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The sign on my classroom wall reads, "Attitude is Everything." I tell my students that there will always be things that come easily and other things will be harder to master. Having this knowledge about themselves gives students the tenacity to hang in there when their studies get difficult. Dealing with chronic illness is no different.

As a long time sufferer of Crohn's disease, a debilitating and painful digestive system failure, I have dropped to my knees with pain, feared dying from it and wondered if it ever would end. In fact, it has ended. My Crohn's disease was cured through acupuncture, against every prediction and study conducted about the disease. But the day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year agony made a positive attitude very hard to maintain and crucial to my wellness.

A positive attitude can take many forms. It can mean educating yourself about your condition. It can mean working to stay fit. It can mean surrounding yourself with loving, caring friends and family. It can mean making a point of seeing a comedy show every week. It can mean faith, determination or detachment.

You must detach yourself from your chronic illness. By separating yourself from your condition, you help remove some of the negative effects that your illness can have on your emotional state. You are not your illness. The pain is not your personality. Maintaining a distance between yourself and the symptoms of your illness, you will have a better time avoiding the depression and hopelessness that often come with chronic illness.

You must be determined to overcome your illness. Your determination will help you face your treatments, your disabilities and your life-changing experience. Holding on to your determination will give you strength you never knew you had. It will help you to keep putting one foot in front of the other, every step of the way. If you give up, you risk complicating your illness with depression and poor decision making.

Faith in a power greater than yourself gives you a limitless source of hope and optimism. That hope and optimism can do wonders to help keep your attitude positive. Believing that a cure can and will come can keep your outlook on a positive horizon, giving you strength and confidence that you can beat the disease. Feeling hopeless adds a devastating level of stress to your already difficult situation.

Research has consistently shown that laughter and happiness are powerful treatments against illness.

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