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MIKE ROLLS How my toughest choice became my greatest mission
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contents
PROLOGUE CHAPTER 1
Find Your Querencia… It’s time to Pause CHAPTER 2
Get Real about your Reasons, Excuses and Justifications… It’s time to Reflect CHAPTER 3
Now or Never… It’s time to Uproot CHAPTER 4
Welcome to your New World… It’s time to Navigate CHAPTER 5
Expect Growing Pains… It’s time to Evolve CHAPTER 6
You Have the Map… It’s Time for Action
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Prologue I lay in bed, taut with excitement, checking my clock every few minutes. I’d hardly slept. I was 18 years old and heading off on my first ‘end of season’ footy trip, to Tasmania. Quarter to six – that would do. I reckoned that was a time I could legitimately wake up Mum without getting shouted at. I grabbed my bag and trotted down the hallway. ‘Come on, Kaff!’ It made me laugh to call Mum ‘Kate’, ‘Kathleen’, ‘Kaffy’ or whatever sprang to mind. I stuck my head around their bedroom door and could see she was doing her best to ignore her annoying teenage son. But I was undeterred – there was no way I was going to be late. ‘See you in the car, Kathleen!’ I threw my bag in the back and, to encourage my driver to move a little faster, gave the horn a few quick blasts. Kate appeared a few minutes later, struggling into her coat and looking halfway between irritation and amusement. We weren’t even out of the driveway before she started the last-minute pep-talk: ‘I expect you to behave like an adult, Mike.’ ‘Your dad and I have trusted you…’ To be honest, I wasn’t really listening – in my head I was one step closer to the team adventure. ‘Bye, Ma,’ I called over the bonnet of the car as I rushed to join the boys. I heard a quiet ‘Hmmm?’ from behind me and Mum was standing by the driver’s door, pointing to her cheek. Seriously? A kiss goodbye, in front of my footy mates? I was mortified, but I knew there was no ignoring her – this was a family tradition. I slinked back and planted the world’s fastest kiss on her cheek, then a lighting quick hug and I was off. It’s one of the last things I remember before the shit hit the fan.
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The walls were yellow, stained, with holes in them, as if to let the plaster breathe. Occasionally I opened my eyes but, when I did, the light was painful. My hands were tied to the bed rails – I couldn’t have sat up, even if I’d wanted to. Balloons floated above me, some with writing on them. When I drifted towards consciousness I would clutch and pull at the tubes sticking out of my body. Then my hands would be restrained again. I had no voice. I tried to speak, to ask questions, but even when I mustered all my energy to shout, no noise came out. Two fingers had gone from my right hand: I held my hand up close to my face and could see they were gone. The rest of my body was covered by a sheet so I couldn’t yet see that my fingers were not the only thing I’d lost. The pain wasn’t intense or in any particular place, but the pain I did feel was everywhere. It was hard to decipher exactly what was hurting. I twisted slightly to the left and felt stabbing pain. I moved the other way to find relief but it never came. The tubes were everywhere. The constant beeps and blips of the monitors became a sound-track to my bewilderment and escalating fear. My neck ached. I didn’t know anything other than that something was very, very wrong.
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c My memories of Hobart Intensive care are vague and hallucinatory. The doctors had performed a tracheotomy and inserted a breathing tube into my throat, so I couldn’t even ask what was happening. I drifted in and out of consciousness, the morphine causing wild visions and nightmares. When I came to, a lady I’d never seen before was telling me I’d been very sick. Considering my pain and the surroundings, I’d worked that part out for myself. Her words were a blur but I could make out something about a disease. It was impossible to concentrate and yet I desperately wanted to understand what she was saying. I tried to talk but I was still voiceless. Finally, the lady told me it was important for me to rest and then she left. I was smelling fresh air for the first time in what seemed like forever. It was glorious but the sun hurt my eyes. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was relieved to be leaving. Someone was holding my hand, with both her hands: my sister Sarah. She was smiling at me and telling me something. I could feel her love and I was overjoyed to see her face; I squeezed her hands so tightly she almost winced.
