POSITIVE THINKING

It hadn't occurred to me that what may be positive thinking in one person's view is not to another. When I had a patient dying of cancer, she was told to read mind over body stuff and told me that she had felt punished by having to read it. She had tried to live a clean and stress-free life but facts and people around her never let that happen. One might ask what her genetics also had to do with her illness. At any rate, she felt that it was expected of her to cure her own cancer with mind over body and she was failing to be able to do it.

When Obama ran on a platform of Hope and Change I could easily relate to both concepts. However, the more I thought of it, I realized that too many people believe prayer is hope, about which they do nothing to advance themselves or their fellow man. Hard work and determination must accompany hope if change is to be the result. Those who pray that a higher power will do it for them, or may even think the President they voted for will do it for them instantly, are living an illusion. Only fools believe an accurate diagnosis means a total cure with no assist from the patient.

Positive thinking and hope make your body feel better. Less cortisol accumulates and your brain deteriorates more slowly as the years go by, giving reason to not leaving clinical depressions untreated. Just as 'you can't cure stupid', positive thinking alone cures little. It allows you to see happiness where others miss it, beauty when others see only blemishes, humor in even a hopeless situation. Positive thinking allows you to take control of your own life rather than waiting for someone else to do it for you. Positive thinking, however, must have facts and reality as a base, otherwise we must call it delusional thinking, which I believe is as contagious and lethal as the swine flu, or H1N1 as we lovingly refer to it.

Rise, Americans, not to do battle but to support the man you appointed to do a job for you. Give him time and ideas, not edicts. It is, after all, his job, not yours, to run the country.