Become an inverse paranoid for your heart and your head.
Did you know that being optimistic can increase both your physical health and your mental functioning? For some of you this will be the bleeding obvious, and for others this will be a bit hard to swallow, and your reaction will pretty much tell you which side of the fence you sit on.
Those of you who say "of course" are more than likely the optimistic ones and are already taking advantage of this fact. Those of you who say "bulldust" are more than likely the pessimistic amongst us.
Well, now it has been backed up by hard science. Research conducted by the Mayo Clinic gave 447 people a personality test in their 60s (no not one of those Scientology ones) and then a health assessment in their 90s. Pessimists reported poorer physical and mental function, lower quality of life and scored lower on the eight measured scales. These results are further backed up by a previous study that showed that that optimists tend to live longer than pessimists.
'So maybe I'm a pessimist, but that's just how I am. What can I do about it?' Well, the first thing that you need to realise is that a pessimist isn't something you are, it is something you do. It may have become such an ingrained habit that you now do it unconsciously but it is still something you can change. One of the best examples of how to do this is the author W Clement Stone. He chose to believe that the whole world was conspiring to help him. This is what he called being an 'inverse paranoid'. This means that whenever something he perceived as good happened to him, he said thanks. Whenever something that other people perceived as bad happened he said thanks, with the understanding that it had happened to teach him a lesson or provide an opportunity that would make his life better in the long run.
So become an inverse paranoid and reap the rewards, both physical and emotional.
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