This is the year … a reason to believe … it’s like Santa … anything’s possible.

Are you an Optimist? Believe the glass is half-full? Have faith and hope?

As friends, we wish and belief the best for/in our friends, right? Even if we have to ‘give them the benefit of the doubt,’ we do – because they’re our friend and that’s what friends do.

I was touched this week by watching the Michael J. Fox special about his book “Always looking up: Adventures of an incurable optimist.” With 19 years of dealing with Parkinson’s Disease, it would be easy and expected for Michael to be at least a little pessimistic – but he’s not. He considers himself an ‘incurable optimist’ and he does that on not only good days, but days that are bad – like he described, when he wakes up and his left pinkie finger is still and the rest of his body is shaking.

How many of us, in his situation, would be able to say:

“For everything this disease has taken, something of great value has been given.” and

“Sure, it’s been one step forward and two steps back. It’s just making that one step count.”

As friends, would it be awesome to be the supportive, hopeful, positive friend who was there for her girlfriends? And how can we be more optimistic?

I propose we give it a shot. Try to look for the ’silver lining,’ Santa in every day, a reason to believe. Let’s make an effort, call a friend when she’s need one, recognize the inspiration and gratitude of girlfriends. Just like good exercise habits can be formed by changing habits for 21 days (or so), if we practice optimism and we make it an active goal in our life, we can perhaps put on some ‘rose-colored glasses’ and start seeing the optimistic view of ‘always looking up.’ Join me in this pursuit of optimism?

Share your comments and thoughts.

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Tags: Michael J. Fox, Optimism, Parkinson, Parkinson's disease

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Be a Better FRIEND. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.