Great expectations can be a prophecy of health

"Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can", exclaims Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), the hero of Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, now showing in cinemas.

While Gatsby, the billionaire with shady business connections, may not be the ideal role model, you've got to give him full marks for his tenacity, vision and expectancy! Starting out life in poverty and misery, he turned his life around to achieve his boyhood dream of wealth and security. His aspirations, expectations and capability enabled him to succeed, as he focussed on the grand possibilities, rather than the roadblocks.

Maybe his background and life experience hadn't equipped him to realise the underpinning significance of honesty, humility and compassion for a fuller, more complete view of himself … and others … and to achieve true happiness.

Such moral emptiness became his undoing in the end; and he discovered that, even if he hadn't, others had moved on; and he was unable to "repeat" or "have another go" at the past, after all.

You may not be able to repeat the past, but there's reason to believe that you can change your experience and degree of wellbeing tomorrow by grasping a better view of yourself today.

Researchers in fields ranging from medicine to education to criminal justice are investigating exactly how expectations work - and when they don't.

In his book, Mind over Mind: the Surprising Power of Expectations, former science journalist Chris Berdik, draws on research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience to show that expectations can heal our bodies and make us stronger, smarter and more successful. Or on the other hand, they can leave us in agony, crush our spirit and undermine our free will.

He relates that Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab psychologists are studying how and why the size, shape, age and ethnicity of an avatar used in virtual experiences can affect how we perceive ourselves. They're finding that the tall, handsome me will think, feel and act differently from the short, pig-faced me. The implications are that we can rewire ourselves to be friendlier, more ambitious or tolerant.

We also learn from the book a good deal more about expectations: how placebo calories can fill us up, how eyesight can improve by simply flipping the chart, why wine judges can't agree and how fake surgery can sometimes work better than real surgery.

It's related that "under the strong impulse of a desire to perform his part, a noted actor was accustomed night after night to go upon the stage and sustain his appointed task, walking about as actively as the youngest member of the company. This old man was so lame that he hobbled every day to the theatre, and sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken, - a signal which made him as oblivious of physical infirmity as if he had inhaled chloroform, though he was in the full possession of his so-called senses", wrote Mary Baker Eddy, a pioneering researcher into how our expectations and beliefs affect our health.

Like Berdik's examples, it's not a stretch of the imagination to understand why the actor experienced a release from pain, once he took on the persona of the character he was portraying. He possessed a new and healthier view of himself, be it for a short time, and experienced the accompanying wellbeing.

A piece in Psychology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-health/201304/great-expectations-re-framing-how-we-think-about-health) helps to explain the relationship of expectations to health outcomes. "A large body of placebo and nocebo research suggests there's a direct correlation. Being hopeful can improve health outcomes, while hopelessness has the reverse effect. Fear of sickness can be a health hazard to the one who's afraid, while an expectation of wellbeing can bring relief. The fact is, Berdik notes, "our real world is in many ways an expected world"", writes Russ Gerber.

Who'd have thought that Jesus' healing works would have resonance with the research findings emerging today? Encouraging a strong expectation of wellbeing (he may have thought of it as "understanding our spiritual existence"), he was able to pierce through the programming or conditioned reasoning of that time. His outlook was a catalyst for healing as he proved time and again that "everything is possible for one who believes".

Small teams of scientific researchers and their very vocal medical exponents, like Drs Bruce Lipton and Wayne Dyer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiXD6ySST8U), are unlocking the science behind Eddy's assertion made well over 100 years ago, "Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously".

It seems, to some extent at least, we have a choice about how we see ourselves and the life we adopt as ours. It's worth asking yourself: what degree of health am I expecting?

Of course, Berdik is quick to temper his claims by concluding that, "The research in this book doesn't promise mind control or unlimited success or freedom from struggle and loss. Its greatest value may be to encourage us to stand back and challenge our assumptions from time to time".

Maybe it's time to challenge our programmed assumptions and realise the mental nature of health.

Even if we're not able to repeat the past, we know we can learn from it, and there's good reason to believe that we may be able to expect and claim better health and increased wellbeing for the future.

We can be encouraged by research that's finding our expectation of health can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Kay Stroud speaks from experience in the mind-body field, especially as it relates to spirituality and health. Kay is a regular blogger on APN website in Australia and New Zealand. She also represents Christian Science to the media and government in Northern Australia.