Posted on 03/02/2013 5:38:41 PM PST by Olog-hai
Older people who look on the darker side of life tend to live longer than optimists, who in turn face an increased risk of illness and mortality, a new study by a German research institute found on Thursday.
Researchers in Germany and Switzerland found that older people who believe their life satisfaction will be above average in future face a 10-percent higher mortality risk or are more likely to develop physical health problems, the DIW think-tank said.
“It is possible that a pessimistic outlook leads elderly people to look after themselves and their health better and take greater precautions against risks,” said one of the researchers, Frieder Lang. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...
And they’re more willing to die.
Well, just because you’re an optimist doesn’t mean things don’t suck...
Screw pessimism. If you’re not sick, in jail or dead, and all of your family is still alive and kickin’, then it’s a GOOD day.
You just proved my point.
if you expect the worst and you get something a lot better than that, life is grand!
Pessimist: The glass is half empty.
Real pessimist: The glass isn't merely half empty, but the person who drank the first half probably backwashed.
Time to rethink that 401K catch up contribution.
Life sucks, then you die.
“A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.”
A pessimist is a person who has been mugged by optimism.
The Pessimists creed:
Nothing lasts forever, unless it does.
“A pessimist is never disappointed.”
I have always maintained that it is not a question of “if”, it is a question of “when”. I would also state that Optimists have never cleaned up the mess.
I'll probably, like you, live to be 150 because there's no way i qualify either. The Dims will probably rule the whole time and my long life will be utter hell.
Yep, oiled machines in a towel factory and in those days earned enough to get married, buy a little house and raise a son WITHOUT ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE. He told my mother his house was paid for and he had thirteen thousand dollars in the bank back when that would have bought a fifty acre farm in the Carolinas. Reconcile that with the BS you hear about the wonders of our modern economy. I wonder what he might have accomplished had he not spent most of his life in a state of depression. My mother said that he worked like a mad man as a teenager, at the age when I only wanted to get a break from all the farm work he would find a tiny spot to plant his own little crop of cantaloupes or something when all the regular farm work was already done.
Agreed.
The pessimist has an advantage over the optimist. The advantage is that the pessimist is nearly always correct and when incorrect it is a pleasant surprise.
Realist :
The glass is half-full if you are filling it and it is half-empty if you emptying it.
Great, something else for pessimists to bitch about. :’) Thanks Olog-hai.
People with a more optimistic outlook have reasons to piss and moan, but don’t. If they weren’t optimistic, they wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. Pessimists aren’t realists, they are pathologically self-centered, insensitive jerks, blissfully unaware of the conditions and suffering of others, while having very little to complain about themselves. IOW, find someone with no health issues, find a pessimist. Optimists are the realists.
At least this “study” isn’t tied somehow to “global warming”, eh? :’)
so. Do pessimists work harder?
I guess if they are pessimistic about everyone else but their own abilities they might
Apparently uncle Bruce only worked harder as a teenager. I of course only knew him as an adult and to me he never seemed to have any energy, he and his wife and son would visit our farm in the summer when we had all kinds of fresh vegetables in the garden and he loved to eat the fresh produce but didn’t seem to want to lift a finger to pick any. He would mostly lounge around and grumble. His wife (my aunt) was a mousy little woman with a tiny voice who moved very slowly, I suspect that she was on some kind of medication for her nerves that kept her moving so slowly. The only time I can clearly remember going with my parents to uncle Bruce’s house she was on the edge of her seat waiting when my father would finish a cigarette and she would immediately take the ash tray and dump it out and then wash it and bring it back to him. They were not a joy to be around, that’s for sure.
Pessimists are people with a brain who don’t live in Chicago, hoping for the best.
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