In my first two blogs this week, I pointed to recent studies suggesting that simply feeling younger than our chronological age is associated with a longer (click here) and healthier (click here) life.

The quick and easy message seems to be: Think of yourself as young and you will stay young and healthy longer.

Here’s the real catch from my perspective. It’s neither quick nor easy to change a belief as deeply engrained as your subjective age.
 
But, you ask, if the benefits of changing a set of beliefs are as substantial as greater health and longevity, shouldn’t a rational mind choose to do so? Though optimistic, this view is probably naïve, and ignores a large body of social science evidence that many of our most basic beliefs aren’t even conscious and available to the rational mind. Even if we are aware of them, they’ve often become part of who we are. We cease to think of them as mere beliefs. They’ve become our reality.

So if you command yourself to think “I’m younger than my actual age,” yet your deeply held core belief is that you’re actually older, your brain will be quick to start an inner war and likely remind you of the many ways your body is falling apart, or any number of other cognitive distortions. Just to keep your beliefs intact.

It’s no surprise that the web is full of advice about how to do one of the most challenging things in life:

15 Ways to Change Your Thoughts
10 Tips to Overcome Negative Thoughts
The Four Keys to Overcoming Negative Thinking
8 Tips to Change Negative Thinking

So, as appealing as these longevity study results are, they probably offer no quick fix for a longer and healthier life.

But quite possibly it wasn’t simply a youthful feeling that was associated with health and longevity. Even though the studies statistically accounted for the influence of a number of potentially contaminating health outcomes, the authors speculated that feeling younger might also lead to better health habits, like regular exercise and a healthy diet. If we feel young, we may have more of a future-orientation that will lead toward a lifestyle with future health in mind. This, in turn, would lead to a longer, healthier life.

Here’s my take.

Behaviors are usually easier to change than beliefs. Improving our lifestyle by incorporating regular exercise and a healthy diet, as challenging as this is for most of us, is probably a quicker and easier way to prolong a healthy life than trying to change core beliefs about ourselves.