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It turns out I was moved from Hobart ICU to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne by air ambulance and Sarah came with me on that flight. My family had rushed to Hobart as soon as they heard I was ill and rarely left my side, but I hadn’t been aware of them in the room. All my energy had been diverted to survival and clinging on to life. That moment of looking at Sarah as we prepared to leave Hobart felt like the first time I’d really seen her, even though she hadn’t left my side for weeks. The first time I registered Mum’s face she looked broken, completely shattered. She tried to smile at me, wanting to reassure me and hide the fear we both felt. I started to sob although there was no sound, just tears streaming down my face. She held my hand and we cried together. Dad had a look on his face I didn’t even recognise: fear, pain, helplessness, confusion all rolled into one. He didn’t say anything but hugged me while I sobbed silently. As I gained a little strength I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to speak – I had so many questions and almost no answers. I later learned that the doctors didn’t want me to find out everything at once and were drip-feeding me little bits of bad news at a time. They were worried that the shock of the full extent of my injuries might impair my recovery – which was already painfully slow. Mum made an alphabet chart from a manila folder so I could communicate. I would point to each letter to spell out a word or question. It was a slow, laborious process but at least I could find out what had happened. What I learned was devastating.
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PROLOGUE
I had contracted one of the deadliest diseases on the planet: meningococcal septicaemia. The fast-acting and brutal infection meant I’d lost my right leg below the knee and half of my left foot. Two fingers on my right hand had also been amputated. I had been given skin grafts all over my body and had lost a portion of my nose. As well as these external injuries, I’d suffered horrific internal injuries, including kidney failure, liver failure and multiple bleeds on the brain. Essentially, the septicaemia part is blood poisoning caused when the meningococcal bacteria enters the bloodstream and multiplies uncontrollably. This damages the walls of the blood vessels and causes bleeding into the skin, which is what causes the distinctive tell-tale rash associated with the disease. It can cause blood clotting and reduce the flow of oxygen to various organs, body parts and skin or underlying tissue. Without oxygen, the skin and tissues begin to die and must be removed – hence the amputations and the skin grafts. My family were told several times to say goodbye. I lost almost half my body weight, dropping from a fit and healthy 80 kg to an emaciated 47 kg. They were told I had a five per cent chance of survival. Everyone played a crucial role in what would become my round-the-clock family support team. We pulled together like a well-oiled machine – everyone took a shift with me while others got some rest. My job was simple – I had to fight. Not only for me, but I had to fight as hard as my family were fighting for me. Without any one of them, mine would have been a very different story.
c
But, before you roll your eyes at yet another tale of ‘triumph over adversity’, this book isn’t really about my story – it’s about yours. Perhaps you’re in a job you hate but can’t figure out an alternative? Maybe you have your own business, but it’s not working out as you hoped – you’re working longer and harder than ever without the financial reward? Perhaps you’re in debt or in a dysfunctional relationship but can’t see a way out? Maybe your ‘big’ challenge is your health – you know you should do something about it but can’t figure out where to start or find the motivation? We all have stuff in our lives that we tolerate – things we know we should get rid of, change or improve – but often find some perfectly legitimate excuse to maintain the status quo. If that sounds familiar, then this book might be for you. It’s time to ditch the dead weight so you can create the life you really want, rather than simply accepting the things that are holding you back. For me, astonishingly, the dead weight ended up being my remaining leg. The illness left me with half a foot that didn’t really do its job anymore. It couldn’t bear much weight and I had to dress it every day – something I did right up until 2009, eight long years after the initial illness.
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CHAPTER 3
Now or Never… It’s time to Uproot Nothing is permanent – not the good or the bad. This can be disturbing when life is good, but equally it can be a relief when we are going through challenging times or when we know they are ahead. Just because we arrive at the realisation that it’s time to act, doesn’t necessarily mean that the action or decisions that need to be taken are going to be easy or enjoyable. There is rarely a perfect time for anything, but putting off what we know in our heart needs to happen just prolongs the agony. Sometimes we just have to grasp the nettle and uproot whatever it is that’s holding us back. Safe in the knowledge that nothing stays the same forever anyway. In fact, staying mindful of the impermanence of everything can be helpful.
