Self-Compassion – by Dr. Kristin Neff

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A lot of people struggle with self-esteem, and depending on one’s surrounding culture, it can even seem socially obligatory to be constantly valuing oneself highly (or else, who else will if we do not?). But, as Dr. Neff points out, there’s an inherent problem with reinforcing for oneself even a positive message like “I am smart, strong, and capable!” because sometimes all of us have moments of being stupid, weak, and incapable (occasionally all three at once!), which places us in a position of having to choose between self-deceit and self-deprecation, neither of which are good.

Instead, Dr. Neff advocates for self-compassion, for treating oneself as one (hopefully) would a loved one—seeing their/our mistakes, weaknesses, failures, and loving them/ourself anyway.

She does not, however, argue that we should accept just anything from ourselves uncritically, but rather, we identify our mistakes, learn, grow, and progress. So not “I should have known better!”, nor even “How was I supposed to know?!”, but rather, “Now I have learned a thing”.

The style of the book is quite personal, as though having a heart-to-heart over a hot drink perhaps, but the format is organized and progresses naturally from one idea to the next, taking the reader to where we need to be.

Bottom line: if you have trouble with self-esteem (as most people do), then that’s a trap that there is a way out of, and it doesn’t require being perfect or lowering one’s standards, just being kinder to oneself along the way—and this book can help inculcate that.

Click here to check out Self-Compassion, and indeed be kind to yourself!

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Recommended

  • The Sprout Book – by Doug Evans
  • Beyond Balancing The Books – by George Marino, CPA, CFP
    Cut out stress without sacrificing performance. Practical advice for mindfully engaging with the business world. Improve health and productivity.

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  • Make Overnight Oats Shorter Or Longer For Different Benefits!

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    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    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

    ❝How long do I have to soak oats for to get the benefits of “overnight oats”?❞

    The primary benefit of overnight oats (over cooked oats) is that they are soft enough to eat without having been cooked (as cooking increases their glycemic index).

    So, if it’s soft, it’s good to eat. A few hours should be sufficient.

    Bonus information

    If, by the way, you happen to leave oats and milk (be it animal or plant milk) sealed in a jar at room temperature for a 2–3 days (less if your “room temperature” is warmer than average), it will start to ferment.

    • Good news: fermentation can bring extra health benefits!
    • Bad news: you’re on your own if something pathogenic is present

    For more on this, you might like to read:

    Fermenting Everything: How to Make Your Own Cultured Butter, Fermented Fish, Perfect Kimchi, and Beyond

    Enjoy!

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  • When Age Is A Flexible Number

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    Aging, Counterclockwise!

    In the late 1970s, Dr. Ellen Langer hypothesized that physical markers of aging could be affected by psychosomatic means.

    Note: psychosomatic does not mean “it’s all in your head”.

    Psychosomatic means “your body does what your brain tells it to do, for better or for worse”

    She set about testing that, in what has been referred to since as…

    The Counterclockwise Study

    A small (n=16) sample of men in their late 70s and early 80s were recruited in what they were told was a study about reminiscing.

    Back in the 1970s, it was still standard practice in the field of psychology to outright lie to participants (who in those days were called “subjects”), so this slight obfuscation was a much smaller ethical aberration than in some famous studies of the same era and earlier (cough cough Zimbardo cough Milgram cough).

    Anyway, the participants were treated to a week in a 1950s-themed retreat, specifically 1959, a date twenty years prior to the experiment’s date in 1979. The environment was decorated and furnished authentically to the date, down to the food and the available magazines and TV/radio shows; period-typical clothing was also provided, and so forth.

    • The control group were told to spend the time reminiscing about 1959
    • The experimental group were told to pretend (and maintain the pretense, for the duration) that it really was 1959

    The results? On many measures of aging, the experimental group participants became quantifiably younger:

    ❝The experimental group showed greater improvement in joint flexibility, finger length (their arthritis diminished and they were able to straighten their fingers more), and manual dexterity.

    On intelligence tests, 63 percent of the experimental group improved their scores, compared with only 44 percent of the control group. There were also improvements in height, weight, gait, and posture.

    Finally, we asked people unaware of the study’s purpose to compare photos taken of the participants at the end of the week with those submitted at the beginning of the study. These objective observers judged that all of the experimental participants looked noticeably younger at the end of the study.❞

    ~ Dr. Ellen Langer

    Remember, this was after one week.

    Her famous study was completed in 1979, and/but not published until eleven years later in 1990, with the innocuous title:

    Higher stages of human development: Perspectives on adult growth

    You can read about it much more accessibly, and in much more detail, in her book:

    Counterclockwise: A Proven Way to Think Yourself Younger and Healthier – by Dr. Ellen Langer

    We haven’t reviewed that particular book yet, so here’s Linda Graham’s review, that noted:

    ❝Langer cites other research that has made similar findings.

