Positive thinking is very important as your thoughts can impact your health. When my husband was diagnosed he held the belief that his treatments would work and he would either become cancer free or live with cancer as a chronic condition. He often told me this was a blip in our life that would soon be over. Having a lot of respect for cancer, he realized that he had a strong opponent to overcome, but he also had a lot to live for and decided to focus on winning the journey.
Positive thinking includes letting go of stressful memories and replacing them with all of the wonderful things that have occurred in your life. Bob Rotella, author of many motivational books, recommends developing a selective amnesia about your past if you’ve experienced a stressful or negative situation. His advice is to re-write your story by focusing on your successes, and his book Life is Not a Game of Perfect includes a wonderful quote by Mark Twain:
“The inability to forget is infinitely more devastating than the inability to remember.”
From a caregiver’s perspective I created a few of my own strategies to keep my thoughts positive:
- The Four Day Rule: I limit my thinking to only focus on the next 4 days which means I don’t fret about the future. An added bonus is that I enjoy daily living again rather than worrying about the “what if’s”.
- Mind Dancing: This involves listening to fun music and imagining myself dancing. It keeps me from worrying and I have a lot of fun with my imaginary dance moves. I typically do this twice a day on my way to and from work.
- At work I posted a picture of the surgeon we read about who could operate on very advanced cases of liver cancer. I would look at his picture daily and visualize him telling me that he removed all of my husband’s cancer.
- I also posted an inspirational quote at my desk, written by Napoleon Hill, which reminded me to remain positive:
Thoughts are things and your thoughts affect you. You become what you think about most. If you think about success, you condition your mind to seek success and you attract large portions of it. Conversely, if you think about failure and despair, you will become miserable and desperate. To keep your mind on a positive track, make a conscious decision to eliminate negative thoughts and replace them with their positive counterparts.
Books also gave me a source of inspiration and I found these ones particularly helpful:
- Anti-Cancer – A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber
- Life is Not a Game of Perfect by Bob Rotella
- Radical Remission – Surviving Cancer Against All Odds by Kelly Turner
- The Essential Louise Hay Collection by Louise Hay
- The Essential Wayne Dyer Collection by Wayne Dyer
- The Greatness Guide by Robin Sharma
Wendy’s Wellness Connection 