Endure – by Alex Hutchinson
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Life is a marathon, not a sprint. For most of us, at least. But how do we pace ourselves to go the distance, without falling into complacency along the way?
According to our author Alex Hutchinson, there’s a lot more to it than goal-setting and strategy.
Hutchinson set out to write a running manual, and ended up writing a manual for life. To be clear, this is still mostly centered around the science of athletic endurance, but covers the psychological factors as much as the physical… and notes how the capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in every field.
The writing style is both personal and personable, and parts read like a memoir (Hutchinson himself being a runner and sports journalist), while others are scientific in nature.
As for the science, the kind of science examined runs the gamut from case studies to clinical studies. We examine not just the science of physical endurance, but the science of psychological endurance too. We learn about such things as:
- How perception of ease/difficulty plays its part
- What factors make a difference to pain tolerance
- How mental exhaustion affects physical performance
- What environmental factors increase or lessen our endurance
- …and many other elements that most people don’t consider
Bottom line: whether you want to run a marathon in under two hours, or just not quit after one minute forty seconds on the exercise bike, or to get through a full day’s activities while managing chronic pain, this book can help.
Click here to check out Endure, and find out what you are capable of when you move your limits!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Spreading Mental Health Awareness
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
Request: more people need to be aware of suicidal tendencies and what they can do to ward them off
That’s certainly a very important topic! We’ll cover that properly in one of our Psychology Sunday editions. In the meantime, we’ll mention a previous special that we did, that was mostly about handling depression (in oneself or a loved one), and obviously there’s a degree of crossover:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
Share This Post
How To Kill Laziness
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Laziness Is A Scooby-Doo Villain.
Which means: to tackle it requires doing a Scooby-Doo unmasking.
You know, when the mystery-solving gang has the “ghost” or “monster” tied to a chair, and they pull the mask off, to reveal that there was no ghost etc, and in fact it was a real estate scammer or somesuch.
Social psychologist Dr. Devon Price wrote about this (not with that metaphor though) in a book we haven’t reviewed yet, but will one of these days:
Laziness Does Not Exist – by Dr. Devon Price (book)
In the meantime, and perhaps more accessibly, he gave a very abridged summary for Medium:
Medium | Laziness Does Not Exist… But unseen barriers do (11mins read)
Speaking of barriers, Medium added a paywall to that (the author did not, in fact, arrange the paywall as Medium claim), so in case you don’t have an account, he kindly made the article free on its own website, here:
Devon Price | Laziness Does Not Exist… But unseen barriers do (same article; no paywall)
He details problems that people get into (ranging from missed deadlines to homelessness), that are easily chalked up to laziness, but in fact, these people are not lazily choosing to suffer, and are usually instead suffering from all manner of unchosen things, ranging from…
- imposter syndrome / performance anxiety,
- perfectionism (which can overlap a lot with the above),
- social anxiety and/or depression (these also can overlap for some people),
- executive dysfunction in the brain, and/or
- just plain weathering “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune [and] the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”, to borrow from Shakespeare, in ways that aren’t always obviously connected—these things can be great or small, it could be a terminal diagnosis of some terrible disease, or it could be a car breakdown, but the ripples spread.
And nor are you, dear reader, choosing to suffer (even if sometimes it appears otherwise)
Unless you’re actually a masochist, at least, in which case, you do you. But for most of us, what can look like laziness or “doing it to oneself” is usually a case of just having one or more of the above-mentioned conditions in place.
Which means…
That grace we just remembered above to give to other people?
Yep, we should give that to ourselves too.
Not as a free pass, but in the same way we (hopefully) would with someone else, and ask: is there some problem I haven’t considered, and is there something that would make this easier?
Here are some tools to get you started:
- Imposter Syndrome (And Why Almost Everyone Has It)
- Perfectionism, And How To Make Yours Work For You
- How To Set Anxiety Aside
- Mental Health First-Aid (To Get Yourself Or A Loved One Through Depression)
- Procrastination, And How To Pay Off The To-Do List Debt
- Take This Two-Minute Executive Dysfunction Test
Take care!
Share This Post
Vegan Eager for Milk Alternatives
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Q: Thanks for the info about dairy. As a vegan, I look forward to a future comment about milk alternatives
Thanks for bringing it up! What we research and write about is heavily driven by subscriber feedback, so notes like this really help us know there’s an audience for a given topic!
