Two weeks ago I headed out to Michigan to see my grandma.  She’s recently been diagnosed with colon cancer.  That being said, she seemed absolutely the same as ever.  Cheerful, optimistic, happy.

My grandma has a couple of habits that I thought I’d share with you.  The first is this – every day, when she wakes up, she says “Happy day, happy day!  Thank you God for another day!”  She told me that she does this, and said she’s been doing it for years.

The other habit my grandma has is to comment on how wonderful things are.  After breakfast at Colonial Kitchen (like a Denny’s for you non-midwesterners out there) she said, ”Well wasn’t that wonderful?!”

Well, I wouldn’t have called it “wonderful.”  But when she said it, I thought, “why not?!”  So I said “YES!  It was wonderful!”

Some people see this type of behavior as silly, or unrealistic.  I see it as imposing the power of positive thinking on your life.

This approach also puts you in control of your life.  Truly, you can’t change external events, you can only change your response to them.  Take this attitude versus diet books, the news, advertising/marketing – whose message is always the same – you don’t know what’s best for you, and we do.

Another thing I like about my grandma’s approach is that it favors simplicity over complexity. While this may not be apparent at first glance, take a closer look at what’s going on.  When she says “Wasn’t that wonderful?!” about a  breakfast, she’s saying “you know what, I can enjoy even the most simple things…and in fact, those things are most wonderful!”

This is the same attitude my friends over at GarageStrength take.  Read their post about dietary fiber, and transfer that to any pharmaceutical cure versus the natural healing powers of the body (when given time and space to perform).  Simple solutions are best.  Get your fiber and nutrients from your diet, and you don’t have to worry about whether or not you took your pill today.  This is also the central theme of Egoscue therapy, which I’m more and more impressed with on a daily basis – surgery versus functional correction.  Simple is always better, but our culture is obsessed with/possessed by complexity.

The thing I like most about grandma’s attitude, if you couldn’t tell, is that it encapsulates what’s known as “Positive Mental Attitude.”  PMA is a choice.  And it’s a muscle.  Use it or lose it!