I have a film about the secret of eternal youth. That’s what it’s called. The heroes of the film, as you might guess, are scientists and people about a hundred years old. The surgeon Fedor Uglov was 104 years old at the time of filming. And I was quite sincerely interested in what the secret was. I was able to find only one common criterion. Everyone had it, regardless of gender, character, fame and profession. Every century turned out to be an optimist.
I wondered if it was a coincidence or not.
Life brings the same setbacks and tragedies to the optimist as it does to the pessimist, but the optimist is supposed to endure them better. He gets up beautifully after a defeat and, despite the blows of fate, gathers his strength and starts his journey all over again. The pessimist gives up and becomes depressed.
I was taught that a sane person, normal and sane (and they should be fine), is someone who more or less objectively and even critically evaluates the world around and, most importantly, himself. That is, he perfectly understands where he is well done and clever, and where he is a liar, a weakling and a rag.
And right now it turned out that being a realist is wrong and unprofitable. And it’s just very good to internally “photoshop” reality, engage in positive self-deception, consider yourself the best, regardless of objective reality – in short, be an optimist.
Researchers Joanna Starek and Caroline Keating studied the performance of athletes—swimmers of the same age, in the same physical condition—and found a direct relationship between their success in competition and the level of positive self-delusion. Athletes who highly valued themselves, their abilities and future results swam much faster than others. Describing this experiment, Starek observed: “What scientists used to call optimism, faith in the best, the coach of a successful team will call the mindset of a champion.”
Optimists perceive an unfavorable situation as a challenge and vigorously fight it.
Probably everyone would like to be optimistic, but not everyone can do it. I, for one, cannot easily deceive myself. If, say, the doctor tells me something unpleasant – even that a tooth needs to be removed – I cannot convincingly say to myself: “Nonsense, this is just a new experience.” I don’t believe these words inwardly – I don’t want such an experience, I don’t want my tooth to be pulled. Not to mention more serious things. Now we will not talk about whether it is possible to become an optimist, but let’s return to the question of whether a positive outlook really affects health and life expectancy.
As you may have guessed, yes it does. A number of studies have shown that the health of optimists is better than that of pessimists. For example, psychologist Christopher Peterson monitored the health of 150 students for a year. He found that, compared to optimists, pessimists were twice as likely to catch infections and seek medical attention.
The chief specialist in optimism is the American psychologist Martin Seligman, the founder of a whole trend – positive psychology. He conducted his first experiments to understand how to treat depression: his father was paralyzed, and the once calm and balanced person very quickly lost interest in life. Experimenting, Seligman became convinced that, once in an unpleasant situation, some perceive it as inevitable, give up, while others – optimists – try to change it.
A characteristic feature of pessimists is their belief that failures will last for a long time, no matter how you fight them, and they themselves are to blame for them. Optimists, on the other hand, treat the blows of fate in exactly the opposite way. They believe that any defeat is temporary. They perceive an unfavorable situation as a challenge and vigorously fight it. Of course, they also sometimes panic, but here I’m talking about a general principle.
It turned out that health at 60 is strongly correlated with the level of optimism at 25.
In the mid-1930s, the Grant Research Foundation organized the observation of healthy adults. The researchers wanted to trace the fate of gifted people in order to identify the components of their success and health. Among the first-year students at Harvard, they selected two hundred men. These people have been actively involved in the study for half a century. Every five years they were subjected to medical examinations and endlessly forced to fill out questionnaires. Years later, the aged researchers were replaced by young ones and continued their work.
And what turned out? It turned out that health at age 60 is strongly correlated with the level of optimism at 25. In middle age, pessimists began to get sick earlier and more severely than optimists. By the age of 45, the difference was already quite significant.
Until the age of 45, optimism had practically no effect on health: it remained approximately at the same level as at 25. However, at about 45, the male body begins to age. How quickly and seriously can be predicted based on whether a person was a pessimist or an optimist a quarter of a century ago. What’s more, the researchers factored in other factors — physical and mental health at age 25 — into the equation. It turned out that optimism plays a decisive role in the state of health from the age of 45 to at least 65 years.
In general, you understand: like it or not, you can or not, but you have to become an optimist.
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