We’ll do a main feature on it, to do it justice. Watch out for Research Review Monday!
Share This Post
Related Posts
The Evidence-Based Skincare That Beats Product-Specific Hype
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
A million videos on YouTube will try to sell you a 17-step skincare routine, or a 1-ingredient magical fix that’s messy and inconvenient enough you’ll do it once and then discard it. This one takes a simple, scientific approach instead.
The Basics That Count
Ali Abdaal, known for his productivity hacks channel, enlisted the help of his friend, dermatologist Dr. Usama Syed, who recommends the following 3–4 things:
- Moisturize twice per day. Skin acts as a barrier, locking in moisture and protecting against irritants. Moisturizers replenish fats and proteins, maintaining this barrier and preventing dry, inflamed, and itchy skin. He uses CeraVe, but if you have one you know works well with your skin, stick with that, because skin comes in many varieties and yours might not be like his.
- Use sunscreen every day. Your phone’s weather app should comment on your local UV index. If it’s “moderate” or above, then sunscreen is a must—even if you aren’t someone who burns easily at all, the critical thing here is avoiding UV radiation causing DNA mutations in skin cells, leading to wrinkles, dark spots, and potentially skin cancer. Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen, ideally SPF 50.
- Use a retinoid. Retinoids are vitamin A-based and offer anti-aging benefits by promoting collagen growth, reducing pigmentation, and accelerating skin cell regeneration. Retinols are weaker, over-the-counter options, while stronger retinoids may require a prescription. Start gently with low dosage, whatever you choose, as initially they can cause dryness or sensitivity, before making everything better. He recommends adapalene as a starter retinoid (such as Differen gel, to give an example brand name).
- Optional: use a cleanser. Cleansers remove oils and dirt that water alone can’t. He recommends using a hydrating cleanser, to avoid stripping natural healthy oils as well as unwanted ones. That said, a cleanser is probably only beneficial if your skin tends towards the oily end of the dry-to-oily spectrum.
For more on all of these, plus an example routine, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
The CBT Workbook for Mental Health – by Dr. Simon Rego & Sarah Fader
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
We have often reviewed psychology books here with a note saying “and no, it’s not just a book of the standard CBT techniques that you probably already know”.
So today, this one’s for anyone who was ever thinking “but I don’t know the standard CBT techniques and I would like to know them!”.
The authors outline specific solutions to many common quantifiable problems, with simple exercises that are well-explained and easy to implement.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is not a panacea, but for the things it can be used for, it’s very effective and is a very good “first thing to reach for” to see if it works, because its success rate for a lot of problems is very high.
What kinds of things is this book most likely to help with? A lot of common forms of stress, anxiety, self-esteem issues, cravings, shame, and relationship issues. Other things too, but we can’t list everything and that list already covers a lot of very high-incidence stuff.
Bottom line: if CBT isn’t something already in your toolbox, this book will help you add all its best tips and tricks.
Click here to check out The CBT Workbook for Mental Health, and get tooled up!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
The Liver Cure – by Dr. Russell Blaylock
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
We’ve written before about How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver, but there’s a lot more that can be said in a book that we couldn’t fit into our article.
In this book, Dr. Blaylock looks at the causes and symptoms of liver disease, the mechanisms behind such, and how we can adjust our dietary habits (and other things) to do better for ourselves.
While the book’s primary focus is on diet, he does also look at medications (especially: those that hinder liver health, which are many, including simple/common stuff like Tylenol and similar), and the effects of different lifestyle choices, including ones that aren’t diet-related.
Because most people’s knowledge of liver disease starts and ends at “don’t drink yourself to death”, this book is an important tome of knowledge for actually keeping this critical organ in good order—especially since symptoms of liver disease can initially be subtle, and slow to show, often escaping notice until it’s already far, far worse than it could have been.
Many people find out by experiencing liver failure.
The writing style is… A little repetitive for this reviewer’s preference, but it does make sure that you won’t miss things. Also, when it comes to supplements, he repeatedly recommends a particular company, and it’s not clear whether he has a financial interest there. But the actual medical information is good and important and comprehensive.
Bottom line: if you’d like to keep your liver in good health, this is a book that will help you to do just that.
Click here to check out The Liver Cure, and keep yours working well!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
