August 5, 2008

Attitude and Aging

3. Seek out new challenges and opportunities. Always have something that is a goal just over the horizon. When you begin to close the gap and reach that goal, set another and another. Keep yourself consistently moving ahead.

4. Try and do one new thing every week or month. Visit a museum, go to the zoo, go to a book signing or lecture. The goal here is to eliminate monotony which is a sure killer of optimism.

5. Look for a new marvel of nature each day. Discover an abundance of happiness. Spoil your pet or if you don’t have one, visit the human society and adopt one. Learn to laugh at yourself. Allow yourself to experience grief but don’t let it control you.

6. Find someone who is worse off than you and lend a hand. Volunteer at a hospital; visit a nursery or a shelter.

In a preliminary study, researchers at the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, California, a biomedical research center that examines mind-body connections, asked 30 men and women to think for five minutes of either a compassionate moment in their lives or a time when they were upset or angry. “We found that simply recalling one episode of anger depresses the immune system for up to seven hours – but one episode of feeling compassion or caring enhances the immune system for about the same amount of time,” says Jerry Kaiser, the Institute’s director of health services.

Armed with that information, stop for a moment and think about how often you feel either end of that emotional spectrum. Makes you think a bit deeper about how we have the power to actually destroy ourselves through our emotions, doesn’t it?

Here are a few quick tips for increasing joy, hope and optimism that will work no matter what your age: