Look on the bright side - it's really good for you

One of my colleagues used to display a bumper sticker at her desk that always stopped me: "The more you complain, the longer God lets you live."

Research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association puts the lie to that piece of bumper-sticker wisdom.

Turns out that optimistic women are significantly less likely than their pessimistic sisters to develop heart disease or to die of any cause. So-called "cynical hostility" - hanging onto nasty thoughts toward others or just chronically mistrusting people - puts you at higher risk of dying, too, but doesn't change your heart-disease risk.

"As a physician, I'd like to see people try to reduce their negativity in general," said Dr. Hilary A. Tindle, lead author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. "The majority of evidence suggests that sustained, high degrees of negativity are hazardous to health."

Her team studied more than 97,000 postmenopausal women from the Women's Health Initiative. Optimists say "yes" when asked questions like, "In unclear times, I usually expect the best." Pessimists say yes to things like: "If something can go wrong for me, it will."

The effect is even stronger among African-American women who are optimists - they have a 33 percent lower risk of death across eight years of follow-up, compared with 13 percent lower for white optimists.

Now, I can just hear the pessimists among you groaning. There are many times I, too, have thought that if you're unfailingly optimistic, you just aren't paying attention.

But the older and, I hope, wiser, I get, the more I realize that optimism is a smart choice. This has nothing to do with reading medical studies and everything to do with observing human nature, my own included. Frankly, I just annoy myself when my attitude gets too bleak for too long.

And the people I admire are those who find something for which to be grateful.

Here's the bumper sticker I just put up at my desk: "Wag more. Bark less."

Works for me.