Seeing Stars

"Look up at the stars and not down at your feet."
"Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist."
"Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at."
"It matters that you don't just give up."
Dr. Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University, 2012

Sagely poignant advice from someone whose life was challenged in such an extreme manner that anyone else might simply surrender to the reality of a mind struggling to express itself in a body that nature had abandoned to a long, agonizing downward spiral of failure. A man who overcame obstacles that would have truncated anyone else's expectations for the future. A man determined to use whatever resources he had to the fullest, despite the wholesale disadvantage of a disintegrating body. And who succeeded beyond the wildest imagination of doctors. In the process creating a different type of celebrity awe in the public awareness of the possible transcending the impossible.

At George Mason University in Virginia, 97 students were asked to complete a series of personality questionnaires by researchers Todd Kashdan and Michael Steger. A diary was to be kept and updated for a three-week period. The researchers, analyzing the results, found that respondents scoring high on curiosity found more enjoyment in life and had the impression that their existence was suffused with more meaning than those in comparison who tended to be inward-looking.

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A survey of over 1,200 Swiss and American adults found that the qualities linked to high levels of satisfaction in life were love, gratitude, curiosity and perseverance. A finding that Christopher Peterson at University of Michigan along with Dr. Willibald Ruch who led the survey, was found to validate Professor Hawking's advice that determination and a sense of purpose leads to personal well-being. Linked to our personal views on life's values is the way we physically carry ourselves.



According to a study by John Riskind at Texas A&M and Carolyn Gotay at the University of Calgary, people who slump rather than stand upright surrender more readily when faced with difficult tasks. Slumpers appear to report greater stress than their counterparts in the study whose posture was upright. Volunteers were asked to generate positive or negative thoughts while either slumped or in an upright position by Vietta Wilson at York University in Toronto and Erik Peper at San Francisco State University. Those participating in that study reported finding it to be significantly easier when upright to produce positive thoughts.

At the University of Auckland in New Zealand, Carissa Wilkes and her colleagues recruited 74 individuals suffering from mild-to-moderate depression in a test to determine whether upright posture might alleviate low moods. Asked to either assume their usual position (slumped) or instructed to sit upright, mood and fatigue levels of participants were then assessed, everyone assigned two stress tests; to prepare and deliver a speech.

While delivering their speech, those who stood upright delivered a more relaxed, fulsome speech, and distinguished themselves by scoring higher for positive mood and self-esteem, while reporting feeling less fatigue than their slumped counterparts. Focusing outward rather than inward, considering our environment, working to solve problems as they are presented throughout life, assures that people feel more fulfilled, content with life and purposeful.