Benefits of Learned Optimism and How it Can Make You Live Longer

Learned optimism is not only likely to make you a lot happier but research is showing that people who are optimistic are healthier and can live up to seven years longer than the pessimistic. For some of us being optimistic doesn't seem to come naturally, but the good news is that it seems possible to teach ourselves to more positive about the future. This is something that I have been trying for a few years, and I'm pleased to say there have been some great benefits in my life.

A study by Seligman and Buchanan found that found that teaching students in the United States techniques for developing learned optimism meant that those in the study had less health and life problems than those who weren't taught these techniques. It has also been long known that most medical treatments rely at least in part on a placebo effect and so optimism can make an important contribution to this effect. Terminally ill people also tend to live longer if they maintain an optimistic attitude; sometimes to the astonishment of those who didn't give these individual much time.

According to a study in Yale University optimism adds seven years to your life. Many people damage their physical and mental health through worry and anxiety, but those who manage to maintain optimisms avoid all this. Seven years is a long time, and those who are optimistic will likely have the health to enjoy this extra time. Learned helplessness is the opposite of this and it can make a person's life unsatisfactory and damage their health.

So how is learned optimism possible? For me this has involved being more critical about any negativity that develops in my mind, and just trying to look for the good in things. An amazing phenomenon seems to be that when you expect good things to happen they seem more likely to. I once felt that if you expected the worst then you would be more prepared for it, but this could actually be making it more likely to occur. One reason why many of us expect the worst is because of low self-worth and we somehow feel that we don't deserve good things to happen; this is a bad attitude for our happiness and health.

If pessimism arises I question its validity. There is no way that I can know the future so it as at least as likely for things to go well as not to go not so good. I put a lot of faith in karma and fully believe that if you do good things then good things will happen as a result; I am always being given evidence for how this is the case. If I try to plant some good karmic seeds then this means is far easier for developing learned optimism. Another thing about learned optimism is that it seems to work like a muscle and the more times you are optimistic the more it will become part of your outlook.

Links

http://health.discovery.com/centers/mental/articles/optimism/optimism.html

http://theworryfreelife.blogspot.com/2009/06/learned-optimism.html