Live Longer with Good Personality Traits

Certain findings on the human lifespan have been well known for a long time. You can effectively live longer by remaining calm and easygoing in life while maintaining a moderate to high level of physical activity. New studies however have shown that you can also live longer by changing your personality in positive ways.

Live Longer By Staying Calm and Active

The Baltimore Sun reported on the National Institute of Aging’s (NIA) recent research on data collected from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. The findings of this NIA research show that in addition to calm and active people living longer lives, those who were emotionally stabile, organized, disciplined, conscientious, and resourceful also tended to live longer.

Conversely there were other personality traits that didn’t lead to longer life but instead led to the opposite.

The NIA study found that anger, emotional instability, anxiousness and depression all led to shorter lives.

This suggests that if you already do all the right things to avoid diseases such as heart disease and diabetes by staying active, not getting stressed out, and eating right, you can take it one step further and change your personality for the better to increase your chances for living longer even still.

Longevity and Personality

Similar to these findings the Sun recalls a earlier study on longevity and personality published in 2003:

"This study is not new news. Most people know that happiness and an active lifestyle lead to good health. In a similar 2003 study, also published in Psychosomatic medicine, researchers found that men with Type A personalities - "competitive, impatient, uptight" - had heart attacks earlier than those who did not have a Type A personality.

It is important to note that personality or activity level is not fixed or predetermined, and that it can be proactively changed by an individual.

So if you find that you are a Type A personality living a sedentary lifestyle, seek ways to change that. Helpful tools may include formal psychiatric and psychological intervention; hobbies; a new sport; activities such as walking, tai chi, or yoga; spirituality; a career overhaul, or self-help."

For more information on how to live longer by changing your diet see my previous post which is fairly comprehensive titled: How To Live A Longer Life. You can also check out my post on human longevity tips.

Source
Baltimore Sun - http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/sns-health-emotionally-stable-live-longer,0,6511596.story
Psychosomatic Medicine Jul/Aug '09