{"id":63,"date":"2010-06-28T13:43:19","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T13:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html"},"modified":"2010-06-28T13:43:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-28T13:43:19","slug":"creating-hope-retrain-that-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html","title":{"rendered":"Creating Hope: Retrain that Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s some good news to start your week:&nbsp; research done at the University of Pennsylvania shows that people have the ability to train themselves to be happier no matter how they were raised or what is involved in their current life situations! <\/p>\n<p>Psychologists say the fastest way to get started is to try to replace any negative thought that pops into your head with a positive one.&nbsp; Doing that may feel like hard work at first. I agree, but you can do this!<\/p>\n<p>As soon as you feel a negative thought popping into that brain, stop anything else you&#8217;re doing and start focusing only on that thought.&nbsp;If you are imagining all&nbsp;of the worst things that could happen, quicky and deliberately start to think about all of the best things that could&nbsp;happen.&nbsp; Force it if you have you.&nbsp; Do it even if you don&#8217;t believe it.&nbsp;The key is in replacing&nbsp; negative thoughts quickly and with consistency.&nbsp; It won&#8217;t take too long until your brain starts to react that way on its own.<\/p>\n<p>Practicing that way of thinking as much as possible will help you to develop new, healthy habits.&nbsp;You&#8217;ll start to see life in a happier, healthier way, because you are reacting to situations in a stronger, more positive way. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s to a productive, hopeful week!<\/p>\n<p>j.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s some good news to start your week:&nbsp; research done at the University of Pennsylvania shows that people have the ability to train themselves to be happier no matter how they were raised or what is involved in their current life situations! Psychologists say the fastest way to get started is to try to replace&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hope"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Creating Hope: Retrain that Brain - Jennifer Cares<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Creating Hope: Retrain that Brain - Jennifer Cares\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here&#8217;s some good news to start your week:&nbsp; research done at the University of Pennsylvania shows that people have the ability to train themselves to be happier no matter how they were raised or what is involved in their current life situations! Psychologists say the fastest way to get started is to try to replace&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jennifer Cares\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-28T13:43:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jennifer Antkowiak\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Creating Hope: Retrain that Brain - Jennifer Cares","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Creating Hope: Retrain that Brain - Jennifer Cares","og_description":"Here&#8217;s some good news to start your week:&nbsp; research done at the University of Pennsylvania shows that people have the ability to train themselves to be happier no matter how they were raised or what is involved in their current life situations! Psychologists say the fastest way to get started is to try to replace&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html","og_site_name":"Jennifer Cares","article_published_time":"2010-06-28T13:43:19+00:00","author":"Jennifer Antkowiak","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html","name":"Creating Hope: Retrain that Brain - Jennifer Cares","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-06-28T13:43:19+00:00","dateModified":"2010-06-28T13:43:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/#\/schema\/person\/e9b1fa9e83faa387f3bb6a551379f681"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/2010\/06\/creating-hope-retrain-that-brain.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Creating Hope: Retrain that Brain"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/","name":"Jennifer Cares","description":"Making Life Easier for Caregivers","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/#\/schema\/person\/e9b1fa9e83faa387f3bb6a551379f681","name":"Jennifer Antkowiak","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2fe\/2fedc168aeef94edb0c4000c70dfe678x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jennifercares\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2fe\/2fedc168aeef94edb0c4000c70dfe678x96.jpg","caption":"Jennifer Antkowiak"},"description":"Jennifer Antkowiak's expertise in the caregiving field is authentic and inspiring. She is a busy mother of five, wife, award-winning TV news anchor and talk show host, author, and speaker. Jennifer knows how long-term illness affects a family. Her mother had post-partum depression and died of a heart attack at age 50. Jennifer feels blessed to have been a caregiver for her mother-in-law who died of cancer, and most recently, for her live-in father-in-law who died of cancer. Her real life experiences fuel her passionate mission to help the world's caregivers. Through her work, she connects with caregivers to deliver help and hope. 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