The Seven Secrets of Optimism By Howard Bloom
On June 8th, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society published a Harvard study of 159,255 women. That is a huge number of study subjects.
The Harvard research revealed a simple fact. Whether you are black, white, or Hispanic, optimism can help you live longer and reach beyond the age of 90.
At least if you are a woman.
But is this also true for men? You bet. On March 10th, researchers at Boston University published the results of their study of 233 men over the course of 22 years. They got the same result. Optimistic men live longer than pessimistic men.
And the Boston University researchers gave a reason. Pessimists live under continual stress. Stress hormones in constant doses are a poison. Which means that non-stop stress degrades your immune system and opens you to illness.
Optimists have more efficient immune systems and, surprisingly, more physical strength.
The body of research that backs this up is huge. Scientists have been getting the same result for forty years. Optimists live longer and stronger. And optimists have a bonus: more success.
Which leads to a further question. Are you immutably mired in pessimism? Or can you choose to become an optimist? The Nemours Children’s Health System says yes, you can turn yourself into an optimist. Nemours gives four ways you can do it:
1. Notice good things as they happen. …
2. Train your mind to believe you can make good things happen in your life. …
3. Don’t blame yourself when things go wrong. …
4. When something good happens, give yourself credit. …and
5. Remind yourself that setbacks are temporary. …
Then there’s a principle the medical experts at Nemours do not give. Be persistent. No matter how glum you feel, never give up.
And use your pessimism as a tool. Use it to produce preemptive paranoia. Use your insecurities to see screw ups before they can happen and to build fail-safe mechanisms to make sure your flubs do not occur.
Let me give you an example from my own life. The year was 1976. Even though I come from microbiology, theoretical physics, and mass behavior, I had just started a public relations firm in a field of mass behavior I’d previously known nothing about, popular music.
Like you, I can be horribly self-critical and self-loathing. So when potential new clients called to ask what I could do for them, all that came to my mind was a list of my failures. That’s not what potential clients wanted to hear. This was a problem.
But there was hope. Even though I dwelled on my defeats, roughly once a week some positive achievement would flicker across my mind for a second or two then disappear. I trained myself to watch for these positive flickers and to write them down before they could escape.
After two months, I had a list of eight positive accomplishments on a three by five card. I kept that three-by-five card on my desk next to the phone in case a potential new client called. When one rang me, I grabbed the card and read off my list of victories. Then I learned to repeat those victories like a parrot.
Slowly but surely, the accomplishments tattooed themselves front and center in my brain. I’d accidentally memorized them. I began to apply the same principle to the rest of my life: look for the positives and note them before you can forget them. And parrot them when people ask you how you are.
This learned optimism helped enormously. The Public Relations firm I began in 1976 became the biggest PR firm in the music industry. My team and I worked on Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Billy Idol, Joan Jett, and roughly a hundred others. All because you can learn to be optimistic.
And, according to 40 years of research on optimism, if you achieve optimism, you can add years to your life.
References:
Hayami Koga, Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald, Lewina Lee, Peter James, Candyce Kroenke, Lorena Garcia, Aladdin H. Shadyab, Elena Salmoirago-Blotcher, JoAnn Manson, Francine Grodstein, Laura D. Kubzansky, “Optimism, Lifestyle, and Longevity in a Racially Diverse Cohort of Women,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, June 8, 2022, doi: 10.1111/jgs.17897. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/optimism-longevity-women/
Lewina O Lee, PhD, Francine Grodstein, ScD, Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald, PhD, Peter James, ScD, Sakurako S Okuzono, MPH, Hayami K Koga, MD, Joel Schwartz, PhD, Avron Spiro, III, PhD, Daniel K Mroczek, PhD, Laura D Kubzansky, PhD, Optimism, Daily Stressors, and Emotional Well-Being Over Two Decades in a Cohort of Aging Men, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Published: 07 March 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbac025 , https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/optimism-longevity-women
Forgeard, M.J.C., and M.E.P. Seligman. “Seeing the Glass Half Full: A Review of the Causes and Consequences of Optimism.” Pratiques Psychologiques 18.2 (2012): 107-120. https://www.academia.edu/14336427/Seeing_the_glass_half_full_A_review_of_the_causes_and_consequences_of_optimism
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Howard Bloom has been called the Einstein, Newton, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. One of his seven books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. He does news commentary at 1:06 am et every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on Coast to Coast AM. For more, see http://howardbloom.institute.
