I use “science” in quotation marks because I think most of us (especially followers of this site) will be familiar with this bit of “news” or just think it’s true on an intuitive basis.

Regardless here’s the article I am referring to and a useful summary:

After controlling for demographics and health behaviors, researchers found that subjects who reported higher numbers of daily frustrations had virtually identical mortality rates as those who reported more highly stressful life events. Only 29% of subjects who experienced few everyday hassles had died, while that percentage jumped to 64% for those who’d experienced high levels. For major, stressful life events, the percentages were around 33% dying for those who’d experienced few events and 50% for those who’d experienced a high number of stressful events.

NPR had some things to say too:

“People who always perceived their daily life to be over-the-top stressful were three times more likely to die over the period of study than people who rolled with the punches and didn’t find daily life very stressful,” according to Carolyn Aldwin. She directs the Center for Healthy Aging Research at Oregon State University and led the study, which is scheduled for publication in the journal Experimental Gerontology.

Some people get frantic sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, worried about being late or not being able to do what they hoped in a timely manner. Others simply take the time to sit back, listen to music and appreciate the break as some quiet time.

Now, if you’l excuse me I’ve gotta go for a run, do some reading for tonight and try to knock off other stuff before returning to the review of A Working Stiff’s Manifesto. That’ll probably resume in a day or two.

Otherwise I will have a few blog posts to share from a guest author on play as well as some concepts, sites and music too so stay tuned!