My blogging, or rather reading of blogs, and networking this morning took me to a recording of Forbes Healthcare Summit 2012, specifically an interview with Michael J. Fox. Of course, the discussion was about Parkinson’s Disease, the research being done, and the strides being made to find a cure. But the interview was also about the journey. When asked at the end of the interview if there was anything he would like to say to other patients or doctors, a message about fighting disease he would like to get out there, Michael replied….
“I think what is key in anything is getting through acceptance, acceptance of your situation and go about learning about it instead of avoiding it… Acknowledge the loss involved… If you can acknowledge the truth of it and then take the heft of it, take the weight of it, the size of it and see just know how it fits into your life, into your world and see what other space there is left over. There is room to move, there’s room in your life to explore other things. If you can acknowledge that, it will take you back to what you can do about your situation. It will free you up. If it’s this kind of free floating sense of doom that you don’t ever look at and you don’t try to understand then you’ll never move past it or find a way to work toward a cure. It’s that acknowledging it as a fact, as a truth, and then you can move forward. For me that was the journey. Seven years… I had to suffer for seven years, I just hung out with my issues… and then a series of events that happened that brought me to a place where I thought, no, this is an opportunity to be of service, to try to move the dial. Once you figure out how much it takes from you, you figure out what you have to give.
We have a motto a kind of mantra that I always throw out whenever we are talking about what we do and it is, Purity of Motive. We have no agenda other than to figure this out…”
~ Acceptance of your situation ~ There is room to move in the space left over ~ Understand it to move past it, that is the journey ~ Be of service ~ Purity of Motive
To listen to the question at the end of the interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaSek6zgkIY&playnext=1&list=PLpndQ-APwbNU4ZQv-eFvToQtK2DBDMKb6&feature=results_video
To listen to the interview in its entirety:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7RaRPQ5WU8
I hope you will take a minute to listen and that it will have an affect on you, just like it did me!