you view it like that, then no matter what you're going through, it's always gonna help you ascend and move through. And at the very least, your mindset will be something that is more conducive to healing as opposed to more pain. So that's what I have for you today, guys. Check out those links below the video and I have two other related videos for you right there.