Beyond “Make Your Bed”—life lessons from experience
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Beyond “Make Your Bed”—life lessons from experience
This is Admiral William H. McRaven, a former United States Navy four-star admiral who served as the ninth commander of the United States Special Operations Command.
So, for those of us whose day-to-day lives don’t involve coordinating military operations, what does he have to offer?
Quick note: 10almonds’ mission statement is “to make health and productivity crazy simple”.
We tend to focus on the health side of this, and in the category of productivity, it’s often what most benefits our mental health.
We’re writing less for career-driven technopreneurs in the 25–35 age bracket and more for people with a more holistic view of productivity and “a good life well-lived”.
So today’s main feature is more in that vein!
Start each day with an accomplishment
McRaven famously gave a speech (and wrote a book) that began with the advice, “make your bed”. The idea here doesn’t have to be literal (if you’ll pardon the pun). Indeed, if you’re partnered, then depending on schedules and habits, it could be you can’t (sensibly) make your bed first thing because your partner is still in it. But! What you can do is start the day with an accomplishment—however small. A short exercise routine is a great example!
Success in life requires teamwork
We’re none of us an island (except in the bathtub). The point is… Nobody can do everything alone. Self-sufficiency is an illusion. You can make your own coffee, but could you have made the coffee machine, or even the cup? How about, grown the coffee? Transported it? So don’t be afraid to reach out for (and acknowledge!) help from others. Teamwork really does make the dream work.
It’s what’s inside that counts
It’s a common trap to fall into, getting caught up the outside appearance of success, rather than what actually matters the most. We need to remember this when it comes to our own choices, as well as assessing what others might bring to the table!
A setback is only permanent if you let it be
No, a positive attitude won’t reverse a lifelong degenerative illness, for example. But what we can do, is take life as comes, and press on with the reality, rather than getting caught up in the “should be”.
Use failure to your advantage
Learn. That’s all. Learn, and improve.
Be daring in life
To borrow from another military force, the SAS has the motto “Who dares, wins”. Caution has it place, but if we’ve made reasonable preparations*, sometimes being bold is the best (or only!) way forward.
*Meanwhile the Parachute Regiment, from which come 80% of all SAS soldiers, has the motto “Utrinque paratus”, “prepared on all sides”.
Keep courage close
This is about not backing down when we know what’s right and we know what we need to do. Life can be scary! But if we don’t overcome our fears, they can become self-realizing.
Writer’s note: a good example of this is an advice I sometimes gave during my much more exciting (military) life of some decades ago, and it pertains to getting into a knife-fight (top advice for civilians: don’t).
But, if you’re in one, you need to not be afraid of getting cut.
Because if you’re not afraid of getting cut, you will probably get cut.
But if you are afraid of getting cut, you will definitely get cut.
Hopefully your life doesn’t involve knives outside of the kitchen (mine doesn’t, these days, and I like it), but the lesson applies to other things too.
Sometimes the only way out is through.
Be your best at your worst
Sometimes life is really, really hard. But if we allow those moments to drive us forwards, they’re also a place we can find more strength than we ever knew we had.
Keep on swimming
It’s said that the majority in life is about showing up—and often it is. But you have to keep showing up, day after day. So make what you’re doing sustainable for you, and keep on keeping on.
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The Other Circadian Rhythms
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We’ve talked before about how circadian rhythm pertains not just to when it is ideal for us to sleep or be awake, but also at what times it is best to eat, exercise, and so forth:
The Circadian Rhythm: Far More Than Most People Know
Most people just know about the light consideration, per for example:
- How light can shift your mood and mental health, and
- How light tells you when to sleep, focus and poo
When your body parts clock on and off at the wrong time…
Now, new research has brought attention to how these things and more are governed by different physiological clocks within our bodies—and what this means for our health. In other words, if you are doing the various things at different times than you “should”, you will be training the different parts of your body (each with their independent clocks) to be on a different schedule, and so the different parts of your body will out of temporal sync with each other.
To put this in jet-lag terms: if your brain is in New York, while your heart is in Istanbul (not Constantinople) and your gut is in Tokyo, then this arrangement is not good for the health.
As for how it is not good for your health (i.e. the consequences) there’s still research to be done on some of the longer-term implications, but in the short term, one of the biggest effects is on our mood—most notably, increasing depression scores significantly.
And even more importantly, this is in the real world. That is to say, until quite recently, most data we had from studies on the circadian rhythm was from sleep clinic laboratories, which is great for RCTs but will always have as a limitation that someone sleeping in a lab is going to have some differences than someone sleeping in their own bed at home.
