If You Want To Live Longer, Make Heaven A Place On Earth

Researchers ran a study like no other, on how nuns see life and what makes some of them live considerably longer than others.

The Nun Study is unlike any other in the medical and research world. You may be thinking — Nuns? Those delicate women who live in a strictly controlled environment, eat the same things again and again, don’t smoke, don’t guzzle booze, and don’t have sex? If anything, you might be tempted to believe that it’s worth running a study regarding their unhappiness. Because what’s life without good food, great wine, and excellent sex (scratch excellent and let’s leave it at sex of any kind) — right?

But researchers thought otherwise — Nuns? Those perfect study participants with “profound similarities around their physical health, who have similar, regularized diets, live together in similar surroundings…”? Wow, there’s no other group of human beings that can be as controlled as that! Can we read their autobiographies since they were only 22-years-old, which is pretty much like snooping into their diaries? And when they die, can we take their brains and dissect them to see what made them happy and saved them from Alzheimer's disease? Cool! Let’s do this!

OK, maybe the dialogue between researchers didn’t go quite like that. Still, that’s the essence of what made the Nun Study one of the most resounding studies on the impact of positive thinking in the whole history of positive psychology.

Aren’t all nuns happy and positive? Why study this?

All nuns are happy and positive because they strongly believe in their life choices. Still, the way they express these positive feelings and thinking may vary to a certain degree. And the differences are given by their temperament and their general attitude towards life.

Here’s how two nuns (who were perfectly content with choosing to serve a higher purpose) talked about it in their autobiographies:

Nun 1: I was born on September 26, 1909, the eldest of seven children, five girls and two boys . . . . My candidate year was spent in the Motherhouse, teaching Chemistry and Second Year Latin at Notre Dame Institute. With God’s grace, I intend to do my best for our Order, for the spread of religion and for my personal sanctification.

Nun 2: God started my life off well by bestowing upon me a grace of inestimable value… . The past year which I have spent as a candidate studying at Notre Dame College has been a very happy one. Now I look forward with eager joy to receiving the Holy Habit of Our Lady and to a life of union with Love Divine.

Researchers considered that the writing of Nun 1 expressed a low positive emotion whereas the writing of Nun 2 expressed high positive emotion.

So, the whole study focused on what kind of words the nuns used in their autobiographies (positive, neutral, negative). They thought that the intensity of the positive emotional expressions revealed their emotional temperament, which, according to previous studies, is an indicator of a person’s emotional outlook.

The study determined the nuns’ temperaments based on their writing style and the emotional outlook it reflected. Their reasoning was that temperament is consistent over the lifespan, it impacts a person’s ability to cope with life challenges and stress, and having a generally positive outlook allows you to manage life better — will the nuns with a more positive outlook live longer?

Again, the nuns had pretty much everything common in their lives, except for their temperament and emotional outlook. Therefore, any difference in their quality of life would have been directly impacted by these factors that differentiated them.

Happy nuns live long. Happier nuns live longer. How much longer?

Just to be clear, the study involved the autobiographies of 180 catholic nuns who had, on average, 22-years when they wrote them, and they were getting ready to enter into the convent.

Researchers came up with the idea of running this study about 60 years later when the nuns who agreed to participate had between 75-years old and 94-years old.

About 42% of the nuns whose autobiographies they read were already dead at that time. So, what they found was that 60% of the nuns who appeared to be the least happy (according to the interpretation of their autobiographies) died by the age of 80. By contrast, only 25% of the nuns who appeared to be the happiest died by the age of 80. As far as longevity was concerned, only 15% of the least happy nuns made it to 94 years old, whereas 54% of the happiest ones lived that long.

In a nutshell, the happiest nuns lived, on average, 10 years longer than the least happy ones.

But researchers were stunned by an unexpected discovery

The initial study wanted to look into the nuns’ autobiographies. Ongoing research stemmed from there, with nuns being asked to give their consent to have their brains dissected once they die.

10 years later, it was clear for the researchers that the ones with more positive thinking and outlook on life had lower mortality rates, fewer diseases, and even some kind of natural immunity against the terrible Alzheimer’s disease. And scanning the “donated brains” showed how the most positive nuns didn’t have any dementia sign, whereas the least positive ones had dementia symptoms.

The stunning discovery was given by 15 of the scanned brains which, despite showing anatomic changes specific to the disease, expressed no clinical signs whatsoever during their lifetime. They suffered anatomic changes but showed no symptoms!

Read that again: 15 of the nuns that were suffering from Alzheimer’s diseases — their brains were obviously affected — lived without expressing any obvious sign of dementia.

This goes to show that a positive look towards life — the most positive you can put out, in fact! — can not only help you live longer but also, in some cases, spare you from acting sick even if you do get sick! How amazing is that?!

How was that quote from Charles Swindoll, again?

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company…a church….a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.” ― Charles Swindoll

If anything, the Nun Study shows how embracing the most positive attitude towards life will help you live longer and healthier here on Earth, during the only life you’re certain of.

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