It Starts in the Mind – Uprooting Limiting Beliefs Unsurprisingly, my initial recovery was excruciatingly slow. I remember being quite pleased with myself when I was allowed to take a shower for the first time by myself. The initial rush of relief and excitement at my ‘progress’ was short lived as I looked down at my new body – an unrecognizable mess. The reflection of me sitting naked in my shower chair was difficult to comprehend. It was as though I was staring at a disfigured 13-year-old boy. I was covered in scars; the areas where the doctors had taken skins grafts looked like I’d been skinned alive. Of course, I started to wash myself the same way I’d done before my illness, only now the soap slipped through the amputated fingers on my right hand and there was no way I could negotiate the shower chair to pick it up. My attention turned to the full-length mirror in the bathroom, but what I saw was demoralizing and undignified. I tried to manage the emotion – the feeling of helplessness was overwhelming. I remember almost marvelling at the brutality and power of the disease as I surveyed the damage. It was a bit like the feeling you get when you see the total devastation of a hurricane or tsunami on the nightly news. There is something truly awesome about the power of Mother Nature, even though that power can sometimes be so destructive. It demands our respect. I felt a little like that looking at my own body. I would probably have been in better shape if I’d survived a shark attack, a road accident
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or perhaps even a house fire. How could a bug, so small that it could only be seen under a microscope, be caught as easily as the flu and inflict such catastrophic damage on the human body? But I was alive and I was grateful for that. I was even more grateful when the doctors told me I could go home. That was such a massive day for me and my family. It wasn’t just my life that had been impacted when I got sick. My family’s lives were also affected as they juggled work, their own lives and visiting me. My brother had become a father for the first time and my sister had been planning a new life in America, so my illness changed her life too. Although, we all think that is one of the ‘silver linings’ – if I hadn’t become ill, Sarah and Mike would probably be living in the US and raising their family there. Happily, they stayed in Australia and we see each other all the time. Mum and Dad made huge sacrifices too. Dad had a thriving business, but as soon as I got sick all his attention and energy switched to helping me in my recovery and the business failed as a result. Mum’s whole life was put on hold as she spent most of her time with me in hospital – I think she only missed three days in six months. So, when I was told I could leave the rehab hospital and go home, we were all over the moon. Finally, I could get the fuck out of that sterile, depressing environment and back to something familiar. I couldn’t wait to see my dogs and eat a home-cooked meal again – at home! When Dad wheeled me through the door Nicky and Billy went crazy. Nicky, a boisterous Jack Russell, was rolling around on the floor squealing, while Billy, the more laid back of the two, jumped onto my lap to say hello. I think that was the first time I had a genuine smile. It was just so good to be home. My bedroom was at the end of our hallway, but Mum and Dad had decided it would be easier to set me up in a double bed in the lounge room. It was much closer to the loo, so I could use the wheelchair in the middle of the night if I needed to. I can still recall my mindset at this stage. Even though I was making great progress, considering where I had been just a few months earlier, I was still very unsure what I was capable of or what the future held. I remember playing the comparison game – never a good idea! I’d think about the old me and then think about all the things I believed I’d never be able to do again. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was beginning to form pretty robust beliefs about my future and they were coming together to paint a bleak picture. Although fairly normal under the circumstances, I’m sure it was a worry to my family. My family and my physios would constantly ask, ‘Mike do you think you’d be happy to ride an exercise bike today?’ or ‘Can you get out of bed and watch TV from the couch for an hour?’ Usually I would find ways to knock them back or put them off so I could stay in bed. I had a giant bag of excuses at the ready and, when pushed, I would simply pull one out and say I wasn’t ready. Most of my reluctance came down to pain. When I was lying in bed the pain was just about manageable. But as soon as I moved around all that changed. Even sitting for more than a few minutes was painful. It was relentless and exhausting.
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I would count down the hours until scheduled events, such as a physio visit or changing my dressings or going back to the hospital for a check-up. The closer they would get, the more upset and unhappy I would become, because I knew I was going to have to move and that hurt like hell. It makes sense to try and avoid that sort of agony but sometimes in life you have to go through the pain to get out of it. Plus, I knew there was also a little fear wrapped up in my refusal to do stuff – fear of finding out just how little I could do.
