If we’re friend’s on Facebook—and if we’re not, we should be!—you probably have been following the saga of my walking pneumonia.  Long story short, I started feeling crummy about a week ago, but as is my way, I figured I could power through it, working a regular day, burning the candle at both ends, and just generally ignoring it.  My doctor confirmed what my mother (not a doctor, by the way) had diagnosed:  I had walking pneumonia.  She (the doctor, not my mother) was seeing lots of cases of it in her practice and it was basically characterized by a persistent, non-productive cough, fatigue, chills, and congestion.  Check, check, check, and double check.

Upon getting the diagnosis, I collapsed into bed like a house of cards, where I have been ever since.  I can’t remember the last time I stayed in my pajamas for days on end; even when I was undergoing treatment for cancer, I got up every day, got dressed, and combed what little hair I had.  With this illness, though, I figured my body was telling me something and it wasn’t good. I needed to take it easy.

Fortunately, I just bought myself a MacBook and the Barbieris, for the first time in the new millennium, are wireless, so I could keep up with the goings on in the world through my trusty computer.  On a lark, I started following Twitter more closely, if only to see what all the rage was.  I even tweeted a few times myself, things along the lines of “I don’t feel good” and “someone bring me pretzels” but I only have a few followers and no one really seemed to care as evidenced by the fact that nobody brought me pretzels.  But after following a bunch of people for several days, I discovered that tweeters fall into a few different categories, some of which I will describe for you here.

With so much death and destruction in the world, I look to find any glimmer of hope in the news of the day.

I found it last week in the New York Times where an article discussed a recent study which reported a 20% rise in cancer survivors in the United States. I, for one, was thrilled. More people surviving cancer is a good thing, right?

I thought so until I posted this new, thrilling fact on my Facebook account and found that at least one person didn’t think it was very positive. Instead, that person wondered if that statistic was inflated because more people are being diagnosed with cancer. This person, a “friend,” went on to wonder if this statistic was even legitimate. “What about all the people who get diagnosed every day?” he wondered.

I was dumbfounded, as were several of my other Facebook friends. Several of them immediately commented, taking this person to task for 1) his insensitivity and 2) his glass-half-empty view of the world. He recanted, obviously chastened, and removed the offending comment from my post. He didn’t know that I was a cancer survivor, not that that really mattered in responding to my update.

To me, there was no way you could read the NY Times piece and see any downside. If there are more diagnoses, it still means that there are more survivors. And in my opinion, that can only be positive.

It just brings me back to that eternal question of just how optimistic can we be? Should we be? There is a lot of talk these days about optimism, the so-called “happiness” gene, one’s emotional outlook, all of the above and their relationship to physical health. Maybe my Facebook friend was having a bad day, or maybe he just isn’t optimistic. Maybe he knows someone who has just been diagnosed and isn’t seeing any value to a study. Hard to tell. But I always find it interesting to see how two people can take the same information or circumstance and look at it in an entirely different way. It makes me wonder: is it the way we’re wired or a choice we make?

I don’t think we’ll ever know for certain, but the latest issue of Oprah magazine does tackle the question of how beneficial positive thinking actually is, citing a study that says that cancer patients who explored their feelings about their illness and talked about it with others had to schedule fewer visits to their doctor. It goes on to say that there are a few things within our control like the quality of our diet and our commitment to exercise, but also our level of optimism. So it is something we can control and something we can unleash when necessary, like when we’re faced with a dire diagnosis and few options.

There are a few secrets to living an optimistic life including expressing yourself, meditating, seeking help if necessary, using your friends to help you, and looking on the bright side. The idea though, expressed simply, is that it is within our power to choose an optimistic mind-set and that we can practice to train ourselves to see things in a positive fashion rather than going negative at the outset.

Sure, we all fall victim to the doubts and the negativity, but I find it interesting that by doing a few simple things, like naming your adversity and identifying the consequences, to name a few, we can train ourselves to look at the bright side.

If you read the Stiletto Gang with any regularity—and because I’m a positive thinker, I’m going to assume that you do!—you know that optimism and positive thinking are two things that I think about and write about a lot. As a result, I was interested to take the quiz in the magazine which would score my level of optimism. I was happy to find that from my perspective,” things usually work out.” I am not “highly aware of potential disappointments,” nor do I “plan for the worst.” Optimism and its effect on health, according to the article is now a “scientific certainty” so in a world gone mad, we have the power to control how we feel and to focus on what’s good despite being constantly bombarded with the notion that the worst is yet to come.