As the researchers said:
❝A critical step to addressing this is the noninvasive collection of physiological time-series data outside laboratory settings in large populations. Digital tools offer promise in this endeavor. Here, using wearable data, we first quantify the degrees of circadian disruption, both between different internal rhythms and between each internal rhythm and the sleep-wake cycle. Our analysis, based on over 50,000 days of data from over 800 first-year training physicians, reveals bidirectional links between digital markers of circadian disruption and mood both before and after they began shift work, while accounting for confounders such as demographic and geographic variables. We further validate this by finding clinically relevant changes in the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire score.❞
Read in full: The real-world association between digital markers of circadian disruption and mental health risks
That questionnaire by the way sounds like an arbitrary thing they just made up, but the PHQ-9 (as it is known to its friends) is in fact the current intentional gold standard for measuring depression; we share it at the top of our article about depression, here:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← the test takes 2 minutes and you get immediate results
Want to know more?
For more about getting one’s entire self back into temporal sync (hey, wasn’t that the plot of a Star Trek episode?), sleep specialist Dr. Michael Breus wrote this excellent book that we reviewed a little while back:
Enjoy!
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Anxiety Attack vs Panic Attack: Do You Know The Difference?
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The terms are sometimes used incorrectly, but have quite different meanings. Dr. Julie Smith, psychologist, explains in this short video:
Important distinctions
Anxiety attacks are not clinically recognized terms and lack a clear definition, often used to describe a build-up of anxiety before anticipated stressful events (e.g. social gatherings, medical appointments, etc, though of course what it is will vary from person to person—not everyone finds the same things stressful, or has the same kinds of anticipations around things).
Panic attacks, in contrast, are sudden surges of intense fear or discomfort that peak within minutes. They are characterized by symptoms including at least 4 of:
- palpitations
- sweating
- shortness of breath
- chest pain
- dizziness
- fear of losing control or dying
There’s a misconception that panic attacks never have identifiable triggers while anxiety attacks always do.
In reality, both can occur with or without a clear cause. Panic attacks can arise from various conditions, including trauma, OCD, or phobias, and don’t necessarily mean you have a panic disorder. They can also occur as a drug response, without any known underlying psychological condition.
You may also notice that that list of symptoms has quite a bit of overlap with the symptoms of a heart attack, which a) does not help people to calm down b) can, on the flipside, cause a heart attack to be misdiagnosed as a panic attack.
In terms of management:
- In the moment: breathing exercises, like extending your exhalation (a common example is the “7-11” method, inhaling for 7 seconds and exhaling for 11 seconds), can calm the body and reduce panic symptoms.
- More generally: to prevent panic attacks from becoming more frequent, avoid avoiding safe environments that triggered an attack, like supermarkets or social gatherings. Gradual exposure helps reduce anxiety over time, while avoidance can worsen it.
If panic attacks persist, Dr. Smith advises to seek help from a doctor or psychologist to understand their root causes and develop effective coping strategies.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Take care!
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The Whys and Hows of Cutting Meats Out Of Your Diet
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When it’s time to tell the meat to beat it…
Meat in general, and red meat and processed meat in particular, have been associated with so many health risks, that it’s very reasonable to want to reduce, if not outright eliminate, our meat consumption.
First, in case anyone’s wondering “what health risks?”
The aforementioned culprits tend to turn out to be a villain in the story of every second health-related thing we write about here. To name just a few:
- Processed Meat Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Constraints of Current Evidence from Epidemiological Studies
- Red Meat Consumption (Heme Iron Intake) and Risk for Diabetes and Comorbidities?
- Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies
- Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality
- Meat consumption: Which are the current global risks? A review of recent (2010-2020) evidences
Seasoned subscribers will know that we rarely go more than a few days without recommending the very science-based Mediterranean Diet which studies find beneficial for almost everything we write about. The Mediterranean Diet isn’t vegetarian per se—by default it consists of mostly plants but does include some fish and a very small amount of meat from land animals. But even that can be improved upon:
- A Pesco-Mediterranean Diet With Intermittent Fasting
- Mediterranean, vegetarian and vegan diets as practical outtakes of EAS and ACC/AHA recommendations for lowering lipid profile
- A Mediterranean Low-Fat Vegan Diet to Improve Body Weight and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Randomized, Cross-over Trial
So that’s the “why”; now for the “how”…
It’s said that with a big enough “why” you can always find a “how”, but let’s make things easy!