The best way out is always through. Robert Frost
Looking back now, I needed to be pushed. I didn’t have the mental and emotional strength to do it alone. One Saturday morning I was watching TV and Dad popped his head into my room. ‘What are you up to?’ I pointed to my missing leg: ‘Well, not a lot, obviously. Can’t go very far.’ We both laughed. ‘Do you fancy going for a drive, mate?’ he continued and I turned my nose up. ‘Not really, I’m happy here relaxing.’ But Dad didn’t give up. ‘Come on, matey. It’s a beautiful day. Just a little spin and then I’ll bring you straight home’. He had a twinkle in his eye and wasn’t taking no for an answer. ‘Up you get mate, we’ll be back home in no time.’ It seemed to mean a lot to him, so I agreed. I sat up, rolled on my leg-liner, slipped it into my prosthetic leg and transferred myself to the wheelchair. Dad was thrilled and quickly wheeled me around the side of the house and helped me into the car before I could change my mind. We were hardly out of the driveway before everything started to ache. A lot of the skin used on my grafts had been taken from my bum, so the skin there was very thin and tender. I was also still just skin and bone, all of which conspired to make sitting really uncomfortable. I told Dad that I was already starting to get sore, so I wasn’t keen to go out for too long. He assured me we wouldn’t. Driving south from our home in Sandringham, we chatted about a few things. Dad told me how great it was that I was home and for the first time he had a real sense of optimism in his voice. I could see he was excited. We were about 15 minutes into the trip and, even though I had my seat reclined to reduce the pain as much as possible, I was reaching the end of my tether. ‘Dad, do you think we could head home now? I need to lie down. I’m really sore.’ ‘Just a little longer, Mike. It’s such a beautiful day.’ He still looked so happy and it was great to see, so I agreed to another 10 minutes. We were now a long way from home. I remember thinking, quite literally, that every minute further meant another painful minute back. By this time, we were heading down the Mornington Peninsula Freeway and I was really starting to doubt my ability to handle
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much more. Doing my best to keep the irritation out of my voice I said, ‘Come on, mate. Enough’s enough. Let’s head back’. But Dad wasn’t having it. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Nowhere. It’s just a lovely day for a drive,’ he insisted. All I could think about was how far we were from my bed, how much pain I was in and how much longer it was going to take to get home and back to bed so that the pain would subside. As that reality sunk in, I lost it. ‘Dad! For fuck’s sake! Take me home!’ As soon as the words were out of my mouth, we pulled into the driveway of The Dunes golf course. ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ I yelled. Dad smiled – as if there was absolutely nothing wrong and he was completely ignoring my angry outburst. ‘I’ve just got to run up and take a leak.’ He jumped out the car and jogged up to the Clubhouse. Five minutes passed. Six, then 10 minutes. What the hell was he doing? I was sore, tired, cranky and pretty sure I couldn’t take too much more of this. I couldn’t believe how selfish he was being. Off in the distance I finally saw Dad reappear… driving a golf cart towards the car with a huge grin on his face. He opened my door and I unleashed my rage. ‘What the hell are you doing with that Ian?’ It’s sort of funny now, but I can assure you at the time I didn’t think it was. Dad, still unfazed by my escalating anger, mused, ‘Why don’t we go for a drive on the course?’ Again, he gave me a look of anticipation. I just couldn’t believe I was hearing him right. ‘Mate, are you crazy? I’ve only just started transfering from a chair to a car and back again. I’ve only just got my leg on. I’m in too much pain. I can’t do it. There’s no way.’ All these excuses started to spew out of my mouth. ‘And how the fuck am I supposed to get into a golf cart?’ Obviously, I don’t usually swear at my Dad, but I was mad as hell and the pain was getting the better of me. He just kept at me, ‘Come on… We’ve come this far, a quick drive up the first and we’ll head straight home, Mike, I promise.’ I gave in because I could see he wasn’t going to back down, and he helped me into the cart. We drove up past the first tee and onto the fairway. I looked around this familiar place, a place where we’d spent so much time in previous years. Dad even used to sneak me out of school some afternoons and we would disappear to The Dunes to play golf. Many wonderful memories came flooding back. The fresh air felt good on my skin and the smell of cut grass started to lift my mood. For a brief moment, I didn’t notice the pain. Without warning, Dad stopped the cart in the middle of the fairway. What now? He reached around behind him and grabbed a golf club. The sneaky bugger had snuck one into the cart. He hopped out and pulled a golf ball out of his pocket. He looked at me and said, ‘Why don’t you have a hit, mate?’
