According to a recent study, being optimistic and seeing things on the bright side (without being naive and hiding all the negative) would have an unsuspected advantage. Indeed, according to a report published by The American Journal of Epidemiology, women who take life on the bright side have a lower risk of contracting certain diseases. Interesting!!
To reach this conclusion, 70,000 women aged 58 to 83 were involved. They had to rate their level of optimism on a scale of 0 to 20 and were then followed for eight years. During this time, all disease-related deaths were recorded. Result:among optimistic women, the risk of mortality linked to cancers, respiratory diseases, heart diseases and vascular accidents would be lower. Obviously, the researchers controlled for other factors before making this hypothesis:the impact of marriage, social background, history of diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol or even depression.
For the eternal pessimists who have just taken a moral hit because of this study, Eric Kim, doctor of public health at Harvard, reminds us that only 25% of optimism is genetic. For the remaining 75%, it is up to us to shape our mindset. To begin with, we don't start out negative and we tell ourselves that we will get there!