    In one study, for instance, 650 people were surveyed about their attitudes on aging. Twenty years later, those with a positive attitude with regard to aging had lived seven years longer on average than those with a negative attitude to aging.

    (By comparison, researchers estimate that we extend our lives by four years if we lower our blood pressure and reduce our cholesterol.)

    In another study, participants read a list of negative words about aging; within 15 minutes, they were walking more slowly than they had before.❞

    ~ Linda Graham

    Read the review in full:

    Aging in Reverse: A Review of Counterclockwise

    The Counterclockwise study has been repeated since, and/but we are still waiting for the latest (exciting, much larger sample, 90 participants this time) study to be published. The research proposal describes the method in great detail, and you can read that with one click over on PubMed:

    PubMed | Ageing as a mindset: a study protocol to rejuvenate older adults with a counterclockwise psychological intervention

    It was approved, and has now been completed (as of 2020), but the results have not been published yet; you can see the timeline of how that’s progressing over on ClinicalTrials.gov:

    Clinical Trials | Ageing as a Mindset: A Counterclockwise Experiment to Rejuvenate Older Adults

    Hopefully it’ll take less time than the eleven years it took for the original study, but in the meantime, there seems to be nothing to lose in doing a little “Citizen Science” for ourselves.

    Maybe a week in a 20 years-ago themed resort (writer’s note: wow, that would only be 2004; that doesn’t feel right; it should surely be at least the 90s!) isn’t a viable option for you, but we’re willing to bet it’s possible to “microdose” on this method. Given that the original study lasted only a week, even just a themed date-night on a regular recurring basis seems like a great option to explore (if you’re not partnered then well, indulge yourself how best you see fit, in accord with the same premise; a date-night can be with yourself too!).

    Just remember the most important take-away though:

    Don’t accidentally put yourself in your own control group!

    In other words, it’s critically important that for the duration of the exercise, you act and even think as though it is the appropriate date.

    If you instead spend your time thinking “wow, I miss the [decade that does it for you]”, you will dodge the benefits, and potentially even make yourself feel (and thus, potentially, if the inverse hypothesis holds true, become) older.

    This latter is not just our hypothesis by the way, there is an established potential for nocebo effect.

    For example, the following study looked at how instructions given in clinical tests can be worded in a way that make people feel differently about their age, and impact the results of the mental and/or physical tests then administered:

    ❝Our results seem to suggest how manipulations by instructions appeared to be more largely used and capable of producing more clear performance variations on cognitive, memory, and physical tasks.

    Age-related stereotypes showed potentially stronger effects when they are negative, implicit, and temporally closer to the test of performance. ❞

    ~ Dr. Francesco Pagnini

    Read more: Age-based stereotype threat: a scoping review of stereotype priming techniques and their effects on the aging process

    (and yes, that’s the same Dr. Francesco Pagnini whose name you saw atop the other study we cited above, with the 90 participants recreating the Counterclockwise study)

    Want to know more about [the hard science of] psychosomatic health?

    Check out Dr. Langer’s other book, which we reviewed recently:

    The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health – by Dr. Ellen Langer

    Enjoy!

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  • What’s Your Ikigai?

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    Ikigai: A Closer Look

    We’ve mentioned ikigai from time to time, usually when discussing the characteristics associated with Blue Zone centenarians, for example as number 5 of…

    The Five Pillars Of Longevity

    It’s about finding one’s “purpose”. Not merely a function, but what actually drives you in life. And, if Japanese studies can be extrapolated to the rest of the world, it has a significant and large impact on mortality (other factors being controlled for); not having a sense of ikigai is associated with an approximately 47%* increase in 7-year mortality risk in the categories of cardiovascular disease and external cause mortality:

    Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study

    *we did a lot of averaging and fuzzy math to get this figure; the link will show you the full stats though!

    In case that huge (n=43,391) study didn’t convince you, here’s another comparably-sized (n=43,117) one that found similarly, albeit framing the numbers the other way around, i.e. a comparable decrease in mortality risk for having a sense of ikigai:

    Associations of ikigai as a positive psychological factor with all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality among middle-aged and elderly Japanese people

    This study was even longer (12 years rather than 7), so the fact that it found pretty much the same results the 7-year study we cited just before is quite compelling evidence. Again, multivariate hazard ratios were adjusted for age, BMI, drinking and smoking status, physical activity, sleep duration, education, occupation, marital status, perceived mental stress, and medical history—so all these things were effectively controlled for statistically.

