The Power of Thought

The arrhythmias began the final day of my junior year in high school. Without any provocation, my heart would go from a normal 60 beats per minute (bpm) to an astounding 300 bpm. As soon as my heart rate jumped so high, my heart stayed at the fast rate. As you can imagine, at 300 bpm my energy level would quickly decrease. To bring my heart rate back to normal, I would go to the hospital where they would shock my heart and bring my rate back to normal.

That day, the last day of school my junior year, was just the beginning of the struggles I would have with arrhythmias. Over the next few years I would go in and out of arrhythmias, always ending in a hospital trip to get shocked. More than anything, getting shocked was inconvenient. Every time I went to the hospital, I knew that I would be there for at least five hours. I came to dread arrhythmias because I didn’t want to take time out of my schedule to go to the hospital.

This dread lead to hyper observance. I would monitor my rate rate several times every hour to make sure that my heart rate was where it should be. But as the weeks went on I began to go into more and more arrhythmias. Eventually, it became clear that the increased frequency of arrhythmias was my fault! My hyper observance was inadvertently causing me to go into arrhythmias. My preoccupation of arrhythmias stressed me to the point of arrhythmias.

With practice, I learned how to control my thoughts so that I my attention was not focused on my heart rate. The frequency of my arrhythmias drastically decreased and my quality of life increased, all because I changed the focus of my thoughts.

Learning to be a Patient Patient

At 20 years old, I found myself sitting in a hospital bed waiting to have surgery the following week. Two days earlier I was doing what every normal missionary did: teaching, working, and sweating. Now, I was laying in a bed with a monitor strapped to my chest to measure every beat of my heart. Seeing my heartbeat was usually a good thing. It meant I was alive. But this time it gave me concern. This concern came not because it was beating but because of how fast it was beating, 300 beats per minute. At that rate, my energy level went down substantially.

As a missionary you are expected to live by certain rules. These rules make sense and help keep you safe and focused. They guide and direct the way you live as a missionary. On the flip side, when you are not a missionary, living all the mission rules prevents living what most consider to be “a normal life.” Since I was technically a missionary but was not doing what missionaries typically do, I found myself faced with some difficulties.

I was not allowed to watch t.v., listen to music, read non mission approved literature, or play any kind of video games. Normally this would not bother me; I kept busy with missionary life, but being confined to a bed, I found that I could only read the few books I had access to for only so long. I became incredibly bored.

The thought of having to wait like this for five days at first killed me. How was I going to make it without any entertainment? As I sat there thinking a thought came into my mind. “Patience is made.” With that thought in mind, I began looking for ways to productively entertain myself without relying on technology. I sought out people to talk with so that I might learn their stories, and I found that not only would they share their stories, but I could also share mine. Opportunities for “unusual” missionary interactions came flooding in!

In the course of mutual sharing, I learned that being patient doesn’t mean waiting without complaining; being patient means filling the time you have with productive activities. In life, patience is required of all of us, whether we are “in-patients” or “out-patients.” Learning how to be a patient patient is truly one of the most important things any of us can ever learn.