Do Hard Things – by Steve Magness

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It’s easy to say that we must push ourselves if we want to achieve worthwhile things—and it’s also easy to push ourselves into an early grave by overreaching. So, how to do the former, without doing the latter?

That’s what this book’s about. The author, speaking from a background in the science of sports psychology, applies his accumulated knowledge and understanding to the more general problems of life.

Most of us are, after all, not sportspeople or if we are, not serious ones. Those few who are, will get benefit from this book too! But it’s mostly aimed at the rest of us who are trying to work out whether/when we should scale up, scale back, change track, or double down:

  • How much can we really achieve in our career?
  • How about in retirement?
  • Do we ever really get too old for athletic feats, or should we keep pressing on?

Magness brings philosophy and psychological science together, to help us sort our way through.

Nor is this just a pep talk—there’s readily applicable, practical, real-world advice here, things to enable us to do our (real!) best without getting overwhelmed.

The style is pop-science, very easy-reading, and clear and comprehensible throughout—without succumbing to undue padding either.

Bottom line: this is a very pleasant read, that promises to make life more meaningful and manageable at the same time. Highly recommendable!

Click here to check out Do Hard Things, and get the most out of life!

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Recommended

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  • Upgrade Your Life – by Pat Divilly
    Upgrade Your Life: Pat Divilly guides you to define your goals, develop success habits, boost self-esteem, and find fulfillment. Don’t miss out, get your copy now!

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  • Blackberries vs Blueberries – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing blackberries to blueberries, we picked the blackberries.

    Why?

    They’re both great! But the humble blackberry stands out (and is an example of “foods that are darker are often more nutrient-dense”).

    In terms of macronutrients, they’re quite similar, being both berry fruits that are mostly water, but blackberries do have 2x the fiber (and for what it’s worth, 2x the protein, though this is a small number obviously), while blueberries have 2x the carbohydrates. An easy win for blackberries.

    When it comes to vitamins, blackberries have notably more of vitamin A, B3, B5, B9, C, and E, as well as choline, while blueberries have a little more of vitamins B1, B2, and B6. A fair win for blackberries.

    In the category of minerals, blackberries have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Blueberries are not higher in any minerals. Another easy win for blackberries.

    Blueberries are famous for their antioxidants, but blackberries actually equal them. The polyphenolic content varies from one fruit to another, but they are both loaded with an abundance (thousands) of antioxidants, especially anthocyanins. Blackberries and blueberries tie in this category.

    Adding up the sections makes for an easy, easy win for blackberries—but diversity is always best, so enjoy both!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

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  • How To Leverage Placebo Effect For Yourself

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    Placebo Effect: Making Things Work Since… Well, A Very Long Time Ago

    The placebo effect is a well-known, well-evidenced factor that is very relevant when it comes to the testing and implementation of medical treatments:

    NIH | National Center for Biotechnology Information | Placebo Effect

    Some things that make placebo effect stronger include:

    • Larger pills instead of small ones: because there’s got to be more going on in there, right?
    • Thematically-colored pills: e.g. red for stimulant effects, blue for relaxing effects
    • Things that seem expensive: e.g. a well-made large heavy machine, over a cheap-looking flimsy plastic device. Similarly, medication from a small glass jar with a childproof lock, rather than popped out from a cheap blister-pack.
    • Things that seem rational: if there’s an explanation for how it works that you understand and find rational, or at least you believe you understand and find rational ← this works in advertising, too; if there’s a “because”, it lands better almost regardless of what follows the word “because”
    • Things delivered confidently by a professional: this is similar to the “argument from authority” fallacy (whereby a proposed authority will be more likely trusted, even if this is not their area of expertise at all, e.g. celebrity endorsements), but in the case of placebo trials, this often looks like a well-dressed middle-aged or older man with an expensive haircut calling for a young confident-looking aide in a lab coat to administer the medicine, and is received better than a slightly frazzled academic saying “and, uh, this one’s yours” while handing you a pill.
    • Things with ritual attached: this can be related to the above (the more pomp and circumstance is given to the administration of the treatment, the better), but it can also be as simple as an instruction on an at-home-trial medication saying “take 20 minutes before bed”. Because, if it weren’t important, they wouldn’t bother to specify that, right? So it must be important!

