January 9, 2017
Interview with Dr. Hilary Tindle, author of the book Up
Mike Carruthers: Having a positive and optimistic outlook helps, it helps a lot.
Dr. Hilary Tindle: Optimists have fewer heart attacks, they live longer, they live healthier, they’re better “copers”, they’re less likely to get depression, anxiety, etcetera.
Dr. Hilary Tindle, author of the book Up says the research is undeniable. While optimism is good for you being a pessimist is not.
We do have a wealth of studies that show that generally pessimistic people do worse health-wise. And other types of outlooks such as cynicism, or anger those folks do worse health-wise.
If you tend to be more pessimistic the good news is you can change that.
The science says that only about 25-50% of our outlook is genetic the rest we create as we live. And it usually gels into a fairly noticeable character trait by the time we’re 20 or 30 but that doesn’t mean that it can’t change.
Dr.Tindle says that it’s important to clarify what optimism is and isn’t.
It’s not that optimists will say, “Hey I don’t need to save money for retirement everything will work out.” Optimists envision a bright future and they work wards those future goals. What some people mistake for what I call optimism is what’s called the optimistic bias or an unrealistic optimism – that’s denial, that’s bad for health.
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