What’s possible for you, for me, for any of us? Perhaps the most useful way to explore such a question would be to look at how we see the world and the limits that can come from our perceptions.

“I can’t help it, that’s the way I am.” This familiar idiom, which many of us use casually to explain feelings, behaviors, and physical states, suggests an out-of-control relationship between us (the thinking/decision-making self) and our emotions, actions, and bodies. Many would have us believe that we are aliens inhabiting physical units that we do not control. In essence, we become victims rather than initiators, responders rather than creators, adapters rather than masters.

What if all of these notions were simply cultural myths rather than facts? What if who we are, what we have become, and how we can change are arenas under our complete personal jurisdiction? What if being happy or unhappy is an experience we can choose? And what if that choice has enormous impact on our body chemistry and electrophysiology? What if we are in charge, and have always been so, but have never found a useful way to understand, acknowledge, and harness that power?

The Option Process® acknowledges our beliefs as the heart of the matter. To be happy (and to foster physical well-being) becomes more than a debatable philosophical construct for some distant time, but an actual living possibility, a choice that we can make right now. We become happier and healthier by exploring and changing our beliefs.

There are no good or bad beliefs, no good or bad behaviors or feelings. We are what we are, and in every way we do the best we can, the best we know how, based on our present beliefs.

When a young boy in a wheelchair, suffering from a progressive and fatal neuromuscular disease, began to entertain the idea (the belief) that he could help himself improve despite the prognosis of experts, he began to regain the use of his hands. After a thirty-five-year-old woman discarded her beliefs about the burdens of adulthood, she experienced dramatic relief from years of chronic back pain. Once a business executive forgave his dishonest partner, a bleeding stomach ulcer began to heal. When a homemaker stopped judging her husband, dropping the belief that she needed him in order to survive, her lingering viral infection abated. These are not infrequent events or feats by only the courageous or intellectually gifted; these are everyday miracles that all of us can perform in an everyday world.

Thus, exploring our beliefs and changing them (either through formalized dialogues with a guide or just by confronting them ourselves) can have a definite impact on our physiological systems. Beliefs and their accompanying feelings translate into neurological responses, which in turn affect one’s immune system and general physical well-being. If depression and unhappiness cause a dampening and diminishing of the health process, then joy and happiness can result in a strengthening of the physiological system. Often, discarding the belief that created the unhappiness opens the doorway to comfort, an enhanced sense of “wellness”, and a more healthy bodily process.

The Option perspective begins with an attitude of trust and acceptance. In such an environment, people worldwide demonstrate continually their ability to be their own experts, to find their own answers, and ultimately to transform themselves and their bodies. Any of us can begin that process by listening and accepting and trusting what we know. And we do know!