FEELING GOOD '92 • FEELING GOOD '92 • FEELING GOOD '92 • FEELING GOOD '92 • FEELING GOOD '92 • FEELING GOOD '92

Affording the best is not the
question„,finding the best is.

Breast Cancer

Continued from preceding page

mation of one's ability to
survive.
If personal finances allow it,
consider this time of treat-
ment and recovery a special
time, when your first priority
is yourself Splurge on that
frivolous robe or that
fabulous outfit. Try on wigs
until you find one that's com-
fortable and wonderful on
you, and learn some makeup
tricks to give you a healthy
appearance. Check out one of
the local in-town spas, such as
Tamara's in Farmington
Hills, and check in for a few
hours of pampering, in the
form of a manicure, pedicure,
facial or massage.

A first ...
Apartment living in a
Skilled Nursing Facility

For the discriminating person
requiring an elegant environment

Bortz
Health Care

Family owned and operated for over 33 years
Medicare approved

Overlooking two beautiful lakes

CALL
363-4121

For our limousine to pick you up for a personal tour of our facility.

6470 Alden Drive, Orchard Lake

F-16

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1991

Remember, always remem-
ber . . . there is life after
cancer, and even though this
experience can inexplicably
alter your emotions, percep-
tions, priorities and values,
it's quite likely that in spite
of, or perhaps because of, your
profound new insights, the
best of life is yet to come!

❑

The Michigan Cancer
Association (phone 541-8162)
and the American Cancer
Society (phone 557-5353) have
lists of numerous other
resources, particularly for
prostheses and wigs. They
will be happy to send these to
you.

Improve Yourself
In The New Year

The holidays are over and
the new year is about to
begin. Many of us will greet
1992 with gusto — and a dog-
eared list of well-intentioned
goals for self-improvement.
For some, making New
Year's resolutions has become
a holiday tradition. Unfor-
tunately, many resolutions
are familiar ones that seem to
pop up annually, such as to
stop smoking — again — or to
lose 10 pounds.
The reason many resolu-
tions never get off the ground
is people tend to set
unrealistic goals for them-
selves, according to psycholo-
gist Ovide Pomerleau, direc-
tor of the Behavioral
Medicine Program at the
University of Michigan
Medical Center.
"If you look at the overall
pattern of resolutions, they
sound good, but they don't
mean much," he says. A more
realistic — and successful —
approach to reaching self-
improvement goals is to avoid
the trap of setting mental im-
peratives, such as "I'll
always" or "I'll never!' Most
people expect more of
themselves than they can
deliver, so they doom them-
selves to failure from the
start. Setting up impossible,
or improbable, situations
steers them that way.
Here are some guidelines
for successful resolutions:
• Live in the present, not
the future. For example, don't
say, "I'll exercise in six
months when I'm thin and
looking good in exercise
clothes!' Instead, start right
away. But do so in sensible,
gradual increments that are
realistic and possible to
accomplish.
"You should build on your
successes — not on your

heroics," Dr. Pomerleau says.
"For example, begin exercis-
ing 15 to 20 minutes a day for
the first two weeks, then in-
crease the time to half an
hour. Don't go out there the
first week and overdo it!'
• Be willing to take time
and practice the new
behavior. After all, new at-
titudes or behaviors take time
to establish and take even
longer to become second
nature.
By the time a person is 40
years old, he or she has sat

Avoid the trap of
setting mental
imperatives.

down to meals roughly 40,000
times. Changing set eating
patterns after that much time
not only takes a great deal of
ambition, but it requires that
the person set a daily
schedule for practicing those
changes.
• Monitor the behavior,
whether desirable or
undesirable. If you monitor a
behavior designated as
desirable, it increases the
behavior, while if you monitor
a behavior that is undesir-
able, it will decrease the
behavior. "It forces you to
acknowledge negative ac-
tivities that you may not have
even been aware of before, and
it also forces you to
acknowledge when you do
something constructive that
is leading toward your goal,"
Dr. Pomerleau says.
Incorporating these fun-
damental behavior modifica-
tion techniques into any
resolution is bound to in-
crease your chances for suc-
cess so that hopefully, the
same old promises won't crop
up again next year. ❑