    And now for a quick personality test

    Did you see the above as a list of dastardly tricks to watch out for, or did you see the above as a list of things that can make your actual medication more effective?

    It’s arguably both, of course, but the latter more optimistic view is a lot more useful than the former more pessimistic one.

    Since placebo effect works at least somewhat even when you know about it, there is nothing to stop you from leveraging it for your own benefit when taking medication or doing health-related things.

    Next time you take your meds or supplements or similar, pause for a moment for each one to remember what it is and what it will be doing for you. This is a lot like the principles (which are physiological as well as psychological) of mindful eating, by the way:

    How To Get More Nutrition From The Same Food

    Placebo makes some surprising things evidence-based

    We’ve addressed placebo effect sometimes as part of an assessment of a given alternative therapy, often in our “Mythbusting Friday” edition of 10almonds.

    • In some cases, placebo is adjuvant to the therapy, i.e. it is one of multiple mechanisms of action (example: chiropractic or acupuncture)
    • In some cases, placebo is the only known mechanism of action (example: homeopathy)
    • In some cases, even placebo can’t help (example: ear candling)

    One other fascinating and far-reaching (in a potentially good way) thing that placebo makes evidence-based is: prayer

    …which is particularly interesting for something that is fundamentally faith-based, i.e. the opposite of evidence-based.

    Now, we’re a health science publication, not a theological publication, so we’ll consider actual divine intervention to be beyond the scope of mechanisms of action we can examine, but there’s been a lot of research done into the extent to which prayer is beneficial as a therapy, what things it may be beneficial for, and what factors affect whether it helps:

    Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials

    👆 full paper here, and it is very worthwhile reading if you have time, whether or not you are religious personally

    Placebo works best when there’s a clear possibility for psychosomatic effect

    We’ve mentioned before, and we’ll mention again:

    • psychosomatic effect does not mean: “imagining it”
    • psychosomatic effect means: “your brain regulates almost everything else in your body, directly or indirectly, including your autonomic functions, and especially notably when it comes to illness, your immune responses”

    So, a placebo might well heal your rash or even shrink a tumor, but it probably won’t regrow a missing limb, for instance.

    And, this is important: it’s not about how credible/miraculous the outcome will be!

    Rather, it is because we have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for healing rashes and shrinking tumors, that just need to be activated—whereas we don’t have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for regrowing a missing limb, so that’s not something our brain can just tell our body to do.

    So for this reason, in terms of what placebo can and can’t do:

    • Get rid of cancer? Yes, sometimes—because the body has a process for doing that; enjoy your remission
    • Fix a broken nail? No—because the body has no process for doing that; you’ll just have to cut it and wait for it to grow again

    With that in mind, what will you use the not-so-mystical powers of placebo for? What ever you go for… Enjoy, and take care!

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  • Can You Shrink A Waist In Seven Days?

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    We don’t usually do this sort of video, but it seems timely before the new year. The exercises shown here are very good, and the small dietary tweak is what makes it work:

    The method

    Firstly, the small dietary tweak is: abstaining from foods that cause bloating, such as flour and dairy. She does say “брожение” (fermentation), but we don’t really use the word that way in English. On which note: she is Ukrainian and speaking Russian (context: many Ukrainians grew up speaking both languages), so you will need the subtitles on if you don’t understand Russian, but a) it’s worth it b) the subtitles have been put in manually so they’re a respectable translation.

    Secondly, spoiler, she loses about 2 inches.

    The exercises are:

    1. Pelvic swing-thrusts: sit, supporting yourself on your hands with your butt off the floor; raise your pelvis up to a table position, do 30 repetitions.
    2. Leg raises in high plank: perform 20 lifts per leg, each to its side.
    3. Leg raises (lying on back): do 20 repetitions.
    4. V-crunches: perform 30 repetitions.
    5. V-twists: lean on hands and do 25 repetitions.

    These exercises (all five done daily for the 7 days) are great for core strength, and core muscletone is what keeps your innards in place, rather than letting them drop down (and out).

