Attitude Adjustment - 50 Days of Hope

Attitude Adjustment

I’m the first to admit that I didn’t have a very good attitude about being diagnosed with cancer. In my opinion I was too young, too healthy, too busy, and too needed by my family to have this nasty interruption.

I’m usually a pretty positive person, but back then the main thing I was pretty positive about was that I thought I was a goner. (Thank goodness the power of positive thinking failed me!)

It’s often said that there are two kinds of people in life: optimists and pessimists. I want to remind you that optimism won’t always change the inevitable. Take the case of the optimist who fell out of the twelfth-story window. As he went by the fifth story, he looked around, smiled, and said to himself, “So far, so good.”

Pessimism isn’t a very good idea either.

Did you hear about the farmer who lived next door to a pessimist? If the farmer said, “It’s a beautiful day,” the pessimist would reply, “We need rain.” If the farmer was grateful for rain, the pessimist would reply, “It’ll probably ruin the crops.”

One day the farmer had had enough of his neighbor’s pessimism and invited him over. The farmer threw a stick out to the middle of his pond. Immediately his dog went after it and walked on top of the water. He picked up the floating stick in his mouth, walked back across the top of the water, and laid the stick at the pessimist’s feet.

The farmer looked at his neighbor and said, “Pretty amazing, huh?” to which the pessimist replied, “Can’t swim, can he?”

You probably think I’m going to tell you to be an optimist. I am not.

I have found that the best attitude for a cancer patient is neither total optimism (“Without a doubt, I’m going to be cured”) nor total pessimism (“Without a doubt, I’m going to die”), but positive realism (“Without a doubt, I have a life-threatening illness and I may or may not get better, so I will plan for both”).

When we insist that we are going to be cured, we set ourselves up for a terrible defeat if that doesn’t happen. On the other hand, if we insist our situation is hopeless, we already are defeated before we start. I believe it’s best to be realistic and make plans to be financially, emotionally, and spiritually ready to depart this life. That’s not giving up. It’s coming to grips with our own mortality so we really can live life fully without fear of death.

I have seen scores of people who refuse to entertain the thought that they might not be cured of cancer because they want to remain totally optimistic. Those who weren’t cured were devastated. I also know scores of people whose situations were medically hopeless, but they continued to live life fully, and some of them even went on to become cancer-free!

Please don’t misunderstand me. I feel there is a difference between total optimism and a positive attitude. Total optimism says, “I’m absolutely, positively going to be cured.” A positive attitude says, “I hope and pray and truly expect that I’m going to be cured, but even if I’m not, I will not be defeated.”

A totally optimistic attitude insists lemons will get sweeter. A positive, realistic attitude adds some sugar and makes lemonade.

A positive attitude will help heal you—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—but it may or may not cure you. As a cancer support group facilitator and a cancer patient advocate, I’ve seen plenty of people with wonderful, positive attitudes who didn’t get better, and I’ve seen people with crummy attitudes doing quite well. If we’re honest, we all must admit that we have known people with great attitudes who did not get well from cancer or myriad other illnesses.

There were many days after my diagnosis that I shed tears and many days I held private pity parties for myself, but I did try to take control of my heart’s attitude. So much else was out of my control: What chemo drugs I needed. How often I needed to take them. What their toxicity was. What my medical prognosis was.

I had no control over any of those, but I could control my attitude.

I love how author Chuck Swindoll describes the importance of attitude:

Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitude toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it. I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude.^a

I can’t guarantee that a good attitude will give you more quantity of life, but it definitely will give you—and those around you—more quality of life.

The heart of a cancer survivor—your heart—needs to find the right attitude.

Lord, please remind me today that what happens in me is more important than what happens to me. Send Your supernatural power to transform my attitude. In Jesus’ name. Amen.