The Scientific Recipe for Greatness
The traits of successful people have fascinated us since at least the 1930s. That was the era when Dale Carnegie founded self-improvement industry (which now worth $11 Billion per year in the US alone).
It was also in the late 1930s that a group of social scientists quietly began the ambitious Grant study exploring the lives of 268 Harvard-educated men.
Sixty years later (the study still going strong) they have basically given up hope of discovering the secret recipe of greatness which they were after. (They also didn't achieve their other lofty aim of easing "the disharmony of the world at large.") However, they have at least identified seven primary factors that predict healthy (physical and psychological) living and aging.
They are:
- getting an education;
- having a stable marriage;
- not smoking;
- employing "mature adaptations;" (see below)
- not abusing alcohol;
- having some exercise and
- maintaining a healthy weight.
All of these strike me as surprisingly simple, str...
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