My song today is, ‘I Believe’. This song was written by co-written by Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl and Al Stillman in 1953. ‘I Believe’ was introduced by Jane Froman on her television show. Troubled by the uprising of the ‘Korean War’ in 1952 so soon after ‘World War 11’, the song was commissioned when the composers were asked to write a song that would offer hope and faith to the populace. Froman's commercial recording reached Number 11 in the Billboard charts during a 10-week stay. ‘I Believe’ has been recorded by many others; the most notable being Frankie Laine, whose version spent eighteen non-consecutive weeks at the top of the ‘UK Singles Chart’. Frankie Laine also had the most successful version in the USA, where he reached Number 2.
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When I first heard this song, I was 11 years old and the singer was Frankie Laine. I had been knocked down by a wagon and run over. When the wagon stopped, my body had been twisted around the main-drive propeller shaft, leaving me close to death. My traffic accident left me with a damaged spine, a punctured lung, a crushed chest, and every limb in my body broken several times. This accident proved to be a life-defining moment for me that would fashion my future beliefs. Whatever I did in life, thereafter, was influenced by hearing from my semi-conscious state, my parents being told by the hospital doctor that I would be dead by the following morning; followed one month later by being told by the same hospital consultant that I would never walk again.
I was a patient in Batley Hospital for nine months, and by the day I left the hospital, while I was unable to walk, I had started to experience feelings below my waistline again(telling me that my spine was once more sending messages to my brain and muscles). What I did during my nine-month hospital stay helped me to realise my fervent belief that I would not only live but that I would one day walk again.
It took me the first thirteen years of my life to realise that one’s mind is more powerful than one’s body, particularly when it comes to influencing one’s future actions. I had suffered horrific body injuries, and when my parents were told by the medics “I’m afraid that your son will be dead by the morning.” I instantly said to myself, “Oh no I won’t!” Then, about one month later after my life was out of danger, and my damaged spine (which left me with no feeling below my waist) led the doctors to tell me and my parents, ‘I’m sorry, but your son, Billy, will never walk again,” again, I instinctively told myself, “Oh yes I will!”
It took me almost three years before I was able to walk again, by which time I had learned a great deal about the power of the mind over the body. During this time, I had effectively established a set of beliefs that served my prime purpose in life instead of militating against it. When western medicine offered me no hope of ever been able to walk again; when I was told that which my ears did not want to hear nor my heart believed, I turned to the doctrines of the east in India, Japan and China for my answers and source of inspiration.
As a young man, not yet a teenager, I read copiously about the functioning of the human body, about the channels and conductors of pain within one’s body, and about the importance of breathing patterns, muscle control, body posture, and balance. My school teacher, Mr, MacNamara, was a regular hospital visitor and he kindly obtained the books I wanted to read. My extensive reading was able to teach me the vital connection between brain and body. I learned about the power of mental imagery and how to stimulate muscle response by means of positive self-talk.
Before I left the hospital nine months later, I had regained my sense of feeling and pain in my legs. My damaged spine had ‘miraculously’ reconnected and had started sending signals to my brain again. During this nine-month period of hospitalisation, I had started to master transcendental meditation methods of the East, and I daily practised progressive relaxation (which I have continued ever since, and which I have taught, written upon, and instructed to hundreds of different groups).
Even at a young age of 11 years (going on 12), I quickly accepted that one’s belief is simply a matter of ‘made up mind’. I never forgot those words of wisdom by the title character in the play ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare which suggests that all human knowledge is limited:
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ (Hamlet (1.5.167-168), Hamlet to Horatio).
As I grew older, I became more independent in both thought and action, but I would be thirty years old and on a training course in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to become a Probation Officer before I would read about the work of an American Behaviourist Albert Ellis. Here was a man who would change my life with his constructive relationship between belief and action.
Albert Ellis was an American psychologist, who in 1955 developed ‘Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy’. He held MA and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University and the American Board of Professional Psychology. His methods became the forerunner to what today has developed into and has become known as ‘Cognitive Behaviour Therapy’.
Essentially, Ellis, expounded the view (now universally accepted by most clinical psychologists), that anyone who suffers from emotional disturbance possesses an ‘irrational belief system’ which leads them to be wrongly convinced that it was a bad event or incident in their past life which brought about the emotional disturbance they currently feel. Ellis’s methods tell them that this is not so. His method of ‘Rational Emotive Therapy’ (RET) illustrates the importance of one’s self-talk and their beliefs formed. It identifies the distinction between ‘rational beliefs’ and ‘irrational beliefs’, and it indicates the necessity to change one’s belief system whenever one’s health, happiness and hope factors are not helped by the beliefs one holds. Ellis says that there are some ‘irrational beliefs’ (unprovable beliefs) which are helpful and which make us feel and act as better humans, such as a religious belief, but in the main, he advocates that most irrational beliefs tend to be unhelpful beliefs.
Ellis reminds us that we talk to ourselves constantly in the form of silent thought communication. He tells us that some irrational words we use in our self-talk such as ‘should’ and ‘must’ need to be eradicated from our vocabulary because the use of such words simply leads one to exaggerate our feelings and actions. In emotional terms, we make ourselves feel much worse than is rational to feel in whatever our situation and circumstances happen to be.
A lifetime of working with people who exhibited problematic, addictive, and emotionally-disturbed behaviour has led me to conclude with certainty that you can do a thing only if you have the belief that it can be done. I have also learned that there is nothing or no person that is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that ‘thinking it’ so will not ‘make it so!’ If we apply this philosophy to ourselves, we come up with the inevitable conclusion that it is what we choose to believe that makes us the person we are and not the events we experience. Events and experiences may influence our thoughts and future behaviour, but they cannot determine it!
Beliefs are personal, unique, and typically, strongly held, whether they be rationally or irrationally based. We have often held our unhelpful and irrational beliefs for years (sometimes decades), and they may be deeply ingrained in our behaviour and response pattern. So, if we choose to abandon long-held irrational beliefs, we ought not to expect it to be any easier than breaking the addictive habit of smoking cigarettes (for example) that we have practiced for twenty or thirty years. We need to resist our temptation to relapse back into our old beliefs with vigour and determined and positive self-talk. There is a world of difference between the results brought about by saying ‘ I might -I may-I will- I shall’, and the energy required to bring about such differences in one’s action can be found in the use of a single word spoken. If a person is 100 percent determined to do something, they will never tell you “I might do this” or “I might do that”. Instead, (and at the very least), they will always say “I will do that” or at best say, “I SHALL DO THAT!”
Please believe me when I tell you that what truly distinguishes the many from the few is the ability to act according to one’s beliefs. Building a solid foundation of helpful and rational beliefs will keep one grounded in fact as well as enabling one to achieve the optimum possibility out of any situation. One's beliefs enable us to acquire the strength we need to overcome any of life’s obstacles. Few of us during our lifetime come anywhere close to exhausting the resources within our capacity, and we have deep wells of mental and physical strength which most of us never use. The real strength of any person will not be found in their physical capacity, but in their indomitable will to believe it possible. This is a force which resides not in one’s forearm, but inside the forehead.
I will leave you with one of my favourite quotations by Thomas Paine, an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary of the 18th century, who said:
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
I believe that Albert Ellis and Thomas Paine would have made good and convivial companions by a warm fireside on a cold winter’s night drinking a flagon of ale.
Love and peace Bill xxx