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…