With all that is going on in the world, though, how do you, our Stiletto faithful, keep a positive outlook?

Maggie Barbieri

I was reading a magazine yesterday morning and worrying about how much I had to face once I got to my office when I was confronted with an article on living longer. The article listed several key things one could do to live a longer life but one point in particular struck me. It said—get this—that people who live longer fret occasionally. Apparently, too much optimism can leave you unequipped to deal with the worst possible scenarios that you might encounter in your life. “A little worry,” the article says, “keeps you warmed up for the curveballs life throws.”

See? I knew I was on the right track.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a constant worrier but I do have moments when worrying consumes so much of my brain power that I need to use specific coping mechanisms to stop. There are a few things I remind myself when I get to worrying:

1. Worrying won’t change the outcome. There have been times when I’ve been so consumed with worry, e.g. a test will reveal more disease, a deadline will be blown, someone I love may have an accident in icy weather, that I can’t get out of my own way mentally. Worry just consumes me, eats me up, so to speak. When that happens, I tell myself that whatever is going to happen will happen whether or not I worry; I have no control over the situation. This takes some mental energy, and sometimes it works, other times…not so much.

2. I should set aside a few minutes each day to worry. Someone once told me that if I was consumed by worry, I should set aside a time—say eight o’clock in the morning—and set a timer for fifteen minutes during which time I should worry about the things that concern me. After the timer goes off, the worrying stops. There are a few problems with that plan. First, I don’t own a timer. And second, I don’t have the mental fortitude to put my problems or concerns out of my head after a set period of time. I learned that while doing the ostensibly mind-clearing exercise of yoga. Not going to happen.

3. Worrying is a giant waste of time. Now this is a coping strategy I can get behind. Why? Well, I’m what is called in scientific circles a “Type-A personality.” (In regular circles, I’m just a hyper lunatic.) When I thought about all of the times I worried about a particular situation, only to have my feared outcome never come to fruition, I calculated that I had wasted approximately a year of my life worrying about things that turned out just fine. Or didn’t turn out at all. Or had become completely irrelevant by the time there was an outcome to note. Wasting time is a concept I can get behind and when I think of wasting precious time when I could be doing something constructive or positive, I seem to stop worrying immediately.

Right now, I’m worried that a book I’m working on for my day job won’t get to the printer in time. Or that my daughter won’t do as well as she wants to. Or that my son will get hurt playing lacrosse. But then I remind myself that if the book doesn’t make it to the printer on the day it’s supposed to, it will probably go the week after. And that my daughter has been working day and night to make sure she’s prepared for the “big test.” And that my son wears so many pads while playing lacrosse that it’s amazing he can move at all. See? Worrying is a giant waste of time.

Any other champion worriers out there in Stiletto land? If so, what do you do to stop yourself from biting your nails to the quick, chewing the inside of your mouth raw, or grinding your teeth?

Maggie Barbieri

Is the rhetoric responsible for what happened in Tucson over the weekend? Probably not; we’ll never know. Should everyone stop flinging blame? Yes; it serves no purpose than diluting the argument. Should we reevaluate what we say and how we say it? Absolutely.

End of subject for me.

This is a tragedy that I cannot even comprehend and my blog sisters, Rhonda and Marilyn, have already done the topic justice with their impassioned posts from Monday and Tuesday. Rather than try to chime in with a plaintive cry for more civility, which I’m not sure we’re going to get despite the loss of six lives, I would rather take a stab at another topic entirely and one that might make us smile: dancing.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to dance and will do it anywhere. That means you may find me dancing in the toiletry aisle at the local grocery store, where they play particularly danceable music, or at Target, or even waiting on line at the DMV. I can’t help myself. And believe me, my kids wish I could.

In Sunday’s NY Times Magazine section, Deborah Solomon interviewed the Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin. The questions centered around her role as Surgeon General and today’s focus on solving the problem of our increasingly obese population here in the United States. Surgeon General Benjamin is no skinny minny herself, and readily admits that (after it was pointed out by Ms. Solomon), but says that everyone should find an activity or exercise that makes them happy and gets them moving. For Benjamin, it’s disco dancing. She doesn’t go to the clubs to get her exercise on, so to speak, but finds that after several hours of dancing she feels invigorated and knows that she has gotten some good aerobic exercise. She recommended that if you could do nothing else, you should dance. I couldn’t agree more. My kids are now running and hiding.

