Quote Of The Day By Michael J. Fox: 'If You Don't Think You Have Anything To Be Grateful For, Keep Looking. Because You Don't Just...'

Michael J. Fox is one of the most beloved Hollywood stars thanks to his iconic role as Marty McFly in "Back to the Future" as well as leading roles in the likes of 1985's "Teen Wolf," "Doc Hollywood," and "The Frighteners." He's also been a prolific TV star, appearing in over 170 episodes of "Family Ties" — one of which included a short but special appearance from Tom Hanks. 

One of Fox's most iconic roles on the small screen was as New York Deputy Mayor Mike Flaherty in ABC's "Spin City." In the show, he tries to keep everything running smoothly while neglecting his own life. The star ultimately had to step away when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and Charlie Sheen replaced him in "Spin City" Seasons 5 and 6.

While Fox has been semi-retired since leaving the show, he has occasionally done voice work or appeared in smaller roles in the years that followed. He even reunited with "Spin City" co-creator Bill Lawrence for Apple TV's "Shrinking" Season 3 where he played Gerry, a Parkinson's patient who strikes up a friendship with Paul (Harrison Ford) in a waiting room. Fox was recently awarded the highest honor from the Order of Canada for his Parkinson's advocacy, which is why we're celebrating him with today's quote of the day.

"If you don't think you have anything to be grateful for, keep looking. Because you don't just receive optimism. You can't wait for things to be great and then be grateful for that. You've got to behave in a way that promotes that."

The quote from Michael J. Fox comes from his cover story for the AARP in 2021 where he explained his outlook on life after retiring from Hollywood, as well as his activism in raising awareness about Parkinson's disease.

During the conversation, he explained that changing his own perspective of life with Parkinson's helped pull him out of a dark place. Fox recognized how grateful he was for the life he's built for himself, noting how his late father-in-law made an effort to show gratitude a lot of the time. Fox also said: "I started to notice things I was grateful for and the way other people would respond to difficulty with gratitude. I concluded that gratitude makes optimism sustainable."

Michael J. Fox's quote about gratitude is about two things, the first being that there is always something to be grateful for even when life is at its most difficult. That's not to say we should be thankful for being tested by everyday life, that would be a little dramatic... But it's about recognizing that we are often surrounded by positive things, it's just about perceiving them. It could be that you're grateful for a good cup of coffee, animals that make you smile, or even just a new episode of your favorite TV show.

The second part of the quote is about changing your perspective, and acknowledging that we can't just blindly wait for things to show up in our lives that we can be grateful for. This means putting yourself in a mindset where you actively do positive things as a way of bettering the world around you.

Fox's work in the last few decades is proof that changing your outlook can lead to positive things, like how he started The Michael J. Fox Foundation to fund scientific research into finding a cure for Parkinson's. That work has led to support for patients and led to numerous medical breakthroughs and discoveries since its inception in 2000.

• "I find as long as I acknowledge the truth of something, then that's it. I know what it is and then I can operate. But if I overestimate the downside of something or the challenge of something and I get too obsessed about the difficulty of it, then I don't leave enough room to be open to the upside, the possibility." — from a 2009 interview with Beliefnet
• "There's always failure. And there's always disappointment. And there's always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss, and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums." — from his 2010 book, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future," via NPR
• "Always be available to your kids. Because if you say, 'Give me five minutes, give me 10 minutes,' it'll be 15, it'll be 20. And then when you get there, the shine will have worn off whatever it is they wanted to share with you. I've never gotten up to see something one of my kids wanted to show me and not been rewarded. — from a 2010 interview with Reader's Digest (via PEOPLE)
• "I don't subscribe to any particular doctrine or ideology. I just think that there's kind of a good and bad, the good being life in its purest, happiest form, and the other being the darker side of existence. I believe that the majority of times the scale tilts toward the good. It's this amazing thing that rolls on and if we get in the flow of it, that's God. And if we fight it, if we swim the other way, we're swimming away from the purest expression of this life." — from a 2012 interview with Parade