Meatless Mondays
One of the biggest barriers to many people skipping the meat is “what will we even eat?”
The idea of “Meatless Mondays” means that this question need only be answered once a week, and in doing that a few Mondays in a row, you’ll soon find you’re gradually building your repertoire of meatless meals, and finding it’s not so difficult after all.
Then you might want to expand to “meat only on the weekends”, for example.
Flexitarian
This can be met with derision, “Yes and I’m teetotal, apart from wine”, but there is a practical aspect here:
The idea is “I will choose vegetarian options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”, which wipes out any difficulty involved.
After doing this for a while, you might find that as you get more used to vegetarian stuff, it’s almost never inconvenient to eat vegetarian.
Then you might want to expand it to “I will choose vegan options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”
Like-for-like substitutions
Pretty much anything that can come from an animal, one can get a plant-based version of it nowadays. The healthiness (and cost!) of these substitutions can vary, but let’s face it, meat is neither the healthiest nor the cheapest thing out there these days either.
If you have the money and don’t fancy leaping to lentils and beans, this can be a very quick and easy zero-effort change-over. Then once you’re up and running, maybe you can—at your leisure—see what all the fuss is about when it comes to tasty recipes with lentils and beans!
That’s all we have time for today, but…
We’re thinking of doing a piece making your favorite recipes plant-based (how to pick the right substitutions so the meal still tastes and “feels” the same), so let us know if you’d like that? Feel free to mention your favorite foods/meals too, as that’ll help us know what there’s a market for!
You can do that by hitting reply to any of our emails, or using the handy feedback widget at the bottom!
Curious to know more while you wait?
Check out: The Vegan Diet: A Complete Guide for Beginners ← this is a well-sourced article from Healthline, who—just like us—like to tackle important health stuff in an easy-to-read, well-sourced format
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Creamy Fortifying Cauliflower Soup
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As delicious as it is super-easy to make, this one is full of protein, fiber, healthy fats, and some of the most health-giving spices around.
You will need
- 1 quart low-sodium vegetable stock
- 1 large cauliflower, cut into florets
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 2 cans cannellini (or other white) beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 cup raw cashews, soaked in hot water for at least 5 minutes, and drained (if allergic, substitute chickpeas)
- 1 bulb (yes, a whole bulb) garlic, roughly chopped
- 5 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 10 fresh sprigs of thyme (keep them whole!)
- 1 large fresh sprig of rosemary (keep this whole too!)
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1 tbsp red chili flakes
- 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tsp MSG or 2 tsp low-sodium salt
- ½ tsp ground turmeric
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Tightly tie up the sprigs of rosemary and thyme with kitchen twine (shining a bright light on it and asking it invasive questions is optional)
2) Heat some olive oil to a medium heat in your biggest sauté pan or similar. Add the onions, and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring as necessary. We are not trying to outright caramelize them here, but we do want them browned a little.
3) Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently.
4) Add the vegetable stock, and stir, ensuring no onion is stuck to the base of the pan. Add the cauliflower, cashews, beans, nooch, pepper, turmeric, and MSG/salt, stirring to combine. Don’t worry if the cauliflower isn’t all submerged; it’ll be fine in a little while.
5) Add the herbs, submerging them in the soup (still tied up bouquet garni style).
6) Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 15–20 minutes; the cauliflower will be soft when it’s ready.
7) Remove the bouquet garni, and blend the soup until thick and creamy. You can do this with an immersion blender, but to get the smoothest soup, you’ll need to use a stand blender. Either ensure yours is safe for hot liquids, or else allow to cool, blend, and reheat later. This is important, as otherwise your blender could explode.
8) Serve, using the lemon zest and chili for the garnish:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety
- Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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Running or yoga can help beat depression, research shows – even if exercise is the last thing you feel like
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At least one in ten people have depression at some point in their lives, with some estimates closer to one in four. It’s one of the worst things for someone’s wellbeing – worse than debt, divorce or diabetes.
One in seven Australians take antidepressants. Psychologists are in high demand. Still, only half of people with depression in high-income countries get treatment.
Our new research shows that exercise should be considered alongside therapy and antidepressants. It can be just as impactful in treating depression as therapy, but it matters what type of exercise you do and how you do it.
Walk, run, lift, or dance away depression
We found 218 randomised trials on exercise for depression, with 14,170 participants. We analysed them using a method called a network meta-analysis. This allowed us to see how different types of exercise compared, instead of lumping all types together.
