Have a purpose in life to live longer….

Today's Post: Tuesday, 6-16-2009

Today’s HealthDay News that I found online under Yahoo health news reports a study that found that if you have a purpose in life –
whether it’s an ambitious mission in life, doing volunteer work that you feel makes a small positive difference, gradually getting your yard in shape, or reading all the 23 books your favorite author ever wrote, you'll live longer.

If you are working towards a goal that you care about reaching, it literally can be ambitious or quite modest.

But if you do you’ll live longer.

How powerful is this?

Even in people who were disabled or who had pre-existing medical problems, having this kind of purpose cut the death rate of the people who had one in half -- compared with people who had none!

When I saw this, I remembered seeing separate research showing that people who had a strong purpose in life had better heath & were dramatically more resilient in dealing with stress than people who didn’t.

But the neat thing that this study found is that even much more modest goals improved your health about as much.

The article noted that it might be that people who have goals had some kind of separate advantage that caused them to both have goals and to have better health.

I think that’s both true and false.

If you had parents or a mentor or teacher as a role model who was good at achieving goals or they taught you how to achieve goals successfully, you are more likely to have goals.

If you are proactive and have found you can achieve goals that you set on your own, you are more likely to usually have a goal or two in your life.

Or if you have read something that inspired you, you may have a goal as a result.

But the nature of working towards a goal and the way it engages your efforts and give a focus to some of your life are such that it turns on your brain to use more of its abilities. I believe that improves your health directly.

In addition to that, when you make choices that might harm you or improve your health, if you are working towards a goal, you are much more likely to make choices that avoid likely harm and that protect your health. THAT makes a very definite positive difference to your health.

Lastly, the process of achieving goals is such that doing so tends to teach you to be prudently optimistic. You look for solutions or causes and try again if something goes wrong. And, when you make progress successfully it tends to make you feel as if you can do the things you care about even if it looks hard to others.

Separate studies have found that people who think that way have better health in almost every category.

So, even if you didn’t have earlier experiences with achieving goals and you don’t have one now, I’m firmly convinced if you find one you care about and begin working towards it, you’ll get this effect.

And, health related goals can be twice as effective.

Say you don’t get any exercise now and cannot walk more than a few minutes without getting too tired. One way to have a goal is to decide to do a daily walk until you can not only walk for 20 minutes each day, you can walk briskly for sections of it without feeling it was too hard. Let’s say that walking for more than four minutes makes you feel really blasted. Start with daily two minute walks at an easy pace.
Then after a week do a 3 minute walk each day. By the week after that, you’ll find that you can easily do a 4 minute walk each day without feeling tired. Then just keep going; do a five minute walk the week after that; then go to six and so on until you walk for 20 minutes a day. Then once you are used to that, walk briskly for one or two short parts of it and keep adding more parts until you walk briskly for most of your walk.

Or you once you can walk for 5 minutes a day easily, do two walks each day. Walk for 5 minutes, then rest for 10 minutes and walk for five more. Then do two 6 minute walks but just rest for 8 minutes in between until you do two 9 minute walks with just 2 minutes in between. Then try just doing a 20 minute walk. Then once you are used to that, walk briskly for one or two short parts of it and keep adding more parts until you walk briskly for most of your walk.

That will help you live longer two ways. Not only you had a goal while you were doing it, you also beginning to do the exercise that also has been shown to slow aging and increase longevity.

Another way to live longer two ways is by volunteering. You can set goals for your volunteer efforts which helps you live longer. But in addition to that, every time you volunteer, no matter what for, you wind up meeting and talking to new people more or meeting and talking to people you already know more often. Then you have goals AND you have more social interaction too. And they both increase longevity.