Arnold Fox M.D. - Wake Up! Youre Alive: Healthy Living Through Positive Thinking: Healthy Living Through Positive Thinking

WAKE UP!
YOURE
ALIVE

WAKE UP!
YOURE
ALIVE

Healthy Living Through Positive Thinking

Arnold Fox, M.D. AND Barry Fox, Ph.D.

An Approved Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation

Published 2019 by Gildan Media LLC

aka G&D Media

www.GandDmedia.com

WAKE UP! YOURE ALIVE. Copyright 2011, 2019 The Napoleon Hill Foundation. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, transmit, store, perform or record the contents hereof.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. No liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained within. Although every precaution has been taken, the author and publisher assume no liability for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Front Cover design by David Rheinhardt of Pyrographx

Interior design by Meghan Day Healey of Story Horse, LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

ISBN: 978-1-7225-0108-2

eISBN: 978-1-7225-2209-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TO THIS EDITION

The Vault is Already Open

by Mitch Horowitz

r eading this book reminds me of a storypossibly apocryphalabout magician Harry Houdini (18741926). A police chief in a German town swore that he had constructed an uncrackable safe. He challenged the escape artist to visit his police station and attempt to open it. When the day arrived, reporters and onlookers flooded into the station house to see if the legendary escapist could break the unbreakable vault.

Police thoroughly stripped and searched the magician for any kind of skeleton key or devices. Houdini then asked to be left alone in the room with the safe.

Moments later, the magician emerged and triumphantly invited the assembled to view the safe. Its iron door hung open with no sign of tampering. The chief was flustered. How, he demanded, did you do it? Houdini explained that, as a first step, he did what few would have even thought of. He simply tried the handle. The chief, it seemed, had neglected to lock the door.

This is a good illustration of what Arnold Fox, M.D., sees as the puzzleand the solutionbehind many of our modern illnesses. A longtime and respected internist, Fox has tried the safe door, so to speak, and discovered that its often not locked at all. In Wake Up! Youre Alive, Fox links many of our bodily ailments, discomforts, and complaints not to implacable or complex organic causes, but rather to our unwillingness to try, as a first resort, to live life to its fullest, with purpose, hopefulness, and dedication; to exercise our innate abilities and agencies to overcome adversity (including physical adversity), rather than to surrender at the first sign of difficulty, seeking solace in substances that often provide only fleeting relief, if that.

Drawing upon case studies of patients whose attitudes reversed mental, emotional, and physical decline, Dr. Fox reasons, in effect, that if we, like Houdini, just tried the door, we might discover that the vault isnt locked. Possibilities abound, and they are in our mental attitudes.

Philosopher William James (18421910) observed that our moods and expressions frequently determine our sense of wellness. The way you comport yourselfsuch as slouching versus standing erect, or grimacing versus beamingresults in, rather than reflects, your physical and psychological state, James reasoned. This is more than conjecture. In recent years, researchers at Georgetown University School of Medicine, including my friend Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., have discovered that administering Botox appears to relieve depression. Why? Rosenthal and his colleagues theorize that because the cosmetic treatment effectively freezes the muscles that are used to frown, Botox may have causal effects on mood. This supports Jamess observation from a century ago.

This type of outcome is in perfect harmony with Arnold Foxs message. But rather resorting to a drug, Fox notes, you can often get the same results on your own by carefully monitoring and acting to improve your manifested moods and expressions. How you act, Fox observes, correlates to how you feel.

My approach, he once told a patient, is simple, not simplistic. Simple answers work the best. The very complex answersdrugs, surgeries and so onare not doing the job. In many cases they compound the problem.

Of course, the physician is in no way suggesting that you forego treatment or eschew traditional medicine. Rather, he is driving home the point that: Walking enthusiastically in the newness of life tilts your biochemical scales in favor of health and happiness.

Among the things I love about Wake Up! Youre Alive is that it is written and structured to be absorbed in a single sitting. You can afterward return to it many times, which the author encourages. But Foxs message is so plain and urgent that it can be taken in and acted upon quickly. Wont you try the door of the vault?

Mitch Horowitz is the PEN Award-winning author of books including Occult America and The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality. Visit him @MitchHorowitz.

FOREWORD

by Norman Vincent Peale