    Thus, there’s only a small amount of actual fat loss going on here (if any), but it slims the waistline by improving muscletone and simultaneously decreasing bloating, which are both good changes.

    For more on all of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

    Take care!

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Related Posts

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  • The 7 Approaches To Pain Management

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    More Than One Way To Kill Pain

    This is Dr. Deepak Ravindran (MD, FRCA. FFPMRCA, EDRA. FIPP, DMSMed). He has decades of experience and is a specialist in acute and chronic pain management, anesthesia, musculoskeletal medicine, and lifestyle medicine.

    A quick catch-up, first:

    We’ve written about chronic pain management before:

    Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

    As well as:

    Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief

    Dr. Ravindran’s approach

    Dr. Ravindran takes a “trauma-informed care” approach to his professional practice, and recommends the same for others.

    In a nutshell, this means starting from a position of not “what’s wrong with you?”, but rather “what happened to you?”.

    This seemingly subtle shift is important, because it means actually dealing with a person’s issues, instead of “take one of these and call my secretary next month”. Read more:

    What is Trauma-Informed Care?

    Pain itself can be something of a many-headed hydra. Dr. Ravindran’s approach is equally many-headed; specifically, he has a 7-point plan:

    Medications

    Dr. Ravindran sees painkillers (and a collection of other drugs, like antidepressants and muscle relaxants) as a potential means to an end worth exploring, but he doesn’t expect them to be the best choice for everyone, and nor does he expect them to be a cure-all. Neither should we. He also advises being mindful of the drawbacks and potential complications of these drugs, too.

    Interventions

    Sometimes, surgery is the right choice. Sometimes it isn’t. Often, it will change a life—one way or the other. Similar to with medications, Dr. Ravindran is very averse to a “one size fits all” approach here. See also:

    The Insider’s Guide To Making Hospital As Comfortable As Possible

    Neuroscience and stress management

    Often a lot of the distress of pain is not just the pain itself, but the fear associated with it. Will it get worse if I move wrong or eat the wrong thing? How long will it last? Will it ever get better? Will it get worse if I do nothing?. Dr. Ravindran advises tackling this, with the same level of importance as the pain itself. Here’s a good start:

    Stress, And Building Psychological Resilience

    Diet and the microbiome

    Many chronic illnesses are heavily influenced by this, and Dr. Ravindran’s respect for lifestyle medicine comes into play here. While diet might not fix all our ills, it certainly can stop things from being a lot worse. Beyond the obvious “eat healthily” (Mediterranean diet being a good starting point for most people), he also advises doing elimination tests where appropriate, to screen out potential flare-up triggers. You also might consider:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

    Sleep

    “Get good sleep” is easy advice for those who are not in agonizing pain that sometimes gets worse from staying in the same position for too long. Nevertheless, it is important, and foundational to good health. So it’s important to explore—whatever limitations one might realistically have—what can be done to improve it.

    If you can only sleep for a short while at a time, you may get benefit from this previous main feature of ours:

    How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

    Exercise and movement

    The trick here is to move little and often; without overdoing it, but without permitting loss of mobility either. See also:

    The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, And Move More

    Therapies of the mind and body

    This is about taking a holistic approach to one’s wellness. In Dr. Ravindran’s words:

    ❝Mind-body therapies are often an extremely sensitive topic about which people hold very strong opinions and sometimes irrational beliefs.

    Some, like reiki and spiritual therapy and homeopathy, have hardly any scientific evidence to back them up, while others like yoga, hypnosis, and meditation/mindfulness are mainstream techniques with many studies showing the benefits, but they all work for certain patients.❞

    In other words: evidence-based is surely the best starting point, but if you feel inclined to try something else and it works for you, then it works for you. And that’s a win.

    Want to know more?

    You might like his book…

    The Pain-Free Mindset: 7 Steps to Taking Control and Overcoming Chronic Pain

    He also has a blog and a podcast.

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Statins: Study Insights

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    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Q: Can you let us know about more studies that have been done on statins? Are they really worth taking?

