Outside the Five to Seven Minutes

By Darrell Pitt

 

Did you know that belonging to Toastmasters will help you live a longer life?

This might sound completely irrational, but there’s good science to back it up. The Harvard Study, which began in 1938, has since changed the way we think about health, success and longevity.

The study focused on 268 Harvard male undergraduate students, and later, 456 boys aged 12-16 growing up in the Boston area. The two groups could hardly be more different. The Harvard students came from well-to-do backgrounds, and those in the Boston group were specifically chosen because they were largely from underprivileged backgrounds.

So what did the study find?

Some of the results were unsurprising. One was that alcohol can have a devastating effect on your life. (A recent statistic confirms this: 15 Australians die every day from alcohol related illnesses.) Another was that people’s desire to be rich had little effect on their ability to gain wealth. Some people who came from rich backgrounds ended up penniless while others rose from obscurity to become immensely wealthy.

What did take the researchers by surprise was the effect of relationships. The men who were in healthy relationships lived healthier, longer, happier lives. These relationships didn’t need to be marriages—although this helped—but extended to their involvement in the community as well. Men involved in their communities were more successful and better adjusted in later life.

The Harvard study is not alone in this finding. Dan Buettner’s groundbreaking book, Blue Zones – 9 Lessons for Living Longer, presented similar results. Buettner studied people from regions across the globe where people lived the longest lives. They came from five zones – Ikaria in Greece, Sardinia in Italy, Okinawa in Japan, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, and a Seventh Day Adventists community living in Loma Linda, California.

Buettner found that the groups had many features in common. They ate in moderation. They shared a diet high in vegetables. They also engaged in moderate physical exercise. But something else they also had in common was their relationships. People in all five regions had strong family and community relationships. Their level of social engagement was high with spouses, brothers and sisters, and members of their community.

The people in these areas kept busy, increasing their sense of belonging. This tied in closely with their ability to de-stress, usually by being part of a close, social network.

This confirms studies that have shown exactly the opposite: people who feel lonely don’t live as long. Loneliness can be a crippling condition, almost as dangerous to health as cancer or heart disease. One study showed that loneliness increases mortality risk by as much as twenty-six percent. Staying involved in communities, being able to share your worries, and feeling supported can add years to your life.

So how does this relate to Toastmasters?

We often think about Toastmasters as being a one-to-many relationship. That is, one person stands before a crowd for five-to-seven minutes to practise their public speaking. But possibly the greatest advantage in this organisation is what goes on outside that five-to-seven minutes: the one-to-one talking during the breaks, the getting together over coffee, the lifelong friendships that are born within the clubs.

It’s these relationships that add to the richness and fullness of our lives and are as much a part of the Toastmasters experience as any speech.

So think twice before you skip that next Toastmasters meeting. The biggest advantage may not be speaking to the audience, but speaking to the person sitting next to you. It’s probably adding years to your life.