It's hard to carry a child around with you, but fortunately, in most cases, you don't have to ask a child for directions if you have a well-chosen role model ready to guide you. This is the next prescription: Take one role model, as often as needed. Set aside a few minutes today to fill this prescription so you will have it handy when you need it. Think now about who your role models have been. What do they offer? Who else do you admire, and exactly what do you admire about them? Have your roster of role models ready and waiting to help you the next time you are perplexed.
Bernie SiegelI'm sure as an infant, no matter what I looked like, I felt like the most loved kid getting those massages. So I really think that was a big part of my growing and my brain developing. Most of all however, I think it was the love that was given to me unconditionally and I felt that my whole life. It certainly wasn't that my parents always liked what I was doing, even my becoming a doctor, my father preferred I went into business so he could help me, but I wanted to be a doctor.
Bernie SiegelSome spiritual traditions view the moment of birth as a passage from a state of wholeness and knowledge to a state of forgetting. In this view of the world, we spend the rest of our lives searching for wholeness and knowledge, wellness and health-the balance and harmony we lost when we were born. If our wholeness is interrupted, then our health suffers, and we need to find a way to restore our sense of meaning. When we move in the direction of that meaning, we're healing.
Bernie SiegelDo not go looking for problems to feed your soul. Just let life be your teacher. It will nourish you with its inevitable difficulties. How will you know whether you are letting life teach you and nourish you? If your physical senses become more sensitive to the beauty you see, the words of love you hear, and the life you feel touching your body and soul, then you know you have discovered the great value of misfortune.
Bernie Siegel