It makes sense to me, as the article also points out, being more optimistic might indicate lower levels of stress. And (prolonged) stress has been known for a long time to be detrimental to health.
If anyone wishes to use this study as a catalyst to shift one’s attitude, then I highly recommend dropping the dopaminergic doomloop apps like Reddit/Bluesky/X/tiktok/IG.
Your life will be better for it. Snapchat can stay…for reasons.
Everything I've learned from psychology (and by this I mean watching psychology lectures from Yale and Stanford on youtube and reading the associated textbooks) makes me confident that I will have a short and unhappy life.
Dr Bloom spoke about how your overall mood during college is a good predictor for how happy you'll be as a person throughout your life. He talked about the optimum time to get married is 26. He elucidated the idea of your prefrontal cortex solidifying around 25, making personality changes MUCH more difficult.
Dr Sopolsky spoke about biological markers that may affect human behavior - both inherited and environmentally influenced.
At 35 I am starting to suspect that I may be on the spectrum ( I kinda expected some adult to tell me this as a child, if it's true ).
The males on my fathers side (with the exception of my uncle) do not make it past 67.
My mothers side has inter-generational trauma that I know i've inherited avoidant behaviors that limit my social ability.
It sounds like therapy would be really nice for you, but here are my 2 cents.
1. I have never been more depressed as I was in grad school. My life has gotten way better and stayed there after college.
2. I got married at 30 and I have friends that got married older. This same statistical logic is what you hear about marriage (52% divorce!). What you don’t hear in that statistic is that a lot of people make terrible decisions. My point is that not being married early is a proxy for having a bad attitude, which I suspect they’re really measuring.
3. Intergenerational trauma may be a thing, but you have tools at your disposal. Cognitive behavioral therapy is something I stand behind and recommend to you personally.
Just remember: things won’t change in your life without faith that they will change
I'm not disagreeing with an actual doctor on the topic, but:
- I was a moody mess in college. Having an income and stable partner made life much better.
- I'm glad I didn't marry that young. The partner I have at 37 is much more compatible with me and we have a solid and compassionate relationship with space for the child we've had.
- I exercised more in my 30s if I factor in running. All I did was lift weights before, thinking I was healthy.
- Trauma therapy helped a lot. I can't dramatically change who I am, but life went from bearable to enjoyable.
Good luck :) 67 isn't that bad, at least you might avoid the really bad years.
It wouldn't surprise me if healthy, privileged people with access to good healthcare are more optimistic than those with serious illness, no coverage and three shitty jobs.
Hard to be optimistic when you have cancer and can't afford treatment.
Being healthy, good social connections, meaningful activities, exercise, family you can depend on, etc. I wonder if the optimism is just a confounding factor, or rather just the middle man we can measure. Seems like having a good life would make one more optimistic about their prospects.
This seems like a rather obvious case of "correlation is not causation". Moreover, the vocabulary of optimism vs pessimism doesn't capture that one can work diligently to avoid pessimistic outcomes, so does that make one optimistic or pessimistic? After adjusting for the correlation, I suspect realists will have the highest longevity.
I suspect optimism is learned to some extent. Past experiences and outcomes shape your optimism, because it skews your bias.
People who had good things happen and got lucky get more optimistic as that's their experience.
If true, it might be that good genetics and environment gives you exceptional longevity, and also increases your chances of good outcomes at every step of your life which in turn make you an optimist.
Off course, I'd love to believe it's your mindset that affects outcomes, as it would give you control over your destiny, but it's precisely because that truth is so tempting that I'm extra skeptical of it.
I can’t speak for others, but this might be extra relevant to this forum — I experienced a shift and became more optimistic when I attempted a startup. Luck may play a part, and it might be a big part, I don’t want to downplay that possibility, since being in a position to do a startup requires some luck, being able to go to college and to write software for a living requires some luck, etc. But I had lucky things happen and still less optimism before running my own business.
