Harvard researchers found that women with higher optimism scores lived longer, even accounting for income and health. TJ Walker argues optimism is trainable, not fixed, and shares his daily practice: writing one optimistic statement and one thing he's grateful for each morning.
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Ultimize. A major new study out of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is drawing renewed attention to something that sounds simple but has surprisingly powerful implications: optimism may help you live longer. That's right, researchers analyzing long-term data from the Nurses' Health Study, a massive decades-long data set tracking tens of thousands of participants, found that individuals who scored higher on measures of optimism had significantly longer lifespans compared to those who were more pessimistic. Specifically, the most optimistic individuals were more likely to live beyond age 85 and showed a measurable increase in overall longevity. Now, let's pause right there because that's not a self-help book. That's not a motivational speaker. That's Harvard research, and they're not saying you'll feel better. They're saying you may live longer, which for most people is a pretty strong incentive because extending your life by even a small percentage is a big deal. Most people are trying to do that with supplements, diets, and gadgets that cost thousands of dollars or more pills, and Harvard is basically saying, have you tried your attitude? That's a tough sell for the supplement industry or the psychology industry or the medical industry, frankly. Side effects include fewer negative thoughts. Now here's what makes this study especially important. The researchers weren't just looking at people who were already healthy, wealthy, or lucky. They controlled for major factors like income, education, and baseline health, meaning this isn't just happy rich people live longer 'cause duh. This is how you think about your future appears to influence your outcomes. And that's where this stops being interesting and starts being uncomfortable, because if optimism plays a role in longevity, then this is not just a personality issue, this is a behavior. Now, here's the key point the researchers emphasized: optimism is not fixed. It's not something you're simply born with. It's a pattern of thinking which means it can be changed, but not necessarily with a prescription from a psychiatrist. And that's where most people quietly panic because it's much easier to say, well, that's just how I am, than it is to say I might need to change how I think. Now let me translate what this study is really saying in plain English. Your brain by default is not optimistic. It's protective. It scans constantly looking for problems, threats, saber-toothed tigers, what could go wrong. Which made sense when survival meant avoiding danger, physical danger from predators all the time. But today, that danger is usually an email, and yet your brain reacts like it's life or death. That constant negative scanning creates stress, and chronic stress is exactly what researchers link to worse long-term outcomes. So if optimism improves longevity, It's not magic. It's the absence of constant mental stress, which brings us to the practical question: is optimism trainable? If it is trainable, how do you actually train it? Because this is where most people fall apart. They hear the research, they agree with it, oh yeah, that makes sense, and then they do absolutely nothing differently. That's not That's an entertainment. So, here's what I do every single day, not occasionally, not when I feel like it, every day, I have a reminder. It's actually a calendar notification. It's in my morning journal notes because I don't rely on motivation. I rely on systems. And when that reminder goes off, when it's staring at me on the screen, I do 2 things. Number 1, I write down one thing I'm optimistic about. I do it every day and I've done it for years. It puts me in a better and more optimistic mood. I also write down one thing I'm grateful for. That's it. Two sentences, takes maybe 20 seconds, and I just dictate it right into my phone. Now that may sound almost too simple, might sound cheesy, which is exactly why it works, because what Harvard is measuring in this study is not a one-time feeling. They're measuring patterns, long-term patterns of thinking. And this creates that pattern because when you force your brain every day to identify something positive about the future, you're training it to look for possibility instead of problems. And when you identify something you're grateful for, you're training it to notice what's already working instead of what's missing, what the negative is. And over time, that changes how you operate. You get better, better outcomes. You take more action. You recover faster when things don't go your way. And those behavioral differences are exactly what show up in long-term studies like this. Now, I hear all the time, I'm just not an optimistic person. No, you're an untrained person because you already use optimism in parts of your life. You get on a plane, you assume it will land. You order food, you assume it's safe to eat. You start your car, you assume it will work. That's optimism. You just haven't applied it consistently to your future. And that's the opportunity because if the Harvard research is right, and I think it is, then optimism is not just about feeling better, it's about living longer, functioning better, handling stress in a healthier way. Which makes this one of the highest leverage habits you can build. So that is what I teach. And yes, I do have online courses focused on building positive attitudes and positive growth and mindsets. You can check it out at ultimize.com or go to my main corporate website, mediatrainingworldwide.com. But at the core of this, it comes down to something incredibly simple. 2 sentences, 1 reminder every day, because if you don't train your brain, it will train you. And based on the research, that's not a great long-term plan. This does point to a big flaw in our entire medical industrial complex because you can take one of my courses for a relatively small amount of money, certainly less than $1,000. Some platforms, it's less than $10 of my courses on this subject. It's not a great revenue model if you are trying to create a medical practice that bills $20 million a year. It's not a great business model if you are a giant HMO and you want to generate billions of dollars a year. It's not a good business model if you are a psychiatrist or a psychologist and you want 40 patients who come to you every single week for an hour willing to pay you $500. This is a terrible business model. So the business of your mental health doesn't like this fact. They'd much rather say, you got to come and talk about how awful your childhood is for an hour, for every week, for the rest of your life. You got to come take this pill, this happy pill, where we can send money to pharmaceutical companies. That's a better business model. Doesn't necessarily mean it's better for you. Okay, so who am I? Who is this TJ Walker character? Why are you listening to me or watching me? I spent 40 years coaching executives, people just like you, but also presidents of countries, prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners on how to have better communication skills and personal development habits. And now you can get the same training. But here's the catch. There is no catch. You can get a free course today. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's U-L-T-A-M-I-Z-E.com. M-i-z-e.com, and you can download your free online communication skills course or your free good habits building course. Go ahead and do that right now, or at least right after the show. Ultimize.
