How TRAITS decrease your lifespan!

Yeap you heard that right!, traits can determine your lifespan and they can either increase your lifespan or decrease it, and its always up to you.

 I can sense YOU want to punch me right now and asking yourself "well I thought this blog was all about health?, how can my traits affect my lifespan/health", "is Abdulqadir going nuts?!", okay well hold those thoughts and join me to learn how traits can affect your health and decrease your lifespan (hold that punch too).

Well from your life experience to where you are right now I'm sure you already know that the better our connections, the deeper our connections and the more we look forward to our connections is the happier we are and the longer we live. According to the academical look in personality traits there are five traits that a human has, normally called the BIG FIVE (OCEAN), here is a small summary on all the traits.

THE BIG FIVE (OCEAN)

The big five or so called the five-factor model consist of five traits that a human has which are, Openness(O), Conscientiousness, Extraversion(E), Agreeableness(A) and Neuroticism(N),oh and i forgot, these traits are categorized into high, low and medium so you can determine yourself through them, now let's dive right through each on of them;

• Openness 

Do you like doing new things all the time?, do you love being creative?, are you very curious?, are you open-minded?, do you love taking risks?, then you are probably among the people with HIGH openness, as for people with LOW openness, these people  are more practical, they probably have a habit traditional ritual routine, very cautious too.

• Conscientiousness 

This trait concerns how you approach details, for HIGH conscientiousness people, these people are very detail oriented, very organized and responsible too, as for people with LOW conscientiousness, they are more flexible and want to go with the flow, and details kinda bog them down, and these people can be careless (sounds like you?).

• Extroversion 

We kinda hear this the most nowadays, as for HIGH extroverted people these people love people, they usually get energy from being around people, whenever they have a good day or bad day they want to share it with people,  people with LOW extroversion (introverts) are always at a state of flight or fight and it can be exhausting as hell!, they get energy from being alone and they recharge with solo time and are usually quiet. The good thing is that many people are 'ambiverts' which are between introverts and extroverts.

• Agreeableness

The YES people who agree on literally everything, the HIGH agreeableness people default to YES, these people oftenly fall into 'people pleasing' and sometimes overcommit because all they want to do is cooperate, help and give. The LOW agreeableness people are the analytical people and are default NO, 'help me with this? nahh i'm busy' these people tend to be more suspicious and always want to look things on their fact checkers to make sure that thing is right, but also tend to say no to things that are even a good idea.

• Neuroticism 

This trait deals with how you approach worry, people with HIGH neuroticism take worrying as a sport and an investment in failure prevention, they are more anxious since whenever a bad thing happens to them feels worse, as for people with LOW neuroticism they are stable, less mood changes and control their emotions.
So, which traits do you think are more likely to increase longevity?

My answer was openness, but guess what? openness is the dangerous(adrenaline junkies) among all of these since these people can do backflips at the top of a skyscraper, also they are prone to gambling since most of them are bored, dissatisfied and seek gambling as a way of coping or escaping. The following are the traits that lead to longevity;

• Agreeableness, this trait leads to longevity since these people are all about cooperation, they will always take chances and try new opportunities and also they'll try things even if they are out of their comfort zone, and although as I said these people can be people pleasers (which for me sucks) but this contributes to longevity.
• High conscientiousness, these people are detail-oriented so they remember doing pushups everyday, they avoid smoking and are self-disciplined. Another way to think of longevity from this trait is not the remembering those details but you also get good at doing things repeatedly, invest your ability to build habits.
• Extroversion, now according to research people who get energy from being with people live longer because the more connected people are the more oxytocin (hormone which influences social bonding) hence the more people feel connected, extroverts usually have people helping them, loving them and supporting them and hence are more likely to be healthy.

But please stay with me, I know now you are wondering, "But I am an introvert does this mean I'll die early?".

First of all these traits are not the only factor that leads to longevity there are many other factors too such as health, your diet(food lifestyle) so breathe, it's important to consider the whole person and not just their personality, you can be an extrovert who consumes lots of sugars everyday and die earlier than an introvert who eats healthy, so extroverts don't get your hopes up.