    Three kinds of ikigai

    There are three principal kinds of ikigai:

    • Social ikigai: for example, a caring role in the family or community, volunteer work, teaching
    • Asocial ikigai: for example, a solitary practice of self-discipline, spirituality, or study without any particular intent to teach others
    • Antisocial ikigai: for example, a strong desire to outlive an enemy, or to harm a person or group that one hates

    You may be thinking: wait, aren’t those last things bad?

    And… Maybe! But ikigai is not a matter of morality or even about “warm fuzzy feelings”. The fact is, having a sense of purpose increases longevity regardless of moral implications or niceness.

    Nevertheless, for obvious reasons there is a lot more focus on the first two categories (social and asocial), and of those, especially the first category (social), because on a social level, “we all do well when we all do well”.

    We exemplified them above, but they can be defined:

    • Social: working for the betterment of society
    • Asocial: working for the betterment of oneself

    Of course, for many people, the same ikigai may cover both of those—often somebody who excels at something for its own sake and/but shares it with others to enrich their lives also, for example a teacher, an artist, a scientist, etc.

    For it to cover both, however, requires that both parts of it are genuinely part of their feeling of ikigai, and not merely unintended consequences.

    For example, a piano teacher who loves music in general and the piano in particular, and would gladly spend every waking moment studying/practising/performing, but hates having to teach it, but needs to pay the bills so teaches it anyway, cannot be said to be living any kind of social ikigai there, just asocial. And in fact, if teaching the piano is causing them to not have the time or energy to pursue it for its own sake, they might not even be living any ikigai at all.

    One other thing to watch out for

    There is one last stumbling block, which is that while we can find ikigai, we can also lose it! Examples of this may include:

    • A professional whose job is their ikigai, until they face mandatory retirement or are otherwise unable to continue their work (perhaps due to disability, for example)
    • A parent whose full-time-parent role is their ikigai, until their children leave for school, university, life in general
    • A married person whose “devoted spouse” role is their ikigai, until their partner dies

    For this reason, people of any age can have a “crisis of identity” that’s actually more of a “crisis of purpose”.

    There are two ways of handling this:

    1. Have a back-up ikigai ready! For example, if your profession is your ikigai, maybe you have a hobby waiting in the wings, that you can smoothly jump ship to upon retirement.
    2. Embrace the fluidity of life! Sometimes, things don’t happen the way we expect. Sometimes life’s surprises can trip us up; sometimes they can leave us a sobbing wreck. But so long as life continues, there is an opportunity to pick ourselves up and decide where to go from that point. Note that this is not fatalism, by the way, it doesn’t have to be “this bad thing happened so that we could find this good thing, so really it was a good thing all along”. Rather, it can equally readily be “well, we absolutely did not want that bad thing to happen, but since it did, now we shall take it this way from here”.

    For more on developing/maintaining psychological resilience in the face of life’s less welcome adversities, see:

    Psychological Resilience Training

    …and:

    Putting The Abs Into Absurdity ← do not underestimate the power of this one

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • The Sprout Book – by Doug Evans
  • How to Stay Sane – by Philippa Perry

    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.

    First, what this book is not: a guide of “how to stay sane” in the popular use of the word “sane”, meaning free from serious mental illness of all and any kinds in general, and especially free from psychotic delusions. Alas, this book will not help with those.

    What, then, is it? A guide of “how to stay sane” in the more casual sense of resiliently and adaptively managing stress, anxiety, and suchlike. The “light end” of mental health struggles, that nonetheless may not always feel light when dealing with them.

    The author, a psychotherapist, draws from her professional experience and training to lay out psychological tools for our use, as well as giving the reader a broader understanding of the most common ills that may ail us.

    The writing style is relaxed and personable; it’s not at all like reading a textbook.

    The psychotherapeutic style is not tied to one model, and rather hops from one to another, per what is most likely to help for a given thing. This is, in this reviewer’s opinion at least, far better than the (all-too common) attempt made by a lot of writers to try to present their personal favorite model as the cure for all ills, instead of embracing the whole toolbox as this one does.

    Bottom line: if your mental health is anywhere between “mostly good” and “a little frayed around the edges but hanging on by at least a few threads”, then this book likely can help you gain/maintain the surer foundation you’re surely seeking.

    Click here to check out How To Stay Sane, and do just that!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Tasty Tabbouleh with Tahini

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    Tabbouleh is a salad, but it’s not “just a salad”. It’s a special kind of salad that’s as exciting for the tastebuds as it is healthy for the body and brain. Its core ingredients have been traditional for about a dozen generations, and seasonings are always a personal matter (not to mention that Lebanese tabbouleh-makers centuries ago might not have used miso and nooch, as we will today), but the overall feel of the Gestalt of tabbouleh seasonings remains the same, and this recipe is true to that.

