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Caring For Elderly Parents and Feeling Negative About Life?
By: tonia boterf
When we care for our elderly parents, our lives become more complicated and difficult. While we try to provide love and care for our aging loved ones, resentment and negativity often enters our lives too. Feeling negative, behaving in a negative way and speaking in a negative fashion often creeps up on a person and it will actually make any situation worse. So, what can we do? We need to overcome the negativity, think in a more positive manner while trying the best we can under, often, challenging conditions.
Changing the negative thoughts and feelings in our lives into positive ones, isn't easy but when you do it, it can create a much better life. If we exude negativity, those around us often will begin to be more negative too. If we approach life with a more positive attitude, that too 'infects' others. So, I hope this article can help you reduce or even eliminate the negativity in your life, while caring for your family members, and it becomes a more positive journey.
Negativity can be defined as "any attitude, belief, or expression that works against you, or is limited in vision."
Is the monster of negativity growing in your life? Do you wish to slay the negativity monster? Then let's get going toward Overcoming Negativity in You!
1. What types of negative things are you doing in your life: behaviors, actions and talk with others and towards yourself? Write them down, look to see if there is a pattern of when, where, with whom, around what type of circumstances or situations do they happen? Examples: eat bad food, tell myself I'm dumb, tell my wife she's overweight, yell at the kids, say bad things about my boss, cut in front of other drivers, don't spend time on the things I really should, etc.
2. Divide list into two parts: negative behavior that you do to others and negative things you do to yourself. If you are brave enough, have a friend, family member, co-worker or other give you ideas of what they see too about you.
3. Prioritize your items on your two lists from 1 to, with 1 being the most important negativity your want to change.
4. Now take the number one item from each list, these are the two negative areas you are going to change in your life.
5. Set a Goal for each that you want to accomplish (goals are broad statements such as, "I will not yell at my wife").
6. Now you need to write Objectives for your Goals. Objectives are specific in what you want to accomplish and have a timeframe in which you want to accomplish it. Example: "By (date - give yourself one year or less if you think you can realistically make it), "I will not yell at my wife when in public, 50% of the time". Make your Objectives real and reasonable. You will need to determine a way to measure how you are succeeding as you progress.
7. You are ready for the creative part what steps or actions are you going to do to reach your Objective? You need to list the obstacles that are in your way too and the ways you are going to get over/around/underneath them. Don't limit yourself when you brainstorm on this, you will edit it later. Have someone else brainstorm with you, it can be fun.
8. Now you have to whittle down the steps you are going to implement into some you are going to try immediately. Keep your brainstorming list in case the steps you choose don't work; something else from your brainstorming list may do it! After you have chosen a few really good steps that you think you can realistically implement, and that will get you to reach your Objective, set the date to implement your plan. Don't be afraid if some steps don't work; you just use different ones. Don't be afraid if you lose motivation, get sidetracked or give-up once in a while, you can get right back on track at any point. Have someone to support and encourage you and someone to keep you focused and on on-track. It isn't easy but by writing things down, having a plan of action and by reviewing it daily, you will start to see progress.
9. Once you reach your Objective, start on another or increase its success rate. Once you reach a Goal, start another. You can have a few Goals and each can have many Objectives under each. As you continue, you will find it easier and that you accomplish things faster. Your life will change and you will Overcome Negativity in Yourself.
10. Two key components of Overcoming Negativity in Yourself are to surround yourself with positive people and people who do not have the negative habits that you have towards others. People do adapt to the 'flocks' of people they hang with, so make sure the 'flocks' of people you choose to be around have the values, traits, behaviors and attitude you want and/or have. The other key component is self-talk. We can all be our own worst enemy with what we tell ourselves in our 'heads'. Stop using negative self-talk and replace it with positive self-talk. Sometimes changing our self-talk is very hard and many people have very good luck with self-talk CDs. Listening to self-talk CDs in the background or while you sleep have proved very effective for many. If you're interested in self-talk CDs, we have some excellent choices in our product/resource section.
As you change how you think from more negatively, to more positively, the duties of caring for your senior adult will get lighter and easier. Help others that you interact with, such as - family members, your aging parents, your siblings, etc., think more positively too. Taking care of you can also include: caregiver support groups, having the right tools and information that you need for your challenges, practical life coaching to help with motivation and more, creating a more flexible work schedule, maintaining your health and laughing, can all help you find a way to a more positive life and future.
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