There was an interesting story today on ABCnews about how positive thinking may lead to longer life. It's an interesting story because they start by focusing on generally upbeat nuns and point out how they tend to age better than a lot of other people.
Being positive apparently results in less production of certain stress hormones that are bad for your heart and immune system. That makes sense to me, because I haven't been sick much at all in the last two years or so, since I was laid-off from a job I didn't like and decided to live on my own terms.
But how do you let stressful stuff just roll off? There's the hard part. Somehow you have to treat even bad things as being positive. That's not easy at all. I guess you do the best you can and train yourself to do it. When I encounter negativity, there's almost always some way that I can challenge myself to deal with it in a positive way, but it depends on how emotionally involved you get.
Crazy stuff to think about!