The placebo effect is one of the more intriguing aspects of human psychology. Welldocumented medical evidence shows that some medical patients report an improvement in their symptoms when they believe they have received treatment – even when they haven’t.
The placebo effect
Various studies ranging from people taking placebo pills to those having placebo knee surgery, have proved that the placebo effect is significant. Placebos have improved patients’ experience of pain, depression, some heart ailments, gastric ulcers and other stomach complaints.
Between 35% and 75% of patients benefit from taking a dummy pill. What’s more, the bigger and more dramatic the patient perceives the intervention to be, the bigger the placebo effect.
Big pills have a greater placebo effect than small ones, injections work better than pills and surgery has the greatest effect of all. What’s even more interesting is that the placebo effect extends beyond a patients’ subjective experience. “Doctors in one study successfully eliminated warts by painting
them with a brightly colored, inert dye and promising patients the warts would be gone when the color wore off.
In a study of asthmatics, researchers found that they could produce dilation of the airways by simply telling people they were inhaling a bronchiodilator, even when they weren’t. Patients suffering pain after wisdom-tooth extraction got just as much relief from a fake application of ultrasound as from a real one, so long as both patient and therapist thought the machine was on,” reports a New York Times article on the phenomenon.
Harnessing mind power
These instances are another reminder of how powerful the mind can be in creating a person’s reality. If the ‘treatment’ is absent then one can assume that it’s the power of the mind that’s doing the healing.
It was Henry Ford who said, “If you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you are right”, which goes to heart of how your perceptions about things can influence whether you achieve success or failure. If you can ‘train your brain’ into changing negative perceptions into positive ones there is the possibility that you can change outcomes in your business life as well.
Very often what differentiates a successful person from an unsuccessful one is not qualifications, experience or even being in the right place at the right time, but rather having the right psychology or mindset.
Winning psychology
In his blog MindPower Marketing, neurolinguistic programming (NLP) practitioner, Robert Greenshields, lists six keys to developing a winning psychology:
- Have a clear sense of purpose: If you keep switching track you’ll never be focussed enough to achieve success
- Develop positive thinking: Channel the energy that you usually pour into worrying about what could go wrong, into picturing success
- Be proactive: Success often comes from a willingness to take action. The first step in taking action is deciding what you want.
- Have pride and confidence: Think of yourself as an expert that has the ability to offer solutions that other people will value. Having expertise is not beneficial if you don’t let people know you have it.
- Focus on personal development: Master a few important skills that will give you an advantage. Stay focused on them so you become an expert in them.
- Stay productive: Know how much your time is worth, make the best use of the time available to you and only do things that earn the value of your time.
