One Famous Doctor's Advice on Healing Yourself

William Osler was one of the last generations of great physicians on the western biomedical side and one of the things I love the most about him was that he was very meticulous about sharing what really denotes a cure and what really denotes medicine as opposed to keeping someone on a drug or a treatment for an indefinite period of time. Now in this video I want to share one of his best quotes that I think is the most important lesson in self-healing and in self-knowledge and self-wisdom and how you can use this knowledge to heal yourself of whatever you're trying to work on. Hey I'm Alex Hine, author of the book Master the Day and I've included a bonus download here for readers which is five Chinese medicine daily habits you can use to potentially add 10 years to your life. It's the first link in the description there below so if you click that, download that, you'll be able to access that right away. You'll also get a weekly email from my newsletter on how to use Chinese medicine habits to live a better life. So the habit and the quote from William Osler goes a little bit like this the good physician treats the disease the great physician treats the patient who has the disease. Now I think there are a few reasons why you can use this to completely change your life. For example there are often patients who fall into like the hypochondria category they're people who are driven by anxiety they come in the story they tell you is very very very long we're kind of in our feelings a lot there's a lot of self-victimization there's a lot of blame there's a lot of like this happened in my childhood and that happened my parents sucked my job sucked the people I dated all sucked and there's just like a little bit of this tone of dripping of victimization like life's been happening to me and I'm really tired of it I didn't sign up for it I didn't want this and so when you look at this kind of person and saying this is a very vague sense what does what's the medicine that person needs do they need the pill the treatment the surgery the acupuncture the herbal formula the massage or is what they need something deeper than that this kind of patient is usually has heavy amount of anxiety there's a heavy amount of fear as well so this kind of person is someone like you kind of just want to like hug you want to like put a warm blanket around them like pat their back it's gonna be okay little Jimmy and this person is not necessarily someone you'd want to heavily medicate you know often when you go to the physician when the person is screaming hypochondria when they have all these anxieties and fears and they're very skittish and worried and what about that what about that what about that the doctor is kind of annoyed and that's the kind of person they're going to put on medication you know they're the kind of person you're just going to like put on Prozac last generation so it's this weird sense of what's the true medicine the person needs for that kind of person who's very worried and all this stuff has gone on in their life maybe they just need to feel safe and secure here's another case example you have the type a businessman wall street banker new york city is like this this this by the books time doesn't take time for lunch it's just like discipline to a t but literally discipline to a fault by definition because he's coming in for medical treatment because his discipline has made him ill he's been sleeping for five hours drinks five cups of coffee a day doesn't go to the gym high powered high stress job and hasn't been taking care of himself now he's 30 pounds heavier he has insomnia he has erectile dysfunction he's gaining like some fat that he never really had before prior in his 30s and there's all these things that are going on but because he's so disciplined and so kind of neurotic about his control of everything does he need medication does he even need massage or acupuncture or formulas or does he need to surrender does that patient need interventions or does he need the ability to take his foot off the gas pedal and just chill a little bit and just let go a little more just maybe i can work less hours maybe i cannot power walk to work maybe i don't have to be pushy with people maybe i can just let things go and sometimes just by that change in life approach i'm just going to let things go just a little bit take my foot off the gas a little take time for lunch breaks my digestion and my acid reflux is going to go away i'm not going to work so late or put so much on my plate because i'm trying to be the highest performer and then the insomnia will improve or maybe it's just like i'm gonna just not try to grit and bear it and then i won't be so easily agitated when i go home with my wife or my friends so what medicine does that person need the type a high power drivers it's all ford momentum what they need is that surrender ability all right i'm just gonna ease off the gas a little bit and then maybe as a third case example you have the person who's just so afraid of the world so afraid to ever date again so afraid to even apply for the dream job so afraid to even book that flight to europe so afraid to say no to her mom so afraid to say no to his dad just afraid of the world this kind of agoraphobia is just afraid of living they won't take any risks for anything they the same meals the same schedules no variation but it's driven by fear it's not driven by love so you can give this patient all the treatment in the world you want and maybe they'll improve a little bit but it's the character the personality traits that are driving this kind of neurotic fear-based behavior of i don't want to make a mistake this kind of weird perfectionism and so for that person maybe what they need is a little bit more self-love it's okay if i make a mistake nothing's gonna happen some practices or some hobbies that will gently get them out of their comfort zone to let them know the world is not a dangerous place the world is mostly a fine place and just all these practices to like take the sheltered dog and just you know just pat it on the back it's gonna be all right you're gonna be all right billy come on boy just give them a little bit of that nurturing and just like yeah you know get out of the house get out of your comfort zone you'll be good so in all these case studies you have a person you have illness patterns you have disease pathology and you have the human in front of you and ideally all holistic or integrative medicine all real medicine really treats the person and not just the disease so what is the person that you may be that may be creating these disease patterns i had to look my own self in the mirror and for me it was mostly that type a businessman control freak by the book doing too much high performing and just stress short-circuiting everything and just had to let go a little bit so maybe in this video for you there's a little gem that'll help you realize how your personality your character traits are driving some of your pathology and your illness and that you can reverse engineer those to figure out how to heal yourself so again if you want to learn some of the life-changing habits from chinese medicine that can help you heal the first link in the description is a free download for five daily habits that can help you add 10 years to your life and if you sign up there you're going to get a weekly email on how to use chinese medicine to have a next level feeling of wellness and self-healing otherwise check out that first link in the description and then check out my related videos right there and there