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I couldn’t believe it. ‘Are you crazy?’ All the emotion I’d been bottling up came flooding out and I reeled off all the reasons why there was no way I was going to hit that golf ball. How could I? My body had been destroyed; I could hardly stand upright for more than a few minutes; I’d only just started wearing this weird new thing on my body; and he wanted me to swing a golf club! Not possible. Enough was enough. The pain came screaming back with my anger. But he didn’t budge. He let me vent for a while and, when I’d finally run out of steam, he just quietly encouraged me in the reassuring way he always did. ‘It’s OK, I’ve got you, mate. I’ll hold you up while you hit the ball.’ Dad has always had a knack for getting the best out of us. He has a gentle, understated approach and has always been a man of great character. He had chosen this moment to give me the gentle nudge I needed, a nudge in the right direction. And he was right there, as he always had been, guiding me through. Determined, he walked around to my side of the cart and helped me up onto my leg. I was wobbly at first, as I got used to standing upright on grass. Dad gave me the golf club and dropped the ball down in front of me, while positioning himself behind me so he could hold me up by the hips. We must have looked like a very odd pair on the fairway that day. By this point I’d accepted that the quickest way to get home and back to bed was to hit that ball. I tried to get myself into the best position I could, steadied myself, looked at the ball, then up the fairway, back at the ball again, then swung the club back and whooshhh! I can still hear the beautiful crack as the club made contact with the ball and it disappeared up the middle of the fairway. It must have gone 150 metres. I was genuinely shocked. Dad was so excited watching that ball disappear that he shouted ‘Great shot!’ and clapped his hands – completely forgetting that he was holding me up. I crumpled face first into a heap on the ground. It was the most amazing feeling. Lying on the grass, sore but laughing, beautiful blue skies above me. That was the exact moment that I realised I needed to change my thinking. If I was going to have any sort of happiness or success in my future I had to reassess the way I approached my recovery and new circumstances. I needed to question the fear and the doubt I was feeling, confront it, challenge it and prove myself wrong. If anyone had told me that morning that I would belt a golf ball down the middle of the fairway at my favourite golf course, I would have said ‘yeah good one…’ But that’s exactly what I did. A few hours earlier I would have happily spent the day lying in bed, watching TV, settling for what felt safe. It was one of those moments that really defined my recovery – an important turning point when I was able to recognise the need for action when it came to my preconceived limitations. From that moment on, there would be no more ‘No’, and no more not trying. I was going see what I could do and what I couldn’t, instead of simply making negative assumptions. I’ll always be so grateful to Dad for helping me appreciate that my life wasn’t over, sooner than I might have realised on my own. Different: sure. But far from over.
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Although neither of us saw it in these terms at the time, I was being forced to assess the beliefs that were starting to form around what I could and couldn’t do. Dad nudged me past them. Now, I was able to find out what I was really capable of. Amputating those toxic beliefs before they really took root was every bit as important as my physical recovery. This was the start of my inner recovery – the recovery of my mind. It might sound trivial to describe hitting a golf ball as a life-changing moment, but it was. It demonstrated to me that perhaps some of my favourite things from my old life were not off-limits after all. Better yet, perhaps with time and some serious focus and determination, this new life might lead to amazing new things that I’d never even considered. I used golf as a rehab tool and measure of my progress. Today I play better golf than I did when I still had my tootsies. In many ways that was made possible because the experience with Dad helped me uproot the limiting beliefs, which I had unwittingly created while in hospital, before they became part of my DNA.
