Prolong your life by being more conscientious

We all know that our weight, our genes, our diet, whether we exercise regularly, whether we smoke or drink are intermingling factors that play a role in determining the longevity of life. There is another factor that often gets overlooked that is key in predicting life span – that is how conscientious you are. Neuroscientist Dr Dan Levitin claims the single biggest factor that predicts if you are going to age well is the personality trait conscientiousness.

Conscientious children don’t run across the road whilst the red man is showing, conscientious teenagers hand in their essay, even after a big night out and conscientious adults don’t park on yellow lines and save a little for a rainy day. Conscientious people live longer, get better grades, commit fewer crimes, earn more have greater influence, are more like to lead companies that success long term are happier and have better marriages.

Being conscientious is multi faceted and comprises of being industrious and hard working, having a sense of duty, being reliable and dependable, having the self control to be able to follow rules and norms and being organised. A conscientious person is good at self regulation and impulse control. This trait will influence whether you will proactively set and keep goals, take obligations seriously and how impulsive or cautious you are when managing risk.

How conscientious are you? Are you the sort of person that can’t leave anything midway and likes to follow through on commitments? Are you super organised and have a penchant for stationary, colour coded files and post it notes? Are appearances important to you? D you comb your hair, reapply your lippy, polish your shoes every so often? There are lots of tests online that you can take to measure conscientiousness.

Some people think that personality traits are fixed. “Although conscientiousness is often a result of what is learned and developed throughout childhood, a person can definitely work on becoming more conscientious throughout life,” says clinical psychologist Carla Marie Manly.  There are things that you can do to enhance and build upon your personality characteristics.  As a psychotherapist I see every day how clients can positively change their personalities by doing activities that fall into 2 categories – doing more of what is important to them and doing more that is fun. Focusing on these areas over time creates change.

Counselling or psychotherapy is a great way to enhance your conscientiousness. Turning up to a session each week to explore how your thoughts, feelings and behaviours are interlined, learning and putting into practice tools to change your behaviours. Therapy can also help you decide on what matters to you, what you want to focus on.  An enemy of conscientiousness is being emotionally reactive and getting carried away acting impulsively and re-actively. If you feel a wave of emotion rise up, pause, take a few deep breaths and reflect before you react.

What small steps can you take to nudge up your levels of conscientiousness? My commitment to myself to be more conscientious in lockdown includes:

  • Not buying stuff (mainly from Amazon) on a whim. I will leave products in my cart for at lest 24 hours before purchasing. That means no more one click shopping!

  • Not to reach for another biscuit or handful of chocolate raisins. Conscientious people do not binge, they know that small things add up. Not surprisingly, conscientious people have a lower risk of obesity and are more like to lose weight that those with lower levels of conscientiousness.  Less conscientious people watch more TV, scroll more on social media, tend to oversleep and are more likely to engage in risky health related behaviours like smoking.

  • Not give up hope around returning to normal life and seeing loved ones. Conscientious people do not quit, they have grit. It’s important to persevere when it gets challenging. Small steps such as getting up and making the bed each day is enough. It doesn’t have to be radical.

So next time you think about your health and wellbeing, spare a thought for “conscientiousness.” It is never too late to start and its never to late to change. Neuroplasticity shoes that we continue to learn and develop new brain connections into old age.   So, in the spirit of being conscientious don’t just click out of this blog and on to the next thing but think what small action you can take towards being more conscientious.

It’s over to you.  

Nicola Strudley