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(CNN) - If you could wish for just one thing, would it be happiness or a long life? According to what the researchers tell us, one thing is likely to produce the other.
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Science has been exploring the connection between happiness and longevity for some time. A 2018 analysis of nearly 10,000 Britons found that those who said they felt happy, happy or excited on a typical day were up to 35% less likely to die prematurely. In a 2016 study, a positive outlook was associated with a longer life for almost 4,000 older French men and women who were studied for 22 years.
The researchers followed more than 2,000 Mexican-American states in 2015 and discovered that those who were most positive in their worldview were half as likely to die. And a 2011 study followed about 200 women and men from San Francisco for 13 years and found that those who reported more positive than negative experiences also lived longer.
According to research on the website of the Center for Positive Psychology, striving for well-being will allow you to perform better at work, have better relationships, a stronger immune system, less sleep problems, lower levels of exhaustion, better physical health and You could live longer.
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Excellent! But how do you get happiness? That is the difficult question, especially because the meaning of the word is not even scientifically agreed.
"Happiness comes in different sizes and flavors," said cardiologist Dr. Alan Rozanski, a professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who studies optimism.
"There is the transitional type, fed by things like walking in a park, spending time with a friend or eating that ice cream you love," he continued. "But these feelings of happiness come and go."
What creates a sustained feeling of happiness, experts say, is a mixture of features such as optimism and resilience, fueled by behaviors such as expressing gratitude, forgiveness and being kind to others, all united by a strong sense of purpose.
Add to that mixture a main ingredient: a sense of community characterized by warm, supportive and satisfying relationships with others.
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Now that we have something of a functional recipe for happiness, let's look for the ingredients.
Satisfactory social connections
“People who are more socially connected with family, friends, community, are happier, are healthier physically and live longer than people who are less connected,” said Harvard psychiatrist Robert Waldinger in his Popular Talk TEDx. "And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic."
Waldinger is the fourth director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which followed the lives of 724 Boston men for more than 75 years and then began to follow more than 2,000 of their descendants and their wives.
Among the original recruits in the study were President John F. Kennedy and former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
The unprecedented study has allowed researchers to approach determining the main characteristics of a happy life.
"The lessons are not about wealth or fame or working harder and harder," Waldinger said. “The clearest message we receive from this 75-year study is the following: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Point".
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You don't have to have dozens of friends or even be in a committed relationship, he emphasizes.
"What matters is the quality of your close relationships," Waldinger said. “High conflict marriages, for example, without much love, turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than divorce. And living in the midst of good and warm relationships is protective. ”
Looking on the bright side
Optimism and pessimism are the yin and yang of happiness. Optimists are people who expect good things to happen to them, while pessimists expect bad things to happen.
It turns out that looking at the positive side of life is really good for your health. Research has found a direct link between optimism and a stronger immune system, better lung function and heart health.
A recent meta-analysis of studies found that, compared to pessimists, an optimist had an approximately 35% lower risk of major cardiac complications, such as cardiac death, stroke or heart attack.
"In fact, the more positive the person, the greater the protection against heart attacks, strokes and any cause of death," said Mt. Rozanski de Sinai, who was the lead author of the study.
There are many reasons why a positive outlook could improve your physical health and help you live longer. It reduces the stress hormone cortisol, which controls inflammation, blood sugar and blood pressure levels, all the key factors in the development of the disease.
Optimists also have better health habits. They are more likely to exercise, have better diets and are less likely to smoke.
"Optimists also tend to have better coping skills and are better problem solvers," Rozanski said. "They are better at what we call proactive coping, or anticipate problems and then take proactive measures to solve them."
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Regardless of the reasons, a 2019 study of nearly 6,000 people from the Harvard Health and Retirement study found that optimists were 24% more likely to maintain healthy aging.
Meaning and purpose
A sense of purpose and meaning in your life is a large part of living a longer and happier life, according to psychology professor Lyle Ungar, who has developed what he calls the Wellness Map. Qualify all US counties. UU. for psychological factors such as openness, trust, kindness and neuroticism.
"Do you have a job or vocation that makes sense?" Ungar asked in an interview with CNN last year. “The road to happiness is not choosing to be happy, it is to find the meaning of life. Volunteer, spend time in a charity, give something of yourself. People who are well that way live longer. ”
Lord Richard Layard, one of Britain's most prominent economists and author of several books on happiness, also believes that to make us happy we must focus on the welfare of others.
"A society cannot flourish without a sense of shared purpose," he writes in his historical book "Happiness: lessons from a new science."
“If your only duty is to achieve the best for you, life becomes too stressful, too lonely: you are prepared to fail. Instead, you need to feel that you exist for something bigger, and that same thought removes some of the pressure. ”
Spirituality
Studies by the Pew Research Center show that actively religious people are more likely than less religious or non-religious people to describe themselves as "very happy." They also share some traits that could improve their chances of a longer and happier life: they are less likely to smoke and drink, and are more likely to join clubs and volunteer in charities.
"I'm surprised at how good religion is for people," said Ungar. "Religious people are nicer, they are happier, they live longer."
It doesn't have to be a traditional religion. Layard points out that spiritual practices that range from meditation to positive psychology and cognitive therapy can also feed an inner life.
Blooming with PERMA
The psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, co-founder of the field of positive psychology, has developed a theory that he believes will allow well-being, which according to some experts is a better goal than happiness.
Seligman has developed five building blocks towards the well-being he calls "PERMA". Each of them remains independent of the others and must be persecuted "by itself, not as a means to an end."
"P" means positive emotion, which you can cultivate with the hope of the future and an appreciation of the past. By practicing gratitude for what you have been given and forgiveness for what you were not, Seligman feels that you can create a positive emotion about your past. Build hope and optimism, he says, and build positive emotions about your future.
"E" is for commitment, which he defines as using all his skills, strengths and attention completely in a challenging task. Doing this, he says, will put you in the "flow," a kind of mental version of the athlete's "zone."
"R" is for the relationships and critical importance they have in our lives to amplify our positive and negative feelings.
"M" is for meaning, a sense of purpose of being part of something bigger than us. He points out religion, family and social causes, how to work for a better environment as ways to increase meaning in our lives. Research shows that doing acts of kindness to others can also increase our well-being.
And finally, "A" is for achievement. This is not necessarily a financial success, but the success and mastery of a skill or activity by itself.
Or as the Dalai Lama has said: “Happiness is not something smart. It comes from your own actions. ”
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