How to Think

 The Power of Positive and Negative Thinking

Unfortunately, my father had type II diabetes. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I believe that his thinking about his disease further contributed to his unhappy emotional state. I remember him talking about his disease and what the future had in store for him. He knew that his eyesight would deteriorate and that he would likely lose his limbs as a result of poor circulation. The point is that he didn’t view himself-his expectations as having a good future regarding his health. In other words, negative expectations played and contributed to his mental state.

On the other hand, my mother was a master psychologist. As she was growing older, I talked to her about moving to an “old folks” facility. I should’ve known better, but I didn’t at that time. My father died and my mother lived alone in an apartment. When I made my inappropriate suggestion, she replied, “I don’t want to live among old people.” She was sharp as a tack and I wouldn’t dare play her in the game of Scrabble since I knew that I didn’t have a chance of winning. She loved being around younger people and especially being a mentor or a psychologist to her young friend Charlotte. Charlotte had relationship difficulties especially getting along with her mother. My mother was there to counsel her and she did.

Mother also sang and played the piano. She loved music and talked about Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. She also loved hearing the records of Mario Lonza, Tom Jones and other heartthrobs. She sang and she played. She also loved the movies-Doctor Zviago and the music from the movie- Laura’s Theme. Going back to an earlier time was very therapeutic for her.

And in the 1970s, when I did research for my dissertation one of the variables that I studied was expectancy. As it turned out, that was the most statistically significant independent variable of my research. Just today, I read an article in the October 26, 2014 edition of The New York Times Magazine about some of Ellen Langer’s experiments.

Dr. Langer believes in the unity of the mind and body. One set of experiments centered on taking older folks, and placing them in a living facility-a time warp, so to speak, to when they were significantly younger. This home was set up to include Perry Como, Ed Sullivan, black and white TV, books and magazines of the 50s, no mirrors or anything to remind them of the present. These eight men lived in this environment for only five days. After the five days in this environment these men began to feel as if they were 22 years younger. In fact, these men were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller than individuals in the control group. Dr. Langer believed that these men put their mind in an earlier time and their bodies went along for the ride

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 Her current research is looking at stage IV metastatic breast cancer. She is evaluating whether or not the power of the mind can affect the ugly “C”. She believes that our culture teaches us that we have no control over certain things and she is out to test that notion.

To Be Continued