    You will need

    For the tabbouleh:

    • 1 cup bulgur wheat
    • 1 cup plum tomatoes, chopped
    • 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped (add the peel to a jug of water and put it in the fridge; this will be refreshing cucumber water later!)
    • 1 cup chickpeas, cooked without salt
    • 1/2 cup parsley, chopped
    • 1/2 cup mint, chopped
    • 2 spring onions, finely chopped
    • 2oz fresh lemon juice
    • 1 tsp white miso paste
    • 1 tsp garlic powder
    • 1 tsp ground cumin
    • 1 tsp ground celery seeds
    • 1 tsp ground nigella seeds
    • 1 tsp ground black pepper
    • 1 tsp MSG, or 1/2 tsp low sodium salt (you can find it in supermarkets, the sodium chloride is cut with potassium chloride to make it have less sodium and more potassium)
    • 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (nooch), ground (it comes in flakes; you will have to grind it in a spice grinder or with a pestle and mortar)

    For the tahini sauce:

    • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
    • 3 tbsp tahini
    • 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
    • 1 tbsp white miso paste
    • 1 tsp ground cumin

    To serve:

    • A generous helping of leafy greens; we recommend collard greens, but whatever works for you is good; just remember that dark green is best. Consider cavolo nero, or even kale if that’s your thing, but to be honest this writer doesn’t love kale
    • 1 tsp coarsely ground nigella seeds
    • Balsamic vinegar, ideally aged balsamic vinegar (this is thicker and sweeter, but unlike most balsamic vinegar reductions, doesn’t have added sugar).

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Rinse the bulgur wheat and then soak it in warm water. There is no need to boil it; the warm water is enough to soften it and you don’t need to cook it (bulgur wheat has already been parboiled before it got to you).

    2) While you wait, take a small bowl and mix the rest of the ingredients from the tabbouleh section (so, the lemon juice, miso paste, and all those ground spices and MSG/salt and ground nutritional yeast); you’re making a dressing out of all the ingredients here.

    3) When the bulgur wheat is soft (expect it to take under 15 minutes), drain it and put it in a big bowl. Add the tomatoes, cucumber, chickpeas, parsley, mint, and spring onions. This now technically qualifies as tabbouleh already, but we’re not done.

    4) Add the dressing to the tabbouleh and mix thoroughly but gently (you don’t want to squash the tomatoes, cucumber, etc). Leave it be for at least 15 minutes while the flavors blend.

    5) Take the “For the tahini sauce” ingredients (all of them) and blend them with 4 oz water, until smooth. You’re going to want to drizzle this sauce, so if the consistency is too thick for drizzling, add a little more water and/or lemon juice (per your preference), 1 tbsp at a time.

    6) Roughly chop the leafy greens and put them in a bowl big enough for the tabbouleh to join them there. The greens will serve as a bed for the tabbouleh itself.

    7) Drizzle the tahini over the tabbouleh, and drizzle a little of the aged balsamic vinegar too.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Body by Science – by Dr. Doug McGuff & John Little

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    The idea that you’ll get a re-sculpted body at 12 minutes per week is a bold claim, isn’t it? Medical Doctor Doug McGuff and bodybuilder John Little team up to lay out their case. So, how does it stand up to scrutiny?

    First, is it “backed by rigorous research” as claimed? Yes… with caveats.

    The book uses a large body of scientific literature as its foundation, and that weight of evidence does support this general approach:

    • Endurance cardio isn’t very good at burning fat
    • Muscle, even just having it without using it much, burns fat to maintain it
    • To that end, muscle can be viewed as a fat-burning asset
    • Muscle can be grown quickly with short bursts of intense exercise once per week

    Why once per week? The most relevant muscle fibers take about that long to recover, so doing it more often will undercut gains.

    So, what are the caveats?

    The authors argue for slow reps of maximally heavy resistance work sufficient to cause failure in about 90 seconds. However, most of the studies cited for the benefits of “brief intense exercise” are for High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT involves “sprints” of exercise. It doesn’t have to be literally running, but for example maxing out on an exercise bike for 30 seconds, slowing for 60, maxing out for 30, etc. Or in the case of resistance work, explosive (fast!) concentric movements and slow eccentric movements, to work fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers, respectively.

    What does this mean for the usefulness of the book?

    • Will it sculpt your body as described in the blurb? Yes, this will indeed grow your muscles with a minimal expenditure of time
    • Will it improve your body’s fat-burning metabolism? Yes, this will indeed turn your body into a fat-burning machine
    • Will it improve your “complete fitness”? No, if you want to be an all-rounder athlete, you will still need HIIT, as otherwise anything taxing your under-worked fast-twitch muscle fibers will exhaust you quickly.

    Bottom line: read this book if you want to build muscle efficiently, and make your body more efficient at burning fat. Best supplemented with at least some cardio, though!

    Click here to check out Body by Science, and get re-sculpting yours!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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