Chapter 4 regarded how optimism correlates to longevity and the results really surprised me. While chapter 5 told us that catastrophizing and too much worrying was strongly correlated to a shorter lifespan, optimism wasn’t shown to lead to a longer, healthier, life. Instead it was found that those who lived long, fulfilling lives grew happier as they got older, even if they weren’t exactly bubbly growing up. This is reassuring to me as I was never a particularly optimistic child and instead looked at things as realistically and logically as possible, which the chapter seemed to connect to favorable outcomes. I agree with chapter 5’s conclusions that people are capable of teaching themselves not to catastrophize as I did that a few years ago by asking myself questions like, “How much control do I actually have over this situation?” and consciously changing my trains of thoughts in a similar manner to what the book described.
I really like your coping strategy with stress. It seems that often we, as humans, stress over things that are out of our control. It’s hard not to spiral out of control into anxiety when we believe that something wrong is going to happen. I find myself often in bed, stressing over something that is out of control, keeping me up for hours. Knowing the results of the study, I am going to try to control this anxiety more using your coping mechanism.