Exercise, a diet of high nutritional value, a regular daily routine, and good sleep are among the sine qua non. It’s far easier to enjoy a good psychological state if you’ve slept well! Beyond this, studies have shown that stress can be managed more effectively by those who have a more philosophical outlook on life. Do you know who lives more than 100 years? Those who can control their baser instincts and regulate their emotions. In the past few years, we’ve studied more than 450 centenarians in the Attica region.
On average, they were never overweight, hadn’t suffered bouts of clinical depression, ate a healthy diet and led lives of impressive regularity. Several of them had seen their children predecease them. Yet they’d say stoically, “What can you do? It was God’s will to take them.” Human beings are the only creatures to have developed a formidably complex prefrontal cortex, which can exert control over instincts, impulses and emotions, stimulate hope and assist in the attainment of a sense of well-being, of a lasting state of happiness.
As human beings, we can harness the systems of our brain that control stress and the emotions by means of philosophy, psychotherapy, meditation or prayer. All religions, irrespective of how dissimilar they may seem, inherently contain the necessary “ingredients” conducive to a better and happier life.