My personal feeling is that the reason has to do with the mindset that comes from a combination of taking more responsibility for all of my failures (including the business failures, including result of things other people do) and of deciding that I have control over my situation in a broad sense. For example, I could find myself unlucky at any given moment, when I get cheated and lose money, have an accident, someone gets mad at me, or business goes down because of something in the news. All of these things used to make me feel unlucky, but I started to think instead that unlucky things are the result of a situation I put myself into from earlier past decisions. Whatever bad situation comes my way, my life decisions lead me there, so it’s somehow my fault. I started assuming responsibility for all bad luck, and that makes me always ask the question what earlier choices lead me there, and how can I make better choices, even when the answer is thinking about how to avoid unlucky situations that really were out of my control.
This might be one reason why successful founders and other optimists often attribute their success to hard work, but I should add that I do believe strongly that luck plays a very big part in success, and there are downsides to forgetting that or being unable to see it. I try not to take all responsibility for the good things that happen to me, even though that makes me inconsistent.
That said, one way that I think luck can feed optimism is realizing that because success is lucky, it means I should try a lot of different things rather that work harder and try to fix bad situations. If nine out of ten startups fail, then try ten startups!
So… yes my optimism is learned, and luck plays a part. My feeling is that deciding to take responsibility for my failures caused a mental shift towards greater optimism. Maybe that’s rationalization on my part, I can’t tell, but I do feel like it was more than luck.
>People who had good things happen and got lucky get more optimistic
Well there's the old story about the lonely mountain blacksmith from hillbilly times who was hard at work one day, when the beautiful widow from the next mountain over came in and wanted him to fix her broken iron. You know, the kind they had before electricity. So he dropped everything and got right to working on it, and was proud to make it better than new in only about 15 minutes.
She was very thankful, gave him a big smile and then he asked her if it would be OK if he called on her real soon. The only thing is, he was a strong-hearted gentleman, but not very tall, less than 5 feet. And she was a statuesque beauty, just over 6 feet tall. But she was agreeable right away, and he said "How about a kiss good-bye right now?", she nodded and he jumped right up on top of his anvil, gave her a big hug and kiss and there was some excitement between them.
Looking straight into her eyes he then tells her she doesn't have to leave so soon, and they can go out in back and pick some fresh flowers on a wonderful spring day, to take home with her. The hard work can wait for a little while.
It is very romantic and they stroll around for a few minutes until they come to the spot where the roses are growing, then he asks her for another kiss. She was too bashful this time, and said that once was enough for their first meeting, but she was looking forward to having him visit. He said "I understand, but if there's not gonna be any more kissin', I think I'll put this anvil down."
My father is 84 and is among the most cantakerous people ever born. It's a sample size of 1, but he is a counter example since he's never had a single moment of optimism is his entire life!
> For men in NAS, higher baseline optimism levels were similarly related to longer life span (Table 1, NAS; P trend = 0.002). After adjusting for demographics, baseline health conditions, and depression, compared to the least optimistic men, those in the highest quintile had 10.9% (95% CI: 1.3%, 21.5%) longer life span.
This is not what the best study at hand has found based on the most extensive human study! Check out The Longevity Project [0][1]! Optimistic people don't pay much attention to symptoms!
29 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 58.4 ms ] threadYour life will be better for it. Snapchat can stay…for reasons.
Dr Bloom spoke about how your overall mood during college is a good predictor for how happy you'll be as a person throughout your life. He talked about the optimum time to get married is 26. He elucidated the idea of your prefrontal cortex solidifying around 25, making personality changes MUCH more difficult.
Dr Sopolsky spoke about biological markers that may affect human behavior - both inherited and environmentally influenced.
At 35 I am starting to suspect that I may be on the spectrum ( I kinda expected some adult to tell me this as a child, if it's true ).
The males on my fathers side (with the exception of my uncle) do not make it past 67.
My mothers side has inter-generational trauma that I know i've inherited avoidant behaviors that limit my social ability.
So great news.
1. I have never been more depressed as I was in grad school. My life has gotten way better and stayed there after college.
2. I got married at 30 and I have friends that got married older. This same statistical logic is what you hear about marriage (52% divorce!). What you don’t hear in that statistic is that a lot of people make terrible decisions. My point is that not being married early is a proxy for having a bad attitude, which I suspect they’re really measuring.
