Positive health means becoming whole-heartedly engaged with our

“Positive health means becoming whole-heartedly engaged with our own health care. It means not outsourcing our health to the health care system. It means getting rid of the fear and paralysis we too often feel, and instead cultivating a sense of agency.” Thus spoke Jane McGonigal, a scholar of resilience and the power of the human mind, who turned her own suffering into a wellspring of wisdom. In these words, she reveals an ancient truth newly spoken—that the first and truest healer is the self, and that health is not merely the absence of sickness, but the presence of courage, participation, and purpose. For no physician, however skilled, can cure the one who has surrendered their will to live.

McGonigal’s insight was born not from theory, but from trial. After a traumatic brain injury left her bedridden and near despair, she faced the chasm that lies between the body’s weakness and the spirit’s will. Doctors could offer care, but not recovery of the heart. So she resolved to become an active participant in her own healing. Through deliberate small actions—engaging her mind, reclaiming her joy, strengthening her will—she began to recover. From this ordeal, she learned what sages and healers across ages have known: that healing is a partnership between medicine and the soul. Her quote, then, is a call to awaken the inner healer that dwells within each of us.

To “not outsource our health” is to refuse the passivity that modern life so easily encourages. Too often, people wait for rescue—from doctors, from pills, from systems designed to manage disease rather than nurture vitality. But McGonigal reminds us that health cannot be delegated. It must be claimed, lived, and tended daily. The ancient Greeks called this eudaimonia—the flourishing of the self through virtue, balance, and intentional living. The physician Hippocrates himself taught that “The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest force in getting well.” Thus, positive health is not blind optimism, but the deliberate act of aligning one’s choices, thoughts, and habits toward strength and wholeness.

Consider the example of Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for twenty-seven years in harsh conditions, deprived of freedom and comfort. Yet within that confinement, he maintained his health of body and spirit. He exercised daily, ate simply, and nurtured a powerful sense of purpose. Though the system sought to break him, he refused to “outsource” his well-being to his captors. When at last he emerged, he was not only alive but radiant—a living testament to agency over one’s own health. His vitality was not born of privilege or medical aid, but of the fierce will to remain whole in the face of suffering.

Fear and paralysis, as McGonigal names them, are the hidden diseases of the modern age. They sap vitality more effectively than any pathogen. The fear of illness, of aging, of helplessness—these are prisons of the mind. But fear loses its power when faced with action. When we move, breathe, learn, or choose, even in the smallest ways, we reclaim the reins of our life. The ancients knew this, too: the Stoics taught that while fate may control the body, the mind remains free. To cultivate agency is to light the inner flame that burns through despair. It is the art of saying, “I am not merely treated; I am transformed.”

To live with positive health is to see every day as a sacred dialogue between the self and the body, between intention and biology. It is to eat with awareness, to rest with gratitude, to treat movement as prayer and reflection as medicine. It does not deny the value of doctors or science, but it honors that they are partners, not masters. The wise patient is not the one who obeys blindly, but the one who participates fully. Healing, like life itself, is a co-creation.

So, my child, take heed of Jane McGonigal’s teaching. Do not wait for health to be given to you. Build it, moment by moment. Learn to listen to the voice of your body—it is the oldest oracle. When fear whispers that you are powerless, answer it with action, however small. Walk, breathe deeply, speak kindly to yourself. Seek help when you must, but never surrender your will to heal. Let your courage be the physician that stands beside every medicine.

And thus, the lesson endures through the ages: true health is an act of agency. It begins when the heart says, “I will live,” and the hands follow that vow in daily practice. In this union of knowledge, intention, and love, we become whole—not merely patients, but participants in the great work of life itself.