The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, but it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use. Arthur Koestler
It’s hardly surprising therefore that by the time we become adults we have thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of beliefs and rules about how we should live based on some pretty dodgy initial data. And, we usually don’t even know we have them until we bump up against those beliefs in our everyday lives. As you consider your life right now and the big issue that you need to tackle, you are almost certainly bumping up against some of your beliefs. If you’re lucky, your positive beliefs will be encouraging you to take action, buoyed by a sense that it will work out for best for everyone. However, most adult human beings are also plagued by some less helpful limiting beliefs that will seek to maintain the status quo. These beliefs may serve to remind you of the times when you’ve tried to make changes before and failed, or how your actions will be perceived by others, keeping you stuck where you are. When this happens – and it will happen – you need to remember that the belief that is almost certainly driving that thought process was formed when you didn’t have a functioning neocortex to question the information’s validity. Instead, you were just clucking like a chicken! Human beings are born with two fears – falling and loud noises. That’s it. Everything else is learnt through experience and conditioning. There are two types of conditioned learning: single trial and multiple trial. As the name would suggest, single trial conditioning occurs in a single moment. As a child, you didn’t need to burn yourself with matches 20 times before you got the message. Physical or emotional pain is often enough to lock that ‘knowledge’ in place with a single experience or single event. Multiple trial
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conditioning, which is the most common way we learn, is through repeated exposure. When we experience something over and over again it becomes a conditioned reflex or response. You might have heard that term in relation to Pavlov and his famous Alsatians. Initially studying digestion, Pavlov noticed that if his dogs were fed at the same time as another stimulus was introduced (such as ringing a bell or blowing a whistle) the dogs would, over time, connect the noise to the process of feeding. With repetition, Pavlov’s dogs started to salivate at the sound of the bell or whistle, even when there was no food present. Obviously, the two events hade no real connection but something happened in the dogs’ brains to wire them together. The same thing happens to us. This is known as ‘Hebbs Law’ – ‘what fires together, wires together’. And this is why conditioning is both incredibly impressive and often unhelpful at the same time.
What are your Limiting Beliefs? Life doesn’t come with a rule book – we make up the rules along the way! Essentially, the beliefs you create about who you are, what you are good at, not good at and what you are therefore capable of, become your internal rule book. They are the things you have chosen to believe about yourself, other people and the world around you. If you have a belief that you are good at maths, for example, you are much more likely to pursue activities that use that skill. If you believe you are tone deaf, there’s a fair chance you won’t be joining a band or pursuing a career in the music industry. Our beliefs have a huge impact on our actions and behaviour. They influence what we ‘choose’ to do and how we act in various situations. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that they can have a significant impact on our life – and yet most of us are oblivious to them and don’t realise they have formed rules that we are unwittingly living by. And that’s the rub. Our beliefs, including our limiting beliefs, usually operate below our conscious awareness in the subconscious mind. As such, they are still pulling our strings and directing our thoughts, feelings and behaviour without our even knowing. According to biologist and author Bruce Lipton: ‘The conscious mind is the creative one, the one that can conjure up ‘positive thoughts’. In contrast, the subconscious mind is a repository of stimulus-response tapes derived from instincts and learned experiences. The subconscious mind is strictly habitual; it will play the same behavioural responses to life’s signals over and over again, much to our chagrin... When it comes to sheer neurological processing abilities, the subconscious mind is millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind.’ If the desires of the conscious mind are different from the habitual routines of the subconscious, the subconscious mind might undermine your best conscious efforts to change your life.
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This might not sound very encouraging. After all, you are reading this book because you probably want to change something in your life. If that change is made almost impossible by limiting beliefs that are buried deep in your subconscious mind that you don’t even know about, then surely that makes the change even more challenging? In theory – yes, but only when we are oblivious to their ability to throw spanners in our plans. Limiting beliefs only really work when we don’t know they exist and, therefore, we never question them. Now you know they exist, don’t worry; I’m not going to suggest ten years of therapy so you can uncover them all and re-program your brain – who has time for that? Instead, just stay vigilant and expect them to show up as you address the dead weight you have identified. Stay focused on questioning the limiting beliefs that might present themselves. The important thing is to bring them into your conscious awareness.
