
Keep a Positive Mindset with Parkinson’s Disease Focus on the Positive: Make the negative irrelevent
Menu: Tools to Maintain a Consistent Exercise Program
Lesson learned as a mom from reading books on parenting.
There was a point about 10 years ago when our house was chaos. We had my two teenage stepchildren and two toddlers living all under one roof and it seemed no one was happy. I was talking to an Air Force Reserve Colleague about it one weekend and asked his advice. His civilian job was working as a social worker in a center for troubled teens. He recommended the “Parenting with Love and Logic” series of books.
I ordered the book and started reading. The entire premise of the book seemed completely backwards especially to my husband and I who had spent a great deal of time in the military where bad behavior is immediately corrected.
The premise was to focus your attention and your energy on the positive and do your best to ignore or overlook the negative. Catch your child being good and praise that. In addition never get into an argument with a teenager because you will never win. Tell them how it’s going to be and walk away, end of discussion. They have more at stake and more energy and you will waste an enormous amount of time and energy with no return on investment. Admittedly it took some creativity finding things to praise initially, but it worked surprisingly well for both the teenagers and the toddlers and took a lot less energy. Over a short period of time the behaviors that were being ignored went away and peace was restored in the household.
Do your best to invest your time and your energy on the positive and learn to ignore the negative and make it irrelevant. Time spent perseverating on the negative and what you cannot do, or that getting old sucks takes a huge amount of energy with absolutely no return on investment. Instead spend that energy thinking and focusing your energy on all the things you have to be grateful for and all that you are able to do.


When you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, take the time to see the wisdom in your eyes, your strength and your determination. If you have Parkinson’s and it makes your hand shake so much it does the brushing for you, laugh at that. If you see something you don’t like, set that thought aside and focus on the positive.
When you exercise, focus your thoughts on the positive and learn to make the negative irrelevant. (I will expand on this on next post on mental toughness.)
Next: Actively search for things you like about your chosen activity: write it down