While I was reading this article, I was listening to my Ipod, set to “shuffle.” I’ve got a ton of disco music on there, but the song that began playing as I turned the page was “Dance Away” by Roxy Music, which implores the listener to “dance away the heartache…dance away the tears.” That got me thinking: What are the benefits, if any, to dancing?

I did a little research and this is what I found.

1. Dancing increases flexibility. As we get older, we get less flexible; that’s a fact. But by dancing when you can, you increase the flexibility of your joints, the elasticity of your muscles, and your ability to move overall.

2. Dancing increases strength. According to About.com, “Dancing builds strength by forcing the muscles to resist against a dancer’s own body weight.” I think this applies to amateur, recreational dancers, like me, or professional dancers.

3. Dancing increases endurance. Because dance is a physical exercise, and exercise increases endurance, dance increase endurance. Any kind of dancing will do, but rest assured that as a result of your busting a move, you will increase your endurance.

4. Dancing gives you a sense of well being. Dancing is a social activity that usually—unless you’re me—takes place in the company of others. You may even dance with somebody, something I haven’t been able to achieve because I like to lead (but that’s a blog for another time). Being in the company of people who are having fun while exercising can help you build self esteem and give you a positive outlook. What can be better than that, really?

As I write this, I am seeing parallels between dancing and writing. Writers need to be flexible, something I’ve learned from years of revision of first drafts. You may be entirely committed to an idea, only to find that it doesn’t work, or so says your editor or writer’s group. The more you write, the stronger you become; just ask Stephen King who talks about developing “writing muscles” by writing every day. Writers need endurance; you’ve all felt this as you’ve approached a particularly tight and perhaps onerous deadline. But ultimately, writing gives you a sense of well being. Why? Because you’re able to express yourself creatively, just like a dancer, or a painter, or a singer.

The world is a scary place sometimes and this past week only serves to highlight that. Dance more; nobody is watching and nobody cares about seeing expressions of pure joy. Write like you’re the only one who’ll read your work. You can only control what you do and how well you do it, so as the old Mark Twain saying goes, “Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.”

Maggie Barbieri

Last week, I received a lovely note in the mail from the Assistant Principal at my former high school, asking me to be the commencement speaker for the 2011 graduation. I was beyond thrilled. My four years at this all-girls, Catholic high school were some of the best of my life; I just didn’t know it at the time. The heavy academic workload saw to that. Surrounded by some of the best and brightest the tri-state area had to offer, it was an intellectual hotbed of young women striving to be the best they could be. Seriously. I’m not joking. Many of us are still in touch years later and I am astounded by what these women have accomplished. Some are business executives; one is a doctor of theology and expert on the subject of medical ethics; another is the mother of five and grandmother of four; another works tirelessly on various fundraising activities, all on the volunteer level.

I have been thinking a lot about what wisdom I can impart to these young ladies and believe me, I’ll need every day of the next seven months to figure out what I want to say. Here are a couple of thoughts I’ve had. Feel free to add your own after you read this post. (I need all the help I can get!)

1. You’re thin enough, you’re beautiful enough, and gosh darn, you are smart enough. So stop sweating the small stuff! When I think back to my twenties and how I exercised for two hours every day and watched every morsel I put in my mouth, I shudder. I was slim, in excellent shape, with energy to spare, yet I criticized my own appearance every day when I looked in the mirror. As long as you’re healthy, you’re set. Enjoy your youth, because someone who is happy in their youth will look great as they age. (At least this is what I tell myself.)

2. Do it now. Whatever “it” is. Don’t put off gratification until a later date. I’m not heading down a morbid path here—although I could; I’m Irish after all—but there really is no time like the present. You’ll always make more money, there will always be time to work, but don’t underestimate the joy of travel, or writing, or singing, or dancing, or doing whatever it is that makes you happy. When we’re young, I think, we’re racing toward the next step in our lives instead of enjoying the life that we are leading at the time.

3. Don’t settle. For anything. Be it a husband, a wife, a job, a meal at a restaurant, you deserve the best and don’t let anyone tell you differently. You are the author of your story and it is up to you to make sure you live the best life you can.

4. Give back. Make sure that your life plan includes a healthy dose of volunteering, works for social justice, or just plain giving. Studies show that people who give back are healthier, happier, and may live longer. So look around, identify the need, and do something about it. The world will thank you for it.

Obviously, I’ll come up with more, but these are my top four for now. What words of advice would you give to a group of 18-year-olds, or to the 18-year-old who you once were?

Maggie Barbieri