Exercise #10: Getting to Grips with Your Limiting Beliefs Take a moment to engage with the ‘dead weight’ you want to take action on. Really immerse yourself in the situation and then imagine yourself solving the problem. What are the immediate thoughts that spring to mind? Keeping the ‘dead weight’ in mind, fill in the blanks in the following:
I can fix this because... I can’t fix this because... If I do this... If I don’t do this... Other people will think I am... Other people will... If I do this I will feel... If I don’t do this I will feel... I deserve this because... I don’t deserve this because... I want to make this change because... I don’t want to make this change because… Go through this list several times and make a note of the first thing you think of when you read the statement. Ideally, read the statement out loud and just listen to what pops into your mind as you finish the statement. Keep going through the list until you can’t think of anything. Once you are blank, start the process again and see if anything new arrives. What happens if you see this process to the end is that all the generic answers and glib responses you’ve been telling yourself for years will probably arrive first. There might, however, be some kernels of truth in these responses, so don’t dismiss them. Pay
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particular attention to the ones that surprise you or that you didn’t expect. Sometimes when we run this type of process we can hear something falling out of our mouth that is genuinely surprising. Definitely pay attention to that. Once you hit a wall and can’t think of anything else you might assume you’ve finished. You haven’t. What’s happening is that your conscious mind has run out of responses but, if you keep going, you might access a new level of answers that could shed more light on what’s going on beneath your awareness. This can feel a little scary. It can be confronting to face the truth of what we believe – sometimes we would rather not admit it to ourselves – but without that honesty it’s hard to make progress. Be brave. Perhaps you don’t think you deserve to be happy or that you are not good enough or that you will lose friendships? Once you’ve identified some limiting beliefs, take some time to really sit with those responses. Why do you think that? What actual evidence do you have for that assumption? Is there any contrary evidence that proves something different? Stick with it and assess what comes to mind from an adult perspective not a child’s. Ask yourself if it makes sense for you to think that from a child’s perspective? Perhaps it does – but does it still make sense now you are an adult? Probably not. This can help to break the thought habits down and expose them for what they really are – unhelpful limiting assumptions that bear no resemblance to reality. What we think is unbelievably powerful. Most of us have heard of the healing effects of placebo – when someone who believes they are getting treatment for a condition is healed even though the ‘treatment’ is nothing more than a sugar pill or saline injection. But have you heard of nocebo – placebo’s sinister brother? Just as positive thoughts can heal, negative thoughts can create illness and distress. One of the most famous experiments conducted in this area, which led to the science of psychoneuroimmunology, was with Japanese children who were allergic to a poison-ivy like plant. In the experiment a leaf from the poisonous plant was rubbed onto the child’s right forearm – and they were told it was poison ivy. A non-poisonous leaf resembling poison ivy was then rubbed on their left forearms, but the children were told this was a different plant and they would not be affected. As expected, almost all the children experienced a rash on their right forearm with no reaction on their left arm. Makes sense, right? Not really; because the leaves were purposely mislabelled. The genuinely toxic leaf was rubbed on the left arms, yet almost without exception the right arms reacted. Why? Because the children believed they were allergic to poison ivy and that had been rubbed on their right arms. That belief was enough to illicit the required reaction on their right arms, even though the arms had not been exposed to any toxin. The conclusion here is simple: positive perceptions, expectations and beliefs make life better, while negative perceptions, expectations and beliefs make life worse. Considering that a minimum of one-third of medical healings are attributed to the placebo effect it’s pretty scary to imagine the trail of destruction that this phenomenon’s opposite, nocebo, is creating. Especially when you consider that psychologists estimate 70 per cent of our
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NOW OR NEVER… IT’S TIME TO UPROOT
thoughts are negative or redundant! Certainly, when I first read about the nocebo effect it made me wonder about my own recovery. How would I have fared if the doctors had told me that the meningococcal would slowly deteriorate my health over the next 20 years and I would die young. How would my life have turned out then? Hope and optimism for a better life are incredibly important, whether we are recovering from physical or mental illness or making big changes in our lives.
Exercise #11: Assess Your Beliefs from the Four Perspectives Another way to assess your beliefs and try to ferret out some limiting beliefs is to consider your life from the four perspectives we discussed earlier:
Mental Life Physical Life Professional Life Personal Life Consider each in turn and think about what negative assumptions and perceptions might be holding you back in that area.
Mental Life One thing I remember becoming aware of was a sense of being lesser or feeling inferior or intimidated by those around me. As my own natural confidence returned I was able to lay that particular ghost to rest. Also, finding ways where I could re-gain control of my situation and contribute gave me a sense of independence and helped to improve my self-worth. Coming to appreciate just how far I had come was a major positive and helped me to regain my confidence. Think about your own situation. What mental or emotional assumptions have you made about yourself and what you can expect or deserve in the future?
