Reminiscing

Lately I’ve found myself saying “remember when” quite a bit. It’s almost like a self defense mechanism to try and keep thinking positive. When visiting a relative in the hospital this week, we had a conversation on the very topic. He’s an elderly patient in intensive care who began talking about his childhood and how things use to be. I remarked how it’s funny his short-term memory doesn’t work, but he can remember events that happened 80 years ago perfectly. In his case, those memories were all he needed to start smiling, even while hooked up to half a dozen machines.

I’ve often hated how easy it is to compile all the situations that are wrong into one ever-sinking feeling; which is especially true for hospital patients. For those of us outside the hospital though, sometimes just a few quiet moments are all it takes to allow your mind to start adding up all the things wrong with life. Those are the times I try to force myself to remember the “good old days” - when hopes and dreams were just a little bigger and problems were much, much smaller.

Forced recollection is actually a technique some top athletes use to help perform their best. They train their bodies to be the fastest, strongest, etc., but dialing-in the best mental state for a competition is another matter – and quite often the difference between winning and losing. Before an event, an athlete may think of a time they performed at their absolute peak… they focus on it, relive the victory, remember all the feelings associated with it… and when the starting gun sounds they are ready to kick some ass.

The same process can be used to feel more like a winner in life. When everything seems to crumble around you, try thinking of a time when life seemed wonderful; when you were happy to be alive. A first kiss, an amazing vacation, even a perfect spring day with a cool gentle breeze and some warm sunshine. For myself, I usually turn on some music to help bring back some memories. For others, there's even magazines about the years gone by, like Reminisce which covers the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.

In my relative’s situation in the hospital, you could just tell he was grateful to have those old-time memories to cheer him up, even while equipment beeped and chirped all around him. Maybe recalling happier times will be all you need to bring a quick smile to your face too – and we all know how hard that is sometimes.