Life is Short, Have a Good Attitude and Live Longer

Life is short, so having and displaying a consistently good attitude is important. Some time ago, and I encourage everyone to do this; I calculated the amount of days of life expectancy for a United States Citizen and was shocked at how low the amount was. Go ahead and try it and tell me if this does not have a positive change on your attitude. 77 multiplied by 365 =? go ahead, do the math, please, I think it will change your life. Remember also that we are living in an improved era in time in that we are living longer, almost twice a long as people did in 1900, Bruce J. Klein, " This Wonderful Lengthening of Lifespan ", Associated Content. URL:(http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=11).

When I saw that number I thought about many things; death, my love for my Family, changing careers, my aging parents, which people live the longest and how do they do it. I also began to think about how I will never be able to change some things I would like to but should work on the things that I can change. I read many articles about improving health while researching the longest-lived people of the world. Their lack of a stressful life became one thing that I thought I could work on.

Stress is controlled by and can be considered an attitude so back to improving my attitude I went. My attitude to life has improved knowing that how I react to my environment is how I control my attitude. Not allowing day-to-day negative issues to bother me will ultimately reduce stress and improve health. Sounds simple enough and 'doing the math' above really helps to boost the block I have on the trivial, negative issues in my life.

A positive attitude is also a key component in the answer to why the longest-lived people in the world are able to live so long. I read the book, The Okinawa Program, by Bradley J. Willcox, M.D., Dr. Craig Willcox, Ph.D., and Makoto Suzuki, M.D., Ph.D., Associated Content. URL:(http://okinawaprogram.com/okinawa_diet_books.html). Throughout their life Okinawans have very little stress. The English word for retirement is not in their vocabulary. Their communities support one another and the elderly are assured of being taken care long into old age. Their population's health statistics show that they are one of, if not the healthiest country in the world due to their diets, spiritual practices, exercise and lifestyle. As the authors put it, "if Americans lived more like Okinawans we would have to close down 80 percent of the coronary care units and one-third of the cancer wards in the United States and a lot of the nursing homes would be out of business".

Unfortunately, living totally like an Okinawan is one of the things I may never be able to change however, I could be like an Okinawan if I could reduce my stress and doing that again is based on your attitude, I'm not going to let a bad attitude shorten my life. We control stress and this point is explained well by a quote from one of the good Roman Emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who said, "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." Associated Content. URL:( http://www.wisdomquotes.com/002050.html).

Florida Fred