See Your Glass Half Full

Michael J. Fox says he an incurable optimist, even though he has faced a daily battle with Parkinson’s disease since 1991. How does he maintain such infectious enthusiasm?

Smile and look up. Every morning, Michael J. Fox passes a full-length mirror as he makes his way to greet his family. "This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stooped, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face," he writes in Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. "I would ask the obvious question, ‘What are you smiling about?’ but I already know the answer: It just gets better from here."

Take control. "The only unavailable choice was whether or not to have Parkinson’s. Everything else was up to me."

Find opportunity in adversity. The latest book title, Always Looking Up, is on one level "a short joke," writes Fox, who stands a fraction of an inch shorter than 5-feet-5. His height never bothered him much, though, and probably contributed to a "certain mental toughness," he says. "I’ve made the most of the head start one gains from being underestimated."

Live in the moment. In the spring of 1994, as he began to accept Parkinson’s disease, Fox began to live in and enjoy the moment. "Yesterday’s losses and tomorrow’s trials were no longer the only poles of my existence," he writes in Lucky Man.

Be open to possibilities. "People say, ‘How do you achieve this?’ And you hear, ‘Just keep your head down,’ " Fox says in a Good Housekeeping interview. "But I find the opposite is true: Keep your head up."

Read this month’s cover story on Michael J. Fox.