3. Intergenerational trauma may be a thing, but you have tools at your disposal. Cognitive behavioral therapy is something I stand behind and recommend to you personally.
Just remember: things won’t change in your life without faith that they will change
- I was a moody mess in college. Having an income and stable partner made life much better.
- I'm glad I didn't marry that young. The partner I have at 37 is much more compatible with me and we have a solid and compassionate relationship with space for the child we've had.
- I exercised more in my 30s if I factor in running. All I did was lift weights before, thinking I was healthy.
- Trauma therapy helped a lot. I can't dramatically change who I am, but life went from bearable to enjoyable.
Good luck :) 67 isn't that bad, at least you might avoid the really bad years.
Hard to be optimistic when you have cancer and can't afford treatment.
Can't wait for a research which reveals the X.
People who had good things happen and got lucky get more optimistic as that's their experience.
If true, it might be that good genetics and environment gives you exceptional longevity, and also increases your chances of good outcomes at every step of your life which in turn make you an optimist.
Off course, I'd love to believe it's your mindset that affects outcomes, as it would give you control over your destiny, but it's precisely because that truth is so tempting that I'm extra skeptical of it.
My personal feeling is that the reason has to do with the mindset that comes from a combination of taking more responsibility for all of my failures (including the business failures, including result of things other people do) and of deciding that I have control over my situation in a broad sense. For example, I could find myself unlucky at any given moment, when I get cheated and lose money, have an accident, someone gets mad at me, or business goes down because of something in the news. All of these things used to make me feel unlucky, but I started to think instead that unlucky things are the result of a situation I put myself into from earlier past decisions. Whatever bad situation comes my way, my life decisions lead me there, so it’s somehow my fault. I started assuming responsibility for all bad luck, and that makes me always ask the question what earlier choices lead me there, and how can I make better choices, even when the answer is thinking about how to avoid unlucky situations that really were out of my control.
This might be one reason why successful founders and other optimists often attribute their success to hard work, but I should add that I do believe strongly that luck plays a very big part in success, and there are downsides to forgetting that or being unable to see it. I try not to take all responsibility for the good things that happen to me, even though that makes me inconsistent.
That said, one way that I think luck can feed optimism is realizing that because success is lucky, it means I should try a lot of different things rather that work harder and try to fix bad situations. If nine out of ten startups fail, then try ten startups!
So… yes my optimism is learned, and luck plays a part. My feeling is that deciding to take responsibility for my failures caused a mental shift towards greater optimism. Maybe that’s rationalization on my part, I can’t tell, but I do feel like it was more than luck.
Well there's the old story about the lonely mountain blacksmith from hillbilly times who was hard at work one day, when the beautiful widow from the next mountain over came in and wanted him to fix her broken iron. You know, the kind they had before electricity. So he dropped everything and got right to working on it, and was proud to make it better than new in only about 15 minutes.
She was very thankful, gave him a big smile and then he asked her if it would be OK if he called on her real soon. The only thing is, he was a strong-hearted gentleman, but not very tall, less than 5 feet. And she was a statuesque beauty, just over 6 feet tall. But she was agreeable right away, and he said "How about a kiss good-bye right now?", she nodded and he jumped right up on top of his anvil, gave her a big hug and kiss and there was some excitement between them.
Looking straight into her eyes he then tells her she doesn't have to leave so soon, and they can go out in back and pick some fresh flowers on a wonderful spring day, to take home with her. The hard work can wait for a little while.
It is very romantic and they stroll around for a few minutes until they come to the spot where the roses are growing, then he asks her for another kiss. She was too bashful this time, and said that once was enough for their first meeting, but she was looking forward to having him visit. He said "I understand, but if there's not gonna be any more kissin', I think I'll put this anvil down."
Mire news at 10.
Notably absent: control by wealth.
Not wealth specifically, but income is probably as good of a controlling factor.
[0]: https://www.longevity-project.com/
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Longevity_Project