Why Positivity Is a Core Quality in a Good Caregiver

By Miguel Silveira, Psychologist at Lxiscare.

When you’re trusting someone to come into your home, or your parent’s home, to provide care, technical skill is only part of the picture. The caregiver’s attitude matters just as much, especially when you’re coordinating that care from another city or another country and can’t be there to see it for yourself day to day.

Is your glass half empty or half full? How you answer that old question about positive thinking says something about your outlook on life and your attitude toward yourself, whether you lean optimistic or pessimistic, and it can even affect your health.

Research shows that personality traits like optimism and pessimism can influence many areas of health and wellbeing. Positive thinking supports effective stress management and is linked to a long list of health benefits.

Suffering and pain aren’t quite the same thing. Pain is a natural, unavoidable part of life; suffering is what we add on top of it, and that part is often a choice.

Positive thinking doesn’t mean ignoring life’s harder moments. It means accepting them without taking them too personally, so you can focus on solutions in a healthy, practical way, and still find something good even in something difficult.

What does positive thinking actually do?

Neuroscience is still exploring exactly how positive thinking affects health, but the evidence so far points to:

• Longer life expectancy
• Lower rates of depression
• Lower levels of distress
• Greater resistance to the common cold
• Better psychological and physical wellbeing
• Better cardiovascular health and a lower risk of cardiovascular death
• A stronger ability to cope during difficult, stressful periods

Positive thoughts strengthen self-esteem, support our health, and tend to attract other positive people into our lives, the kind of people we build real friendship and warmth with.

How do you build a more positive mindset?

You can train yourself to turn negative thinking into positive thinking. It’s a simple process, but it takes time and practice, since you’re essentially building a new habit. A few ways to think and act more positively:

• Identify where you need to change. If you want to be more optimistic, start by noticing where in your life negative thinking shows up most: at work, during your commute, in a relationship. Start small, with just one area.
• Check in with yourself. A few times a day, pause and notice what you’re thinking. If your thoughts are mostly negative, look for a way to give them a more positive spin.
• Don’t lose your sense of humour. Let yourself smile or laugh, especially in hard times. Look for the humour in everyday situations. When you can laugh at life, it weighs less.
• Keep a healthy lifestyle. Aim for around 30 minutes of exercise most days. You can even split it into 10-minute chunks. Exercise lifts your mood and lowers stress. Eat well, and learn a few stress-management techniques.
• Surround yourself with positive people. Build a circle of supportive people you can trust for good advice. Negative people can raise your stress levels and make you doubt your own ability to manage it.
• Practise positive self-talk. Start with a simple rule: don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to someone else. Be kind and encouraging toward yourself. When a negative thought takes hold, evaluate it rationally and answer it with what’s actually good about you. Think about what you’re grateful for.

Swapping negative self-talk for positive thinking

A simple way to see this in practice: the same situation sounds very different depending on the inner voice you use.

Being a caregiver isn’t easy work, but it’s genuinely noble work, and that’s exactly why staying positive matters so much. Our attitude and energy are contagious to the people around us. That doesn’t mean a caregiver has to be cheerful all the time, we’re human too, but the real heart of caregiving is the ability to care with love and passion for the work. And, of course, with positive thinking.

It’s this mindset we look for in every member of our team, wherever in the world the family relying on us happens to be. If you’d like to know more about how we select and support our caregivers, get in touch.