Many of us spend a lifetime creating and listening to negative voices. Where do they come from? Why do they so inexorable persist? To begin with, they echo the words of parents, teachers, and other authority figures as well as normal individual insecurities. Further, body chemistry plays a role. When serotonin levels are low, depression can ensue. Also, our species’ history makes us anticipate danger to survive. In addition, we use anxiety to motivate ourselves or to defend against being let down. If we expect the worst, it’s harder to be disappointed. The problem is, we become driven by negativity, addicted to it. Consider the endless mayhem in the evening news. Finally, bear in mind that in intuitive terms negativity has an inherently noisier, more frenetic, and stronger charge than the more even, subtler signal of the positive. Generally, as a novice, you pick up traumatic events and emotional upheaval before anything else. Even in ordinary life our attention is compelled more by the train wreck than by the system that works nearly all the time.

As you can see the negative voices have many sources, much power. To exorcise them requires reconditioning your focus, replacing fear with faith. First, expose the tirade. Hold nothing back. Go straight for the boil. Charge like a samurai: lance it. In one swift blow. Second, summon every ounce of compassion you can muster to combat these untrue, unkind beliefs. Don’t buy into the fear. Third, tell these insufferable voices, "Thank you for sharing" and keep moving on.

I ruefully appreciate from my own experience how tenacious negative voices can be. They feed on our apprehensions and on the part of ourselves that is reluctant to be large. Just when you think they are gone- they're ba-ack. Nonetheless, there comes a point when you must decide if you want a life that is fear-driven or one founded on love and hope. Establishing this premise is tantamount to bringing your healing to the next level. Remember, each gain will be incremental. You’ll catch the negative voices faster; you’ll dismiss them more quickly. Significant improvement, but its also true that the process is ongoing.

In all types of illness, from cancer to a cold, never fail to remember the mind’s capacity to heal, even what has been deemed unhealable. By lovingly learning to focus your intuition, you can strive to cure or at least improve any health situation. This brings us to an appreciation of a world where positive beliefs, emotions, and actions are prime factors in getting well, can even stimulate our immune response. A world where our defense against illness is related to a bodywide communication network we can take an active part in programming. A mix of science, instinct, and mystery, this is how intuitive healing can benefit you.

We can't always regulate what happens in life, but the quality of our passage is up to us. Become accustomed to looking at your beliefs as intuitive guideposts, both as precursors to illness and as ways of deflecting it. Prevention is more within your grasp than you may think.

Exercise: Questions To Help You Create Positive Beliefs About Healing

• Do your beliefs give you strength during illness? If not are you ready to find ones that do?
• In a health crisis, what role does intuition play? How far would you go to trust it?
• How do you treat yourself when you get sick or are in pain? If you're self-critical how can you turn that into self-compassion?
• Do you believe love can heal? How about humor? Are you willing to put them to the test?