Secondly, most of the people lie in between, you can have two traits from the five traits, so don't punch me yet and stay with me please, breathe!.

I'M AN INTROVERT,  WHAT SHOULD I DO?

 For people having none of these traits (I strongly include myself with them although some people say I have the openness trait, hell no!) , its okay, so this is where charisma comes in, According to the oxford dictionary charisma is defined as compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion among others.

Let me bold the following statement, get your 'aha' moment ready, you can find your flavor in charisma and it doesn't have to include to be pretending to be an extrovert, did you 'ahaa'?, not yet? okay lets go on, people nowadays are like well I can follow the phrase 'fake it till you make it'  , for people that have tried this i'm sure of how deep down unhappy you guys are, this thing drains you faster whether you like it or not. Now you can read the bolded statement again and 'aha' it.

Listen, you are better off if you understand your social battery, meaning figuring out what things, people, places drain your energy, it can be an app, a website, a person at school/university/work and figure out how you can boundary them and say no to them limiting your exposure to them.

And this is how you and me can gain from extroverts or other longevity traits.

Now here comes the interesting part, well Abdulqadir, I am very awkward and I don't think people understand me. Hmm if you think you are among those people please send me an email, we can be friends, okay so what to do for these people according to Vanessa Van Edwards the best way to overcome this is that you can break down specific aspects of your conversations interaction that works for you and what doesn't work for you and find questions and topics that light you up.

For the people who term themselves as awkward (and all other traits, I didn't forget you guys) the best way to keep conversations and maintain them is that we should try to avoid the 'SOCIAL SCRIPT QUESTIONS' , these questions include;

• What's new?
• How are you holding up?
• How's business?
• How was school?
• What do you do?
• Where are you from?
• How's the family?

Now i'm bored!, now these questions are for the people you don't want to go deeper with, but not the closest relationships you have in life, because not everyone can be your 'close friend' but can still be your 'friend'.

The common mistake made in trying to be charismatic is that they jump into way too deep questions before they know the basics part, our brains are taught to start with basic information first. Interesting questions can be;

• I am trying this interesting activity, can I share it with you?
• What interesting thing did you learn this week?
• You are a good player, where did you learn playing like this?
• Girl you can cook!, I wonder how you learned how to cook?

But, this doesn't mean you should be a chatterbox but rather you should interact with people, speak when you are supposed to, and trust me people do not like a blabbermouth and are all about themselves, also whenever you feel people draining you, you have every right to distance them.

AMBIVALENCE VS TOXIC RELATIONSHIPS

Did you know that ambivalent relationships are more dangerous than toxic relationships? 

According to the oxford dictionary ambivalence means the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.

Whenever you know that someone doesn't like you (toxic) its easy to avoid them, you can have short convos, or don't talk to them at all but whenever you have ambivalent relationships with people and always ask yourself questions such as;

• Do I have fun with them?
• Was I supportive?
• Was that enough?
• Was I mean to her/him?

There's a problem!, whenever we are unsure that someone likes us or support us we are prone to be more stressed, there are going to be people that you look forward at and you don't know which way to go, trust me those people are the ones you have to watch for, research says that ambivalent relationships are more harmful.

                                                            Source: Car pickhart Ph. D

Listen, there are always going to be people in your life that you might have to love from a distance because you see that these people are going through too much hurt and want to take that hurt on other people, they usually say "I'm not successful because the people besides me did not do enough" , but that's for people to figure out on themselves. (did I sound like a motivational speaker?).

And remember that people are a byproduct of their circumstances and we should be thankful we didn't have the same parents or situations as them, because if we did we would probably be like them.

Phew!

That's enough for today, I hope I don't deserve a punch and also hope that I was helpful.

My biggest fear? 

My biggest fear is if whatever I share couldn't be helpful to your life in one way or another!

I would love feedbacks from you and e-mails(people who think they're awkward too) of whatever interesting topic you want to know about, and don't forget to share this post to your friend and another friend.

Thank you for your time, again.. 💛