You Want Some Stress

Trauma? No. Stress? Probably. Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan discovered that early life stress contributes to longer lifespan: https://news.umich.edu/u-m-researchers-discover-stress-in-…/

Whereas abuse in early life correlates with much shorter telomeres (and thus likely shorter lifespan: https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/…/childhood-trauma-patient…/), cells respond positively to some stress.

This isn’t entirely surprising given that young, fit, health astronauts show signs of osteoporosis in only a few weeks of weightlessness. And, frankly, infection (or vaccination) is a major stressor, which at some level everyone agrees is a requirement for immune system maturation. The eustress of intelligent exercise programming speaks for itself. Sedentary people have the highest incidence of joint replacements. Activity doesn’t “wear them out.” Our bodies require stress.

Management of stress doesn’t necessarily mean reduction. In fact, Harvard challenged that hypothesis last year when they found that people who add ADDITIONAL learning to an OVERBUSY plate end up managing stress BETTER than people who reduce their busyness: https://hbr.org/…/to-cope-with-stress-try-learning-somethin…

You might have even noticed that people who resist learning (ie - changes in beliefs) are in a constant state of anxiety. Stress is going to come. Stress is good. But we must be open to being molded by it, instead of the nonstop anger at opposing thoughts and information.

You might also have noticed that people who enter retirement or a semi-retirement period of life also become incredibly less resilient to stress. When you ask them what they’re doing today, you can see them bristle if they have more than one task on the list. A trip to the grocery store AND doctor’s appointment in the same day can practically kill them. Reduction of 45-65 hours of work and commuting per week didn’t do them any favors, unless they learned to fill that time with other stressors (in this case hopefully more enjoyable ones).
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You want some stress.