    That is a great question! We imagine it might have been our recent book recommendation that prompted it? It’s quite a broad question though, so we’ll do that as a main feature in the near future!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • The Science Of New Year’s Pre-Resolutions

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    The Science Of New Year’s Pre-Resolutions

    There’s a military dictum that “prior preparation and planning prevents piss-poor performance”.

    Would it surprise you to know that soldiers going on the attack are not focused on the goal? Rather, they are focused on the process.

    With drills and mnemonics, everything that can be controlled for in advance is; every action, every reaction, everything that can go wrong, and all the “if x then y” decisions in between pre-battle PREWAR and PAWPERSO and post-battle PACESDO (all mnemonic acronyms; the content is not important here but the principle is).

    In short: take Murphy’s Law into account now, and plan accordingly!

    The same goes for making your plans the winning kind

    If you want your resolutions to work, you may need to make pre-resolutions now, so that you’re properly prepared:

    • Do you want to make an exercise habit? Make sure now that you have the right clothes/shoes/etc, make sure that they fit you correctly, make sure you have enough of them that you can exercise when one set’s in the wash, etc.
      • What grace will you allow yourself if tired, unwell, busy? What’s your back-up plan so that you still do what you can at those times when “what you can” is legitimately a bit less?
      • If it’s an outdoors plan, what’s your plan for when it’s rainy? Snowy? Dangerously hot?
      • What are the parameters for what counts? Make it measurable. How many exercise sessions per week, what duration?
    • Do you want to make a diet habit? Make sure that you have in the healthy foods that you want to eat; know where you can and will get things. We’re often creatures of habit when it comes to shopping, so planning will be critical here!
    • Do you want to cut some food/drink/substance out? Make sure you have a plan to run down or otherwise dispose of your current stock first. And make sure you have alternatives set up, and if it was something you were leaning on as a coping strategy of some kind (e.g. alcohol, cannabis, comfort-eating, etc), make sure you have an alternative coping strategy, too!

    See also: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

    We promised science, so here it comes

    Approach-oriented resolutions work better than avoidance-oriented ones.

    This means: positively-framed resolutions work better than negatively-framed ones.

    On a simple level, this means that, for example, resolving to exercise three times per week is going to work better than resolving to not consume alcohol.

    But what if you really want to quit something? Just frame it positively. There’s a reason that Alcoholics Anonymous (and similar Thing Anonymous groups) measure days sober, not relapses.

    So it’s not “I will not consume alcohol” but “I will get through each day alcohol-free”.

    Semantics? Maybe, but it’s also science:

    A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals

    Why January the 1st? It’s a fresh start

    Resolutions started on the 1st of January enjoy a psychological boost of a feeling of a fresh start, a new page, a new chapter.

    Similar benefits can be found from starting on the 1st of a month in general, or on a Monday, or on some date that is auspicious to the person in question (religious fasts tied to calendar dates are a fine example of this).

    Again, this is borne-out by science:

    The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior

    Make it a habit

    Here be science:

    How do people adhere to goals when willpower is low? The profits (and pitfalls) of strong habits

    As for how to do that?

    How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

    Trim the middle

    No, we’re not talking about your waistline. Rather, what Dr. Ayelet Fischbach refers to as “the middle problem”:

    ❝We’re highly motivated at the beginning. Over time, our motivation declines as we lose steam. To the extent that our goal has a clear end point, our motivation picks up again toward the end.

    Therefore, people are more likely to adhere to their standards at the beginning and end of goal pursuit—and slack in the middle. We demonstrate this pattern of judgment and behavior in adherence to ethical standards (e.g., cheating), religious traditions (e.g., skipping religious rituals), and performance standards (e.g., “cutting corners” on a task).

    We also show that the motivation to adhere to standards by using proper means is independent and follows a different pattern from the motivation to reach the end state of goal pursuit❞

    Read: The end justifies the means, but only in the middle

    How to fix this, then?

    Give yourself consistent, recurring, short-term goals, with frequent review points. That way, it’s never “the middle” for long:

    The fresh start effect: temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior

    See also:

    How do people protect their long-term goals from the influence of short-term motives or temptations?

    Finally…

    You might like this previous main feature of ours that was specifically about getting oneself through those “middle” parts:

    How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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