T<\/span>he conventional narrative in America often portrays caregiving for older loved ones as a burdensome responsibility or a problem that demands a solution.<\/p>\n Undeniably, caregiving presents challenges, as caring for someone we love, whether they are facing illness, injury, or age-related changes, can be inherently stressful and trigger feelings of sadness and uncertainty.<\/p>\n However, there is another, more uplifting side to the story.<\/p>\n Caring for an older loved one allows us to pause and reflect on what genuinely matters in life, deepens our relationships, and paves the way for personal growth and resilience that extends beyond the caregiving role. Positive Caregiving concentrates on these benefits, offering a methodology for caregivers to adopt a positive mindset and focus on making caregiving a meaningful experience.<\/p>\n Positive Caregiving is built upon four pillars: perspective, savoring, reminiscence, and growth.\nPerspective encompasses embracing life within a broader context, recognizing that your unique worldview influences how you approach challenges, and adopting positive lenses such as gratitude, empathy, forgiveness, love, and awe to foster a more balanced outlook on caregiving and life in general.<\/p>\n Savoring promotes mindfulness, assisting you in focusing on the present and appreciating small moments of joy while actively seeking and discovering beauty in everyday wonders. This approach cultivates a positive environment for more profound shared activities and experiences with your care partner throughout your journey together.<\/p>\n Reminiscence involves reflecting on the past to help you and your care partner find meaning in your lives. By reminiscing on shared memories, caregivers can strengthen their bond with their loved ones and foster a sense of continuity and connection.<\/p>\n Personal and relational growth naturally emerges from gaining new perspectives, savoring, and reminiscing. This growth benefits both the caregiver and the care receiver, as well as their relationship.<\/p>\n Using the power of positive emotions is key to helping put the four pillars into practice. Positive Caregiving focuses on gratitude, empathy, forgiveness, love, and awe. These five emotions are important in caregiving relationships and have been shown to support our overall well-being.<\/p>\n It is important to note that Positive Caregiving doesn\u2019t mean that you must be positive all the time. It simply lays out how and encourages having a caregiving mindset of opportunity rather than obligation. It doesn\u2019t equate to ignoring or suppressing negative emotions that may arise along the way. Instead, it helps you to embrace and harness positive emotions like gratitude, empathy, forgiveness, love, and awe to balance out the common negative emotions associated with caregiving.<\/p>\n To cultivate a positive mindset and set a clear direction for the caregiving relationship, caregivers can work with their loved one to create a care-partner mission statement. This statement aligns the relationship through shared goals and offers comfort and clarity during challenging times.<\/p>\n To develop a care-partner mission statement that encapsulates the essence of your relationship, include your aspirations for the relationship and your hopes for stability, comfort, and direction as you navigate caregiving.<\/p>\n Consider the following key topics and questions to initiate the conversation:<\/p>\n \u2022 What are your shared values?\n\u2022 What are the desired outcomes of your care-partner relationship?\n\u2022 What is most important to you in this relationship?\n\u2022 What is most important to both of you in life?<\/p>\n After discussing these crucial questions, draft a one or two-sentence mission statement that summarizes your aspirations and direction. You may need several revisions to perfect it.<\/p>\n Here are a few sample care-partner mission statements to inspire you:<\/p>\n Our care-partner mission is to cultivate a loving environment and cherish every day together. We will honor and celebrate our unique abilities and gracefully adapt to life\u2019s changes.<\/p>\n Our care partner mission is to embody love, forgiveness, and patience. We will support each other in becoming the best versions of ourselves, striving to laugh daily, remain hopeful amid fears, and let love and kindness guide our journey.<\/p>\n Display your mission statement on your refrigerator, save an image on your phone, or place it anywhere easily visible for reflection and guidance throughout your caregiving journey. By adopting the principles of Positive Caregiving and implementing practical steps like creating a care partner mission statement, you and your care partner can reap the rewards that a caregiving relationship can offer.<\/p>\n The four pillars of positive caregiving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[170,171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2023","category-spring-summer-2023-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13702"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13935,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13702\/revisions\/13935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Four Pillars of Positive Caregiving<\/h3>\n
Putting the Four Pillars into Practice<\/h3>\n
\n
A Practical First Step: Developing a Care-Partner Mission Statement<\/h3>\n
Sample 1:<\/h4>\n
Sample 2:<\/h4>\n
Sarah Teten Kanter is the author of the book Positive Caregiving: Caring for Older Adults Using the Power of Positive Emotions.<\/em> She holds a doctorate and a master\u2019s degree in gerontology from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Prior to pursuing her encore career in gerontology, she was the chief marketing officer and chief customer officer at Kenexa, now an IBM company. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her family.<\/h5>\n
This article is based on and contains excerpts from the book Positive Caregiving: Caring for Older Loved Ones Using the Power of Positive Emotions<\/a>, <\/em>Positive Caregiving Library<\/a>. <\/em>For more information or to download a free Positive Caregiving Care Partner Mission Statement Workbook, visit: PositiveCaring.com<\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"