We found walking, running, strength training, yoga and mixed aerobic exercise were about as effective as cognitive behaviour therapy – one of the gold-standard treatments for depression. The effects of dancing were also powerful. However, this came from analysing just five studies, mostly involving young women. Other exercise types had more evidence to back them.
Walking, running, strength training, yoga and mixed aerobic exercise seemed more effective than antidepressant medication alone, and were about as effective as exercise alongside antidepressants.
But of these exercises, people were most likely to stick with strength training and yoga.
Antidepressants certainly help some people. And of course, anyone getting treatment for depression should talk to their doctor before changing what they are doing.
Still, our evidence shows that if you have depression, you should get a psychologist and an exercise plan, whether or not you’re taking antidepressants.
Join a program and go hard (with support)
Before we analysed the data, we thought people with depression might need to “ease into it” with generic advice, such as “some physical activity is better than doing none.”
But we found it was far better to have a clear program that aimed to push you, at least a little. Programs with clear structure worked better, compared with those that gave people lots of freedom. Exercising by yourself might also make it hard to set the bar at the right level, given low self-esteem is a symptom of depression.
We also found it didn’t matter how much people exercised, in terms of sessions or minutes a week. It also didn’t really matter how long the exercise program lasted. What mattered was the intensity of the exercise: the higher the intensity, the better the results.
Yes, it’s hard to keep motivated
We should exercise caution in interpreting the findings. Unlike drug trials, participants in exercise trials know which “treatment” they’ve been randomised to receive, so this may skew the results.
Many people with depression have physical, psychological or social barriers to participating in formal exercise programs. And getting support to exercise isn’t free.
We also still don’t know the best way to stay motivated to exercise, which can be even harder if you have depression.
Our study tried to find out whether things like setting exercise goals helped, but we couldn’t get a clear result.
Other reviews found it’s important to have a clear action plan (for example, putting exercise in your calendar) and to track your progress (for example, using an app or smartwatch). But predicting which of these interventions work is notoriously difficult.
A 2021 mega-study of more than 60,000 gym-goers found experts struggled to predict which strategies might get people into the gym more often. Even making workouts fun didn’t seem to motivate people. However, listening to audiobooks while exercising helped a lot, which no experts predicted.
Still, we can be confident that people benefit from personalised support and accountability. The support helps overcome the hurdles they’re sure to hit. The accountability keeps people going even when their brains are telling them to avoid it.
So, when starting out, it seems wise to avoid going it alone. Instead:
- join a fitness group or yoga studio
get a trainer or an exercise physiologist
- ask a friend or family member to go for a walk with you.
Taking a few steps towards getting that support makes it more likely you’ll keep exercising.
Let’s make this official
Some countries see exercise as a backup plan for treating depression. For example, the American Psychological Association only conditionally recommends exercise as a “complementary and alternative treatment” when “psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy is either ineffective or unacceptable”.
Based on our research, this recommendation is withholding a potent treatment from many people who need it.
In contrast, The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists recommends vigorous aerobic activity at least two to three times a week for all people with depression.
Given how common depression is, and the number failing to receive care, other countries should follow suit and recommend exercise alongside front-line treatments for depression.
I would like to acknowledge my colleagues Taren Sanders, Chris Lonsdale and the rest of the coauthors of the paper on which this article is based.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Michael Noetel, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Brain’s Way of Healing – by Dr. Norman Doidge
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First, what this book isn’t: any sort of wishy-washy “think yourself better” fluff, and nor is it a “tapping into your Universal Divine Essence” thing.
In contrast, Dr. Norman Doidge sticks with science, and the only “vibrational frequencies” involved are the sort that come from an MRI machine or similar.
The author makes bold claims of the potential for leveraging neuroplasticity to heal many chronic diseases. All of them are neurological in whole or in part, ranging from chronic pain to Parkinson’s.
How well are these claims backed up, you ask?
The book makes heavy use of case studies. In science, case studies rarely prove anything, so much as indicate a potential proof of principle. Clinical trials are what’s needed to become more certain, and for Dr. Doidge’s claims, these are so far sadly lacking, or as yet inconclusive.
Where the book’s strengths lie is in describing exactly what is done, and how, to effect each recovery. Specific exercises to do, and explanations of the mechanism of action. To that end, it makes them very repeatable for any would-be “citizen scientist” who wishes to try (in the cases that they don’t require special equipment).
Bottom line: this book would be more reassuring if its putative techniques had enjoyed more clinical studies… But in the meantime, it’s a fair collection of promising therapeutic approaches for a number of neurological disorders.
Click here to check out The Brain’s Way of Healing, and learn more!
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