Physical Life Obviously, I was acutely aware of the things I couldn’t do physically any more – footy, gymnastics, high jump! I was convinced I would never run again, because if I did my foot would be a bleeding mess. No biggie. Once I took the leg off, I could re-evaluate my capabilities and running was suddenly back on the agenda. With change comes new possibilities. I still remember the freedom I felt when I ran again on my new legs – initially it wasn’t that graceful, but who cares? I was doing something I thought I’d never be able to do again. Think about your own situation – what assumptions have you made about what you can and can’t do physically?
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Ditch The Dead Weight Professional Life I always had it in my mind that a 9–5 job would be impossible for me. From very early on my need for rest to recuperate and minimise the pain was at the forefront of my mind. Just sitting for five minutes was a challenge, so getting through a whole day of work, let alone a whole week, seemed genuinely out of reach. That negative belief stuck for a few years but, as I got stronger, my thinking, concentration span and overall health improved to the point where I started to work every day at the gym we owned. I even started working out myself, too. It was a case of simply testing the waters, updating a belief that was at one time true but no longer needed to be. Think about your own situation – what beliefs have you created around this situation that could impact your professional life? Is there something you want to do, but you believe your situation prevents you in some way? Are you sure that’s correct?
Personal Life Initially I remember thinking: ‘Who will ever want to be with me now?’ I couldn’t even imagine being in a relationship. I thought that I would be an immense burden on another person. I also used to think about social standing and how I would be perceived by other people. This also related back to feelings of inferiority and my identity as a man. I often questioned my ability to be a provider – my usefulness and perceived value was affected and my own sense of self-worth certainly took a massive hit. Getting together with Dayna made a hugely positive impact in this area and my self-esteem returned steadily over time. We were together for 10 years and, although the relationship didn’t go the distance, she had an incredibly positive influence on my personal life and how I saw myself. After I had my left leg amputated, my self-confidence and sense of self-worth improved along with my recovery. I regained a level of independence that I’d not experienced in years. The freedom from pain also made a huge difference to my mind set. I now live with my amazing partner, Andrea, and we are planning our life together. I’m in a happier place now than I’ve ever been in my personal life – largely because I found the courage and commitment to amputate dead weight. Think about your own situation – what beliefs have you created around this situation that could impact your personal life? Are some of your beliefs already affecting your personal life? The day my Dad essentially forced me to hit that golf ball really shifted something inside me. I still had to challenge my thinking and, while my mindset was not permanently positive from that moment, it did help me break through some of the mental barriers I had been erecting around what my life was going to be like after meningococcal. Working with and adapting to my new mindset also allowed me to come to the decision to amputate my remaining leg.
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COMING SOON FROM MURDOCH BOOKS More than just another triumph over adversity story, Ditch the Dead Weight offers an alternative approach to the challenges we all face. By combining his personal experience with proven scientific research and a practical methodology for letting go of anything that no longer serves you, Mike Rolls offers a bright new outlook and inspiration to discover your best life today. Mike was a fit footballing teenager when he contracted the deadly virus, meningococcal septicaemia. Suddenly he was fighting for his life. By the time Mike regained consciousness he had lost his right leg, half his left foot, two fingers and part of his nose, as well as suffering internal injuries. He was given a five per cent chance of survival. After a painfully slow recovery and years of living with a leg that would never heal, Mike finally realised enough was enough: he took the decision to have his second leg amputated. Through this gruelling experience, Mike learned how to move forward with grace and perseverance and began to feel whole again.
Australian Sales enquiries please contact Jim Demetriou JimD@allenandunwin.com Media & Event enquiries ANZ Carol Warwick carolw@murdochbooks.com.au
Ditch the Dead Weight By Mike Rolls AU 9781 76052 394 7Â UK 9781 76063 499 5 July 2018 (August 2018 UK) AU $29.99 NZ $32.99 UK ÂŁ16.99 224 pages C Format 234 x 153 mm
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UK Jemma Crocker jcrocker@murdochbooks.co.uk facebook.com/MurdochBooks twitter.com/murdochbooks instagram.com/murdochbooks
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